Catherine O’Hara goes wild in sorrowful take on a classic

“Wanna go up on the hill and play war?”

Not exactly how Canadian comedic icon Catherine O’Hara expected to be greeted by her Where the Wild Things Are director Spike Jonze when she arrived at his house, but appropriately whimsical, impulsive and clumsily innocent considering the film they were making together.

Along with fellow cast mates James Gandolfini, Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, Paul Dano and Forest Whitaker, O’Hara brings Maurice Sendak’s kids-lit classic to life as the voice of Judith, one of the titular Wild Things. These alternately imposing, snarky, lonely and adorable beasts populate Max’s (Max Records) imagination and become his pseudo-family after he bolts from his real mom’s (Catherine Keener) house in a fit of childish rage and frustration.

Though limited to using just her voice onscreen as the sarcastic naysayer and comic relief figure, O’Hara explains that Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) had the cast act out the movie together in order to get authentic performances.

“We physically acted everything for a month, with remote microphones,” she said while in Toronto recently to talk about the film. “[Spike Jonze] is so smart. When we were there with him, he was being Max. He was not standing off, talking about his vision or your character’s arc. It was, ‘K, what do you wanna do?’ It was just so wild. You feel like he’s a little kid. And you’re just in the play of it and it’s erratic. It was so primal.”

Working from source material made up of only nine sentences, Jonze, and co-screenwriter Dave Eggers, took Sendak’s 1963 tale of a misbehaving boy who retreats to a fantasy world where he’s king and fleshed out not-so-kid-friendly themes like loneliness, sadness, rage and alienation.

Given the film’s rather melancholy tone, and controversial early test screening responses, Jonze seems to have made a purposeful distinction between making a film about childhood and a movie for children but O’Hara doesn’t think it’s restricted to a certain age group.

“It’s your own experience, this movie. It allows you that. It’s almost like a book where it leaves something to the imagination. I don’t think [kids] are going to enjoy it the same way. But I think it’s beautiful for kids to appreciate the compassion that Max has and for them to feel that compassion for the Wild Things.”

In Jonze and Eggers' beefed up version, the Wild Things represent Max’s own unchecked emotions and mirror the adults in his life, or those absent from it, and show a nine-year-old boy who’s in the process of trying to figure out who he is and who he wants to be.

O’Hara recalled a video chat that Jonze set up with the cast and Sendak, whom she called a “beautiful man”, and his advice that since kids will go and see anything, they, as filmmakers, artists, writers and the like, had to respect that “and give them worthy entertainment for their fresh, little beautiful minds.”

And, yes, Jonze certainly fetishizes the innocence of youth in WTWTA, but he doesn’t pander or try to squeeze in a moral or grandiose lesson – especially noteworthy considering the saccharine story arc of most children’s movies.

“There’s a lot of great kids movies but there’s a lot of crap out there too,” O’Hara offered, echoing a common sentiment. “And it’s just cheesy. Artistically, you want your kids to see good comedy, good art.”

She calls Jonze a genius and describes him as a highly intuitive director who encouraged improvisation and authentic reactions to the other actors - key to the film's pure, free-spirited tone.

“He just demanded me to be Judith in the moment. He’s amazing. I got into it. I felt like Judith, because Judith needed to let go and just give [her]self to [Max] and [believe he was king] and I felt like that. I felt like I was 90 years old and I just wanted to be a kid and let go, let go, let go.”

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Where the Wild Things Are opens in Cineplex Theatres October 16.

Watch clips from the film: