If you're extra lucky, they'll let you into a secret lair (behind a bookshelf, of course). Earlier this year, we wrote about the products available from the store, and now we're bringing you inside. The Brooklyn Superhero Supply is yet another whimsical concept store from novelist Dave Eggers, who runs a series of writing workshops for young people in these storefronts - which include San Francisco's Pirate Store, and a Time Travel Mart in Los Angeles. Eggers' nonprofit 826 National is devoted to teaching kids to write by inspiring them with imaginative scenarios and general fun.

Photographs by Jeffrey O. Gustafson.

via 826NYC

Let's get this out of the way right away: Jonze's Wild Things is only an adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's book in the loosest possible sense. It shouldn't surprise anyone that Jonze, whose Adaptation was a dissertation on the impossibility of adapting a literary work to film, has treated the Sendak book as a mere jumping-off point. There are only a handful of incidents in Sendak's book, but at least half of them don't appear in the movie. Instead of using the book's spare narrative as a framework and adding to it, the movie mostly creates a new story from scratch.

In a way, WTWTA is the polar opposite of Watchmen: Zack Snyder faced a 12-book magnum opus of graphic storytelling, and tried to distill it to three hours without losing anything essential or changing anything (except the ending.) Jonze takes Sendak's twelve sentences and expands them to 100 minutes of incidents. And yet, both films wind up feeling lovely but a bit empty, triumphs of gorgeous imagery over substance.

This review is not going to tell you whether Wild Things is good, or whether you'll like it — after talking to tons of people who've seen the movie, I've come to the conclusion that this is such an idiosyncratic, strange movie that it's impossible to predict whether you'll like it or not. So far, everybody I've talked to has either loved it or hated it — and I have a feeling that sharp divide will be the norm. It also may be the sort of movie that you'll only fully appreciate on a third viewing, with the right substances in the mix. (If you want to read an unreservedly rave review of the movie, check out Entertainment Weekly's.)

Wild Things is not a movie about a little boy who wants to be wild, traveling (in his fantasy, or via magic) to a strange land full of monsters who make him their king and let him be as wild as he wants, until he gets homesick. Rather, Wild Things is a movie about the terrors and insecurities of childhood, and the monsters we all have inside of us. It presents an unnerving portrait of childhood as a stormy, exhilerating time, in which play is intensely serious and important, and loneliness is the biggest nightmare of them all.

Max, who's around ten, lives with his divorced mom, who's slowly failing at her job and barely making ends meet thanks to her shitty absentee ex-husband. She's dating a new guy, whom Max hates. Meanwhile, Max's older sister, Claire, who used to be his friend, has stopped hanging out with him because she's trying to get in with a cool crowd at school. Max acts out, trying to get people to pay attention to him, but it only makes matters worse — so finally, Max screams "feed me, woman!" at his mom, in front of her new boyfriend, and then actually bites her. He's sent to his room, but he runs away from home, until he finds a boat, which takes him to the land of the Wild Things.

Whether you love or hate this movie will depend most on how you feel about the Wild Things, who are sort of weird and totemic. They look like the creatures in Sendak's book — until they open their mouths.

What comes out of the Wild Things' mouths is a stream of complaints and bitter observations, punctuated by moments of extreme, shining whimsy. It keeps you off guard: The monsters, one and all, seem miserable, upset and perennially disappointed by life, but then they come out with cute, occasionally hilarious lines. While the monsters serve to amplify the conflicts, anxieties and destructive glee inside of Max, they don't really feel like aspects of a child's psyche to me — they come across more like emotionally stunted, narcissistic middle-aged people.

I didn't realize the main monster, Carol, was voiced by James Gandolfini until after I saw the film, because i saw a super-early screening and hadn't read much press before hand. So to me, Carol just sounded like a cranky, neurotic old guy with anger issues. At times during the main body of the story, I felt like I was sitting on a particularly long therapy session in a group home, or a Seinfeld episode with fewer jokes.

On the other hand, other people I've talked to who've seen the movie found the Wild Things much more convincing, and compelling, as aspects of Max's inner life, made real and massive. So your mileage may indeed vary.

But whatever you think they are, it's made clear that the Wild Things form an utterly dysfunctional family, one where you sense the same arguments have been going on for decades and will continue for decades more. Carol is upset because another one of the monsters, K.W. (Lauren Ambrose) has decided to leave the group and go spend time with her new friends, who turn out to be weird owls that you have to hit with rocks before you can talk to them. Carol is bursting with resentment and neediness, and when we first meet him he's trashing the other Wild Things' houses like an alcoholic, abusive dad. K.W., meanwhile, just acts like she's sick of everyone's shit.

Then there are two other Wild Things, Judith and Ira, who constantly feel neglected and marginalized within the group — Judith complains every few moments that whatever activities the gang of monsters does, she and her companion are pushed to the side. Nobody cares what they think, nobody pays attention to them, etc. There's also a big bull, who's sort of bull-like.

Here's the scene where we get introduced to some of them, and Judith is like "Oh, you don't need to know me, I'm kind of a downer." The tree-destroying thing is cute, though, as is the tongue thing:

So, yeah... dysfunctional family of losers. Who are depressed. A lot.

But it's not all anhedonia — a big point of the film is that Max shows up and shakes up the monsters' dreadful staleness, becoming their King and giving them a whole bunch of new games to play. "We'll take care of each other, and sleep together in a real pile," Max says. Unlike the people in Max's real life, these monsters pay attention to him and are curious about him, and sort of become his minions.

When Max convinces the Wild Things that he's a King, and that he was a King among the Vikings for twenty years already, it's a brilliantly whimsical scene. Max Records, as Max, shines the most in these quirky moments where's spinning a line of amazing B.S., talking about his crazy super-powers and his amazing leadership skills. The "let the Wild Rumpus begin!" sequence is severely fun and insane, culminating in a crazed puppy pile. And later, when Max concocts a crazy scheme to build a huge fort, with a crime lab and spy gadgets and all sorts of other weird superhero/scifi touches, he's the total nerd-kid avatar, with a team of monsters doing his manic bidding.

But you sort of know, all along, that this whole "king" thing will not turn out well — and that's the biggest departure from the book. Forget the fact that the movie dispenses with the book's "bedroom turns into wild jungle" sequence — the biggest change is that it's much clearer that Max is a failed king, and the monsters end up hating him. This happens partly because Max decides to split the monsters into "good guys" and "bad guys," drawing them into a war fought with dirt clods, which quickly turns ugly. Max makes Judith and Ira into "bad guys," exacerbating their persecution complex, and you can just see in this clip the beginning of things going South:

Sorry to give away so much of the movie's plot — this really isn't a movie you'd go see for the plot, though. It's much more about the weird little touches and character quirks, the lush visuals, and the blaring-loud, wordless score by Karen O. and Carter Burwell.

As I said in the beginning, this movie offers the coldest comfort of any film in Spike Jonze's career. It feels like a journey into sheer dysphoria — Max's home life is unrelentingly horrendous, and when he escapes to a fantasy land, it turns out to be even worse. The film's message seems to be that life sucks, growing up sucks, and most of all, any attempt to escape into wildness or fantasy will only turn out even suckier.

I don't think WTWTA is too scary for small children — but I suspect it may be too nihilistic. Teenagers and tweens, though, may love it.

The film reinforces its dark message with an unblinking stare aimed at blank landscapes. When we first meet Max in the "real" world, the world is blanketed with snow, and Jonze's camera zooms in on the unrelenting whiteness. Max builds a snow fort and hides inside, and he appears to be in a blinding snow tunnel. When Max travels to the land of the Wild Things, at first he's in that famous forest/jungle setting, but the film quickly moves to the blank dunes of the Melbourne area, where Jonze filmed. The landscape is meant to reflect the moods of Max and the Wild Things, which grow increasingly joyless and unrelenting.

Here's a bit where Carol and Max walk through a desolate landscape, and Carol talks about how the landscape used to be rocks, and now it's sand, and soon it'll be dust, and who knows what comes after dust? And then Max says the sun is going to die, and Carol tries to put a brave face on that piece of info:

(The film's visuals, it must be said, really are incredible — the film has brilliant design, from the monsters to their weird circular wicker-like buildings.)

If you think of this as a kids' movie, you'll be sadly disappointed. If you think of it as an adventure film, you'll be puzzled. But think of it as a continuation of Jonze's first two movies, and it makes perfect sense. Like Malkovich and Adaptation, WTWTA is about someone who's uneasy in his own skin — Max literally seeks liberation by donning his wolf costume, and this leads him to his adventure — and like the heroes of Malkovich and Adaptation, Max discovers, the hard way, that being someone else is no solution to his problems, but also that it's a kind of trap.

The main difference is that Wild Things feels much more surreal than those first two films, thanks to the weird Jim Henson/CG creatures. And it's about a kid, rather than a thirtysomething or fortysomething guy. In a sense, Wild Things does for the coming-of-age tale what Jonze's first two movies do for the midlife crisis/second chance story: strip away the candy coating on the fantasy to reach the pure existential crisis beneath, and show how insoluble that crisis really is.

A story in the Oct. 19 Newsweek contains this classic exchange:

What do you say to parents who think the Wild Things film may be too scary?

Sendak: I would tell them to go to hell. That's a question I will not tolerate.

Because kids can handle it?

Sendak: If they can't handle it, go home. Or wet your pants. Do whatever you like. But it's not a question that can be answered.

Jonze: Dave, you want to field that one?

Eggers: The part about kids wetting their pants? Should kids wear diapers when they go to the movies? I think adults should wear diapers going to it, too. I think everyone should be prepared for any eventuality.

So apparently I was wrong about Michael Bay being the film-maker most eager to have us all wear diapers to the movies.

[Newsweek, via SFGate]

This feature definitely includes some spoilers for the movie version of Where The Wild Things Are, so if you wish to remain unspoiled for that film, you may want to stop reading here.

We were lucky enough to be among a few reporters who sat down with Jonze, who directed the film, and Eggers, who collaborated with Jonze on the screenplay adapation — plus Catherine Keener, who plays the mother of Max, the young boy who travels to a mysterious land of monsters and weird creatures, where everything is wild. They talked about striving to be true to the book — and yet finding ways to transform a relatively short picture book into a full-length movie, with fully realized characters and a fleshed-out story.

Sendak's one reservation

One major, significant change from the original book is the way Max enters the world of the Wild Things. In the book, his bedroom transforms into a lush forest. ("That very night in Max's room a forest grew, and grew — and grew until his ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world all around.") But in the movie, Max runs away from home, running down city streets and past dark parking lots, until he finds a waterfront with a boat, and then he sails to the world of the Wild Things.

Jonze and Eggers admitted that even though Sendak supported all their choices in the movie, this was the one choice Sendak kept coming back and questioning:

Jonze: We thought that if we did this amazing sequence that Maurice had illustrated, of the bedroom turning into the forest, it would say that the whole thing was in his fantasy, and it didn't seem to be doing justice to what we were writing up to that point. When I think about those four pages in the book, I vividly remember being captivated by them. They seemed like magic to me. Between the bedpost turning into the tree, and the wallpaper turning into leaves, the way the thing transformed was so captivating. And Maurice was the one who said we need to make this our own, and that was something that it had to lose along the way.

Eggers: And the funny anecdote was, Maurice was so supportive of every choice, and really understanding what it took to expand the book. But this is the one thing he kept coming back and sort of saying, "Really? You really don't want to [do the original sequence]?"

Spike: [Sendak kept saying] "You gotta make this your movie. I totally understand. But what about [the bedroom scene]?" And after we talked about it, he'd be like, "Oh good, you guys seem like you're confident in what you're doing with this." And then two weeks later, he'd be like, "I was thinking…" But to his credit, he wasn't coming at this thing as a protective artist, like "This is my thing. Don't fuck it up." It was sort of like he jumped off a cliff. Once he decided he wanted us to do it, he gave it over to us entirely and said, "Make it your own. The movie is not mine. The book was mine 40 years ago. But the movie is yours." He really lived by that. And it made the movie what it was. Without that, I don't really think I would have been able to make the movie, go down the path. I would have been too scared of making something that he didn't like. But because of his sort of commitment to us making something personal, it let us do that.

What the Wild Things mean:

As in the book, the movie of Wild Things is sort of a dreamlike story where nothing feels quite real. But because it's a full-length movie and the monsters are much more fleshed out as characters, we get a much bigger story. And to me, it felt like a parable about violence: Max in the movie acts out more violently in the book (he bites his mother), and when Max becomes king of the monsters, he incites them to start a play-war, which escalates until some of the monsters get seriously hurt. The monsters are huge and powerful, but they never hurt each other until Max incites them to do so.

So I had to ask Jonze and Eggers if there was a message about violence here. Jonze demurred: "I am loath to say what the movie is supposed to be about, or not supposed to be about, because it's more interesting for it to have its own life." Just like the book means something different to everyone who reads it, the movie should likewise have its own personal significance to everyone who reads it. Eggers agreed that he wants people to be able to take away their own interpretations from the movie: "That's the beauty of a certain type of art, whether it's poetry or picture books, or whatever: there's a certain spareness that leaves some room for somebody to... [make their own meaning.]"

But then Eggers added that there is a sense in which the violence in the movie is about fulfilling Max's desires:

For a nine-year-old boy, a lot of this is wish-fulfillment, where you really get to act out. There's a little boy who might feel a little bit contained within the walls of his school or his home, but in a land without any boundaries or borders, he can act out his wildest fantasies. And that includes a full-scale war with people at his beck and call. And that's why he says, "I know something that always cheers me up: A war." Which is the way boys think, or at least how I remember thinking.

In response to another question, Eggers said Jonze really resisted the idea that there would be any parallels between the Wild Things and the people in Max's "real" life at home. From "day one," Jonze insisted, there should not be any direct correlation. "It's not going to be, 'This one's the dad, this one's the mom..." At the same time, you can definitely see that the different monsters correspond to different parts of Max's personality, and because Max has an absent father at home (more on that in a moment), he's more drawn to Carol (James Gandolfini), the big, fatherly monster. "Spike did a great job of keeping it vague enough that it isn't tidy," says Eggers. "The book isn't tidy. Childhood isn't tidy."

And the land of the Wild Things in the movie shifts a lot depending on the scene — at times it's almost a normal forest, and at others, it's sort of surreal, with a giant dog wandering huge sand dunes, and weird owls that need to be hit with rocks to get their attention. Jonze says this is meant to be "a place where everything is wild. It's emotionally wild, geographically wild, weather wise — anything can happen at any time. It's just trying to represent what it feels like to be nine. That was sort of the goal of the movie... to capture the feeling." The movie is definitely meant to be from the point of view of a nine-year-old, so the audience sees everything from that vantage point.

And Keener chimed in that the landscape is not unlike our myths of the Wild Wild West, where anything can happen. "There are still places here that are dangerous to go."

The Absent Father

Speaking of Keener, she plays Max's mother, mostly in the sequences before he goes off to the land of the Wild Things. And in the film, she's clearly struggling to keep it together in the wake of a nasty divorce.

Keener said she was allowed to use her own imagination to come up with her character's backstory — "That's kind of how Spike works" — and she imagined her ex-husband as being an absent guy, who doesn't contribute as much as her character needs, financially and in other ways.

I thought he was wrong... she's just there with two kids, and working, and struggling with her job, and it's not going very well, and she's probably way out of her depth on it, and wants to have sex and be loved and all that stuff, and it's hard with a couple of kids around who need you. And it's beyond her control to fullfill their needs as well, so everybody's a little out of control in the movie.

Eggers says that when he first joined the project, Jonze had already decided that Max's parents were divorced, even though the book doesn't say one way or the other. And the fact that world is out of control is key to Max's experiences: At home, there's a man whom Max doesn't approve of and doesn't want there (his mother's new boyfriend.) At school , we see the science teacher telling Max and the other kids that the sun will eventually die, but that the human race will probably be extinct by then. Max's sister, who used to be his friend, is no longer interested in him. Max "can't control all these external factors, and can't control the turmoil inside of him, [so] all these external factors pop, and he runs away."

Added Keener:

Everyone's very fearful. The mom is fearful that her boyfriend is going to be scared away, she's fearful about paying for this house [and] raising her kids. The daughetrer is fearful about her peers and being accepted. And Max is fearful that everything is going, everything is falling apart. And he just ends up going out and slaying that dragon, he goes off on his adventure and he becomes at peace with it and less afraid and [more] successful as a result of it. When kids are fearful growing up, they are less successful in life.

The wonder of James Gandolfini

Everybody was full of praise for Gandolfini, who plays what Jonze calls the "most essential" of the monsters, the huge tusked Carol. This character needed "his kind of presence and his kind of vulnerability, and his emotions are right under the surface," adds Jonze.

Eggers described Gandolfini coming in for the first day of voice recording, wearing an enormous wide-striped shirt and looking way more imposing and intimidating than he does on The Sopranos. "He was Carol from the first time walked in, and all the other creatures — the other actors — assumed a subservient role... He's such a powerful actor."

Crafting the storyline

Eggers and Jonze also talked about the difficult process of turning a short storybook into a full length movie. Eggers had never worked on a screenplay before, and he didn't have any software. He and Jonze wrote the first draft in Microsoft Word, adding tabs and capitals themselves. Jonze kept getting easily distracted and wanting to go to the store or watch Youtube videos, so Eggers was more of a task-master, keeping him in focus.

The big thing was figuring out who the Wild Things really are and what they want. "That's how you grow a 12-page picture book into a movie," said Eggers. "Not by applying a quest on top of it, like a Golden Chalice, but he gets there and has to learn about who they are."

The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company raises funds for the New York chapter of 826 National, a non-profit founded by authors Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida that helps students with creative and expository writing. Each outlet has its own fantastical shop, such as the Echo Park Time Travel Mart we've mentioned in the past.

The Brooklyn shop sells everything from capes to robotic sharks to secret identities, but there's something especially wonderful about the understated packaging of their home-brewed superpowers, which also come in Immortality ("not an effective strategy for putting off student loans"), Chaos ("not as fun as it sounds"), Cloning Fluid ("You'll only have to buy one bottle. Ever."), and Omnipotence.

[Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company via Lovely Package]

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Author Dave Eggers of McSweeneys and A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius started 826 Valencia in San Francisco as a tutoring and writing center for students, and they now have locations in New York, Los Angeles, Michigan, Chicago, Boston, and Seattle, with more coming soon. Many of the locations feature themed stores that generate both traffic and money for the non-profit centers: San Francisco has a pirate store, New York has a superhero goods company, Seattle has a space travel supply company, and now Los Angeles has a time travel mart.

You can hit this link for an exhaustive rundown of all the products they sell. We particularly like the Evil Robot Memory Eraser and the Drinkable Languages.

Time Travel Mart [826 LA] (Thanks Alan!)

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