LOS ANGELES—It’s unlikely that fans of Maurice Sendak’s children’s book Where the Wild Things Are had Spike Jonze’s name at the top of any list of possible directors of a film adaptation. If they knew Jonze at all, it was probably through his work on two bizarre Charlie Kaufman–scripted films, Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. Those movies are a distance away from a book about a runaway child named Max who ends up on an island inhabited by a group of goofy monsters.

Jonze says that although he grew up with the book, it wasn’t a movie he felt compelled to make. In an L.A. hotel room, he explains that he actually turned down the opportunity on a couple of occasions.

“I didn’t want to make something just to make it,” he says. “I didn’t think, ‘Oh, great, I get to make Where the Wild Things Are and I love that book.’ I think for all the same reasons that I was thrilled to be offered the opportunity, I ended up passing on it a couple of times. I didn’t want to come up with something just to put my fingerprints on it. The film feels like something that came from within the book rather than something that I put on top of it. The idea was to make the Wild Things be wild emotions that would flesh out who Max was. Then it felt like the story came from within the book, because those things felt like they were in the book.”

In Jonze’s adaptation of the book (which is only 48 pages long), Max throws a tantrum in protest of his divorced mother’s (Catherine Keener) new relationship. He goes down to the ocean and finds an abandoned sailboat, eventually landing on the monsters’ island. He befriends most of them but discovers that their decision to make him king of the island could have repercussions since they’ve been known to eat their kings. (The movie opens on October 16 in Vancouver.)

Jonze says that as a fan of the book, he wanted to make sure the points Sendak made came across in the way he remembered. He says he was so impressed by the author that he decided the best way to give him his own voice was to make a documentary film as a companion piece.

“I loved the book, and anything I say now is as an adult trying to analyze it. But as a kid, anything that feels honest or is a feeling you relate to feels true, because kids respond to anything that doesn’t condescend to them, and Maurice’s work doesn’t condescend to them. Before we made the movie, he said, ‘Don’t pander to children, because they are smart,’ and I think he is a force to be reckoned with. That is why I wanted to do a documentary on him.” (The documentary airs in the U.S. on HBO on October 14. There is currently no air date set for HBO Canada.)

Jonze’s sense of allegiance to both Sendak and the children who read the book extended to the people who made the movie with him in Australia. He invited the cast and crew to bring their families and went out of his way to create an environment that would leave them with good memories.

“The set had lots of kids on it all the time. I really wanted it to be a set where the kids felt they could go on any truck and play with anything, or they could go on a set that wasn’t being used and make a movie themselves if they wanted to. The idea was, ‘Let’s have the kids all there and make it an experience for them that they could remember.’ ”

While the four-month shoot may have been fun, the three years that have passed since the shoot ended haven’t been as positive. Jonze has admitted that he and the studio, Warner Bros., disagreed on several issues related to the movie and that he was concerned he might be fired during the editing process. He says when interviewed in L.A., however, that he has been very happy with the support he has received since it was completed.

“It wasn’t always easy, but I got to make the movie I wanted to make. We got to make a movie that is very intimate, but on a scale that is epic, and now they are releasing it in a big way. So for all the difficulties that we had last year, they have come around and are embracing the movie. There are billboards everywhere [in L.A.], and what is cool is that they look like our movie. And the trailers aren’t trying to make it look like a safe thing. It looks like it should, which is pretty exciting.”