I was up for the gig writing the screenplay for Where the Wild Things Are a million years ago, when the project was at Universal. I had mixed feelings about taking on the project, because the book is so slim, and so primal, so, well, "wild," that I knew no studio would spend $100 million doing it properly. Where the Wild Things Are should be weird, intense, edgy and deeply personal, the exact opposite of what i knew a studio wanted out of a four-quadrant hit.

I was fortunate enough, in my dealings with Universal on the project, to have a 2 1/2-hour phone conversation with Maurice Sendak, the book's author. Sendak is a true artist, something I rarely meet in my Hollywood travels. We got along instantly on the phone and jawed for a long time on many topics, from Disney (Sendak thinks he was a genius, up through Pinocchio, but then it's all downhill) to Beckett (Sendak loves his plays but can't get into his prose).

Sendak had only one note for me as a potential screenwriter of Wild Things: he didn't care what form the movie took, he didn't care if it was faithful or not, he didn't care what the Wild Things looked like or what sort of house Max lived in, his only requirement was that the movie needed to be as shocking, and as revolutionary, as the book was in 1963.

Well. Is that all.

I felt his pain and I shared his concern. I had spoken to the studio executives at length, and the one thing I knew about them was that "shocking" and "revolutionary" were the last two adjectives on their list for this project. I warned him that the studio would never make the movie the way he wanted it and he said "Fine, then they don't have to make it. The book is still selling fine, I have plenty of money, I don't need this, I don't need a movie to be made of Where the Wild Things Are. Either they make it according to my one requirement, or they don't make it, I'm fine either way."

Readers may or may not be aware of the battles Maurice Sendak has fought over the decades on the behalf of his vision of children's entertainment. Wild Things was indeed shocking and revolutionary when it was released in 1963, and many teachers, parents and librarians felt strongly that it was not proper entertainment for children. It taught no lesson, it was not created to edify or instruct. It was dark and weird and scary. It presented childhood the way it feels to a child, not as it's idealized by adults, and that was something quite shocking and revolutionary indeed in 1963.

Anyway, I did my best to find a compromise between "shocking" and "commercial," I did my best to come up with a narrative that would be psychologically grounded and dramatically propulsive while fulfilling the demands of the marketplace. I didn't get the gig, that project fell apart, and nothing happened for a few years, and then it turned up at Warner Bros with Spike Jonze directing and Dave Eggars writing the screenplay. And I said "Well, good, that sounds like it will either be a brilliant movie or a noble failure."

Well, it's not a noble failure. As I read over the weekend's reviews, I'm a little surprised to see that the battle Sendak's been fighting since 1963 is still being fought. I keep reading over and over that this movie isn't appropriate for children, but this time it's couched in a strange kind of reverse-snobbery. People seem offended, for the sake of the children of course, that the movie is too "arty" or too "pretentious," too boring or too psychological or too sophisticated or too adult. "This is not a movie for children," one online-critic sniffed, "this is a movie for film critics."  David Denby in the New Yorker worries: "I have a vision of eight-year-olds leaving the movie in bewilderment. Why are the creatures so unhappy? That question doesn’t return a child to safety or anywhere else."  Well, no, it doesn't, does it?  Denby's remark assumes that children are here to be comforted and reassured by Hollywood entertainment.

I guess I'm not quite sure why these self-appointed guardians of childhood innocence wish to protect the little ones from art exactly, but the same online folk who whined that they were worried that Warner Bros would turn Wild Things into Shrek are now insulted that the movie is too intelligent, that it was not made to entertain but to display the filmmaker's prowess. As though the parents of the US should be concerned about exposing their children to quality filmmaking. How dare Warner Bros, how dare they try to pass off a nuanced, detailed portrait of child psychology as light entertainment!  The same people who complain about the rote, chipper quality of most children's entertainment, where all morals are clearly spelled out every ten minutes, timeless bromides like "Be Yourself" and "Believe" and "Dare to Dream," are now aghast that a major studio has the effrontery to offer something not so easily figured-out.

Well, I saw the movie Saturday morning with my son Sam (8), his sister Kit (6) and their friend Rahi (7), in a theater packed with parents and their kids.  There was a round of applause at the end from the crowd, and while Kit got a little restless at times, both Sam and Rahi were riveted throughout and later declared it "the best movie ever made in the history of everything." They were not bored or baffled or confused or upset. They recognized that, yes, the commercials made it look like a light-hearted romp, but they certainly didn't object that the movie offered a more personal, more intense experience than the commercials promised. They were overwhelmed in the way that young filmmakers are when they see 2001 or The 400 Blows, that sense of "Wait, movies can do this? Why didn't anyone tell me movies can do this?"

Myself, I'm looking back at a season that included, in short order, District 9, Inglourious Basterds, A Serious Man and now Where the Wild Things Are, and feeling pretty good about the year. What do the above four movies have in common? Well, of course, they are the products of intensely personal visions, brilliant individuals bringing their idiosyncratic worldviews to the movies and greatly expanding the limits of the art form.