Whenever I catch myself hosting my own private pity cabaret, I snap out of it by going online and hunting down scenes of Catherine O'Hara playing SCTV 's resident drama queen, the eternally self-absorbed warbler Lola Heatherton. It always works. Just watch Catherine/Lola sing "You don't carrrrreeee - You don't DARE to!", her lower lip flailing like a netted eel, her face clogged with cheap mascara, and you too will wonder what on earth you ever had to complain about.
Catherine O'Hara is not so much an actor as an elemental force. As is often said of Bette Midler, and was said not often enough to the late Madeline Kahn, O'Hara just has to show up and the audience is happy. Her body of work - from SCTV to Tim Burton's classic Beetle Juice , to the Home Alone blockbusters and on to her recent collaborations with Christopher Guest - is one of the most consistent and reliable in the trade.
What people will make of her latest project, Spike Jonze's big-screen, big-money adaptation of Maurice Sendak's beloved Where the Wild Things Are , remains to be seen. Messing with a classic is asking for it. But wary fans can rest assured on one front: As Judith, the crabbiest of the Wild Things, O'Hara gives the film a deliciously knowing, grown-up nuance without ever resorting to the cheap wise-cracking that stands for wit in most family films.
Why should only Bette Midler enjoy the sobriquet "The Divine?"
I've never read Where the Wild Things Are . Why are people so fanatical about it?
I can't say I'm fanatical about it, but I definitely love the book and I read it to my sons - over and over and over again. It's only 10 sentences long, but they're obviously 10 perfect sentences, and they leave so much up to the imagination. You know, I've never tried to analyze that book before, but now I'm full of it, I'm full of it and I'm trying to come up with answers. My guess? It reminds people that we are wild things, that the animal side of us is raw and primal, and the other, beautiful human side of us - well, they're both beautiful, both sides - is so sensitive, and we're so deeply affected by each other. The book, and the film, really love both sides of human beings, and neither tries to explain human beings - it just says, this is what we are.
My theory is that Max, the hero of the film, is having a psychotic episode .
Are you serious? Get outta here!
Others might say it's a dream. Others might say it's purely Max's imagination, that he's learning how to calm himself down by imagining others who feel the same way…. Who knows? But I love that that's your reaction. I love that! I'm not gonna argue - that's your thing.
How were the creatures created? Was a motion-capture process used on your face?
Originally, they had some kind of, you know, computer robotics stuff built into the Wild Things, which were made, and had actors inside them. But it turned out the heads were really heavy, and it was hard to do the manipulations. So, the animation had to be done over the faces. Do you not agree that it was done subtly? It turned the creatures, facially, into the best actors in the world.
So, it is your face under there, somewhere?
Yes, yes, they shot us, when we recorded the voices, all together in one room, for a month, with remote microphones on our heads. And we actually got in a sleep pile, and we had a bread roll fight, we knocked each other down, we hit each other, we lay on each other - we did everything you see the Wild Things do in the movie. Everything. Over and over, for a month, with Catherine Keener and Spike Jonze taking turns playing Max. So, Spike did not direct from a distance. Then they used what we did as a guide track for the people inside the costumes, and they used playback of our voices and the people inside the costumes lip-synched us, as well as they could.
This film is much more sombre than I expected, and emotionally complex. Will it resonate with the same age group who read the book ?
I think kids will get what they get. First of all, I think kids are not as afraid as we think they are. Sometimes we forget that about ourselves, the way we were as kids, unless you go into primal therapy. But, also, we forget how terrifying those early days and nights were, because we had no control as kids, so I think kids will probably like seeing that kind of human darkness. It's not a creepy darkness at all, it's a relatable darkness. It's the darkness that's a part of us that isn't a bad darkness. It's probably easier for kids to laugh at that than it is for adults.
In terms of kids' movies, to say it's complex, but in terms of humanness, it's not dark. And it's not creepy adult concepts being shoved on kids. Nothing is overexplained, and, like a friend of mine said, I'm so glad they didn't have the two wise-ass characters on the side doing vaudeville! And, there's no dead parent at the beginning either. What is that? Every kids' movie starts with a dead parent. It's weird.
And, my part of it was only playing a Wild Thing. There was no discussion about what this meant, about what we were doing. I swear to you. I wouldn't want to say they're trying to teach anything.
I once read a description of you I found hard to believe: that you're an actor who does not understand your own appeal.
Oh, now I do! Ha! I'm kidding! That would be so sad! Oh, man, I'm not even walking into that one. Surely I never said that about myself. You know what's great about me? I don't understand how great I am! Ha! Aren't I amazing that way? Ha! Sorry, but I don't think you have to be an actor for that. I don't think anyone should understand their appeal. Where have you got to go from there? I never said that about myself … but I'm not contesting it! Ha! Hey, you're making me talk about myself! I'm not here to be myself! That's why I like playing characters.