Let's start at the very beginning. What drew you to Where the Wild Things Are?
The main thing, obviously, was that I loved Maurice's books as a kid. When you love something and feel connected to it at that age, you're permanently connected to it when you grow up. The motivation for the film was just loving what it stirred up in me, connecting to what I felt as a kid and wanting to make a movie about childhood—or what childhood was to me.

Tell us about the making of the film.
Each one of my movies feels like a first for me. You have to create the process that works for that story. I wanted it to feel like Max was really there with these people—these creatures—and that you could touch them and feel them: That you were in this place with wind and dirt and sand and trees and leaves, and that this was the place where the Wild Things lived. I wanted Max to touch them and lean on them and interact with them and hug 'em—or they could push him, or they could come up to him, and there would be a sense of the physicality of these towering creatures above him.

How did the making of the film feel different from your past experiences?
This is the longest movie I've ever worked on. Both the other movies actually took three years from beginning to end, and this one's taken five years. It's definitely like a marathon. Your legs are just so tired, and you don't think you can go anymore, but somehow you keep going.

My sister ran the Boston marathon the other day, actually. Just the fact that she ran it is insane. Some runner she was reading about said, "You don't really know yourself until you run a hundred miles." She told me that at one point during the marathon she looked over and made eye contact with some 60-year-old woman, and the woman looked at her and saw how much pain my sister Julie was in and just screamed "You can do it!" It totally gave her this huge charge—this woman just screamed it with all this feeling, this 60-year-old woman, just feeding her, yelling at her from the road! My sister couldn't hear what she was saying because it was in this crowd of hundreds and hundreds of people, but she could just see the words coming out of her mouth.

Do you ever feel like the filmmaking process is a competition?
Not really. During the editing process my friends were there all along, and I don't feel competitive with my friends. I feel so excited for them if they make something great. Like I

could show rough cuts to Mike Mills or Miranda July, or David Russell, just friends of mine that are filmmakers who can just be supportive and contribute advice or ideas. It's been like a huge group effort. I didn't ever do competitive sports. Coming from skating, it's more about going skating with your friend and trying to land a trick while your friend is trying to land another trick. And you're both psyched. You're done skating and everyone's done skating, but there's just one guy left trying to land a trick and you're all there for him, just hanging out waiting for him and supporting him.

How did you end up working with Dave Eggers?
I actually started to write it myself—I'd written so many notes and ideas—but I was still thinking I should get someone else to work on it. Writing it by myself seemed too daunting, or too lonely, or just not as fun. I got to know Dave when his first book came out and just sort of loved him and his writing. It seemed like the right fit. It was his first time writing a screenplay.

Have you gotten to know Maurice Sendak?
About 14 years ago, I actually worked on a movie with him that didn't end up happening—a movie based on the Crockett Johnson book Harold and the Purple Crayon. Through that, I got to know Maurice, and he's just sort of a completely rare person... there's no small talk in his conversation. Everything is exactly what he's feeling, straight from his heart or his wit. He doesn't have any ability to hold back what he's thinking.

Were there any films that served as particular points of reference?
The 400 Blows, The Black Stallion, My Life As a Dog... Maurice loves that movie.

Did you originally conceive of Where the Wild Things Are as a children's film?
I don't think I was trying to make a children's film. I was trying to make a film about childhood.

How close is the final cut to your original vision of the film?
Every movie evolves, so the challenge is to make sure it's evolving for the right reasons and not the wrong reasons—and making sure it's evolving because it's getting truer to your intentions and not sort of getting the guts cut out of it. And I feel like neither of those happened. I made the movie I wanted to make.