I'm In The Milk And The Milk's in Me!

Most people know Maurice Sendak. Where The Wild Things Are... and Mickey in the Midnight Kitchen has become the default slip-in-to-conversation pieces if you are talking to someone of your own age who is cool enough for you to have little in common with.

PLus Spike Jonze's decision to make Where The Wild THings Are... into a feature film SOON TO HIT THE BIG SCREEN has sent a lot of us back to boxes in attic's to dig out childhood favourites. Quite how he intends to turn the 10 minute read into a hour+ long film without adding incredibly irritating plot sequences and morals, I don't know. We shall see.

Spike is, however, not the first at having a go at bringing Sendak's creations to celluloid and while I am not over the moon about his attempt, he at least had the grace to include the book's original author in the credits.

Many of the same generation who gazed in awe at the ink Sendak put to paper have the fellow cornerstone of their development of David Bowie in Labyrinth. Loads of people's favourite film. Oddly, writers Jim Henson and Dennis Lee take full credit for the story. They seemed to think that when they fell upon what they obviously imagined to be the 'lesser-known' Sendak story Outside Over There....that no one would ever have heard of it. So true to human grace the pair simply lifted the story....which, to those who know neither goes...

While Ida is busy playing her wonder horn faceless goblins come in through the bedroom window and kidnap her baby sister. So Ida puts on her mother's yellow rain cloak and sets off on a mystical journey into outside over there, to rescue her sister and save her from having to become a nasty goblin's bride. But once she finds the goblin's hiding place she has to employ a very special, clever ftrick before she can carry her sister home to safety. I won't spoil the end.

Buy the book, steal the film and compare. You would think Jim Henson and David Bowie would have enough original ideas of their own. The audacity of success if ever I saw it.