Wild Things island is a nice enough place to visit, but you probably wouldn’t want to live there. For one thing, it’s only accessible via treacherous boat ride. For another, it’s inhabited by giant, hairy creatures who just might eat you if the mood strikes. In Friday’s “Where the Wild Things Are,” young Max lands on the island and bonds with the monsters. Director Spike Jonze faced a number of challenges in turning the children’s book into a film, especially when it came to the Wild Things themselves. Jonze shunned CGI, asking Jim Henson’s Creature Shop to spend eight months fabricating elaborate costumes.
Here now, the secrets of the beasts, according to art director Sonny Gerasimowicz, costume designer Casey Storm and production designer K.K. Barrett.
■ “You could get a random hair stuck on your nose or lips, and it would itch like crazy, but there’s nothing you could do about it,” Gerasimowicz says. A crew member would stick a toothbrush through the costume’s mouth and brush the hair away.
■ The costumes were hand-dirtied before each day’s shoot. The crew collected buckets of natural material from each location so the correct debris could be thrown on the costume for that day’s scenes. “We wanted them to feel like mangy dogs,” says Barrett. Each night, the inside of each costume was sprayed down with vodka to disinfect it.
■ The inside of the heads contained small TV monitors that displayed what the camera was seeing.
■ More than 100 wolf suits were made, says Storm. There were different suits for day and night shots, shots lit by fire, for stunt doubles, etc.
■ Storm also made a wolf costume for Jonze. He’d wear it and stand off-camera to give the Wild Things something they could react to.
■ K-Y Jelly simulated runny eyes and noses.
■ Digital computer effects were used to make the Wild Things’ faces speak or emote.
■ The temperature inside a suit could rise to more than 100 degrees, says Gerasimowicz, who also plays the goat creature Alexander (seen here). Between takes, a small fan was positioned to blow air through the costume’s mouth — the only opening in the suit. “Someone passed out at one point, but you couldn’t really tell,” Gerasimowicz says. “They’d just slump over like three degrees to the left, the suit was so heavy.”
■ The actors who inhabited the suits had no prior experience. They trained for weeks to learn how to move in costumes weighing up to 150 pounds