It’s a tough year for Michelle Williams. First she and Heath Ledger break up (a break up that has shaken Brooklyn to its very core, by the way. The people of my beloved and erstwhile home were looking at Heath and Michelle to validate their long underdogged borough in the way only hot celebs can), now she gets canned from the new Spike Jonze movie. Williams was the voice of one of the Wild Things in Jonzes’ adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s kid’s book, Where the Wild Things Are.*
Replacing her will be the vocal chords of Lauren Ambrose, the redhead from Six Feet Under who I believe exemplifies the concept of ugly hot. She’s like a young Sissy Spacek (click here) in that her features just don’t work together in any rational way but you totally want to get it on with her.** None of this has anything do with Where the Wild Things Are, though, since the monsters are big CGI things interacting with a little live action kid. In the book by Sendak the kid comes to this island of monsters and is kept as their version of Richard Gere’s gerbil. It’s icky.
Speaking of Where the Wild Things Are, those quims in Fall Out Boy suddenly discovered that using Sendak’s art for their latest tour and merch without his estate’s permission is kind of against the law. How you could be in a rock band and decide to use Where The Wild Things Are as your theme is beyond me, although I guess Tom Petty managed to rock the house with Alice in Wonderland imagery, huh? Well, Fall Out Boy’s no Tom Petty, and if you listen to them I hope you get your head cut off in a bizarre gloryhole accident.
Spike Jonzes’ film version, written by the often wonderful, occasionally annoying Dave Eggers, is still a long ways out. Like late next year long ways out. It takes a long time to make the big monsters look good, kids.
* I think it goes without saying that if the likes of Barry Sonnenfeld directed this movie, Tone Loc would have made an appearance.
*Also ugly hot: Diana from V. With her face off.