LOS ANGELES ? Can you picture a nine-year-old Sean Penn?

That?s what ?Where the Wild Things Are? director Spike Jonze was looking for when he was casting for Max, the principal character in the film adaptation of Maurice Sendak?s 1963 classic picture book for children.

Spike had been on the lookout for a year. He was already on location in Australia, two months away from shooting, yet he and his casting directors had not found their Max.

?We were kind of looking for a nine-year-old Sean Penn or somebody you could put on camera and without him even speaking, you would know what he was feeling and you?d sense a level of complexity to the performance,? said Spike, who would be joined later in this interview by Max Records?the boy who got the role.

Spike told us that he would have put the movie on hold if they didn?t find the right boy. But at the last minute, they thought of looking in ?smaller cities with art communities.? Spike said a friend of his, documentarian Lance Bangs, who lives in Portland, Oregon, sent him a tape of Max, whose only acting experience was the movie ?The Brothers Bloom? and a music video for the band Death Cab for Cutie.

?We flew Max down to Los Angeles and auditioned him,? Spike recounted. ?We decided that we had found the kid.?

That kid, now 12 years old, appeared as scheduled, 30 minutes into our interview. The bond between the two was obvious.

Spike has a boyish quality about him that inspires an instant, playful rapport with Max. Catherine Keener, who plays Max?s mom in the movie, said of Spike: ?When you work with him, it imbues confidence ? it brings you back to the bravery of being a kid?before fear, or things that will cause fear, set in.?

It was probably this same quality that endeared Spike?who just turned 40?to Maurice Sendak, who wrote the story about a boy who ends up in a forest inhabited by wild creatures and is crowned as their king. Maurice has endorsed Spike?s cinematic rendition of his book. We like it too?the film is strange, beautiful and yes, wild.

What do wild things mean to you personally?

Max (M): To me, wild things embody different emotions within Max or within anybody that have taken form. They either are like his best friends or are going to bite him on the butt or something.

So these are positive and negative emotions?

M: I think each of the wild things are like a little of each.

Max, just pretend that Spike isn?t beside you. What?s really wild about Spike?

M: He?s really in touch with the child-like aspects of himself. He?s not afraid to do something even if it costs 10 million bucks or something (laughter).

Spike learned to swallow fire just to get a scared reaction from you for some scenes. Max, tell us how good he got at swallowing fire. How good were you at it, Spike?

Spike (S): Not very good, I think.

M: Yeah, not at all ... I was just exasperated. I thought, come on, do something else. You?re going to burn your tongue really bad. (Turns to Spike) Every time, you did burn your tongue, really bad (laughter).

S: Yes, that?s true.

How important is reading to you?

S: I like to read but Max can read 10 times faster than I can. I watched him read in the car yesterday. We were driving like half an hour. He probably read a couple of chapters in half an hour. I would have read like four pages ?

What was Max reading?

S: The dictionary (laughter). He?s teaching me vocabulary.

Max, what are you reading now?

M: I?m in between books right now. I mostly read fantasy/sci-fi stuff.

Do you have a favorite?

M: I don?t really have a favorite. I like the Aragorn Books or stuff like those. I just finished ?The Chronicles of Prydain? by Lloyd Alexander. All sorts of stuff.

What was the most fun scene to shoot and what was your least favorite scene?

M: There were a lot of good ones. (Long pause) My least favorite were the scenes inside KW?s stomach.

Why?

S: We had to cover him in all this slime. We doused him. His wolf suit suddenly weighed like 25 pounds?

If you were king for a day, what kind of kingdom would you like to have?

M: I would want a place where I could go out, have a snowball fight in the morning, come back to the house, lie on my bed, read a book or something and sleep.

Would you like to continue acting?

M: I never really thought about acting. It kind of just fell out of the sky and then I found out that acting itself is really fun.

What are you doing next?

M: I?m not making anything currently. I guess the only thing that I am making is probably?

S: Trouble (laughter).

M: Yes, like one of my favorite hobbies is to make swords out of PVC mattress foam and duct tape.

E-mail the columnist at rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com and read his blog, ?The Nepales Report,? on http://blogs.inquirer.net/nepalesreport.