Last Sunday I got asked to come down to shoot a screening of Tell Them Anything You Want a 40 minute documentary about Maurice Sendak.  Sendak as you probably know is the creator of Where The Wild Things Are and about 100 other children’s books.  The film was directed by Lance Bangs and Spike Jonze who were on hand to do a Q&A after the screening.  The screening was the third film in a weekly series presented by Oscilloscope Laboratories’ The Circle of Trust Screening Series at Liberty Hall at the Ace Hotel.

The film was fantastic, I got free food and after I ate I got to watch the Jets lose on the movie screen.  What a great night.  Honestly if you get a chance to see this film you should.  It’s available for sale from Oscilloscope and worth going out of your way for. Sendak is an interesting and hilarious man in the last years of his life who has accomplished so much but is much more concerned with what he hasn’t done.  I have a feeling if I make it to my 80’s I will be just as pissed off about it, although probably with a much less impressive resume to look back on. Spike Jonze befriended him in the 1990’s and made the documentary over the five years that it took to make the Where The Wild Things Are movie. Sendak really trusts and loves Jonze and it comes out in the film and makes for a really intimate portrait of a brilliant man.

This write up is probably really poorly written because I am trying to write it and watch Obama’s State of the Union address at the same time.  So I am just gonna go ahead and get these photos up. But two things I should note.  The first is that I didn’t really shoot this like I would a party. These pics were for press and in house reasons for the Liberty Hall screening series so I mostly just took environmental shots to show the big crowds and then some photos of the introduction and the Q&A.  The second thing I should mention that a long with the directors of the film Catherine Keener showed up for the Q&A.  She is in the film and happened to be in town so Spike and Lance brought her a long.  I am a pretty big fan of all three of them so it was really great to shoot them and talk to them for a second after the film.

Okay, let’s do this. Click here to see all the pictures from the Tell Them Anything You Want Screening at the Ace Hotel’s Liberty Hall.

Ps. Oscilloscope Laboratories is way worth checking out as well. They have released several documentaries that I have loved and pretty much every film in their library looks well worth watching. They have a subscription service that you can order for $150 that sends you their next 10 films (on DVD or Blue Ray) before they have been released to the public and you don’t even have to pay shipping. Hell of a deal..

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