026 Wild Thing Transcript (Maurice Sendak)

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Amit: This is famous and gravy, a podcast about quality of life. As we see it, one dead celebrity at a time.

Michael: This person died in 2012, age 83 as a child photographs, show him to be plump round faced slanting eyed, droopy, litted, and arching proud.

Friend: So a fat baby, huh? I can only think of that comedian John candy. Oh my gosh. This is not gonna be good.

Michael: it's not John candy. As he grew up lower class Jewish and gay, he felt permanently shunted to the margins.

Friend: I mean, I would do it, but, um, let me see. Philip Roth,

Michael: not Philip Roth. Great guest though. His characters were described as headstrong, bossy, even obnoxious

Friend: Farley. Chris

Michael: Howley, not Chris. Farley. Hell . He was largely a self taught illustrator. His work was the subject of critical studies and major exhibitions. In the second half of his career, he was renowned as a designer of theatrical sets.

Friend: Oh, Dr. Seus, Theodore Geel.

Michael: So fuck close in 1964, he won the call to cotton medal for where the wild things.

Friend: Oh, oh, Maurice, what's his name? The guy who no, not that guy. Oh, Maurice Sineck ma Sineck. I knew it damnit. I thought he was French.

Michael: today's dead. Celebrity is Maurice. Sineck

Maurice: where animals were violent. Where criminal, where not so far away from the gorillas and the apes, those beautiful creature. And then we're supposed to be civilized.

We were supposed to go to work every day. We were supposed to be dice to our friends and send Christmas cards to our parents. So to all these things, which trouble us, and if I've done anything, I've had kids express themselves as they are impolite. Lovingly, they don't mean any harm. They just don't know what the right way is.

And as it turns out, sometimes the socalled right way is utterly the wrong way. What a monstrous confusion,

Michael: welcome to famous and gravy. I'm Michael Osborne.

Amit: My name is Amit Kapoor

Michael: and on this show, we choose a celebrity who died in the last 10 years and review their quality of. We go through a series of categories to figure out the things in life that we would actually desire and ultimately answer a big question.

Would I want that life today? Maurice Sineck died. 2012 age 83 category one grading. The first line of their obituary. Maurice sundeck widely considered the most important children's book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly.

Beautiful recesses of the human psyche died on Tuesday and Dan Barry, Connecticut. He was 80. Wow.

holy shit. Right? I think pretty good. I think we gotta start with the most importance.

Yeah. That's actually my major qual, whose choice was that? The New York times apparently, but

Amit: this is putting him against Dr.

Michael: Seuss. Yeah. That is actually the thing I take the greatest issue with. So actually, can we return to that? Let's talk about the rest of this. Yeah. Okay. So who wrenched the picture book out of the safe sanitized world of the nursery? I like that imagery. It's very it's evocative. Yes. We wrenched the picture book out of.

A sanitized world and plunged it into the dark terrifying. And Haly beautiful recesses of the human psyche. Like holy shit. They really went for it here.

Amit: Absolutely. Was it that dark and terrifying? I see that referenced over

Michael: and over again. What what's interesting is that he makes this case over and over that adults are horrified by things that children are not horrified by like where the wild things are.

For example, kids are not scared of the wild things, the beasts, because max isn't scared of them, but you know, parents at the time, and with a lot of his books had this, like, we should be freaked out about this. Yeah. These are gonna haunt our children. Right. Like a lot of the artwork is. I don't know, fucking weird, you know?

Yeah. And it like messes with you. Correct. But so does Sesame street? I disagree. So everything in Sesame street looks huggable to me, even the big bird in the grouch. I think so. I mean, grouch is a little bit silly and a little gross. Maybe you kind of think that there's a smell there, but you, you feel like the grouch could be cleaned up.

Amit: Okay to whereas a wild thing

Michael: or, yeah, a Golin no, they got sharp teeth. They got big eyes. And then the goblins have dark faces that we never actually see.

Amit: So dark and terrifying was modifying the human psyche. Not the illustrations. So what I think they're saying is that his art just tapped into what was already there and otherwise not talked about, you know, what should children's stories contain?

Well, how would I

Maurice: know? All I do know is that my parents were immigrants and they didn't know that they should clean the stories up for us. So we heard horrible, horrible stories and we loved them. We absolutely loved them.

Amit: Yeah. What do you think about wrenched? I love it. It kind of gives this image of like being protected in like a mother's arms and he's ripping out like

Michael: children well or ripping out truth.

I mean, I think that there is something very preexisting about whatever he's extracting from. Safe sanitized world of the nursery.

Amit: Yeah. He's ripping out reality. Yeah. So not so different than what we talked about in Larry McMurtry with like the acid tests and all of Ken Kei, the same thing. Yeah. It's like this reality is there.

You just have to bring it out of you.

Michael: It really feels like a first line that they spent. An hour putting together well. Alright. Where do you come down on it? Numerically? Yeah. Do you wanna give it a score? I may be

Amit: personal besting here at a

Michael: nine. Wow. It's ambitious. I think I'm gonna give it a four. Really?

Amit: I think

Michael: so. What, okay. Maybe that's too low. You didn't

Amit: even bring any of that to the conversation.

Michael: When you come out with the phone. I know. Oh know, I, if that's what you're feeling, I wanna hear it. It's the widely considered the most important children's book artist. Like who the fuck are they to decide?

There is something very precious about Marie CACH, but there's something that really pisses me off about anointing anybody in the first line of the obituary. And this has like a art critic bias to. That really frustrates me if it weren't for that superlative, I think I would've been eight or nine with you, but because of that, I'm downgrading it quite a bit, but here's the thing it's accurate to how the New York times sees the world.

I don't know if it's accurate to the world that

Amit: our Brooklyn born slightly demented children's author and illustrator, as opposed to Dr. Seuss, which permeates all of America and the world. Correct.

Michael: So that's where I come down on

Amit: this. Good for you. I like it. You make a compelling argument. I'm not changing it, but good for

Michael: you, Michael.

Yeah. All right then category two, five things I love about you here. Amit and I work together to come up with five reasons why we should be talking about this person, why we love them. I wonder if this one's on your list, cuz this is maybe my single favorite thing about him. He is not sentimental about children, his overall philosophy on kids as being tyrannical, vulnerable, and full of character.

I just love his take on kids and I think it really pushes against what people assume is the nature of childhood. Here's why I love it. I think it is very, very easy. Certainly it's, it's easy for me and for parents to get sentimental about childhood and he's emphatic about this is that we should not be sentimental about childhood.

Yeah. And he's

Amit: also, I think, acknowledging the difficulty of it. Yeah. Of how hard it is to be in a child in a confusing world of giants. And

books

Michael: should and have to be serious for them. I don't mean serious

Amit: solemn. They could be serious, funny, which is even better,

Michael: but they have to be honest. To a child's life, which is a very complicated life, as complicated as our lives are and how dare we assume that they are not, since we become what we were, how

Amit: dot we best treat the kid

Michael: like a serious subject.

Maurice: I'm not, I don't set out to freak children out, wanna scare them. I'm setting out to digest the opposite to comfort them. But the only way I know how to comfort them is by telling them the truth and the truth before you. To the comfort

often is scary,

Michael: but it also is just a clearer eyed look on what it means to be a human, certainly what it means to be a kid, but then really what it means to be a person, you know, in some sense, I think he's in touch with an inner child.

Actually, I have a really good quote about that. Do you want. You wanna hear this? Yeah. Okay. In this biography, I read this guy, Jonathan co says, I don't believe that in a way, the kid, I was grew up into me. He still exists somewhere in the most graphic, plastic, physical way. I have a tremendous concern for him and interest in him.

I communicate with him or try to all the time. And one of my worst fears is losing contact with him. And I don't want this to sound coy or schizophrenic, but at least once a day, I feel I have to make contact. The pleasures I get as an adult are heightened by the fact that I experience them as a child at the same time, some are child poetry right there, right.

That I think speaks to his overall philosophy of not being sentimental about what it means to be a kid. So that's my thing. Number

Amit: one, I like it. Number two, I put the discovery story. So how he actually became an illustrator for children's books. So he is working for FAO Schwartz in the late forties, early fifties as a window dresser, making paper mache and types of things to advertise toys and set scenes.

And he has discovered not so accidentally. I believe the manager of the store actually like arranged this by the woman that became essentially his publishing partner. A good bit of his life. Is

Michael: this Ursula Norstrom? Yeah. She also was responsible for goodnight moon and for some of where the, uh, sidewalk ends and Charlotte's web.

And she ushers in this kind of new period of children culture in the mid 20th century.

Amit: Anyway, what happened is she essentially came by the store. One day serendipitously and quote discovered Maurice Sendek and said, I think you have what it takes to be an illustrator. And that was the beginning of this entire career.

To me, it's akin to Ebert discovering John Prine in the back of that bar. You have these talents that need to be nurtured, but some bit of luck and some bit of serendipity and some bit of divine universal intervention brings it together. And here you are on a trajectory. Yeah, it's a fairytale. Yeah.

Almost. And I like it when

Michael: it's true. That's a good one. That's a really good one. All right. I'll take number three. Seems to accept aging or at least claims to develop an ability to see beauty as he ages. He was interviewed by Terry Gross on fresh air numerous times. But in the last interview that he gave with her, I mean, there's this, he actually made me tear up because he pays her this compliment saying there's something in you that I've always loved being interviewed by you.

And, and thank you. it's funny. Cuz there was an article that came out a few years prior to that in the New York times. That was. Seemed to paint a picture of CDAC as not aging, all that gracefully. And I almost felt like he was countering that in this interview with Terry Gross, but I mean, he does say that I am seeing beauty in the world in a way I never have that.

It's good to be older and to have all this time, even if my body is breaking down, even if there's pain. And I don't know if I ever told you this, my father-in-law, um, Allison's dad. He died really, really. he knew death was coming. He'd talk about it. Like we had great conversations about what it was like to die.

He's the only person I've ever known who like, kind of walked me through what he was going through and I'll always be grateful to him for that. And I heard a little of that in Maurice sundeck in this interview with Terry Gross, that one of my fears is that I'm gonna get old and I'm not gonna have as much interest and I'm not gonna be able to keep up with culture and life.

And I need to see people who get to their eighties and say, I'm loving at least parts of it. And here's why in that same interview, he is like, now maybe I'm crazy. And maybe I'm rationalizing, but even that honesty makes me think he's not, you know, so my thing, number three is I like the way he aged and to some extent he's dying.

Amit: Okay. I'll take it. Yeah. Okay. Number four, three hundred and thirty eight words. That's all there was in where the wild things are. Wow. So this man's legend and legacy. And part of the whole reason we're even talking about him right now is because of that book and it was 338 words long. That's it 10 sentences.

Wow. That's nothing. That is nothing at all. I mean, granted, it's the illustrations. Yes. It's the imagery that made the whole thing. But what I like about it is the masterpiece idea of it. As having simplicity. And I am not sure we should talk about this if this is an antiquated idea, but I like the idea of a simple masterpiece.

Michael: I don't think it's an antiquated idea. I think this happens in music all the time. Stupid is

Maurice: so big, so delicate, but. What he did was pick a form that looked so humble and quiet so that he could crawl into that form and explode emotionally find every way of expressing every emotion in this miniature form.

And I got very excited and I wondered is it possible? That's why I do children's books. I picked a modest form, which was very modest back in the fifties and the forties. I mean, children's books were the bottom end of the

Michael: totem pole. I would put where the wild things are as maybe the greatest children's book I've ever encountered.

I'd make that superlative statement, which I suppose contradicts what I was. say I'm still giving it a fucking form. It's you're not talking the person. It's also my opinion.

Amit: Yeah. That's very different than you working for. A large

Michael: publication. Exactly. That's a good one on it. 338.

Amit: Yeah. And I think just to wrap that up, what I like about both the serendipitous discovery and this very brief masterpiece is it's so not logical.

You know, I think granted since the sixties we've changed a lot. To move much more to rational away from emotional, but when these types of things occur, you're taking away rationality and logic, and you're sort of just getting into the emotion of wonder yeah. That these types of things can happen, that there are still golden dicks and you have to believe in some of that in order to have, I think, a decent outlook on.

Michael: Do you ever heard that phrase create your own luck?

Amit: Exactly. That serendipity's still an option and it's a message of hope.

Michael: Yeah, really? Yeah. And surprise unpredictability. I do have a number five. I personally connect with him in some surprising ways. One thing that really leaps out is he's the youngest of three.

He's got a brother five years older and a sister almost 10 years older. That's the same pattern as my family. I have a sister is about 10 years older and a brother is about five years older. And the way he talks about his relationship with his brother and a sister for that matter is very familiar. My brother being five and a half years older than me.

Has always felt like a good number in that it was the right amount to sort of like really look up to him and for us to not have a kind of violent sibling rivalry, he had more of a protector role a little bit more. Yeah. And absolutely was you just put your finger on. It was the thing I really related to the way he, his brother kind of helped make sense of the chaos of the world that really.

Familiar. Another thing that I connected with was his obsession with Herman Melville. Do you remember this

about

Amit: me? I do. He's I didn't. I was wondering if we were gonna talk about it yet. I don't know if I

Michael: should, cuz so I'm a Melville descendant. He's my great, great, great grandfather. And I've never.

Quite known what to make of that factoid of my life.

Amit: I tell people to the extent that you'll let me, cause I know it's just interesting. It just kind fascinating. Interesting, right? Yeah. I there's no, there's no royalties trickling

Michael: down, but none. Yes, no. And I find it kind of interesting, but he does have a fascination with Melville, like Modac does.

Oh, he named his dog. Herman. Yeah. He also, uh, had an extraordinary Herman Melville collection, all kinds of first editions and signed copies and shit like that. And then I guess the last thing that I really related to in some interview, I heard him talking about not wanting to be a kid kind of in a hurry to grow up that I really relate to.

I did too. Yeah. Like when I was a kid, I didn't wanna be a kid. You know, I was, I was like anxious to be an adult. I was really ready to get there. I, on a very deep level, just related to some of the bare bone facts of his life and how he viewed the world and family dynamics. And so.

Amit: Yeah, I think that's great.

And that is genuinely something that you love about him. So I like it. I need to ask you something though about not wanting to be a kid or looking forward to not being a kid. Yeah. Were you ever bothered by the toys are us lyrics? I don't wanna

Michael: grow up fun toys record. The guy on toys of toys are us that I can play with.

I'm the one Goa, I'm a toys. Just, we got the best for so much as you really Flipp.

Amit: Yeah, I think I was, I remember being bothered by

Michael: it because you're in so many ways powerless, right? You're this, I mean, this is a real Synack sort of thing is that children are tyrannical. They want to have domain or whatever, godlike powers over the world yet they don't because of what adults say and what sort of rules are imposed on you.

And I, I hated that from the beginning. It's

Amit: just confusing, right? Because you need the protection. Need the love and the nurturing all around you. You're completely incapable of functioning outside of your own home or your own school, but you're like, oh, I really like what's outside. Yeah. But it's just so far away.

Yeah.

Michael: And, and I think that that's like the myth that he's poking at in some ways.

Amit: Yeah. We wanna be able to make our own decisions and drive our own destinies, but we also wanna really be protect.

Michael: And loved. Yeah. Shall I move on? Yes. Category three. Malcovich Malcovich. This category is named after the movie.

Bing John Malcovich in which people take a little portal into John Mavis mind and they can have a front row seat behind his eyeballs. The point is to imagine what memories or experiences might have been interesting.

Amit: What do you got? So when, where the wild things came out after a few years, as it started to kind of be distributed and reach it, wasn't, you know, the sixties were very different.

It's not like you drop something and it goes viral. Right? Right. These things take a lot of time. Right. So he started to. Male, which I think was encouraged from a lot of kids who loved it. And they were mostly asking questions or like sending money saying I would like a ticket to where the wild things are.

Yeah. And that's so sweet stuff like that. And he responded to a lot of 'em, which I think is great. But there was one story that was told about a boy named Jim who wrote and said, I want to go to where the wild things are. How do I get there? So CDAC wrote back and said, thank you. I left your note and drew a picture of one of the wild.

On the card and some weeks go by and he gets a note from Jim's mother and it says, Maurice, thank you so much. Jim loved your card so much. He ate it.

Michael: stop it. And Maurice sundeck thought that's the highest possible

Amit: copy. That is exactly. He said that it was the highest possible compliment that he could receive from a child.

For his work. So I think it's an Alka bitch moment. Well, just that this like surrealist act of a child eating paper, but it also was just proof to everything that embodied his artistry. Yeah. You know, it's not all. Perfectly like Teddy bears. There is twisted tendencies in children and in humans. And perhaps you show appreciation for something that spoke to you by swallowing it a hundred

Michael: percent.

And so in some of the books I read, they talk about cannibalism as a recurring theme in syntax books. And I mean, even in where the wild things are, you know, the wild things say, we'll eat you up. We love you. So, and sure enough, I mean, it's not exactly cannibalistic, but eating this original me Sineck artwork.

That came in the mail. That's fuck it. Beautiful.

Amit: It is. I, I would, so I wanna be there when Maurice hears of it and I, I mean,

Michael: I kind of love Jim. Yeah. I wonder where he is today. I was just thinking that's great. I'm so glad you brought it up. It was one of my Malkovich contenders. Okay. Okay. This kind of speaks to some of the things I love about him.

Around 2007, he's been suffering from a lot of back pain. He's been aging, but he's starting to feel a little bit better. And he goes on a walk with Tony Kushner, who was this playwright wrote angels in America and was a really good friend of Maurice Eck. Maurice is sounding kind of like Zen, he's going for this.

I'm trying to get to this Buddhist place where I just accept things and see beauty. This is. All about the aging process. And he can almost tell that death is near, he's telling Tony I'm just happy to be alive. Then this car pulls up while these guys are walking. And it's one of Maurice's neighbors. This is in Connecticut.

And it sounds like rural pastoral, Connecticut. And this neighbor says last night, I saw Jim Henson on American masters. The PBS program and the neighbor says you should be on there. Maurice, Jim was so good and you are so great. And then this neighbor drives off and Maurice turns to Tony Kushner and says that fucking Jim Henson, he stole for me.

And then they both laugh. And he says so much for Zen. I love this for a lot of reason. One, the idea that Jim Henson stole from Maurice Sineck is hilarious to me, but what I really like and the reason it's a Malcovich moment is that there is this like I'm aging, I'm getting to a place of acceptance.

Fucking Jim Henson, right? there is this, like, he's not there yet. This is a man still in process. Yes. You know, and still trying to get to that place of acceptance.

Amit: It's like the Lloyd bra serenity now serenity now serenity now yes. Inside.

Michael: exactly screaming serenity now. That's great. I like that. I thought you'd like that one.

All right. Oh

Amit: no, we can't leave Malkovich yet without pointing out something. Oh, so being John Malkovich directed. Oh, spike

Michael: Jones who also directed where the wild things are. Exactly. Yeah. Good call. All right. Category four, love and marriage. How many marriages also, how many kids, is there anything public about these relationships?

So no marriages, Maurice Sineck in 2008, comes out as gay after his partner had died. His partner of roughly 50 years, Eugene, David Glenn was his name. So it sounds like they connected got together in. His late twenties, early thirties. And it sounded like they were a committed partnership.

Amit: It sounded very domestic.

Yes, absolutely. Like they lived in the house in Connecticut and I mean, he admits that his life changed entirely after Eugene died. Yeah. That he went into a depression and just completely changed his view on life, which he could never recover. He could never unring that.

Michael: But I couldn't find anything else about this.

I mean, despite the fact that Maurice sundeck gave a ton of interviews like this didn't come out until four years before he died. Yes. Terry Gross did ask him also about children and he is like, well, let, let me ask you this. You, you came out a few years ago, correct? If you were able to be out. In a period like we live in today where it's, it's socially acceptable in lots of circles to be gay and have children.

Would you have had a child? No, no, there's too much hard work involved. Uhhuh. And I'm, I am devoted to being an artist. This guy is such a curmudgeon. Yeah. Total. GRMP a total GRMP he does say like, look, I don't like people to the extent that I like anybody. I like kids a little bit more, cuz they're just honest.

Yes. And, and they're

Amit: real. Let's talk about

Michael: kids. I don't trust them, is that true? They are just biting their time until we're gone and then they get our stuff. That's really good.

Maurice: They take our place Uhhuh. That's an interesting point of view. Thank you. But not interesting to me, particularly, there's something in this country.

That's so opposed to understanding the complexity of children. It's quite amazing. Do you like them? I like them as few and far between as I do adults, maybe a bit more because I really don't like

Michael: adults, adults, but I don't know what to make of this category. This is an unusual one here. I

Amit: think we have to divide it into two areas.

So one is the actual stability of it. What we know about it, did it look good? Fulfilling, happy. And then the second side is the secre. Part. Yeah. So first I found no contrary evidence of it ever not working. Yeah. By all accounts, it seemed to be pretty stable, pretty domestic, and pretty fun. He talk about just going traveling and we'd read our favorite books together.

But then again, like these things just due to the era, we probably. Don't get much of the, where there's periods of fighting and separation and so forth.

Michael: I mean, I'm happy to sign off on that. I just, with the major asterisks that we're always going in this category on limited information, we're going on really limited information here.

Correct. But as best we can tell, looks like long and happy.

Amit: Partnership. Yes. Which he never told his parents about. And he never came out. Well, this is,

Michael: this is the second part here. Right? We're going into the second

Amit: part. The secrecy. Yes. I mean, one thing that he said was, do you think I could have ever actually been a children's author if I was openly gay?

And I think he's pretty damn right. I'm not even sure how well America would handle that right now. Yeah. Much less the sixties and seventies.

Michael: I also think that it becomes all the more imperative in a way as his books discover controversy, right? Like in the night, what's it called in the night's kitchen.

Yes. And that image of a small boy's penis, like drove everybody fucking crazy. And he was so pissed off, like why in the hell is this according so much controversy go to the museum of fine arts and there's, you know, Children, you know, in statues from Roman ancient Greece, why is it not okay now to put this into a children's book, even where the wild things are gets banned all the time.

Some people even thought it was dangerous. I don't see that, but I would imagine if you are making art that is provoking, that kind of reaction and you're gay and in the closet about it. You would want to keep that closet door all the more shut? Yeah.

Amit: I don't think he had a choice with what his career was.

Yeah. He also said, which I found very interesting. He was like, you know, no one ever really asked me

either.

Michael: Yeah. That in that article that came out he's like people have asked me everything except whether or not I was gay. So I'll just tell you, I am. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of

Amit: incredible. This is, I wanna ask about this and this idea of having children when you are a children's.

Icon in some

Michael: way. Yeah. Dr. Seuss, by the way, also did not have kids, shell Silverstein had too.

Amit: Yeah. So what is this about? You know, I know a guy who owns a dance studio with his wife that is like dancing summer camps. And I remember asking him if they plan to have children. And he's like, no, I gotta deal with 2,500 of a year.

Yeah. Already. Yeah. So it's just funny that these people that are in kid industries, I know Maurice sundeck and Dr. Jesus are different because their actual interaction with the children is not necessarily as much as we would think. It's not like they're sitting in classrooms all the time and reading their books.

And I think this goes way back to your thing. Number one is they had respect and. For children. And they saw children as little humans and they liked them. Yeah. As much as they liked, you know, adults, because these are just complex regular human beings, but they don't wanna raise them.

Michael: Dr. Seuss had one quote, apparently where he said you raise 'em all entertain them or something like that, which I think sums it up nicely.

But it almost seems like they also don't necessarily in any way, shape or form respond to the cultural pressure to have had kids. I, I guess I, the reason I'm sort of pushing on this is that, you know, I have kids, I love my kids. I connect with other people who have kids and who love their kids. But I also, at the same time, wish that there was not this cultural pressure to have children, right.

This expectation that we're all supposed to be procreating. Cuz I think it's weird. I think it's misplaced. I think it's not just irrational, but sometimes like what is that all about? I like that he didn't have kids in a way. I also like that he gay or not gay is like, I don't need to have kids. That's not what my life's

Amit: all about.

And yeah, maybe that's the key point too, is that, you know, you can have a large influence on children on the next generation and on future generations without being the one that to either procreate or raise.

Michael: I mean, I do also wonder if this is actually the twin sister of the same impulse to sentimentalize childhood.

That one of the reasons that there is this sentiment out there that you should have kids, is that by having kids you're reminded of the experience of childhood and perhaps begin to connect with your inner child, which I do think is a good thing. And I do think that's a good framework for what it means to be a healthy human being and should understand it with clear eyes and.

Maurice. Indeck kind of way. I, I, I wonder if that's not where that impulse comes from, that romanticizing and sentimental childhood also means go out and have kids. Like, it seems like part of the same. It does very much seem like it's sight that maybe we should wrap the love and marriage category here.

Cause I'm not sure there's a clean ending to any of this. Probably not.

Amit: Yeah. Okay.

Michael: Good call. Okay. Category five net worth.

Amit: I got

Michael: 20 million. I actually wouldn't have been surprised by more, in a way. I don't know the sort of pastoral life in Connecticut, plus the royalties from where the wild things are. I think that alone, I

Amit: mean, from that the trilogies and his second act yeah.

Was pretty fruitful as well. You know, designing sets, uh, I think he did costume design, but this wasn't for like, Little neighborhood theater stuff. He was doing some pretty

Michael: big time things. Major productions. Yeah, absolutely. But 20 million sounds good.

Amit: And what do you think then about this level of fame?

Michael: Where is that? That's next category. In fact, let's get to, let's say good for that. Let's let's get to it unless you wanna talk more about net worth. I

Amit: don't, but I did just wanna uncover that. I found that he was a Sesame street consultant.

Michael: Yeah. He was on the bird directors for the, what is it? The workshop.

What do you call it? The, uh, children's workshops. The thing that gave birth to Sesame street and a lot of great kids programming on PBS. I will say this. I mean, When I had kids and I was like, what kind of TV are they gonna watch? Boy, it was nice to discover all the children's programming on PBS when you become a parent or when I became a father for me, you know, one of the things that you rediscover is like, all right.

What is the music that we can agree on? Because I'm not listening to RAI oh, God day. So we're gonna do the Beatles and we're gonna do the beach boys. And classic rock actually works pretty well. And baby. No. See, that's what I like. I get the, I can't do it. Right. Okay. And you do come upon forms of entertainment where you're like as into it, as they are, where the wild things is good.

And I think Dr. Sus I fucking love Dr. Sus a lot of Pixar movies, a lot of Miyazaki, there is something to be said for. Artists who can appeal to all ages, but it's not dulling the parents. Right, right. Because there's a lot of that crap out there of like books where I'm like, this is stupid. We shouldn't be fucking reading this.

I don't actually say that to my kids. But yeah, you don't write

Amit: that in Sharpie.

Michael: On the book. I haven't yet wait till they go to bed. I'm like, fuck this book. Yeah. Yeah. No green eggs and Ham's good though. Okay. Shall we move on now? We can move on. All right. Category six Simpsons C night live or hall of fame.

This category is a measure of how famous a person is. We include both guest appearances on SNL or the Simpsons as well as impersonations. I'll say as well as parody too. So here's what I got. Let's do Simpsons first. I didn't know about this in season 17, there is an episode called the land of wild beasts.

There's a character named Milton Berkhart, who is the author of this book. And he is a clear parody of Maurice sundeck. And the whole show is like an homage to this book. I've never seen this episode before. I haven't, I'm definitely intrigued to go watch this season 17, but Maurice CDAC does not voice anything where am

welcome to of wild beasts.

Not scared, not scared

Maurice: without say. You're eight years

Michael: old. It's natural for you to feel scared sometime, but

Amit: I'm too smart to get scared. Lisa, everybody

Michael: gets scared, no matter how

Maurice: old or how smart they

Michael: are. I haven't seen it, but there it is. Saturday night live. I found nothing. And then finally Hall's of fame.

He was never on AEN hall. I'm afraid though. He was on Cobert. He was on Colbert, won the Caldecott medal, of course, for where the wild things are. He's in the New York writer's hall of fame and he does have a national medal of arts, like Larry McMurray. Okay.

Amit: Personal favorite though in accolades is he has two elementary schools named after him.

I didn't see that. Yeah. I like that bit of posterity. I kind

Michael: of think that this once again, validates our criteria for fame, that there is an obscure Simpsons and not a whole lot on SNL. Maurice Sendak is not a household name. All right. Category seven mm-hmm category seven. Over, under, in this category, we look at the generalized life expectancy for the year.

A person was born to see if they beat the house odds and as a measure of grace. So life expectancy for men born in the us in 1928 was 55.6. Maurice lived to 83, just shy of his 84th birthday. So he beat it by about 28 years. That's

Amit: pretty damn good. Pretty damn good. Especially when any biography or summary article you see of him talks about how his childhood was riddled with sickness.

Yes. Cause like they were in this dense housing with, in Brooklyn. Yeah. In Brooklyn with all of these relatives coming over from Europe, basically to escape the rise of the Nazis. Right. And they were just in. Dent spaces and all of these diseases just going around and they were just constantly sick.

Michael: Yeah.

He talks about whooping cough and, you know, Scarlet fever and, and he was like a particularly sickly child. He was in bed a lot. He didn't participate in sports. He had what sounded like a very, very lonely childhood and develops this relationship with the window. He's got this fixation with windows. He talks about it being the movie theater.

Yes. You know, for his life.

Amit: But he also had a prophecy. He talked about, I think this was in one of the interviews about like, he just thought he would be dead by 30. Yeah, I think cuz he was so surrounded by death. Uh, he lost practically all of his extended family in the hol, in the Holocaust. Yeah. And he just assumed that he would have a short

Michael: life.

So yeah, it sort of speaks to his understanding of fear. And of death. Yes. He's proximate to death. All right. So yeah, 28 years over. What about the grace?

Amit: I liked it. And I liked the, kind of the turn at the end, this like overly sentimental being very open about how he loves life and how beautiful life is.

Yeah. This is my thing in the imagery of it. I didn't even just see grace. I saw it turn towards brightness in those last 10 years or so.

Michael: Yeah. He's pretty open about struggling with anxiety and depression. For most of his life. There's no

Amit: doubt. Every single work he put out, every angle of those illustrations is colored with some history yeah.

Michael: Of depression. Yeah. Let's take a break for a work from our sponsor.

Amit: Michael. I've got a question for you. Yeah. Uh, if you could take today's dead celebrity to any retail store, what would it be? Ooh, I think I would

Michael: take 'em to half price

Amit: books on it. Half price books. Phrase, absolutely. Explain yourself. Sorry. Well, I, I love

Michael: shopping for books with people. Shopping for books is always stimulates interesting conversation, right?

You browse the different aisles and you see, you know, different topics come to mind. Have you ever read this author? Have you ever read that book? It's just a good place to talk and wander and discover. So yeah, absolutely half price books is an awesome venue to connect with people, to discover books that you've long forgotten about or that you haven't read.

And it's all

Amit: a great. And you know, what half price books is celebrating 50 years of buying and selling books, movies, and music. There are over 120 stores and you can find out more@hp.com.

Michael: At this point in the show, we've mostly covered the knowable information. And now we pivot towards being a little bit more introspective, try and take our best guess at what we think it would have been like to have been this person. The first of the introspective categories is man in the mirror. What did they think about their own reflect?

What do you

Amit: have here? I think older Maurice did not care at all. I think he was the guy of the mind and the guy of the imagination and perhaps the way he looked at body and face, it was just irrelevant almost to the human experience. Yeah, though, when you do look at pictures of him, From the sixties. I think he was very handsome, very like well kept and well dressed.

So I think that part of him was a little more self-conscious. But if I'm gonna go with an overall answer, I'm gonna say irrelevant.

Michael: I leaned no here, the 2008 New York times article where he comes out, he is described as quote, a square shaped Nome. I think he struggled with self-acceptance. I think it's not hard to imagine that his closeted homosexuality played into that.

Does that actually translate into, I don't like myself in the mirror or not. I think it does. Oh, yeah, definitely. I think he worked on self acceptance. I think he tried to get there, but I'm going on balance? No, I don't think he liked his reflection. So what

Amit: cruel motherfucking journalist would call him a square shape?

No, I

Michael: don't know. I mean, he's, he's so, you know, crusty and curmudgeonly and, you know, abrasive and, and all those things that, you know, maybe they thought he could just take it or maybe they thought he would even like it, that he's described as a square. You know, that's a good point. I think that's true. I don't know, it is kind of a ballsy thing to write.

Yes. All right. Next category, outgoing message. Like man, in the mirror, we wanna. Get at, how do they think they felt about their own voice? Would they even leave it in their outgoing voicemail?

Amit: What do you think? I think he liked it, but it was very like gruff. It sounded like a smoker's voice. Yeah. A bit. I mean, it sounded exactly like somebody born in the 1920s in Brooklyn.

Yeah. It

Michael: was a great Brooklyn

Amit: accent. Yes. But he's got some shit to say, but he loved using it. Yeah, I think. And you heard that in the interview.

Michael: Luke Gingrich said it. Children don't have a work ethic,

Maurice: but Luke Gingrich is an

idiots. Historian is something so hopelessly gross and vile about him. Let's I start taking him seriously. Well, let's agree to disagree.

Michael: Sure. Okay. I, I think he liked talking. He liked using

Amit: it, especially in critical context, like with, if he was ready to slam somebody or just express emotion specifically of a negative variety.

I think he really liked using it. And I'm gonna bring some examples that I wrote down. Oh, please. And he was always prompted about like, what do you think about what's happening in literature? So what he said about Somon Rushdi, who once gave him a bad review in the New York times. Yeah. I saw that. He said that flacid fuckhead, he was detestable.

I called up the ITO and nobody knows that. Did he actually say

Michael: that? Yes.

Amit: Holy shit. Um, and as, uh, to roll doll, am I saying that night? Roll doll? Yeah. Roll doll. He said the cruelty in his books is off putting scary guy. I know he is very popular about what's nice about this guy. He's dead. That's what's nice about him.

really when asked to comment on Steven King. Bullshit. So he was asked about eBooks, you know, and I think there was some conversation about, is there gonna be an interactive iPad book for where the wild things are? And what Maurice said is, fuck them is what I say. I hate those eBooks. They cannot be the future.

They may well be. I will be dead and I won't give a shit . So all this points me to believe that he liked using his own voice. And I think he would on the answer machine. And he also had a problem with self importance. In a certain way. Yeah. That I think leads me to believe that, Hey, if you've got his number, I don't think it's very widely out there.

You're gonna get his real voice. It's not gonna be flowery. Yeah.

Michael: But you're gonna get it. It's not gonna be sugar coated. I have nothing to add. okay. Nice work on that one. Okay. Next category, regrets, public or private. What we really want to know is what, if anything kept this person awake at night? I mean two public and one private.

Okay. You start his book outside over. There was in many ways, the most agonizing of, of the ones he worked on the baby kidnapping, the kidnapping one. Yeah. He shared artwork with somebody before he was ready for it. And he said it set him back six months. He just wasn't ready to receive that feedback. So that's one regret.

The bigger one is I, he did express in that New York times article that he came out too late, that he wishes, he came out as gay earlier. They didn't say much more about that. And I tried to find what else he had to say about it. And it wasn't even a quote. That was just how the times reported it in this article.

And, and so initially I had this as a private regret until I saw it in that article. I don't think I obviously didn't have anything to be ashamed of, but that doesn't matter. That's not how. Or crazy fucking country interprets, you know, a gay man who's writing children's books. Correct. So I don't know what to make of

Amit: that regret.

So my interpretation of it is he didn't come out until after his partner died. So he was never able to share his love publicly.

Michael: That is a good point to not be able to share that spotlight with somebody who you. Admire and want the world to admire too. I don't know. You know, I don't know enough about the relationship obviously, but it's a good point.

Yeah.

Amit: Have you got

Michael: other regrets? Only this one? Private one. Okay. The runaway success of where the wild things are. There is a one hit wonder aspect to this. Most people are gonna know him for this one book. And what I hear in his discussion of it is a little bit of a conflicted relationship with it. You know, if he were to choose one of his books to be the most popular, would it have been this one, but you've also gotta kind of honor it too.

Certainly. I think if you're a musician and you have a song that is a breakout hit, but there's no others that reach that level of success, that's always kind of looked. Rough, you know, I wouldn't want to be that band touring where everybody's waiting for that one song when you perform, you know, I guess it's outta your control, but it does feel like a thing that might haunt you a little bit or might frustrate

Amit: you if nothing else.

So as much as I said that I liked the masterpiece aspect of it. What I wrote for regrets was just the label asphyxiation. Which I think has to do with the fact that where the wild things are was, is permanent work. So he was always labeled as just like a children's illustrator, but then also this whole second act of his career, which was very directly related to art illustration almost never gets talked

Michael: about.

Yeah. At the same time, the art critics. Are infatuated with him. And the set designers were confident enough in his artistic abilities to say, why don't you design a set for, you know, our production. So I think there's something to be said of validation from like critics as being a separate sort of validation from.

Book sales. Um, what did you have

in

Amit: regrets? My big one was coming out. Yeah. Sooner. And then the EF fixation of the labels, both for just being for a singular piece of work and known solely as an illustrator.

Michael: Okay. So we had similar things. All right, our next category. Good dreams, bad dreams. This is not about personal perception, but rather, does this person look haunted?

Do they have something in the eye that suggests inner turmoil, inner demons, unresolved trauma.

Amit: This man's life was about outer demons. Like writing them down and drawing

Michael: them. It's a little bit hard to not go with a very, very obvious, bad dreams. Answer here. Do you have a counterpoint only in the thing that has come up a lot in our show about artistic catharsis, you know, like working it out.

I mean, he does talk a lot about, I work out my demons through my art and as a result, Like he is producing great art and he is productive for all of his life. It doesn't ever look to me to compensate for whatever trauma and pain got sort of embedded on his psyche at a young age, but I thought it was worth mentioning that there are counteracting forces to what is otherwise a very obvious tortured.

Civil. Yes. Should we move on?

Amit: I think so

Michael: second to last category, cocktail, coffee or cannabis. This is where we ask which one would we most want to do with our dead guest? This may be a question of what drug sounds like the most fun, or it may be about getting access to something that we're still curious about.

Amit: I didn't sense a lot in the curiosity, cuz he was very open about. And his art was kind of that interactive. So I went cocktail just cause I wanna see him get angry and drop at bombs. I just want, I wanna prompt him with like certain, just current pop cultural things. I know he'll detest. Yeah. And he give you a very strong opinion on it and then just like throw a glass of whiskey against the wall and watch it shatter.

So is

Michael: cocktail for the

Amit: humor. It is cocktail for the humor, but. I will also say that. I mean, he's not only funny, but he's insightful. And so I think it could be a good cocktail session for not only that for me to enjoy these very strong opinionated moments, but there is a lot behind those very strong opinionated moments, the reasons why he doesn't like and why he's so extremely favors certain things.

I want to hear more about.

Michael: I kind of like that. There's no nonsense with him, you know? I mean, when you. Watch him AICE CACH interview and the way he furrows his brows and is like, sort of looking at you with those BDIs like, and, and, and that he's got this like acid tongue kind of, you know, fire power. I do want a ringside seat to that.

You know, I do, I wanna hang out with that to a point, but I went cannabis for largely the same reasons, the humor, I think he would crack me up among other things. He was apparently a great mimic. I saw people say that about him, especially at a younger age, but I would've liked to have seen that. Mimicry is funny to me

Amit: and ING the vehicle towards this

Michael: well, and the imagination.

Okay. I mean, so it's the combination of those two. I think I would've laughed. I also think that there's an imagination underneath everything else. I mean, if I thumb through a copy of where the wild things are, like, I love this sort of. Etched engravings almost like wooden grievings like tactile nature of it.

And it, one of the things that happens also in where the wild things are is early pages are framed, but then you get to the part of the book that's about the wild rumpus. And like all of a sudden the artwork is covering the entire page. There's entire worlds being created in there. I don't know if he would do that, you know, over B ribs or over a joint, but I have to think that some access to that imaginative power comes from proximity if he bothers to let you in on it.

And if it has expression other than an illustration, It's funny, heavy and funny is enough.

Amit: Yeah. It's also not really bong hits and joints as much these days you could have a gummy

Michael: I might have a actually that's probably the thing to do. All right. I think we're here. The final category. The VanDerBeek named Dr.

James VanDerBeek, who famously said in varsity blues. I don't want your life based on everything we've talked about. The big question is, do you want this life? I'm pretty close to that. 50 50 mark. I think despite how much I admire him in a lot of different ways. I think he's articulate in interviews. I think he's E even though I'm frustrated with the New York times anointing him as the greatest children's artist or whatever, the 20th century, I see what they're talking about.

And I would love to have. Artwork that some describe as genius. That'd be exciting. I also, like I really admire his take on a human life, what it means to be a kid, what it means to age, what it means to be human. I think that there is something very clear eye and pure and brilliant about how he understands it.

But I don't think that that knowledge or that insight, I'm not sure it did in many favors. The end of the day, this life looks more painful than joyful. Even if he finds joy, both in his own art and in others, whether that's Emily Dickinson or Herman Melville or Mozart, I mean, he was obsessed with Mozart.

All of those art forms look like relief. To me, including his own. I think it's liberating. I think it's taking his own internal pain and coming up with an expression of it that heals him partly, but it doesn't ever look complete somehow. Maybe that's not the right word, but do you know what I mean by the word complete there mm-hmm.

20. Million's a nice number 50 years with the same partner is great. It's an interesting life and it's beautiful, but do I want it? I don't think I do. I think I'm a. What about you?

Amit: I'm right there on that middle ground as well. I'll tell you the, the things that I love that didn't necessarily come up as explicitly at the beginning, I loved the ending like that clarity of just joy and love emanating from him in those last five or so years of interviews, I love the masterpiece idea.

Like it's, it can kind of suck to. Through it, I think to be known and labeled for a singular thing. But you still leave this world with a masterpiece. Yes. And you leave this world with. Most respect of the highest critics and highest peers imaginable. I mean, I read that Dr. Seuss in sometime in the late seven days, they asked him to say, who's your favorite contemporary artist?

And he said, Synex Sy. Yeah. And so I like the ending and I like the impact. I don't think I like the ride very much. It was full of death. It was full of disease. It was obviously full of fear. I don't like that in the era that you were born in, that you have to live the entire duration of your love life in secrecy, but the thing I'm also going with is it just didn't look that fun.

Yeah. Like, you know, he was curmudgeonly and he was critical. He could have a good laugh, but I just didn't see that much fun in the whole ride. You're not going and doing readings and you are not like a public figure part by his choice, but it's a very, seemed kind of like a private hermit life and there's variety to it.

But, you know, I just get this image of. You know, he is in this house of Connecticut and he's sketching, and these are beautifully acclaimed, highly regarded works, but it just doesn't seem that fun. It doesn't seem to have the world traveling of curly Neil and, you know, the basically roaring good times and the signposts of big.

Memories.

Michael: Yeah. And it doesn't even seem to delight in the artwork that much. It almost seems like he has to get it out. That's a very

Amit: good point. There's pride, but there's not delight. Yeah. Well, the, the playfulness was in, was in his imagination in his mind, but what it was missing for me was, was just play yeah.

Outward

Michael: play. And it almost seems like he was denied that as

Amit: a kid. Exactly. And then perhaps that just fed into, to every choice that he made in terms of the life that he led as a semi-private figure. Overall, I'm saying it's a great thing to have legacy, but I don't wanna see all live for legacy. I wanna see more live for live.

And so, no, I don't want your life born east and back.

Michael: Do you think anybody called him Mo.

Amit: Uh, surely somebody had to

Michael: I'd like to think so. I think it probably would've pissed them off. I mean, I, I really feel like I'm not sure we should leave this episode without pointing out our most recent episodes.

Larry McMurtry curly nail. Well, I'll leave it for the listeners to fill in the blank. Okay. all right. Uh, I guess we're here. Pearl, the gates, Pearl,

Amit: the gates. Okay. You are Mo uh, you were standing before Pete at the pearly gates, the proxy for all things after life. Yeah. Make your case.

Michael: So St. Peter, I think that there's a lot of confusion down there on planet earth, about what childhood is, what it means and what it feels like to be a kid.

I devoted my life to art and trying to express what it means to be human. I actually didn't set out to be a children's illustrator or to make picture books. I made art and people said, oh, that's for children. But what I was really trying to get at is the human condition, what it's like to be scared and vulnerable, but also courageous and imaginative what it's like to feel the need for love.

What it's like to get that what it's like to not get that. I did that in my illustrations, in my story and in the combination of the two. And I think that I helped both children and adults and really everybody. See the universality of that experience and maybe feel some comfort in that they're not alone in those feelings.

And for that, I hope you'll let me in.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of famous and gravy. If you're enjoying our show, we have a favor to ask. We hear from a lot of people that this show cheers, 'em up. It puts 'em in a good mood. So think of somebody in your life, just one person who you'd like to cheer up and cheer an episode of our show with them, be like, Hey man, here's an episode of famous and gravy.

Share it with anybody who you think could stand to. In a good mood. We are on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is at famous and gravy. We also have a newsletter which you can sign up for on our website, famous and gravy.com. Famous and gravy was created by AMIC Kippur and me Michael Osborne. This episode was produced by Jacob Weiss, original theme music by Kevin Strang.

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