For indie’s Miguel Arteta an excellent, good move to make kids’ film

If you were looking for a director to take on a big-screen version of the much-loved 1972 children’s book “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,” Miguel Arteta would seem at first glance like, if not a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad choice, at least not the most obvious one.

The characters in Arteta’s movies — adult-oriented, often darkly comic art-house fare like 1997’s “Star Maps,” 2000’s “Chuck & Buck,” 2002’s “The Good Girl,” and 2011’s “Cedar Rapids” — have wrestled with such things as sexual obsession, depression and dead-end jobs. The elementary school protagonist in Judith Viorst’s picture book wrestles with such things as waking up with gum in his hair, not getting a prize in his cereal box and having to eat lima beans for dinner.

Over the last four decades, millions of kids have read Viorst’s award-winning chronicle of one boy’s indignity-filled day (or more likely, have had it read to them) and found comfort in the realization that they aren’t the only ones for whom life isn’t always perfect. But growing up in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica, Arteta, 49, said on a recent morning at his home in Beachwood Canyon, “I had never read the book.”

Arteta’s adaptation of “Alexander” hits theaters Oct. 10 with an ensemble cast that includes Steve Carell, Jennifer Garner and as Alexander, newcomer Ed Oxenbould. Simply getting a movie out of a slender story aimed primarily at 5- to 9-year-olds, let alone with a filmmaker known for making R-rated indies, seems rather improbable. Over the years, Viorst’s book has been adapted as a short animated film and a musical stage production, but until now no one has managed to crack it on the big screen.

Not that people haven’t tried. “It was optioned a lot over the years by various movie companies, but it was stymied by the fact that it’s 32 pages with rather large type,” said Viorst, 83, who actually based the book’s dyspeptic main character on her son Alexander, now 47 and with three kids of his own. “How to turn that into a feature film seemed to have gotten everybody stuck.”

Aside from the main character’s name and his obsession with Australia, the movie actually bears little resemblance to Viorst’s book. In the film, 12-year-old Alexander, after suffering a string of mishaps, wishes for the rest of his family to have an awful day so they will understand what he’s going through. Much terribleness and horribleness ensue — a bungled job interview, a disastrous school play and other minor and major family catastrophes.

“We were hoping to capture a tiny bit of that John Hughes or Harold Ramis magic, that sort of madcap energy with a lot of warmth and authenticity,” Arteta said.

For Disney, the film represents a chance to bring back the kind of live-action family movie that used to make up a major portion of the studio’s slate.

“They consciously wanted to do a throwback to the heartwarming live-action Disney movies from the ‘60s that I grew up with, movies like ‘That Darn Cat!’ and ‘The Parent Trap’ and all those Dick Van Dyke movies,” Arteta said. “All the elements were there with this movie. Steve Carell is kind of a modern-day Dick Van Dyke. They both have that rare ability to make funniness out of niceness.”

“Alexander” stands to perform strongly at the box office, according to Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at the tracking firm Rentrak. “I think given the lack of family films both this past summer and in the current market, ‘Alexander’ is poised to do very well,” he said. “Look at how well ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ and ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ did because they filled a void left by a short supply of family films in the earlier part of the summer.”

Mixing an edgy indie sensibility with family fare can be tricky business, of course. Spike Jonze’s 2009 take on another childhood literary classic, Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are,” drew some wildly positive reviews but proved too odd for some mainstream moviegoers, grossing a less than spectacular $77 million. But with “Alexander,” Carell thinks Arteta got the balance between quirk and audience-friendliness right. “Miguel has a big heart and a good sense of humor,” the actor said. “Those two things in tandem were important for whoever was going to direct this.”

Familial tale

Scripted by Rob Lieber, “Alexander” actually began as a 20th Century Fox project, with Lisa Cholodenko (“The Kids Are All Right”) slated to direct. But after Fox put it into turnaround and Cholodenko departed, Disney took it on and brought Arteta on board. Despite his lack of familiarity with the book, Arteta — who had been looking for years for the right studio film to take on — found that he connected with the script on an emotional level.

“‘Alexander’ is about a kid who stops appreciating his family for a moment and over the course of the movie finds a new appreciation for them,” said Arteta, who was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to a Peruvian father, who sold auto parts, and a Spanish mother. “That’s been a journey for me with my family as well.”

As a teenager, after “getting myself kicked out of high school” in Costa Rica, Arteta moved to the Boston area to go to boarding school. A movie fan since childhood, he went on to study filmmaking at Harvard and Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., before getting an unlikely career break thanks to his auto mechanic.

The ex-wife of Arteta’s mechanic was married to an Episcopal priest named Robert Castle who happened to be a cousin of director Jonathan Demme, who in turn happened to have made one of Arteta’s favorite movies, the 1986 dark comedy “Something Wild.” The mechanic, who had seen Arteta’s thesis film, set up a meeting for him with Demme. On the spot, Demme hired Arteta to work on a documentary he was making about Castle called “Cousin Bobby,” and he went on to become a mentor to the fledgling filmmaker.

“The moral of the story is make sure you have the right mechanic,” Arteta said.

With the experience of making “Alexander” under his belt, Arteta — who has also worked in television on such shows as “Six Feet Under” and “Enlightened” — is looking to follow Demme’s lead by moving from smaller films to bigger ones on a studio level. “I would love to do a thriller or a science-fiction movie or a tear-jerker,” Arteta said. “I want to find my ‘Terms of Endearment’ or my ‘Silence of the Lambs’ or my ‘2001.’”

Carell, who had first met Arteta when he came on to direct an episode of “The Office,” credits the filmmaker with investing “Alexander” with a dash of indie flavor. Indeed, this is the only kids’ movie in history with a climactic scene involving male strippers clad in Australian cowboy outfits.

“We didn’t want to feel like we were going right down the middle of the road with this movie,” Carell said. “Miguel was able to keep it silly and fun while finding subtleties in it as well.”

Ultimately, Arteta said, the secret to making the movie feel authentic lay in casting, particularly with the kids. The director met with some 150 kids before landing on Oxenbould (who, ironically enough, is Australian) for the role of Alexander.

“It was really important not to see the sort of typical Hollywood kid acting,” he said. He laughed. “One of the first questions I would ask kids is: ‘What’s your favorite food?’ And you would be surprised how many kids say sushi.”

josh.rottenberg@latimes.com