Spike Jonze’s hotly anticipated Where the Wild Things Are is released today (Oct. 16), and the director has been talking about the influence of the Arcade Fire on his movie. The film was initially trailed by a clip that featured the band’s “Wake Up,” and he has explained how he used the Arcade Fire’s music to set a tone for the feature.

"Before we shot the movie, I cut together this mood piece; I used footage from E.T., Ratcatcher and The Black Stallion, and cut together this mood piece to the song,” he said. “I showed it to the crew to give them a sense of the tone and the feeling of the film before we shot. It was a way to get everyone to the same place.”

But the influence of the band didn’t stop there. Jonze also revealed that their music played a part in inspiring him as he wrote the movie. “I wrote the whole script to Arcade Fire’s Funeral, and I listened to that song a lot,” he said. “That record is thematically very connected to the film. So it seems so perfect that we got to put that in the trailer.”

[Exclaim]