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#Post#: 129--------------------------------------------------
The Dominion Post: Boy Wonder (interview) - September 25, 2011
DIR By: Sylwia
Date: January 21, 2018, 9:04 am
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--- Quote ---
> Boy Wonder
> Tom Fitzsimons
> Sep 25 2011
>
> Next are warriors: For his next Kiwi film, Taika Waititi has
the Maori Battalion in his sights - only it might be too big.
>
> Taika Waititi is driving when I call. "I'll be parking in
about ..." he says and pauses. "6.4 minutes." Pause. "Do you
want to call me back in about seven minutes?" I do as he says.
So how's his internal GPS system?
>
> "Timed it perfectly," he says from an Auckland footpath. "I'm
just walking out on to the street. The safety of the street."
>
> Waititi, actor, joker, sometime Wellingtonian and, of course,
brilliantly successful film-maker isn't easy to pin down.
>
> Most of the time, he doesn't pick up his phone. His
answerphone message directs you to send an email to
[inaudible]@[inaudible].com. He's back in town on a week-long
break from filming in the United States.
>
> But when you do get him, he is funny and lively and smart and
abidingly quirky, as all his movies get called. 6.4 minutes
indeed.
>
> Since we last spoke with Waititi, 36, his second feature film,
Boy, has become the single highest-grossing Kiwi movie ever,
eclipsing Once were Warriors and The World's Fastest Indian. It
took $9.3million at the local box office. Something about his
funny, dreamy tale of an East Coast Maori boy captured the
national mood.
>
> "Didn't see it coming, that's for sure," he says. "Like, I
thought it was a good film, but I didn't expect a public
explosion of support for it."
>
> It's the tall poppy part of being a New Zealand film-maker, he
says. You learn never to expect a great local reception. So,
yes, a surprise.
>
> "And a really nice surprise as well. Not that I would ever
brag about it, but I'm quietly pretty chuffed with myself.
>
> "And I think also just happy that New Zealanders are
supporting New Zealand films in such a way. So often you can get
a bit disheartened and think, `Man, what's the point, because
people aren't going to see it'."
>
> To be fair, he says, one reason they might avoid some Kiwi
comedies is that we're not great at making them. We either lean
on other countries' formulas or don't try them at all.
>
> "So perhaps it was good timing just having a film that people
wanted to see, a New Zealand comedy, which we don't make that
often ... maybe it was that as well, but I don't think I'll ever
really know why it did so well."
>
> The other thing about making a Kiwi film or really any film is
that everything moves slowly. So while Boy has won all sorts of
gongs at film festivals, it's only now getting set for an
American release where it will open in February.
>
> Those long intervals also explain how he can barely recall
another notable gig of the past couple of years: an acting role
in superhero flick Green Lantern. He played Tom Kalmaku,
sidekick to the titular hero.
>
> "It's so weird. I pretty much forgot that I was in it. It was
over a year ago that I filmed it, and then it came out in June."
>
> He went to the premiere, which was big, glamorous and fun. But
he always felt removed from the movie, he says. It wasn't a
reflection on the film's quality, just the whole business of
working for another director.
>
> "When you make up your own film, you feel very much part of
it. But there I just felt like I was a very small cog in a
monstrous machine. And it was someone else's project and someone
else's dream, and it wasn't my dream."
>
> Now Waititi is deep in the middle of another American project,
working on a TV series for MTV, a channel otherwise "renowned
for shows about children who get pregnant", he quips.
>
> The show is The Inbetweeners, a transplant from Britain where
the original series was such a huge success that it's spawned a
hit film.
>
> Waititi has already directed the first four episodes, and he's
about to head back to the US to do the season finale.
>
> Both versions follow a group of four teenage schoolboys – "the
invisible group", he says, the sort who "just glide through
school not really being picked on too much, but not at all being
popular".
>
> "They basically just pass their time trying to have sex,
trying to get girlfriends, trying to get alcohol, and just going
through all those experiences that people in college, high
school, do."
>
> There are plenty of quirks to filming in the US, he says. The
actors who play the schoolboys are all in their early 20s –
"that's classic". Most of the swearing and smut from the British
show has had to be excised from the script. "We're not allowed
to be as crass as the UK version, because the standards in the
States are way higher ... It's really hard. You've got to do
weird versions where you're making alternative swearwords."
>
> There have been personal challenges too, such as spending
weeks sweating in the heat of Orlando, Florida, the theme-park
town where the series is being filmed.
>
> "Orlando's not the most picturesque town I've ever been to,"
he says, laughing.
>
> But it does have some perks. For one, it's got an "anywhere in
America" feel, perfect for the show's fictional location.
>
> For another, it's helped him focus on his writing. And Waititi
is a writer, a creator. He cooked up Boy and his first feature
Eagle vs Shark, and his two breakout short films from scratch.
>
> You get the feeling he's comfortable in his own head, teasing
out the next little bit of whimsy.
>
> "I think the good thing about going somewhere boring like
Orlando is that it forces you to just work," he says. "There's
nothing else to do. It's very hard to write somewhere like New
York, because you just want to go out."
>
> He's got a couple of ideas for US shoots. He's upbeat, too,
about what he thinks will be his next Kiwi film – an expansion
of his 2004 short about the Maori Battalion, Tama Tu, which won
international festival awards.
>
> The only problem is that subject is almost too big. Even on
the East Coast, where he's from, there are too many war stories
to count, he says.
>
> "I'm kind of spoilt because there's so many incredible stories
from all over. And you want to try and include so many of them,
but it's very hard to make something that would be authentic if
you used all of these stories ... You'd have like 100 different
characters."
>
> Writing for the screen is so hard, he says.
>
> "Screenwriting is probably one of the hardest things you can
try to do, I think. It's not like writing a novel where you can
just waffle on and there's no limit to how many pages you have."
>
> Screenwriters have to land their finished product between 90
and 120 pages, he says. They have to keep the whole thing
logically watertight. They have to be constantly attentive to
the audience. "What is going to drive the story? Who are the
main characters? What do they want?"
>
> Writing is what occupies most of his time, he says. But this
movie-star, MTV, jetsetting life, that's got to be good, right?
>
> Like his friends and Flight of the Conchords stars Bret
McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, Waititi has spent the past five
years or so extending his talent beyond the most outlandish
predictions, proving that it wasn't just a one-time thing.
>
> He seems to wear it all pretty lightly: the lifestyle, the
success. He likes the travel, likes the chance to get away.
>
> That Green Lantern movie? Fun, but "I wouldn't say it changed
my life".
>
> Travelling to Orlando? "Not exactly my dream come true."
>
> The Hollywood payday? "Now their dollar's so dead, there's
almost hardly any point earning money over there."
>
> Another pause. "But I am enjoying it, yeah. It's nice to have
a break from here [New Zealand], especially after spending
30-odd years here. But I'm not going to live there. I always
want to live here. I think just for now it's nice to go over and
take advantage of some of these opportunities."
>
> The free-to-air television premiere of Boy is on Maori TV at
9pm on October 1.
--- End Quote ---
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