The comedies that inspired Taika Waititi the most
Taika Waititi’s career can be split into two halves. The first portion saw him establish himself with comedy dramas like Boy and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, bringing his trademark dry New Zealand comedy to various outlandish situations. Then came his big break, the Marvel movie Thor: Ragnarok.
Since joining the MCU, Waititi has become one of the most sought-after names in Hollywood. His movie Jojo Rabbit, in which he also appeared playing an imaginary version of Hitler, was nominated for ‘Best Picture’ at the Oscars and won Waititi the award for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’. He went on to make the fourth Thor movie, Love and Thunder, and is set to direct the big-screen adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Klara and the Sun. He also made the sports comedy Next Goal Wins, but let’s not spend too much time on that.
The Māori-descended superstar has done a lot with his time on Earth, which makes you think about what inspired him to become a filmmaker in the first place. In a conversation with HeyUGuys, the director addressed this very question. “Both New Zealand and Australian humour is quite similar and we have good comedies coming out of both places that I’ve always really loved and been influenced by,” he revealed. “The ones I’ve turned to are The Castle and another film called Love Serenade, which was a big influence on me early on.”
Love Serenade is a 1996 film by Australian director Shirley Barrett. It stars Miranda Otto and Rebecca Frith as two sisters with wildly different personalities who end up in competition for the affections of a local radio host (George Shevtsov). The project won the Caméra d’Or award at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival as a marker of its success. As for The Castle, that was also made by an Australian: Rob Sitch. The story follows an ensemble cast playing a large family who all live together in one home. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest Australian movies ever made.
The two films Waititi mentioned are both straight comedies, while his own work often blends drama and humour together. When he was asked about how easy it was to do this and put a lot of down to the editing process, the director answered: “It’s why I spent a lot of time editing, and on all my films I’ve taken really long on that,” he said.
Waititi added: “On [What We Do in the] Shadows we spent 14 months editing that, and it wasn’t even that much of a mixture of comedy and pathos. But this one [Hunt for the Wilderpeople], finding that balance was quite important because the film is in danger of veering off into the absurd with a lot of the characters and situations, so a lot of the time we were just trying to figure out how to keep it in some sort of reality.”
Despite acknowledging the importance of this part of the process, Waititi revealed that it wasn’t his favourite. “I enjoy shooting more than anything else,” he said. “The editing part is actually harder and more lonely, so I enjoy the shoot so much more.”
Alongside Klara and the Sun, Waititi is also said to be involved in writing the screenplay for a movie version of the Akira anime. Following his work on The Mandalorian – he directed the season one finale and voiced the character of IG-11 – he is also said to be working on an as-yet-untitled Star Wars movie.
