The movie Taika Waititi calls “one of the great pornos”
New Zealand director Taika Waititi first arrived on the film scene with his debut feature movie Eagle vs Shark and cemented his promising future career with 2010’s comedy-drama Boy, and 2013’s What We Do in The Shadows, written in partnership with Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Concords.
By the time 2016’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople arrived, Waititi had established himself as one of New Zealand’s best contemporary directors and began to enjoy a widespread global audience. He was then afforded the chance to take on a Marvel film in 2017’s Thor Ragnarok and even won a ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ Academy Award for 2019’s Jojo Rabbit.
So Waititi’s works comprise several cinema fan favourite moments, and when the director visited the JM Video store in Paris, he picked out a number of films that he personally admires and paid particular attention to Mike Nichols’ 1967 film, The Graduate. Waititi rather humorously called it “one of the greatest pornos ever made” and admitted that it’s “consistently been in” his top five films.
The Graduate is a romantic comedy-drama written by Buck Henry and Calder Willingham based on the 1963 Charles Webb novel of the same name. It stars Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft and Katharine Ross and tells of a young recent college graduate who is seduced by Mrs Robinson, an older woman, only to fall in love with her daughter.
Back in 2012, Waititi had also expressed his admiration for Nichols’ film, calling it “always a good one to have” on his list of favourite films. “It’s hilarious,” he told Rotten Tomatoes, “But also has that element of treading between comedy and drama and doing it so well, and actually being about something”.
The director continued: “It’s probably the best version of those films about rich people and their boring problems, you know, that anyone’s ever made. People have tried to do that since — that film has totally inspired generations of filmmakers. For me, it’s just fresh.”
A large part of the brilliance of The Graduate for Waititi, though, comes from the acting. “There’s also the energy of the actors,” he said. “Hoffman, just young and going for it; he hasn’t become jaded.” Waititi also believes that if the film was released today, audiences might think it was a Wes Anderson or Sofia Coppola movie. “I’ve always loved that film,” he concluded.
Check out the trailer for Mike Nichols’ 1967 film The Graduate below, as well as the Konbini video in which Waititi picks out some of his favourite movies.
