26th Annual Washington DC International Film Festival

The Cinema Lounge

Boy: Q&A with Writer/Director Taika Waititi

By Annette Graham, DC Film Society Member

A screening of Boy was held on March 26 at Landmark's E Street Cinema. Writer/Director/Actor Taika Waititi took questions from the audience. Boy is a delightful coming of age comedy set in a Maori area of New Zealand during 1984 when Michael Jackson was all the rage. Taika Waititi appears in the film as Boy's father.

Taika Waititi: Thank you for watching the film and sticking around. The film is shot in New Zealand in Waihau Bay (means Windy Waters). That's where I'm from, it's my home town that you saw on the film. I shot at my grandmother's house where I grew up. When I went to the school in 1984 there were 30 kids. When we shot the film in 2009 there were 28.

Audience: Have you made any other films?
Taika Waititi: I'm relatively new. But I've been making films since 2004 when I made my first short film. My first feature film was Eagle vs. Shark.

Audience: Were you really into Michael Jackson at the time?
Taika Waititi: Yes absolutely, we were all into Michael Jackson in the 1980s. Especially for kids when I was growing up, he was the ultimate. We embraced anyone who was black or brown who was doing well. So it was Michael Jackson, Prince, Eddie Murphy, Ponch from CHiPs. We used to love all those dudes. The reason kids loved Michael Jackson I think was not just because he was an amazing singer and dancer but here's a guy who's earning millions and millions of dollars and spending it on the same stuff that 10 year olds would spend it on. He buys a big castle and fills it with zoo animals, puts a train around the outside, has Pepsi Cola on tap. The reason I set the film in the 1980s is because I know that time and you have to write what you know. And I don't really know the world of kids these days. So for me and for New Zealand as well, the 1980s was a coming of age decade. So it made sense to make a coming of age film. New Zealand was a very clumsy decade for us. It was very innocent. We were like teenagers. We had a very innocent outlook on the world. We had a commercial in 1980 which was a guy driving his car to a store, he gets out of the car and goes into the store and when he comes out his car is gone. "Where's my car?" And across the screen it says "Don't leave your keys in the car." (everyone laughs) And that's the end. So it was a cool time to grow up.

Audience: Is the Goodnight Kiwi icon (shown when the TV shows went off) still in existence?
Taika Waititi: That was a cartoon on TV. In New Zealand in the 1980s we had two TV channels, TV 1 and TV 2. In 1993 we had a third, TV 3. Now it's 2012 and I think we now have 5. So every night at the end of TV which is around midnight there was a cartoon they played which is the kiwi that shuts down the TV station and goes up to his nest in the TV tower. TV lasts all night now; we're now really modern.

Audience: In the dance sequence at the end, was that fun choreography or did you incorporate Maori influences?
Taika Waititi: That's a haka, it is essentially a song which has actions with it; you might call it a war dance. It's just a challenge you would offer to people who you wanted to kill. (everyone laughs) Traditionally every Maori kid growing up in New Zealand would learn these haka. There are lots of different ones from different tribal areas and you would learn ones from your area. When we were kids, to make it interesting, we would mix contemporary stuff with it, Michael Jackson stuff. Because breakdancing had just exploded, we would do a lot of breakdancing haka as well. In our culture when you make a speech or have something important to say, if you have a general meeting and someone gets up and says what's on their mind, at the end of that you are culturally obliged to sing a song. It happens in any Maori situation you're in. That's really where that comes from.

Audience: How much of the film is autobiographical?
Taika Waititi: The only thing autobiographical is the place, the setting, showing how kids grew up in that time, and what the area was like.

Audience: Why is this story important to you and how did you come up with it?
Taika Waititi: I wanted to tell a story set in that time because it's never been on film before. New Zealand film really isn't like this--a lot of it is kids dying or people riding animals or talking to trees. Around the world, people have a misconception of what Maori people are like. We need to make different types of films and see ourselves in different ways.

Audience: Were the kids in the film from that area?
Taika Waititi: Yes.

Audience: Your short film Two Cars One Night was also seen through a child's point of view. Is that of interest to you?
Taika Waititi: I'd rather not work with kids again, but one of my next films is going to have an 11 year old kid. I really love the way the kids reinterpret the adult work and the way adults can be very child-like. I love characters like the father who really hasn't grown up and people who are parented by their children. I think families are very interesting and there's always strange dynamics within families. These are the people you are supposed to be closest to in your life. But often within family structures you have the most distances between people.

Audience: Once Were Warriors (1994) was a fantastic film by Lee Tamahori.
Taika Waititi: That's the kind of film we have made before. I was trying to show the more hilarious side of child neglect. (everyone laughs) Especially here people expect a certain thing when they see the Maori culture on screen. I had an interview where this guy said to me, "What was it like when you went back to your village and the elders in your village saw the camera for the first time? And saw the soul-capturing contraption? And the lights and technical wizardry? What was it like for them?" We have had TV for 60 years. This is the age of internet, it isn't hard to find out what we're about down there. I read a review once from Variety, this guy never went to New Zealand. He said, "The film wasn't culturally specific enough to Maori people. There wasn't enough of the spiritual element that you need to see in films about Maori people." We don't talk to ghosts every day. This is culturally specific. I was there.

Audience: What was the gesture when they were leaving graveyard?
Taika Waititi: Washing the ghosts off you. They are very clingy. You don't want to take them with you. It's a Jewish tradition as well.

Audience: How old is the tree?
Taika Waititi: That is called pohutukawa. It's twisted and grows sidways with the wind.

Audience: Do you serve in the military in New Zealand?
Taika Waititi: No, we don't really have a military. But we fought in the war. WWI and WWII. We had a special Maori batallion. It was a decorated unit.

Audience: Could you comment on the realism vs. non-realism in the drawings?
Taika Waititi: I wanted to separate the three fantasy elements for the three characters, including the dad. Rocky's was very simple and that's when those animations came in. I did those, to keep his vision very simple and separate from reality. Boy's is the next step, more advanced and very imaginative live action cut aways. Alamein's fantasy manifests itself in the physical world, and how he dresses and presents himself, in changing his name all the time, the idea of creating a fantasy about yourself to escape who you are.

Audience: What would you like people to take away from this film?
Taika Waititi: A ticket stub! Really, I just wanted people to see a cool story that's an alternative or an antidote to what was probably on in the other nine cinemas. This film was made at a time when independent film was suffering a lot. The independent studio independent distributors all shut down in the last few years. Paramount Vantage, Warner Independent, other studio owned departments all closed down. In a recession you really can't be buying obscure films from countries that no one can locate on a map and then try to get people to see them. Films like Whale Rider did very well because everyone was very confident and had money. But now what you find is a pattern where people need to know how to market something. This film premiered at Sundance in 2010 and did incredibly well, got good reviews, was nominated for the Jury prize. But the problem was we couldn't find distribution because people just don't know how to market it. There's no dragons, no muscley guy with a sword. There's an incredibly good looking father character, (everyone laughs) but apart from that, it has no stars and is a kind of obscure film. So we are self-distributing the film and relying on the old concept of people actually talking about the film, audiences going out. That's where you guys come in, going out and telling people. Because it used to be that way. When you saw a film that was great people would talk about it and it would generate word of mouth. Now it's "do you have $15 million to spend on advertising." For most films that get made in Hollywood, they'll spend up to the same budget that the film cost to make on advertising. So for John Carter the advertising for that would be $150 million. I can make 100 films for that. So what I want is for people to see the film, love it, and then go and tell other people.

Audience: What percentage of filmmakers in New Zealand are Maori?
Taika Waititi: I think maybe 10%.

Audience: How is it being distributed?
Taika Waititi: It opened in New York at the Angelika, the next week it was LA, San Francisco, Seattle, here, later this week I go to Boston, Atlanta. Then it rolls out everywhere. April 6, from then on we're in Phoenix, Santa Fe, and lots more places. It's ongoing. Not many people realize that when you release a film, it might not be there next week. It runs from Friday to Thursday. They check the numbers; it's like Survivor. If there are five films in the cinema, the one with the lowest number of people to see it will drop off and then a new film will take its place. That's how it works. So if we get people in the cinema every day, but weekends are the biggest times, then we get to keep going. We're still at the Angelika a month later, because it's been doing quite well there. Go on Facebook and tell everyone.

Audience: What's your favorite experience working on The Flight of the Conchords?
Taika Waititi: Just working with my friends. That show was really fun. It was just like doing an old theater show that we used to do and there happened to be cameras there.

Audience: Where did you find the kid who played Boy? Was he an actor?
Taika Waititi: We found the kids in chatrooms. (everyone laughs). That's the brilliance of the internet, you can really troll for young actors. We found them all at schools. None of them had acted before. James [Rolleston] was cast three days before shooting. He plays Boy. I wouldn't recommend doing that. I had cast another kid nine months before that--he was brilliant, a really great actor. By the time we started pre-production and rehearsals he was hitting adolescence and he was as tall as me and his mustache was as big as mine. So we gave him another role, as the bully in the classroom. James was an extra in a classroom scene. He came in for a wardrobe fitting. Everyone loved him, he had a great personality and I auditioned him that day. That afternoon I told him, "You have to be the lead in the movie." He just jumped into it. He was just incredible. Two or three days into the filming he was saying things like "cut, cut, it doesn't feel real." And asking to improvise monologues. Rocky was very much like Rocky. When you cast kids you try to cast to the character you want.

Thank you so much for staying.

Boy opened in DC on March 30.

Romance Joe: Comments by Director Lee Kwang-Kuk

By James McCaskill, DC Film Society Member

Romance Joe (Lee Kwang-Kuk, South Korea, 2011) will be shown in Filmfest DC. These comments were made at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

"I have no specific audience in mind when I begin making a film. If I make a film about a subject I enjoy then there is an audience who will enjoy it. I am interested to see how the audience will see the film as a whole. How people will see the ending," Lee Kwang-Kuk (photo above) told me in Rotterdam where his film was was selected for the Tiger Awards Competition. Romance Joe, his debut film, is entertaining and imaginative and will find a world-wide audience. Lee, who was the assistant director on Hong Sang-Soo's award winning The Day a Pig Fell in the Well, plays fun-filled games with his characters and the audience as he toggles back and forth between stories. A film maker dumped in an isolated area and told to come up with fresh story ideas. Was that an analogy for Lee coming up with his own fresh take? A chance meeting at a rural inn between the out-of-ideas director and a waitress who is a fan of his film leads to the unfolding of her stories within stories. The film dissolves the thin connection between art and life. Traditional story telling is tossed aside as Lee carries you into his world of film. The world of Romance Joe has its own unique sense of humor.

"Everyone in the world lives in their own universe, within which they have their stories," director Lee said. "Everywhere you look you see people talking about their lives, giving each other part of their stories. I want to introduce that feeling into my own film." The organization of Lee's debut feature follows that concept resulting in a delightful tangle of stories. Lee Kwang-Kuk told me that he wrote the screenplay in 2010, started filming in Spring 2011, and finished film in Autumn 2011; it took eight months to film. What did he enjoy most in creating his film? "Developing the film with the actors. There was not anything I did not like. The low budget was a constraint but it forced creativity. I had my scenario ready but wanted room for details that the actors could add. I learned how to make films by working with other directors. It was important that the whole film was created through this collaborative process. Not everything happened as I envisioned when starting the screenplay." He could not say there was a key reference. "I needed a story. Maybe a connection between myself and the lead character. Romance Joe was mostly from my imagination."

"In the beginning the white rabbit was not there. The rabbit was from Alice in Wonderland and leads Alice into her adventure. In this film the rabbit is at the end of the film." On the low budget, he told me: "Films are not made by money. The concept, the several story lines, are not made by financial concerns. The money is not the start of my thought process." It is beautifully filmed by DP Jee Yune-jeong who follows the director's lead of creativity.

When I asked about casting, he replied, "Some actors I knew before, some were new. I did not use auditions the way most directors do. I had interviews and wanted to know what kind of people they were, how they would fit into the film." Director Lee knew what he was looking for; rest assured that he is fully in charge of this contemplative films and will carry you with him.

Romance Joe will be shown as part of Filmfest DC on April 15 and 19.

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