Tai­ka Wait­i­ti: ​‘I often fan­ta­sise about stop­ping mak­ing films’

Tai­ka Wait­i­ti is New Zealand’s most excit­ing cin­e­mat­ic export since Peter Jack­son. As the quick-wit­ted mind behind cult clas­sics Boy and Eagle vs Shark, he has smashed box office records in his home coun­try twice over. His lat­est film, Hunt for the Wilder­peo­ple, is a reck­less­ly fun­ny road trip, star­ring Sam Neill as an acci­den­tal child abduc­tor allied with a ​“bad egg” orphan. While on loca­tion in Bris­bane, direct­ing Thor: Rag­narok, the com­ic trea­sure told us how he’ll always choose to work with friends.

LWLies: How did you first hear about the book, ​‘Wild Pork and the Water­cress’, which Wilder­peo­ple is based on?

Wait­i­ti: I was approached by a few pro­duc­ers, at first they just talked to me about writ­ing the adap­tion. This was quite a while back, about 2004 or 2005. I went for a very dif­fer­ent tone in the ear­ly stage that was much more like the book. It’s not a fun­ny book and it’s very dif­fer­ent to the film. I end­ed up giv­ing up all my notes and went and made my three oth­er films. I offered to take the rights to the book and film it. I was more con­fi­dent about mak­ing myself and thought, ​‘I’m going to do it.’ Quick and cheap, with lots of laughs and bigger.

Do you think if you hadn’t made your oth­er films before­hand it would have been a success?

No, it would have been ter­ri­ble. Well, maybe it would have been a good film, but def­i­nite­ly more seri­ous. Per­haps, I would have tak­en it too seri­ous­ly because I took myself too seri­ous­ly at the time. As a bud­ding film­mak­er, I would have tried to make it an arty film. Ricky Bak­er would have died in the end of the film or some­thing. I wouldn’t have done that though. I always want­ed to make it a comedy.

When­ev­er you read a book, do you find your­self think­ing about how it could be adapt­ed for screen?

Often I do. Even when I hear a sto­ry or an anec­dote I’ll think, ​‘Shit. You’ve got to write that into a movie, mate. That’d be great.’ But, so many good books would nev­er make good movies. Some­times it’s more about the idea. Wilder­peo­ple is based on a beau­ti­ful, poet­ic book. A true adap­tion just wouldn’t have worked. They’re out in the bush for about four years in the book. Ricky grows up and gets skin­ny. They’re not run­ning, they’re just liv­ing out there and it’s not fun­ny. There’s no sense of adven­ture, no car chas­es, there’s no social work­ers with rifles. I added all that stuff because it felt like it just need­ed a bit more of that. The basic enter­tain­ment, to pull the audi­ence in.

Your films have a very spe­cif­ic, self-mock­ing sense of humour. Are you ever been crit­i­cised for mak­ing a joke at the expense of New Zealanders?

When I made Boy, there a cou­ple of peo­ple, most­ly non-Maori who said, ​‘Oh my god! I can’t believe you por­trayed maori peo­ple like that.’ In fact, uni­ver­sal­ly, every Maori per­son who watch­es Boy recog­nis­es that that’s exact­ly what it’s like: cramped, fun­ny and sweet. Exact­ly what I put on screen. It’s usu­al­ly peo­ple who are try­ing to defend some­thing that they don’t under­stand. It might be weird humour that they don’t get, but most accept it as a cer­tain style. A lot of it is mak­ing fun of where I grew up myself. I most­ly only get praise for it.

You also por­tray New Zealand as some­what antiquated.

I’ll poke fun more at an inter­na­tion­al idea of what New Zealand is like. Of course we have amaz­ing tech­nol­o­gy. We’re so close to Asia, so we get a lot of their shit before any­one else. In all my films you’ll see that I joke about peo­ple think­ing we only got TV a cou­ple of years ago. Or, at the idea that we only have real­ly old equip­ment, like the Stingray con­trap­tion that the police were using in Wilderpeople.

Do you think your maori roots helped you become a bet­ter storyteller?

I would have loved to have thought that but I don’t think that’s true. I think every­one has uncles and aun­ties who are incred­i­ble at telling sto­ries. Com­ing from a Poly­ne­sian tra­di­tion, the idea that maori are renowned for sto­ry­telling is cor­rect, but it’s not some­thing that’s taught. It’s not some­thing that’s been embraced in edu­ca­tion. One of my biggest crit­i­cisms of school was that up until age eleven you’re encour­aged to be cre­ative. As soon as you hit a cer­tain age it’s all maths and busi­ness. They teach the prac­ti­cal things that you need to sur­vive in the world. And yet, they don’t speak to you about tax­es. Being told to stop writ­ing, stop being cre­ative, stop day­dream­ing – for me – is so dangerous.

As a direc­tor, how does the expe­ri­ence of work­ing with a young actor like Julian Den­ni­son and a screen vet­er­an like Sam Neill differ?

You know what? There isn’t a real dif­fer­ence. Sam has a lot of expe­ri­ence and he is a big actor. He hits the mark. He knows how to play the part. If we’re run­ning out of time he goes, ​‘Yep, come on, we can do it.’ Julian’s very fresh and raw and he hasn’t real­ly learnt all the tricks of film­mak­ing yet. He’s very reli­able, but he couldn’t always hit the same mark as Sam. But, then again, there’s a lot of expe­ri­enced actors who couldn’t hit that mark. Julian and Sam were very good to each oth­er. Julian would always make sure Sam was warm enough on set and Sam would go get Julian a cup of tea. They looked after each oth­er. It was impor­tant to me that they had a bond.

You’re known for hav­ing a cast of reg­u­lar col­lab­o­ra­tors. Do you pre­fer to work with peo­ple with whom you already have a cre­ative relationship?

I pre­fer work­ing with my friends. There’s just no bull­shit. I can talk to them how I want and say, ​‘That was lame’ or ​‘that wasn’t fun­ny.’ I think your job should be fun. You should sur­round your­self with peo­ple with whom you have fun with every moment on set. It’s real­ly hard to make a film or get a job mak­ing one in the first place, so you may as well enjoy it. I love being with good, fun­ny, cre­ative peo­ple. I real­ly don’t have any time for egos or super­fi­cial­i­ty. I have a big enough ego for everybody.

You’ve been an actor, an artist and a come­di­an. Do you think you have final­ly found your craft in filmmaking?

I’m still will­ing to explore oth­er avenues. I feel like I’ll run out of ideas for films soon, or run out of patience or inter­ests. I’ve spent much of my life doing film as very much a ​“job” and it’s been great, but I nev­er real­ly expect­ed to do it for so long. I often fan­ta­sise about stop­ping mak­ing films and going back to some­thing that’s a bit more per­son­al. Film involves so many peo­ple and I quite like work­ing by myself.

You’re in Bris­bane film­ing Thor: Rag­narok. Have you have lost a bit of cre­ative free­dom work­ing on such a large-scale film?

It still very much feels like one of my films, the way I’m cov­er­ing it. But, it has to fit with­in a larg­er frame, a larg­er uni­verse. I have to take into account the four oth­er films that have been made. There’s a cer­tain style to be main­tained in action films as much as there’s a cer­tain style to Mar­vel. You’re work­ing with a larg­er group of peo­ple too, which is good. I don’t know how handy I’d be if it was just me.

You often appear in your own films. Will there be a Thor cameo?

Maybe like I’ll walk through a shot. I’m try­ing to fig­ure out some­thing, but I’ll only do it if it’s real­ly good.

Hunt for the Wilder­peo­ple is released in cin­e­mas 16 September.