Perhaps It’s the Coffee

“Perhaps it's an inability to sit still, to explore a single form or medium to its ultimate end. Perhaps it's the coffee. I think it's because I'm an artist who expresses himself in whatever medium is readily at hand. There are so many interesting ways to create worlds and beings, how can someone only be interested in one method?”

Taika Waititi with the cast of Thor:Ragnorak (2017)

Taika Waititi is, for now, a filmmaker, best known in the US for Thor: Ragnorak (2017) and best known in his home country, New Zealand, for the nation’s highest box-office grossing films Boy (2010) and Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016). Waititi never really planned to become a filmmaker, but always knew that he wanted to be a creator. From starting a five man improv group to drawing to inventing the “emery board guitar neck” and “button down tie,” Taika built up an eclectic background in visual art, drama, fashion, and even music. What finally turned him to filmmaking was writing his short film “Two Cars, One Night” (2004), when he got a burst of inspiration, or as ……… would call it, insight, while waiting in a g-string in between scenes on a film set in which he was playing a stripper. (link)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL71KhNmnls

Taika acting his horror-comedy film What We Do in the Shadows

Born to a mother of Russian-Jewish descent and a Māori father, one of the indigenous peoples of New Zealand, Waititi grew up “attracted to the outsider,” and tries to focus on that theme in a lot of his work, the idea of people who don’t quite belong. This is just one of the ways he expresses himself and shares his ideas and point of view, which he considers his true calling more than any one particular profession or field. As he puts it, only being interested in one method is “like only cooking with leeks and onions,” while he acknowledges that “some people can do things with just leeks and onions that, when eaten, would change your world view or break your heart” but he “need[s] a lot of different ingredients to do that.” (link) This is apparent in all of his work, which is never purely comedy or drama or poetic or mundane but rather all of those things at once.

Taika's acclaimed film, which broke his previous box-office record in New Zealand

His process is at once instinctual, describing it himself as quite like steering a ship toward a glint on a horizon a little bit everyday until someone tells him to stop (link),  but also involves a lot of pulling from the creators who inspire him, like Wes Anderson’s framing techniques and Tarantino’s use of chapters, which Taika utilizes in Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and the people around him as well. He always tries to work with friends, who he can always trust to give honest criticism and share exciting new ideas, like another pair of friends Sustein and Thaler discuss in their New York Times article, believing that “we’re here to communicate and share ideas, that’s success.” (link)  He truly is Gardner’s perennial child, as well, seeing creativity as “having fun and looking at life through the lens of a child, really.” (link) His creativity, in the end, though, really comes down to his inability to ever stop constantly exploring and evolving. For now, he’s a filmmaker, but who knows what he’ll be tomorrow, I can’t wait to find out.

Sources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkYvLrys-EA

https://singjupost.com/transcript-taika-waititi-on-the-art-of-creativity-at-tedxdoha/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL71KhNmnls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT-wVAA7SNc

https://www.thearts.co.nz/artists/taika-waititi

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/taika-waititi-interview-on-hunt-for-the-wilderpeople-thor-ragnarok-new-zealand-a7307336.html