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About a Boy
We speak with New Zealand writer-director-actor Taika Waititi about his film Boy which has wowed critics and audiences alike.
Boy - a funny, but painful coming-of-age comedy set and shot in New Zealand community Waihau Bay - may have broken box office records in its native country, besting other productions like Roger Donaldson's feel-good The World's Fastest Indian and Niki Caro's moving drama Whale Rider, but its writer-director-actor Taika Waititi does not expect his compatriots to kick up too much of a fuss over his accomplishment. "I was overseas working (on comic book blockbuster Green Lantern). I processed it pretty quickly and it does not have much impact on me and it does not have much impact on my life because nothing really changes... New Zealanders, and over here as well, we find it deeply uncool to make a fuss about things. And they go out of their way to not make a big deal about things. It can be really frustrating for Americans to see that kind of behaviour," Waititi says.
On the phone from Melbourne's The Crossley Hotel, Waititi is speaking almost six months after Boy's debut in New Zealand where it has grossed over $6.5 million, making it a more profitable proposition than American blockbusters Iron Man 2, Toy Story 3 and Alice in Wonderland, and effectively drowning the worldwide $1.3 million gross for Waititi's previous film, Eagle vs. Shark.
The second feature for former stand-up comedian/painter Waititi, the ‘80s set Boy actually has its origins before his first film and subsequent work as writer and director on episodes of HBO's Flight of the Concords (which reunited him with Eagle vs. Shark star Jemaine Clement). Originally an attempt to adapt his black and white, Oscar-nominated short film Two Cars, One Night (2003) to the screen, the project developed into a funnier, more slapstick-driven drama. Initially titled Choice (then Volcano), Boy was given a more joyous, upbeat tone until it gradually deepens into a darker, more troubling depiction of father-son relationships. "Yeah, the first few drafts were quite dramatic. There was a little bit of humour to it, but it was definitely a drama. And then I realised it is not really my style, the kind of films that I make. One of the things that I like about these kinds of stories is that there is a mixture of comedy, a nice balance between comedy and drama. So, once I picked at that, I just launched into it, I was much happier writing that stuff and coming up with that stuff when we were shooting," Waititi says.
The long development process of the screenplay began in 2005, when Waititi was invited to talk about his ideas at a Sundance Laboratory - gaining insight from writers like Frank Pierson (Cool Hand Luke, Dog Day Afternoon), Naomi Foner (Running on Empty), Susan Shilliday (Legends of the Fall) and David Benioff (25th Hour, The Kite Runner) - and wrote and directed Eagle vs. Shark in close collaboration with his partner and star Loren Horsley. The process allowed Waititi to refocus the story on the initially sweet, but gradually troubled and fractious relationship between Boy (James Rolleston) and his hapless, negligent ex-con father Alamein (Waititi). "In the first draft, the dad did not actually come into the film until about halfway through. So it went through a lot of changes with those relationships and balancing out all the relationships and the family dynamic and then eventually we just realised to go with the obvious choice which was to go with the crazy, buffoon dad being the antagonist and accepting that was the main interest in the boy's development. It was with him meeting with his hero and his hero not being who he thought he was," Waititi says.
Like Flight of the Concords' Jemaine and Eagle vs. Shark's compulsive-liar Jarrod (both played by New Zealander Clement), Alamein is a comical buffoon, but there are also patterns of violence and resentment lingering in his portrayal, and much of the sadness and tension in the story grows from the increasingly antagonistic relationship between the fawning Boy and the childish Alamein. Still grappling with the death of Boy's mother, Alamein is a self-sabotaging figure, so desperate to be admired that he is willing to push away the love and affection of Boy and his younger brother, Rocky (Te Aho Aho Eketone-Whitu). "A lot of my male characters are like that in the sense that I find them loveable, but other people find them frustrating and some people can't stand them. But it is those difficult characters that I really get attracted to. People who are desperate and who are desperate to be cool. They are kind of like taking everyone out in their desperate endeavours to be cool. So Alamein is very similar to Jarrod," Waititi says.
Crucial to the film's success is the casting Rolleston as Boy. Discovering the debut actor in a costume fitting in preparation for an extras role, Waititi cast himself in the lead in order to concentrate on the childrens' performances. "I tried to cast kids as close to the characters as I could. So they did not have to act too much and they could be natural. And all we had to do is just get them to learn the lines and point the camera at them. And James, he lives with his grandmother. You know, he displays a lot of the characteristics and traits of the characters that I had written," Waititi says.
Given his slapstick performance that slowly devolves into grief and aggression in Boy, Waititi is frankly as confused as anyone that he was cast as Hal Jordan's sidekick, Inuit American engineer Thomas Kalmaku, in Martin Campbell's sci-fi spectacle Green Lantern. Waititi says, "(Boy) played at Sundance and the casting director at Warner Bros. happened to see the film and I guess had an opening for a role in the film for someone who wasn't, I don't know, not-white or not-black. (Laughs) I don't know. I don't know what they were thinking, to be honest. But I wasn't really gonna ask. I just said, ‘Yes. I'll do it'."
Boy is released in cinemas August 26.
Picture caption: Waititi at the 2010 Maui Film Festival, courtesy of Getty Images. Taken by Michael Buckner.