Page 97 - Sharp Winter 2024

defeated American Samoa by 31 goals to nil at a World Cup qualifier) and Waititi was so inspired by the story that he started work on an adaptation.
SHARP caught up with the filmmaker twice in the run-up to the movie’s release, first to photograph him in downtown Toronto when the footballing film premiered at TIFF, and again today, when Waititi once more finds himself pitch-side — albeit for a different sport. The New Zealander is in Paris, primed to watch his native All Blacks give Argentina a thrashing in the Rugby World Cup. He calls this “the real football,” and stands by a candid claim he made on Instagram earlier this year that soccer was “a sport [he knows] nothing about.” Major League Soccer may be attracting ever bigger names, he admits, Ryan Reynolds may have staged a well-publicized takeover of Welsh club Wrexham, and Ted Lasso may have become a global hit (although Waititi hasn’t seen a single episode of the Apple TV+ show), but the filmmaker maintains his indifference. He married British pop star Rita Ora last summer, which has seen him spend more time in the U.K. of late, but even the world-leading lure of the Premier League has failed to entice him.
“I wouldn’t know where to begin!” he laughs. “It’s like when someone says you should start watching The Wire. I don’t have time for that!”
The same Instagram post saw Waititi label Next Goal Wins his “least cynical film.” “Nothing really bad happens,” he explains, “and it’s probably the most joyful film I’ve made. My other films have fallen into a pattern, where something tragic must happen to remind the audience that the world is a fucked-up place and terrible shit happens to people all the time. For me, especially now, I feel like we get reminded of that enough every day. And I think it’s okay to just make some cinema where it’s nice, and all about happiness and hope.”
On the praise-heaped heels of Jojo Rabbit, but before he rolled the cameras on Thor: Love and Thunder (Waititi previously directed the third entry in the superhero franchise, Ragnarok), the filmmaker was keen to revisit his roots. From his feature debut, Eagle vs Shark, in 2007, to 2016’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Waititi had filmed the first four movies of his career entirely in New Zealand. “So, when I watched the documentary Next Goal Wins,” he says, “it not only had so many elements of great sports films, but it was made extra special because it was about Polynesians, and that was a chance for me to come back home, to do something in my neck of the woods.”
The film ended up shooting in Hawaii, but it retains the spirit of the acclaimed 2014 documentary, which follows the efforts of Dutch-American football coach Thomas Rongen (played by Michael Fassbender in Waititi’s film) to turn around the amateurish American Samoa team. And, while a decade is yet to pass since the documentary’s release, Waititi sees no problem in retelling the story again so soon — because the Pacific Islanders have an oral storytelling culture.
“There’s no written word for us,” the filmmaker explains. “So it’s all about telling stories, and retelling stories again and again — and embellishing them more and more until they become mythology. So, for me to tell this story and make everything exactly spot on and accurate, and to show every single thing that actually happened, that would be boring. You’d watch the documentary if you wanted that. If I was going to do it, I was going to ‘Taika-fy’ it, and change some stuff. The heart of the story is all true — I just added more jokes!”
For anyone who has seen a Taika Waititi film — from his celebrat- ed sophomore picture, Boy, to campy vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows — you’ll know the score. The ‘Taikification’ process consists of the following: a slight heightening of reality, a
handful of larger-than-life characterizations, the odd twisted truth, much touchy-feeliness, and several choice homages. That crane kick from The Karate Kid shows up in Next Goal Wins, as do knowing nods to both Rambo and The Matrix. But the clearest influences come from sports films.
“Definitely Cool Runnings,” Waititi nods, “but I also looked at other sports films to get some ideas. Another good one is Miracle, which is Kurt Russell in the true story of an ice hockey team. And the best thing about that one is the montages — the training montages are really well done. And I’ve got like 20 training montages in this film, or that’s what it feels like!”
Set to the ever-welcome, clickety-clacking rhythm of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” the most memorable of Waititi’s montages ben- efits from the filmmaker’s soft spot for a needle drop. In previous films, whether he’s cueing up Vivaldi, anachronistically deploying David Bowie in Nazi-era Germany, or cranking up Led Zeppelin and Guns N' Roses to spur on Thor, Waititi’s musical choices speak to an admirably open mind — one that refuses to allow snobbery or ill-favour to get in the way of a good time. But he’s a musical man, having sung backing on Ora’s latest album, scooping a Grammy for producing the Jojo Rabbit soundtrack, and religiously listening to music whilst penning his scripts.
“If I’m writing a particular scene,” Waititi says, “I’ll play a particular song over and over, and think about how I’m going to shoot it — the timing of things. It’s a really nice way for me to feel like the film’s already finished, and I can see it. This’ll happen. Then that’ll happen. Then boom, the chorus!”
“I used to find writing so enjoyable,” he adds, “because it was this thing I got to do. I got to escape, and no one was paying me
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