Taika Waititi Quotes

 Taika Waititi Quotes



 1) Music - it's motivational and makes you relax. 


Taika Waititi Quotes


2) People overcoming the odds is an essential part of humanity, and I don't think we get to celebrate that as much as we should.

Taika Waititi Quotes


3) Indigenous people in films, it's all, like nose flutes and panpipes and, you know, people talking to ghosts... which I hate.


Taika Waititi Quotes


4) My favorite kind of comedy comes from the awkwardness of living, the stuff that makes you cringe but borders on tragedy - that is more interesting to me. It resonates; it comes from emotional truth.


Taika Waititi Quotes


5) At the end of the day, the reality is we're all losers, and we're all uncoordinated. We're the worst of all of the animals on earth, and there's something quite endearing about that.


Taika Waititi Quotes


6) Kids are always very savvy. It doesn't take long for a kid to realize when an adult is a loser.


Taika Waititi Quotes


7) In a lot of my films, the biggest theme is family, making families out of those around you.



Taika Waititi Quotes


8) I don't like laughing at people unless they're in a privileged position or if they're in authority. If it's poor people or people who live on the outskirts or on the margins, or the underdog, I'd rather be laughing with them.


Taika Waititi Quotes


9) My father is a visual artist, so I was influenced by him, and my mother is an English teacher who forced me to read a lot of books and poetry and get involved in theatre. I developed a varied taste for different arts.


Taika Waititi Quotes


10) Most people in their lives do feel like they are outsiders at some point.


Taika Waititi Quotes


11) We've got a thing called the 'tall poppy syndrome' in New Zealand, where if anyone is doing really well, it's quite common to try and bring them down - like, cut them down and say, 'You've been to the moon? So what? I mean, plenty of people have been to the moon.'


Taika Waititi Quotes


12) I'm in all my films, I can't help it. I just jam myself in there if there's a space.


Taika Waititi Quotes


13) Maori get pigeonholed into the idea they're spiritual and telling stories like 'Whale Rider' and 'Once Were Warriors,' quite serious stuff, but we're pretty funny people, and we never really have had an opportunity to show that side of ourselves, the clumsy, nerdy side of ourselves, which is something I am.


Taika Waititi Quotes


14) I don't mind going from sadness to comedy in a split second or mixing the two up.


Taika Waititi Quotes


15) I play music all the time because silence freaks me out.


Taika Waititi Quotes


16) If someone asked, 'What are your films like?,' the best I can come up with is that they're, like, a fine balance between comedy and drama. And they deal mainly with the clumsiness of humanity.


Taika Waititi Quotes


17) I daydream all the time.


Taika Waititi Quotes


18) I've loved vampires since I was a kid or many of the vampire movies I saw. Anything with sharp teeth, really. I remember You could get those fake vampire teeth, and I remember just keeping them in all the time.


Taika Waititi Quotes


19) 'Boy' was about my dad.


Taika Waititi Quotes


20) I loved 'Iron Man,' you know, with a passion. I thought that was the freshest, cool thing, in terms of superhero movies, that I'd seen in a long time.


Taika Waititi Quotes


21) One of my favorite books, when I was young, was 'Wuthering Heights.'


Taika Waititi Quotes


22) A set should be like a family, except that you all actually like each other.


Taika Waititi Quotes


23) My world is not a spectacle and explosion. It's two people talking.


Taika Waititi Quotes


24) When I play characters, I like playing people who just comment on stuff, stand around, and talk.


Taika Waititi Quotes


25) I've always found the script to be more of a skeleton, the template.


Taika Waititi Quotes


26) I like flawed characters, and I like seeing people who are supposed to be not villains but antagonists. There are elements to them, which are really annoying, but you kind of see where they came from. You see the things that caused those inadequacies.


Taika Waititi Quotes


27) I wish I was less good-looking and more unpopular. Then I could get into politics and use my pent-up resentment about being ugly and unpopular to systematically destroy the country.


Taika Waititi Quotes


28) You can have integrity with your art, but worrying about integrity doesn't pay the bills.


Taika Waititi Quotes



29) I've been on a lot of film sets, and I've always promised myself I wouldn't create a set where people dread coming to work.


Taika Waititi Quotes


30) 'Eagle vs Shark' was about keeping myself sane. I wanted to go back to my comedy roots with people I trusted and had worked with before and do something low-budget and more experimental.


Taika Waititi Quotes


31) Characters I create are just mixtures of the people I know.


Taika Waititi Quotes



32) In my films, a lot of the situations come from real life.


Taika Waititi Quotes


33) I'm always fascinated by the theme of children who parent adults.


Taika Waititi Quotes


34) I'm not interested in doing work that doesn't captivate me.


Taika Waititi Quotes


35) The ridiculous events in everyday life are often overlooked - people don't recognize them as potentially cinematic.


Taika Waititi Quotes


36) Actors are terrible at overthinking things before they turn up to work, and they decide on a way they're going to do it, and then it's hard to break them out of it.


Taika Waititi Quotes


37) You have to write what you know.


Taika Waititi Quotes


38) New Zealand was such a weird place in the 1980s. For instance, we used to have this commercial in the late 1970s where this guy drives a car and stops outside a corner store. He goes in to buy something, and when he comes out, his car is gone. He's like, 'Huh?' Then a voice says, 'Don't leave your keys in the car.'


Taika Waititi Quotes


39) Shooting a movie should be fun! It's not a real job. It can be hard, but at the end of the day, we're dressing up and playing pretend.


Taika Waititi Quotes


40) I think our first heroes with whom we discover flaws are our parents.


Taika Waititi Quotes


41) I actually keep having this one recurring dream where I'm a little number standing in a line of other numbers that look identical to me. Then there are more and more of these numbers that follow me, again and again, and again. It's more of a nightmare.


Taika Waititi Quotes


42) I think I'm a better filmmaker than an actor, so I already know that. That's OK. I can handle not being a famous actor.


Taika Waititi Quotes


43) I've always said that, first and foremost, I make films for New Zealanders. They're my target audience. Then after that, if people appreciate my stories from outside this country, then that's an added bonus.


Taika Waititi Quotes


44) We all have to remember that New Zealand is built on this kind of people who are rebels and renegades, people doing it their own way, fighting for freedom, and braving the elements. I think it's cool to celebrate that.


Taika Waititi Quotes


45) I come from a country whose idea of masculinity is quite extreme, and I've grown up around a lot of that energy. I've been part of that a lot. And it's very draining; it's quite tiring trying to be macho.


Taika Waititi Quotes


46) I always wanted to play a dapper gentleman, and I also always wanted to play my mum.


Taika Waititi Quotes


47) I'm not very proud of coming from a place that everyone thinks is this pure green country whereas, in reality, all our lakes and waterways are poison.


Taika Waititi Quotes


48) I love living in New Zealand.


Taika Waititi Quotes


49) I've never been a guy who was anal about housework. A typical Wellington flat when I was flatting was a warehouse with, basically, sheets hung up for walls.


Taika Waititi Quotes


50) I come from a big extended family, so it's very normal to be around babies for us, but when it's your own, it's a very different experience for us.


Taika Waititi Quotes



51) The stuff I'm passionate about is what I write; it isn't multi-million-dollar franchise movies.


Taika Waititi Quotes


52) I love heroes that really go through ordeals, and they come out the other end completely changed.


Taika Waititi Quotes


53) My favorite was 'The Lost Boys.' Corey Haim wore this trench coat, and I made my mum buy me a trench coat. I wore it to school, to primary school.


Taika Waititi Quotes


54) I love films that make you feel something but also deliver that payload behind jokes.


Taika Waititi Quotes


55) Within the family unit, you have people you grew up with who are supposed to be your brother, father, or your mother who are almost like strangers and acquaintances.


Taika Waititi Quotes


56) Coming from a very small country, it's always nice to see our own doing well.


Taika Waititi Quotes


57) You realize that there's nothing more endearing than people who are desperately trying to be liked or trying to be the hero, you know? Who also probably just needs a hug or wants to impress their dad?


Taika Waititi Quotes



58) You have to let go of the control and allow things to develop. You need to have a flexible attitude, especially working with kids.


Taika Waititi Quotes


59) The family unit is very interesting because these are people that you're supposed to be the closest to in your life, and yet that's where you find the greatest distances between people as well - especially between parents and kids.


Taika Waititi Quotes



60) I find that a lot of child actors are ruined once they've done a job.


Taika Waititi Quotes


61) Independent films are really the best ones out there. They're the most original stories, and they're very good.


Taika Waititi Quotes


62) Nothing could be more restrictive than working with people in advertising.


Taika Waititi Quotes


63) I did roles that I hated, and there were roles that were detrimental to my acting ability. There were roles that I was always doing that was always the comic relief... it was destroying my soul.


Taika Waititi Quotes


64) My style of working is I'll often be behind the camera, or right next to the camera yelling words at people, like, 'Say this, say this! Say it this way!' I'll straight-up give Anthony Hopkins a line reading. I don't care.


Taika Waititi Quotes



65) I was depressed about the roles that were on offer, so I had to make my own stories.


Taika Waititi Quotes


66) My job is to express myself.


Taika Waititi Quotes


67) Anyone who has a parent can relate to this idea of not quite understanding whom your parents are or making up stories about them.


Taika Waititi Quotes


68) I think something that every actor wants, whether they've done four movies or forty movies, is they want to find the work interesting. You want to come to work and think this is going to be a challenge.


Taika Waititi Quotes


69) It was never really my plan to become a filmmaker.


Taika Waititi Quotes


70) A lot of people are trying to get out of their home country and think 'making it' is if you're able to work in another. For me... I'd be quite content to keep doing my own little films down there for the rest of my filmmaking career.


Taika Waititi Quotes


71) I've always felt that I wanted to make a Marvel film... I just want to make sure I'm not making an episode.


Taika Waititi Quotes


72) The thing for me is that 'Thor' was an indie film that just had a few more zeros on the budget. At heart, it is just a simple story about a guy trying to get home to deal with someone who has broken into his house. It's just 'After Hours,' but set in space.


Taika Waititi Quotes


73) My main thing was painting; I was just going to do that.


Taika Waititi Quotes



74) There are lots of parts of filmmaking that I don't like. At the end of the day, especially on features, the film turns into a commodity. You have to play this entirely new game I'm very uncomfortable with.


Taika Waititi Quotes



75) I find that relationships between kids and parents are very interesting.


Taika Waititi Quotes



76) Films that are easy to sell happen to be the worst films. Look at the poster for 'Wrath of the Titans' and 'John Carter': they're exactly the same. You could switch titles.


Taika Waititi Quotes


77) With some actors, you can tell, just from their different backgrounds and their different approaches to working, they would have just a natural conflict, just a sort of friction.


Taika Waititi Quotes



78) You make up a character, there's always gonna be parts of you that, like it or not, shine through.


Taika Waititi Quotes



79) To me, spending millions of dollars recreating the world's sadness with actors and props, and sets - seems like a kind of an arrogant waste of money... Unless that is, it's a film about a historical event.


Taika Waititi Quotes



80) There's nothing cooler than going to work and hanging around with your friends and laughing because it's something that you get told off for throughout your entire time at school... it's just like a big 'in your face to those bully teachers that you had when you were a kid.


Taika Waititi Quotes



81) I think... part of life skills is also socializing... I think many people make the mistake of not going out... You can spend a little bit too much time with your nose in your book or with your fingers on a keyboard, and you miss out.


Taika Waititi Quotes



82) I really didn't want to be boxed into becoming a certain kind of filmmaker - becoming the Maori story filmmaker because I had made those short films.


Taika Waititi Quotes



83) I had a country upbringing in a predominantly Maori community, and that contrasted with a very multi-cultured arts community in the Aro Valley in Wellington: growing up around a lot of theatre and poets and writers and stuff.


Taika Waititi Quotes



84) Unfortunately, there aren't enough interesting acting roles in New Zealand to sustain a career.


Taika Waititi Quotes



85) That's what attracts me to the kind of characters I try and write - that they're not cut and dried.


Taika Waititi Quotes


86) Not every person can be an artist: we need people to run stuff.


Taika Waititi Quotes


87) I think everyone has experienced those boring arguments about whose turn it is to do the dishes.


Taika Waititi Quotes



88) When I became a filmmaker, all my favorite films, weren't comedies.


Taika Waititi Quotes



89) As kids, we all thought Bob Marley was Maori.


Taika Waititi Quotes



90) Basically, the big studios and companies distributing your movie just take a big cut of profit for making posters.


Taika Waititi Quotes



91) When you're on set, you're like, 'Everyone's judging me because I'm the director, and everyone thinks I'm doing this because I just love myself and I want to do everything.' Part of it's true: I do want to do everything, and I do kind of love myself.


Taika Waititi Quotes



92) 'Eagle vs Shark is a little film I could take risks with and make mistakes on.


Taika Waititi Quotes



93) New Zealand was kind of getting a reputation for making middle-of-the-road films that weren't really that unique. They were kind of New Zealand versions of overseas films, and for sure, having an Oscar nomination totally helped me get funding.


Taika Waititi Quotes



94) I don't think there's much tolerance for people who are a little different or withdrawn or quiet. They always seem to be the ones who stick out the most, the ones who want to just shy away and withdraw.


Taika Waititi Quotes



95) Visually, I'm always considering shots and composition quite a lot, and I love putting art into films, and I do a lot of the art.


Taika Waititi Quotes



96) Most of my films - if you look at the tone, apart from 'Shadows,' which is a straight-up comedy - the tone is a mix between comedy and pathos, and I really love that.


Taika Waititi Quotes



97) There are 100,000 versions of Jeff Goldblum.


Taika Waititi Quotes



98) I really like arcade games and like the '80s and early '90s kind of games, just because there's a real kind of naivete to them, but there's like a real inventiveness to it as well.


Taika Waititi Quotes


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