Thread by @WIRED

In the newest edition of WIRED, Jennifer Kahn meets actor, writer and director @TaikaWaititi. Known for his eccentric style, oddball comedy, and subversion of the superhero beat—he's really just a man “trying to not do whatever the grown-ups say.” wired.trib.al/dhC6q41 1/14

He grew up in New Zealand and spent his 30s making small, cultishly popular films. Two of these, ‘Boy’ and ‘Hunt for the Wilderpeople’, featured primarily Maori characters and actors—and felt like radical creations. 📸: @choutoo 2/14

In the six years since ‘Wilderpeople’, his career has gone vertical. In 2016, he made ‘Thor: Ragnarok’, reinvigorating the stale franchise by poking fun at it. Then he wrote, directed, and starred in the Oscar-winning ‘Jojo Rabbit’. And that’s just for appetizers. 3/14

He’s had his hand in everything from ‘The Mandalorian’ and ‘Our Flag Means Death’ to the movie ‘Free Guy’. Unsurprisingly he doesn’t like focusing on just one thing. 4/14

“Some people will focus really hard on a single film, for two or three years. I feel like I’ve got more energy than that, and more ideas than that.” 📸: @choutoo
5/14

Unlike some directors, who will meticulously study technical details like framing or the transitions between scenes, Waititi never went to film school and tends to work more intuitively. 6/14

In the early stages of writing, he makes a playlist of songs to listen to on repeat; not a soundtrack so much as an aural mood board. He also tries not to assign characters a gender, at least at first, and will sometimes swap roles. 7/14

Given that Waititi’s childhood was often fraught with money tight and his father not around, he recalled the time with a surprising amount of nostalgia. “We’d just rove around in these little gangs of kids, having full control of our world,” he said wistfully. 8/14

He made his first major film, the short ‘Two Cars, One Night’, in 2003. It won a slew of awards, and was nominated for an Oscar. “In New Zealand, if you do anything well, you basically get encouraged by the Prime Minister to keep going. So it was like an arranged marriage” 9/14

These days, Waititi has an extraordinary ability to get projects greenlit—he has a standing deal with FX—and will often go out of his way to hire indigenous actors and crew. 📸: @choutoo 10/14

But still he is occasionally frustrated by the way comedy can be treated as something frivolous. “When you laugh, you want more, you listen more, you’re more receptive. That’s when you can deliver a message that’s more profound.” 11/14

Now, we know you want #ThorLoveAndThunder gossip, but for contractual reasons, Waititi couldn’t reveal much—other than that he tried to write it as a love story. And it will be “unexpected,” which sounds pretty on-brand. 📸: @choutoo 12/14

Delve deeper into the mind of this cinematic renaissance man in this month’s issue of WIRED.

Click here for the full scoop: wired.trib.al/dhC6q41 13/14

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📸: @choutoo

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