Top 134 Quotes & Sayings by Taika Waititi
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a New Zealander director Taika Waititi.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
To me, spending millions of dollars recreating the world's sadness with actors and props and sets - it seems like a kind of arrogant waste of money... Unless, that is, it's a film about an historical event.
We've got a thing called the 'tall puppy 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.'
The stuff I'm passionate about is what I write; it isn't multi-million-dollar franchise movies.
My job is to express myself.
I daydream all the time.
In my films, a lot of the situations come from real life.
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.
My world is not spectacle and explosion. It's two people talking.
I think I'm a better filmmaker than actor, so I already know that. That's OK. I can handle not being a famous actor.
Anyone who has a parent can relate to this idea of not quite understanding who your parents are or making up stories about them.
I think... part of life skills is also socialising... 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.
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.
It was never really my plan to become a filmmaker.
Indigenous people in films, it's all, like, nose flutes and panpipes and, you know, people talking to ghosts... which I hate.
Nothing could be more restrictive than working with people in advertising.
In a lot of my films, the biggest theme is family, making families out of those around you.
You have to write what you know.
'Boy' was about my dad.
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.
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.
You can have integrity with your art, but worrying about integrity doesn't pay the bills.
I find that relationships between kids and parents are very interesting.
Kids are always very savvy. It doesn't take long for a kid to realize when an adult is a loser.
I've always found the script to be more of a skeleton, the template.
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.
People overcoming the odds is actually a really important part of humanity, and I don't think we kind of get to celebrate that as much as we should.
I love living in New Zealand.
When I became a film-maker, all my favourite films, they weren't comedies.
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.
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 this 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.'
I'm not interested in doing work that doesn't captivate me.
I play music all the time because silence freaks me out.
A set should be like a family, except that you all actually like each other.
You realise 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 need a hug or want to impress their dad?
I always wanted to play a dapper gentleman, and I also always wanted to play my mum.
My main thing was painting; I was just going to do that.
You make up a character, there's always gonna be parts of you that, like it or not, shine through.
I was depressed about the roles that were on offer, so I had to make my own stories.
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.
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.
I'd loved 'Iron Man,' you know, with a passion. I thought that was the most fresh, cool thing, in terms of superhero movies, that I'd seen in a long time.
I find that a lot of child actors are ruined once they've done a job.
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.
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.
The ridiculous events in everyday life are often overlooked - people don't recognise it as potentially cinematic.
We all have to remember that New Zealand is built on these 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.
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.
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.
I love heroes that really go through ordeals, and they come out the other end completely changed.
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.
I'm in all my films, I can't help it. I just jam myself in there if there's a space.
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.
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.
Not every person can be an artist: we need people to run stuff.
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.
Music - it's motivational and just makes you relax.
My favourite kind of comedy comes from the awkwardness of living, the stuff that makes you cringe but borders on tragic - that is more interesting to me. It resonates; it comes from emotional truth.
I've always felt that I wanted to make a Marvel film... I just want to make sure I'm not making an episode.
I don't mind going from sadness to comedy in a split-second or mixing the two up.
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.
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