Top 134 Quotes & Sayings by Taika Waititi - Page 2

'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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

I don't think there's much tolerance for people who are a little different or withdrawn or quiet.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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 were always the comic relief... it was destroying my soul.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

As kids, we all thought Bob Marley was Maori.

There are 100,000 versions of Jeff Goldblum.

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

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

One of my favourite books when I was young was 'Wuthering Heights.'

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.

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.

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

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

I've loved vampires since I was a kid, or loved a lot of the vampire movies that 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.

When you're actually making a film, it's just people on your back all the time wanting stuff and you're constantly having to it deal with them. It's probably the most time consuming of all the arts, but I do love it because it is a great mix of visual art and music and writing.

I love heroes that really go through ordeals and then come out the other end completely changed.

With a feature film you're dealing with so much more money and you've got to be very aware of the fact that you're really working with an audience. You've got to have a relationship with the audience. Play with them and show them things you want them to see.

I'm used to working with restrictions and that's when you come up with the more creative stuff.

I never wanted to be a filmmaker. I still, sometimes, think I got sidetracked by this, like this is a tangent. My main thing was painting; I was just going to do that.

I've become more like water, I'm more relaxed and I'll say, "Okay, let's just completely change it and do it that way."

Hitler rounded up all of the vampires in Europe.

I really love him [Jack Gleeson as Joffrey in Game of Thrones] - I love watching that character. It's quite phenomenal how people love to hate that character.

I hate the modern day the kids live in. I don't think it's very cool. Everyone's interconnected.

I constantly remind myself that there are terrible movies out there. I try to watch them, some of them, to give myself an understanding of what not to do.

Short film: you can be poetic and you don't have to answer anything. You can make whatever you want. You have creative freedom with short film.

Also with that money comes the idea, "Let your imagination run wild." Which I think is a very dangerous thing. I think it's dangerous because you can get into pretty wacky territory. There are things that are too crazy.

I distinctly remember watching Annie when I was very little and thinking 'I don't like this kid.' In fact I think I remember thinking 'I don't like any of these kids.' That's all I remember.

If you're tracking with a character that's running off a thing and diving off, I would leave the camera there and not follow them down, because cameras don't do that. The audience understands that. I'll definitely bring that understanding of keeping things a bit more grounded.

I want to do weird things and big budget things and no budget things. I don't have a five-year plan.

I like to find comedy or something interesting to look at with whatever I'm working on.

My job is to make a film that can sit as a standalone piece, that if it's the only Marvel film you see, it's a great film with a great story in and of itself. The lucky thing is that there's a bunch of geniuses who run Marvel that make sure, even if it's a standalone piece, that it's part of a great big jigsaw puzzle that could be appreciated as a whole as well.

Sometimes there are really happy mistakes.

To make filmmaking interesting to me, I want to keep learning things.

I've loved comics since I was a kid, collected them, I've always dreamed of being involved in comics.

A big part of the humor is in identifying with the tragic elements of the film. The New Zealand sense of humor is very dark. Our films are usually very dark and it's always someone being killed. Usually a child.

The films I like to watch are when they make it relatable to human audiences.