Page 95 - Esquire (November 2019)

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Mandalorian, the first live-action television se-
ries in the Star Wars universe; acting in DC’s
new Suicide Squad movie, aptly called The Sui-
cide Squad; directing a movie about the Samoan
soccer team that, against all odds, made it to
the World Cup; rebooting Flash Gordon; and
releasing his latest film, Jojo Rabbit, which he
wrote the screenplay for, directed, and stars
in. (It’s out now.)
So the only personal artifacts around this
house are a pile of books on the dining-room
table and a picture of his daughters. “The thing
with this place is, you say, ‘I don’t live in L.A.’
and yet you do live here,” he explains, in that
casual yet philosophical manner in which you
describe being happy with an arranged mar-
riage after a decade. “Both my kids were born
here—well, one of them was born in Venice
Waititi manages to bring big kid energy to (clockwise from top left)
Beach and the other one was born in Hawaii.
vampires (What We Do in the Shadows), Norse gods (Thor: Ragnarok), and
So it all really is sort of laid out.”
Aryan assholes (Jojo Rabbit).
He swallows some avocado and resigns
himself to the idea that he is now kinda
sorta an Angeleno. by the way. It’s not challenging in the least.” of losing my mind. I think when your body is
Given the recent surge of neo-Nazism, it’s deficient of vitamins, you kind of go a bit mad.
strange that a movie about a boy and his friend And this is before the costume! This was just
Adolf is not capital-A about white national- me trying to be white. I can’t go in the sun or
Jojo
Rabbit is the
story of a ten-year-old ism. “It was around Charlottesville when peo- I’ll fucking go brown in like five minutes. And
German boy, Jojo, who discovers a Jewish girl ple were asking, ‘Is this a reaction to that?’” so then I had to get the chemical in my hair to
hiding in the home he shares with his mother, he says. “And it was like, no, this is just some- straighten it, because my hair”—here he just
Rosie, during World War II. Waititi calls it an thing I was trying to make, and weirdly, it’s be- points at his shock of salt-and-pepper curls—
“anti-hate satire,” and the satire is introduced coming more and more pertinent.” “then dye it black.” He sighs. “I was just like
through the character of the boy’s imaginary Also weird—and hilarious: Hitler is played this fucking forty-year-old car salesman who
friend: Adolf Hitler. by Waititi, a Polynesian Jew. was trying to get on Tinder or something.” He
Some people, including, according to Vari- A friend recommended a book on Hitler, says in a Hitler-as-a-weenie-salesman voice:
ety, a Disney executive, have found the movie and after reading four pages, Waititi decided “This is my chance to be young again!”
controversial. “I’m not really sure if that’s he didn’t want to know anything about the guy. And in a way, it was. “He’s conjured from
true,” Waititi says. “I’m not sure if I should be “I wanted him to be a buffoon,” he says, like the mind of a ten-year-old, so he had to be a
saying this, because I don’t want it to feel like Drop Dead Fred, the troublemaking imagi- ten-year-old,” the director says.
I’m defending myself, but [Bob Iger, CEO of nary friend of Phoebe Cates in the eponymous Childhood is a preoccupation for Waititi, the
the Walt Disney Company] and [Alan F. Horn, 1991 cult classic. son of a Polynesian painter and farmer named
cochairman and chief creative officer of Walt Then there was the physical transformation. Tiger and a schoolteacher named Robin, who
Disney Studios] have seen the film and have “It was fucking horrible,” Waititi says. “It was is of Russian-Jewish heritage. Part of his child-
sent me emails like, ‘This is fucking a very im- summer in Europe, boiling hot. I was wearing hood was spent in Raukokore, where he went
portant film; we love the film.’” He considers these big fucking hats and sunblock. So I was to a school with fewer than forty kids, and the
the situation. “This is not a film to be afraid of, like the palest I’d been.” He pauses. “I was kind rest was spent in Wellington. When he was

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