Video: “The Art of Creativity” — Taika Watiti

A 2010 TEDx talk which foretells some of the writer-director’s future projects including the Oscar-winning movie Jojo Rabbit.

Like many of you, I was thrilled that Jojo Rabbit won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. It is a brilliant movie based on a fantastic script which is all the more remarkable because it could have crashed and burned in so many ways. Check out this plot synopsis from Fox Searchlight:

A World War II satire that follows a lonely German boy named Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) whose world view is turned upside down when he discovers his single mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a young Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) in their attic. Aided only by his idiotic imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi), Jojo must confront his blind nationalism.

Seriously, you have to think looking at this, “How can this movie NOT fail?” Nazis? Anti-Semitism? Hitler? Kids? War? Scarlett Johansson dies? But the film succeeds wonderfully. Here’s a scene from Jojo Rabbit:

I’m watching this movie and thinking, “How the hell did Taika Watiti pull off this delicate balancing act of satire, drama, and comedy?”

As it turns out, this 2010 TEDx talk provides several clues. In fact, 4 of them:

• Outsider: Taika talks about how since he himself was born an outsider — his father a Māori farmer and artist, his mother a Russian Jew — he approaches storytelling from that point of view, oftentimes from the perspective of a youth and their naivete.
• Obsession: Throughout his life, Taika followed his passions into painting, drawing, animation, acting, stand-up comedy, and even at one point was fascinated with drawing swastikas.
• Perspective: Instead of running away from his obsessions, he leaned into them which led to his award-winning movie Boy:

• Failure: In his TEDx talk, Waititi talks about how we can learn much from failure, that we shouldn’t be afraid to pursue what drives us creatively, even at the risk of it not working.

Indeed, he describes success not being judged based upon monetary gains, rather on the communication and sharing of ideas.

Seriously, watch this video and you can see the roots of Jojo Rabbit a decade ago. Plus, Waititi is one funny and entertaining guy.

Here is Waititi’s Oscar-winning speech in which he ends by encouraging indigenous youth to follow their creative instincts as “we are the original storytellers.”

Here is his post-acceptance speech press room Q&A including an exchange about how the script made the 2012 annual Black List:

If you haven’t seen, Jojo Rabbit, do yourself the biggest favor. See it! And if you have a story to tell from your own unique perspective, do not let the fear of failure stand in your way. The world needs stories nowadays more than ever, ones which put a human face on the ‘other’ and engender empathy… and ultimately hope.

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