THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 94 NOVEMBER 6, 2019
RABBIT: KIMBERLY FRENCH/COURTESY OF TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION (2).2019 AWARDS SEASON ANATOMY OF A CONTENDERplays Elsa, the Jewish girl hiding
in the walls of the Beltzer home,
also had to get used to taking
direction from the Führer. “Just
looking at Taika, you go, ‘OK,
you are really funny and there is
obviously a lot going on in your
head,’ ” she says.
Once the 40-day produc-
tion wrapped, Waititi placed
a cold call to Oscar-winning
composer Michael Giacchino,
who’d scored projects rang-
ing from Ratatouille to Jurassic
Worl d. Recalls Giacchino, “He
was like, ‘Do you remember what
you did for Up?’ And I go, ‘Yeah,
I remember that.’ And he goes,
‘Just do that.’ ” While Waititi and
his editor, Tom Eagles, spliced
together footage, Giacchino and a
35-piece orchestra recorded about
45 minutes of fairy-tale-style
music at Abbey Road Studios in
London. But Waititi also wanted
the soundtrack filled with more
contemporary music, like Beatles
songs. During research for the
script, while watching docu-
mentaries on the Hitler Youth,
Waititi couldn’t help but notice a
creepy historical echo. “It struck
me, the similarities between
the crowd at Hitler’s rallies and
the frenzy at Beatles concerts,”
he says. Wrangling the rights
to German-language Beatles
songs for a comedy about Nazism
proved to be difficult, though.
“The first response is, ‘Um, I don’t
think we want to do that,’ ” says
Giacchino. But, having previously
worked with Paul McCartney,
the composer made a direct plea.
“Once his people saw the film and
understood, they made it hap-
pen,” he says.
The first assemblage of Jojo ran
two hours and 40 minutes, way
too long for a comedy. “We didn’t
want it to turn into Titanic,” says
Eagles. Cutting the film down to
its final run time of 108 minutes
took eight months, during which
time there were extensive screen-
ings with test audiences. “We
needed to test different versions
of things and iterations of jokes,”
says Waititi. But the screenings
weren’t all about tracking laughs.
The filmmaker discovered, forinstance, that some audience
members had surprising reac-
tions to a part late in the second
act when imaginary Hitler starts
to act more like the real one,
lashing out against young Jojo.
One viewer at a test screening
began quietly reciting a prayer.
“It was a reminder of the subject
matter we were dealing with,”
says Eagles.
That subject matter can
obviously be pretty polarizing,
especially at a time when neo-
Nazis appear to be resurging
both in the U.S. and abroad (and
especially for a studio that since
production began had been
absorbed by Disney). But Waititi
believes that’s all the more reason
why a movie like Jojo Rabbit needs
to be in theaters. “To try to make a
movie that can awaken the minds
of youth, that would be quite a
good thing,” says the director.Despite concerns that Waititi
was making light of the 20th
century’s darkest hour — the very
same complaint that was lobbed
at 1998’s Life Is Beautiful, which
went on to win a foreign-language
Oscar — Jojo Rabbit won the audi-
ence award at the Toronto Film
Festival in September. Reviews
have been mixed (“A Holocaust-
focused comic crowd-pleaser
that won’t please all crowds,” said
THR’s Todd McCarthy). It had
an impressive opening on the
weekend of Oct. 18, with a $70,000
per-screen average across just
five theaters.
As for the film’s message, its
star believes it’s so simple that
even an 11-year-old can under-
stand it. “I think it’s important
for kids to see how little bits of
hate can end up going really far,”
says Davis. “And to not be Nazis,
I guess.”1
21 Davis was cast
only a month
before principal
photography began.
“We were very lucky
to find the kid who
shared traits that
I’d wanted Jojo to
have, which was
a vulnerability and
being sensitive
to what’s going on
around him,” notes
Waititi.
2 Says Johansson
of signing on to the
project, “My biggest
concern was, Who
is going to be Hitler?
It was this big mys-
tery that everyone
was wondering, and
when [Taika] told me
it was him, I thought
it was very ... brave.”Damon and Christian Bale’s race
car movie, Ford v Ferrari, when
his mother dragged him to the
studio offices to visit a friend.
While in the hallways, a casting
director suggested that the young
British boy, then 10, also audition
for an upcoming Fox Searchlight
project. He was handed two sides
and given 30 minutes to prepare.
“I was reading the script and I
was like, ‘Is this kid a Nazi?’ ”
Davis recalls. “And my mom goes,
‘No, of course he’s not a Nazi.’
And I said, ‘No, I think this kid is
a Nazi!’ ” With weeks to go before
production, Davis landed the
title role.
He was quickly flown to Prague,
which was standing in for 1940s
Berlin. “In Prague, they are used
to making World War II movies,
day in and day out. This is their
bread and butter,” says Neal, who
had heavily scouted locations
across eastern Europe. But, given
that the movie is told from the
perspective of a 10-year-old, this
wartime would look a lot differ-
ent. The typical gray-brown-blue
color scheme that paints many
World War II reimaginings was
swapped for an expansive palate
of saturated greens, reds and
oranges. Costume designer Mayes
C. Rubeo borrowed pieces from
Rome’s famed costume house,
Tirelli Costumi, while her crew
sewed 250 Hitler Youth uniforms
for the extras, as well as three
separate uniforms for Hitler.
Another thing Waititi had
learned working with kids is that
they perform better when you
shoot sequentially. That meant
the director was often pulling
triple duty in a single scene,
directing the cast, making script
revisions and acting, very often
in full Hitler regalia. “When
you’re working with a director
who’s also acting with you, it’s
hard because sometimes they
are looking at you as a director
and sometimes they are look-
ing at you as a fellow actor,” says
Johansson. “But then you’ve also
got the Hitler garb, which was
very strange.”
Thomasin McKenzie, the
19-year-old Kiwi actress who