THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 61 SEPTEMBER 4, 2019
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ultimately passed. “I think it was a little dif-
ficult for people to figure out if it was a good
career move, and I can fucking totally under-
stand. Who really wants to see themselves as
Adolf Hitler on a poster?”
Earning a coveted spot on the 2012 Black
List, the Jojo screenplay began to gain trac-
tion, but it was still a tough sell, and Waititi
didn’t do himself any favors when he met with
potential producers. “I’m terrible at pitching,”
he sighs, before reciting his awkward descrip-
tion of the project: “ ‘It’s about this little kid
and he finds this girl in his attic and his
best friend is Hitler and ...’ You can see them
[thinking], ‘Oh my God, no. There is no fuck-
ing way I’m going to have anything to do with
this. Bye.’ ”
Nevertheless, he persisted, heading into
meetings armed with relatable reference
points, such as Life Is Beautiful (a heartwarm-
ing coming-of-age tale set in a concentration
camp), Dr. Strangelove (a biting satire) and
Harvey (about a grown man with an imaginary
friend who is a rabbit). “Americans, they need
everything explained to them,” observes
Waititi. “You just have to keep comparing it
to [other] films because a lot of them don’t
have any imagination.” He continued to send
Is Germany Ready to Laugh at Jojo Rabbit?
N
early 75 years
after the end
of World War II,
is Germany prepared
to embrace a big-
screen comedy about
Adolf Hitler? More
specifically, will German
audiences come out
for Taika Waititi’s Jojo
Rabbit, a Nazi satire
featuring Waititi him-
self in the role of an
imaginary, goofy and
goose-stepping Führer?
Making jokes about
the most horrific
period in German
history — in a country
still haunted by its
past — can be a tricky
business. My Führer,
a 2007 satire from the
Jewish-Swiss director
Dani Levy — which
imagines Hitler get-
ting public speakingFox Searchlight’s World War II satire could face its toughest audience in a country still haunted by its Nazi past
BY SCOTT ROXBOROUGH$22 million in Germany.
Outside Germany,
Jojo Rabbit is unlikely
to face much in the
way of outrage. In the
rest of Europe, comedy
and satire set during
World War II are not
taboo. Most European
industry insiders who
spoke to THR aboutthe film said it could
be a strong performer
for Twentieth Century
Fox, pointing to the
success of Life Is
Beautiful, another
satire/tragicomedy set
during the war, which
grossed $229 million
worldwide despite
being in Italian.
“Films like this
live and die by their
P&A spend and the
reviews,” says U.K.-
based producer
Jonathan Weissler.
With the right studio
backing — and Jojo
Rabbit has the full
marketing might of
the new Disney-Fox
monolith behind it —
he believes Jojo
Rabbit would do
“very well” across
the Atlantic.out scripts and take meetings whenever he
found himself in California. Eventually, Fox
Searchlight — the studio label behind best
picture winners like 12 Years a Slave and
Birdman — signed on to the project, but with
one condition: Waititi should be the one to
play Hitler.
The filmmaker had acted in his own work
before, including major roles in Boy and
his 2014 vampire comedy What We Do in the
Shadows, but, besides the obvious, he had
reservations about playing the Führer. Even an
imaginary one. Along with being Maori, the
indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand,
Waititi is of Russian-Jewish descent, on his
mother’s side. “I felt weird about it,” he says of
taking the role. “Even though the character in
my film is not evil — he’s got a 10-year-old’s
brain because he comes out of Jojo’s head —
there’s elements to him that are shared with
the actual guy.” But, he had finally found a
studio that was willing to make his ‘subver-
sive anti-hate satire,’ at a time when release
calendars were only becoming more crowded
with capes and kaijus. He acquiesced: “It was a
kind of now or never feeling, in my head.”
So, in the summer of 2018, Waititi found
himself on an impossibly quaint river inPrague, wearing a red swastika on his
arm, blue contact lenses and a disturbingly
trimmed mustache, screaming over the water
to his crew on the opposite riverbank about
how he wanted a shot to be framed. “That
was a sad moment for me, yelling at the crew
dressed as Adolf Hitler in public,” he says with
a rueful laugh. “I looked like Charlie Chaplin
in The Great Dictator.”
Regardless of Jojo’s reception, Waititi
is going to remain a very busy man. In
addition to directing an episode of The
Mandalorian, Jon Favreau’s anticipated
Star Wars series that debuts on Disney+ in
November, he’ll appear onscreen in Shawn
Levy’s Free Guys opposite Ryan Reynolds (he
is also reportedly in talks to join the cast
of James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad). Prior
to helming the next Thor outing, he’s going
to squeeze in one more directorial effort
— working again with Fox Searchlight on
Next Goal Wins, a drama about the American
Samoa soccer team.
“It’s just nice to be wanted, sometimes,”
says Waititi of his packed schedule. “People
are like, ‘Oh, you should take a break.’ And
I feel like saying, ‘Yeah, sure, but I was on a
break for 30 years.’ ”than the Holocaust.’
In Germany, I’ve had
people get up and walk
out of my show when I
do that bit ... Germans
see Hitler and World
War II from a different
perspective, just as
slavery is seen from a
different perspective
in America.”lessons from a Jewish
actor — was lacerated
by German critics and
disappointed at the
box office. And with a
real threat from rising
right-wing extremism
in the country — the
nationalist, anti-immi-
grant Alternative for
Germany party won
more than 12 percent
of the vote in 2017
elections — Germans
these days are even
more careful about
what they laugh at.
“I have a joke I
do onstage,” says
Shahak Shapira, an
Israeli comedian
based in Berlin. “I
say: ‘Auschwitz has
five stars on Yelp.
McDonald’s has three.
So, objectively, chicken
nuggets are worse From left: Roman Griffin Davis, Taika Waititi and Scarlett Johansson in Jojo Rabbit.But Munich-based
production house
Constantin scored a
huge success in 2015
with Look Who’s Back,
a Borat-style comedy
that imagines Hitler
waking up, unharmed
and unchanged, in
modern-day Berlin.
The film earned nearly