Taika Waititi on ‘Next Goal Wins’ and His Quest to Quit Hollywood 

New Zealand director and actor Taika Waititi arrives for the Los Angeles premiere of Searchlight Pictures' "Next Goal Wins" at the AMC The Grove theater in Los Angeles, California, on November 14, 2023. (AFP)
New Zealand director and actor Taika Waititi arrives for the Los Angeles premiere of Searchlight Pictures' "Next Goal Wins" at the AMC The Grove theater in Los Angeles, California, on November 14, 2023. (AFP)
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Taika Waititi on ‘Next Goal Wins’ and His Quest to Quit Hollywood 

New Zealand director and actor Taika Waititi arrives for the Los Angeles premiere of Searchlight Pictures' "Next Goal Wins" at the AMC The Grove theater in Los Angeles, California, on November 14, 2023. (AFP)
New Zealand director and actor Taika Waititi arrives for the Los Angeles premiere of Searchlight Pictures' "Next Goal Wins" at the AMC The Grove theater in Los Angeles, California, on November 14, 2023. (AFP)

Sports movies typically culminate, after stirring locker-room speeches, in a dramatic bid for athletic glory. Taika Waititi’s “Next Goal Wins” concerns the quest of a historically bad national soccer team, the 2011 American Samoa men’s squad, in their struggle to qualify for the FIFA World Cup after an infamous 31-0 drubbing against Australia.

“Next Goal Wins,” inspired by a 2014 documentary of the same name, is a sports movie that delights in upending the conventions of sports movies. (Michael Fassbender plays the coach brought in to turn the team around.) For Waititi, it’s a typically deconstructionist approach that leans more into the charisma of its Polynesian cast (among them Oscar Kightly and Kaimana, as Jaiyah Saelua) than rah-rah win-or-lose dramatics.

“I think all my films are feel-good films, but I feel that more and more that’s becoming less normal and more of a risky thing to do,” Waititi says. “Which makes no real sense because you go to the movies to escape.”

The 48-year-old Māori filmmaker of 2019’s Oscar-winning “Jojo Rabbit” and 2022’s “Thor: Love and Thunder” met a reporter the morning after “Next Goal Wins” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. He was speaking while the writers and actors strikes were ongoing, which, for him, was a welcome hiatus after a whirlwind stretch of work, with plenty of projects (including a “Star Wars” film in development) still in the wings.

Waititi, himself, doesn’t know much about soccer and professes to know even less after making “Next Goal Wins,” which opens in theaters Friday. He’s also, as he said in the interview, less and less interested in Hollywood, a game he’s already tempted to walk away from.

AP: Are you a fan of any sports movies?

WAITITI: I don’t know. I don’t really watch that many sports movies. I’d say I like them but I can’t really remember many of them.

AP: Not “Any Given Sunday”? You quote from it in the film.

WAITITI: I just remember that being so long. So long and so many zoom shots. No, I like that film. I think “Cool Runnings” is probably the closest to this.

AP: Your last “Thor” movie took apart masculinity and superhero convention, and “Next Goal Wins” seems just as disinterested in sports movie traditions.

WAITITI: Yeah. Well, my second film (“Boy”) is a sort of deconstructed anti-feelgood family film. It’s just a comedy about child abuse. I guess “What We Do in the Shadows” is the same. Just trying to fight against what the normal filmmaking would be or what the normal idea of what that film should be. I’m interested in soccer but I’m not passionate about it. I don’t care about it like I care about stories about people, stories about family.

AP: Your films return often to the idea of family. You’ve said your notion of family isn’t defined by blood.

WAITITI: I have a big family but a couple friends are way closer to me than any of my family. For me, this idea of blood family being so important, it comes from when villages were tiny and people in Europe were obsessed with keeping the bloodline alive. I just don’t think it’s such an important thing anymore. Adoption is such a great thing because it’s not who you come from, it’s who raises you. You adopt a kid, they become a version of you because of the things you teach them and how you raise them.

AP: Along with “Reservation Dogs,” which you helped create, “Next Goal Wins” captures Indigenous people in a celebratory, less self-serious way than we often see in film.

WAITITI: For good reason, there needs to be respect. But I think Polynesian, Pasifika people, we’re very self-deprecating. We like to laugh at ourselves. If this was made by a Westerner or was a white-led film, it would be just too respectful and the kind of saccharine bulls-—. That’s the reason Native Americans have been misrepresented for so long in film. It’s not because it’s not an authentic portrayal of what they look like. They’re always portrayed as stoic, mysterious, quiet, wise characters who speak in sage advice passed down by ancestors. It’s like, what a boring existence if that’s the way you live. And it’s not the way we live. This is why I really believe films about cultures need be made by people from that culture or who have at least lived amongst that culture.

AP: What was it like assembling a cast of largely Indigenous actors for a production shot in Hawaii?

WAITITI: To be able to swim while you’re shooting and go to the beach before work and after work when the sun is going down and you’re losing light, go home, play with the kids, have dinner. I understand now why Adam Sandler did all those films in Hawaii. A lot of people like to torture themselves in filmmaking. They want to go and live in the snow and eat carcasses and live the experience. I don’t. I grew up super poor and I don’t want to do that again. I basically hate working and want to retire, but if I have to work, I’ll make it as pleasant as I can.

AP: But you work all the time.

WAITITI: Yeah, but do I? People say I work all the time. Only I know the truth. Listen, your name can be a lot of headlines about work that apparently you’re doing. Doesn’t mean you’re doing it. Having some press release about me being attached to a project, that’s someone else doing the work. It’s not me doing the work.

AP: Is this you saying you’re not doing a “Star Wars” film?

WAITITI: I’m not saying anything about anything. I’m not having any of these conversations because I’m not allowed to. I can’t wait for the strike to be over but, selfishly, this has probably been the best thing for me, in terms of me getting to take a break. I needed to be forced to stop working for a bit.

AP: How have you been spending your time?

WAITITI: Now and then I’ll think about ideas I might want to do. And then very quickly I get very tired just thinking about them and I fall asleep or find anything else in the world to do that’s not a job. This summer I was in Europe, enjoying the sun, back on beaches. It’s all I want to do for the rest of my life. Go to the beach. I grew up on beaches and then I worked for so long without getting a chance to go back to the beach until this film. This is probably what reminded me — just like Michael’s character learning there’s more to life than football — there’s more to life than film. There’s more to life than being in the entertainment industry. You think it’s going to be so cool — what a great life it’s going to be in show business. Hollywood is just sad people eating lukewarm food out of cardboard boxes in offices with windows looking on other offices.

AP: But you’ve started to think about whether you need to keep working?

WAITITI: Oh, I know I don’t. I’m already — my plan, basically, is to figure out how to quit. (Laughs) To figure out how can I comfortably stop doing anything. What I need to do is get a big piece of wood and some sandpaper and just sand it. Keep sanding it everyday until I die.



How the World’s Press Rated Paris’s Olympics Opening Ceremony

Former French football player Zinedine Zidane holds the Olympic torch during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
Former French football player Zinedine Zidane holds the Olympic torch during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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How the World’s Press Rated Paris’s Olympics Opening Ceremony

Former French football player Zinedine Zidane holds the Olympic torch during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
Former French football player Zinedine Zidane holds the Olympic torch during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Paris broke with tradition on Friday by turning the Olympic Opening Ceremony into a parade down the River Seine rather than a stadium-based show.

TV viewers around the world were treated to a spectacle performed on bridges, the riverbank and rooftops, culminating with French athletes Marie-Jose Perec and Teddy Riner lighting the Olympic cauldron and a performance from Canada's Celine Dion.

However, the 6,000-odd athletes, 3,000 performers, 300,000 spectators and dozens of world leaders had to endure heavy rain for much of the event.

Here's how the world's media judged Paris's ambitious ceremony:

FRANCE

Newspaper Le Monde wrote in a rave review that director Thomas Jolly "succeeded in his challenge of presenting an immersive show in a capital transformed into a gigantic stage".

Right-leaning Le Figaro said the show was "great but some of it was just too much". It said viewers "could have been spared" images including an apparent recreation of the painting of The Last Supper of Jesus and his apostles in front of a fashion show.

UNITED STATES

"Opening Ceremony Misses the Boat" headlined the New York Times's television review.

It wrote that the river parade "turned the ceremony into something bigger, more various and more intermittently entertaining. But it also turned it into something more ordinary — just another bloated made-for-TV spectacle".

The Washington Post was more glowing, noting that the organizer's "bold thinking" brought a shine back to an event that has seen its popularity wane in recent years.

CHINA

China's Xinhua state news agency said the ceremony succeeded in showcasing France.

"There were Can-Can girls, a homage to the reconstruction of Notre Dame and of course the French Revolution, with fireworks, heavy metal and singers who appeared to have lost a battle with the guillotine.

"If there was a downside to the ceremony, it is that any event performed over such a long distance has to struggle with continuity, and the big difference between this ceremony and others is that the parade of athletes was mixed in with the performances."

SOUTH KOREA

South Korean media noted the "impressive" imagination of using the whole city as the backdrop but the event was overshadowed by the country's team being misintroduced as North Korea.

South Korea's CBS radio said while the incident was no doubt an honest mistake, it was disappointing the Paris organizers failed at what should have been a very basic part of the event.

GERMANY

"As beautiful as it was mad," wrote Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine. "France revolutionized the opening ceremony ... by the end even the rain had been defeated."

Tabloid Bild was bowled over by Celine Dion's return to the stage after four years, defying illness to "sing just as in the best of times. She deserves a gold medal for this performance."

BRITAIN

British tabloid The Sun joked "Wet The Games Begin!" on its front page alongside an image of the Eiffel Tower surrounded by laser beams, and described the ceremony as spectacular.

The Daily Mail's headline read "La Farce!", mainly in reference to the train disruption earlier in the day, but the paper also judged Paris's gamble on the weather had "backfired spectacularly".

A writer for the Guardian newspaper described the parade of boats on the Seine as "like watching an endless series of weirdly nationalistic office parties" but concluded Celine Dion had rescued the event with a "jaw dropping" performance.

ITALY

La Gazzetta dello Sport said the ceremony was "something unprecedented, even extraordinary. A great show or a long, tedious work, depending on your point of view and sensibility."

The mainstream Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera likened the show to a contemporary art performance, noting that "some (spectators) were bored, others were amused, many found the spectacle disappointing".

The left-leaning Italian daily La Repubblica said the ceremony overshadowed the athletes.

"A lot of France, a lot of Paris, very little Olympics.... a mirror that the immortal Paris turned on herself and discovered that she was so much, too much and soaking wet".