What We Do in the Shadows: VICE Meets

the neighbors can see you flying around you want to draw attention to this house H you got a whole documentary crew following you around what is it that you did to get these vampires to trust you to allow them uh to you know open up their world to you it took a long time oh I'm sure uh we just we gained the [Music] trust so is this your first [Music] mockumentary what mean by Mo ex forgive me forgive me documentary it's our first Venture into the documentary field [Music] yes hi I'm rhan Salam this week Vice meets Jermaine Clement and taica yti the directors and writers of what we do in the shadows it's been like this the whole time Deacon on dishes and it still hasn't moved in 5 years you're a cool guy but you're not pulling your weight in the flat oh I'm glad to hear that I'm cool no that's not the point though you miss fled meeting about how cool you are when you get three vampires in a flat obviously there's going to be a lot of tension viago was an 18th century Dandy look a ghost cop so you guys have been working in this world for a long time you've been comedians you've been filmers makers um I thought you meant in the world were vampires on Earth well that world too obviously but so so in this world tell me about the difference between getting a project like this made uh versus you know kind of getting a kind of bigger budget kind of movie well um we we actually pitched this idea in Hollywood um a couple of years ago and well firstly they didn't the their eyes are kind of glazed over once we mentioned vampires and then the eyes glazed over even more like a double glazing one eye glaz that and then the second eye second eye just sort of clouded over and then they kind of fell asleep when we said that there were no parts for um big stars in the film and that we just wanted to use our friends despite the fact that you guys had a track record despite the fact that you guys have made things before that have been well understandably they can't really sell a film without you know at the moment it's hard to it's hard to sell a film that has a low budget and we knew we wanted to have a low budget so we have all the freedom of just doing whatever we wanted why didn't you want to have you know kind of famous actors if that would make it more salable like what was it it was just because you had particular people in mind for the style of this like sitting it in New Zealand with you know like and and that and also like not having cuz it's a a mockumentary like not having super recognizable people was actually quite important we also have to tell our friends that you're not going to be in the movie anymore cuz Johnny Dip's playing your part there is something about these characters these vampires are kind of marginal guys and the fact that it takes place in New Zealand some would say somewhat marginal place you know one of the characters talks about um having you know his coffin bouncing around from place to place and finally winding up in New Zealand sometime in the 20s but there is this way that like gosh you know we have guys who live in castles and yet here we are like was that really Central to the movie for you that they'd be in this kind of no castles anywhere in New Zealand so it's like you know they would have got there I imagine that they you cuz in the 1800s people like New Zealand was advertised as like this great new destination or you know the land of milk and honey and stuff and they um and people went down there and it was like the piano it was just muddy and like there was nothing there and it was really boring and people were just it looked like a piano and um people was really depressed and you if like if you're a vampire and you think oh man this is it forever I was going to buy a castle lot of disappointment yeah no Castle can't build a cast we think of them though as yeah being chased right across the world further and further south until New Zealand it's basically the last place they can go do you feel like that shapes the kind of the music and art that comes out of New Zealand just the sense of being kind of on the edge of the world we're isolated yeah um it's isolated at maybe it is I feel like people often say it's a little bit like mind I think Iceland is probably even more upbeat than New Zealand and it's at but New Zealand's known for like d yeah it's like dark humor all movies that you know got like a sort of dark Edge to them how did that influence you when when you were when you were young before you even before you guys met like when you guys were watching television the fact that there were like you know two or three channels uh you know kind of how do you think that shaped your cultural consumption and there were two channels well you had to absorbed everything that you saw on TV because there was no there were no other options and so it's not you could really choose what to watch um and you just yeah you just suck it up you think that's part of what made you guys want to do your own thing to kind of be creative in this way because you had to be that you kind of had to kind of come with your own gen a great mix of American and British um comedy and you know like the best of of Both Worlds so what is it like you know when you're taking a film like this outside of New Zealand I mean do you feel like you know it connects with audiences or do you think that there's something that's missed there's something kind of distinctive and particular about that sensibility that you know doesn't necessarily translate whenever we started to do uh theater shows and and stuff tyer and Britt McKenzie and I would would travel people in newal would say they won't I think they won't get it over there you know but it doesn't really apply that much just the way New Zealand didn't have much confidence in its own content back then as well no especially in comedy people are like people like why are you guys bothering with this get a real job you know we understand things from America and New Zealand as you understand things from Britain here and uh there is a sweetness to it though I mean this movie in particular when you were talking about about you know people's eyes glazing over the prospect of another vampire movie it is so striking that there's something kind of fuzzy about these vampires and I kind of Wonder I mean that is something that's been true of your work in the past there's a kind of sweetness to it um and I wonder is that intentional or are you try guys trying to make it really mean and aggressive and it just comes off that way no I think being from New Zealand everything is kind of polite it's just polite comedy it's uh you know like pot comedy and like dude comedy and yeah but we're not really like that down there we're not those kind it's just polite it's like we don't want to get in the way if you were to personify New Zealand it would be a very big bulky man who's very insecure do you do you like me it be that's how I I do Wonder does the aggression kind of get channeled in some other way or is it just not there I think this is even though it is kind of sweet this is the darkest comedy that we've done there is a lot of murder in blood murder that's true we've put that in for you sunlight out there now um when you say that you know there wasn't this interested in Hollywood then how did you guys go about getting the movie made you had a short film that you know was very well received um but then what happened next what were the next steps actually the short film we kept a secret for a long time um but we uh we were financed privately through actually through a producer here in the states and um cuz we in New Zealand you get funding through the New Zealand film commission is the usual way to do it but it's quite a bureaucratic system and it's taxpayer money so you got to go through you know a lot of there's a lot these channels you got to go through and often involving script development uh we would have had to hand in our our script and they would had notes on it about you know particular story lines and lines and things like that and we knew we were going to use it as a basis to improvise from yeah we we knew would find the true story like a documentary in the edit were there anything things that surprised you about the process of making the film now given that it was improvised um you know kind of were there places the story took you because of the performances or did you have a pretty clear sense of where you wanted to wind up we we knew where the story was going to wind up we had a script um but we wouldn't show the actors The Script only tyer and I knew where it was going and and the crew but um we try to surprise the actors to get their reactions and to get their natural you know cadences and speaking and those kind of things MH I agree I'm agreeing with all that I was there you guys have known each other for 20 years and you're still able to work together I mean tell us a bit about that we work together through our assistance we communicate this way how we communicate we yeah I mean but we do other stuff as well so it's not constant so we we see other people we Arrangement is there one person who was kind of the instigator and then the other person was kind of like H I'm going to keep up or does that change from you know kind of one of you to the other depending on who you're talking to the answer will change we'll both say we both say that we're the leader and the other ones keeping up but you keep it from the other one you just to spare their OS I know this T has been doing a lot of drama kind of stuff LLY so this was I was trying to get him back into comedy your leg wow St back from block High okay punching hi yep hi yep and how do you guys divvy up the work given that you guys are very close collaborators given that you guys you know both have uh top billing as as directors and writers of the film um is there you know only billing as directors and writers if you look at the poster um we well cuz I more experience working with Crews and um and like schedules and kind that that side of film making so i s of took care of most of that technical stuff and uh then because we didn't show the actors the script um Jermaine would just work closely with them and disc you explain what was happening in the scene and what we wanted to get out of shape the scene way yeah do you guys feel comfortable working with other writers and directors or do you kind of imagine you know your favorite work your best work is when you guys have that control over the process I've never this is the first time I've co-directed something um it was good the sometimes working with other writers has had we've work we've ridden together for a long time so it's a bit easier so tell us about working in the United States as opposed to working in New Zealand and you know just the roles you pursued and the frustrations perhaps or we love America it's so good to us it's a very good country it is true I mean we were doing things in New Zealand mostly mostly theater and if it weren't for our success in America we probably wouldn't work that well in New Zealand New Zealand wouldn't have given us um any chances it's literally the fact that you proved yourself in yeah t terer was nominated for an Oscar for his first short film and if it weren for that I wouldn't be Mak films he wouldn't have made another wouldn't have been able to make another F they kind of made me the government made me do more films after that on one level you know you could say New Zealand is this place that's kind of bicultural because you have the indigenous component you have the mai component and then you have this you know kind of from the British Isles component but then now that you have this big Asian influx you have Pacific Islanders from you know other parts of the region who are settling I I imagine that has to have led to some cultural change slowly getting better you know like for instance we did when we did the short film version of of Shadows um in 2005 and you know you've seen the way we dress with these frilly shirts and everything we did one scene where we walked through the main street of Wellington and it was a Friday night which is a big rugby night and um rug is sort of like a religion in New Zealand and so everyone was out in the streets men and women as well would doing this to us but we would walk down the street and basically we just got called homos and the entire way down this big stretch from guys and girls and uh you got to admit some of the girls were into it when we go into town we must try to blame in just walking this streets coming into town um is really cool because just for brief moment I [Music] feel and then but then cut to 2012 when we tried to recreate that that scene thought oh it's really you interesting to to get those comments from people so we went down the street and we couldn't find anyone to do who who would call us that we'd written it into the script because we were expecting people to do it to to yell out homo at us uh but it didn't happen once so New Zealand's become a lot more tolerant of frilly shirs why don't you go smell your own crotches H can't what are you talking about we don't smell our own crotches we smell each other's crotches and it's a form of greeting you're on camera don't don't do it it's okay cuz I know this guy let's count fulara hey hey hey don't swear sorry they we're werewolves are we werewolves not one thing I wonder about is just you know given these kind of two you know kind of fundamental streams of New Zealand's culture um if some of the qualities you're identifying that kind of diffidence that insecurity you say you know is this something that is coming from one half is this coming from let's say the kind of you know the British half or is it also come do they reinforce each other in this way but also the older an older generation because it seems as though you know kind of Our Generation and younger don't care they don't care but um the older generation were very skip and when we were trying to you know do stuff get TV shows or whatever in New Zealand when we were um younger that generation would would stop our generation and there still a lot of that generation run things in the TV world and stuff and it's really hard to convince them of stuff is it fair to say that people of indigenous origins in New Zealand um you know kind of have a more I mean are there barriers still I mean kind of you know is there a sense in which you know kind of in terms of having a public profile in terms of New Zealand will admit it I I think less so than in other countries though so like there's more of a sense of ownership there's more of a sense of like actually a lot more inclusive and um yeah yeah a lot more opportunities like you know we have um a m TV channel we've got you know we've got a Mii um we got two mty political parties you know who have seats in Parliament we've got so yeah we're a lot more involved this is a bit silly but I mean when you're telling the vampire story you know clearly these are all guys with silly accents but I mean is this also partly an immigrant story as well yeah that's how we yeah yeah I think vampires are you know like you can look at them as basically anyone who lives on in the margins or anyone who's you know who has trouble fitting in you know they're yeah they definitely represent immigrants um and also not only are they out of their um countries they're out of their time you know they centuries they're from different centuries and they also represent smaller subcultures even like you know Goths and you know and like Emos any any group that's like small and marginalized I think that it's like a perfect parallel for CU like when we were walking through town like we'd dressed up like this yeah you'd see I remember see seeing like a couple of these goth kids who like sort of looked over at us like oh wow there's some different people you know some people like us you the reason I brought you here is to tell you that I'm a vampire [Music] this dude took it pretty well he's definitely my best mate and I'm not going to eat him if they ever offer you spaghetti um you shouldn't eat it I think they offered me biscotti vampire mates don't e human mates and no matter how much I wanted to eat him I would never eat him cuz he's my mate hey true yeah yeah one thing I found cool about it is that even though it is about a subculture or let's say a marginalized group you know these vampires it's also just about their internal Dynamics rather than purely about how other people look at them it's kind of about how they deal with each other and I thought that was kind of striking was that something that you kind of would want to see more of in kind of accounts of let's say immigrant subcultures or whatever else just kind of you know more of an internal perspective like you if what do they think rather than how are they affected by groups outside of them I think so yeah I think that what's relatable is just it's a pretty Universal story you know about a group of it's just like a family you know like my character's kind of let them um you know his his character is like the dad and the family and then you know and deacons like the teenage son and then they get this new kid coming to the fold and disrupt everything and um and we grandfather 8 8,000 years old it's just a British sitc really are there any other stories that you guys um you know have in mind that you guys want to pursue in the in the coming years we've done a few shows in um New Zealand where we use video and um put it in a live theater place and we've talked about doing another one of those with some of our other newal friends no roles for Johnny de in there either it would be good to bring it here though to America um we're riding a TV show idea which is an anthology each episode being a different um kind of world or genre and uh so any that'll be a place for lots of ideas that uh we've had and we'll get other writers hopefully if it goes ahead to um to join us on there gentlemen you are most welcome Nick is so much fun I'm a vampire vampire vampire so where can people find the movie The what we do in the shadow uh it opens in New York and La first on the 13th of February and then on the 20th it goes to 10 more cities and the 27th another 10 something like that slowly creeping on creeping across America the virus thank you very much guys you're welcome

Channel: VICE

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Keywords: VICE, documentaries, news, vice news, documentary, What We Do In The Shadows (Film), Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement, New Zealand, interview, interviews, culture, wild, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, funny, funny videos, journalism, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos

Id: ERVWnq7uY3E

Length: 18min 37sec (1117 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 13 2015