If you’ve spent any meaningful amount of time online, you’ve likely encountered someone who complains—loudly and frequently—about the Hollwyood movies that could never get made today. They often use movies like “Blazing Saddles“ as proof that Hollywood’s political correctness is running unchecked and that visionary directors are forced to work with one creative hand tied behind their backs. To those people, I offer Taiki Waititi‘s upcoming “Jojo Rabbit,” a comedy about a young Nazi who has Hitler for an imaginary best friend.
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Waititi talked openly about his career as a later-in-life filmmaker, his challenges trying to get “Jojo Rabbit” made, and his initial discomfort at being asked to play Hitler himself. Back in 2011, Waititi began adapting Christine Leunens’s “Raging Skies”—a novel about a young Nazi Youth who discovers his family has been hiding a Jewish girl in their home—for the big screen. Of course, Leunens’s novel would be filtered through Waitit’s signature sense of humor. “I hate Nazis,” the filmmaker told The Hollywood Reporter. “And I don’t really care too much about making a film about their point of view. [But] there’s something so amazing about the seeds of the story and what it could be — could I figure out a way to make this enjoyable for myself to make if I ever get to?”
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A script in hand, Waititi found himself desperately trying to get any studio to show an interest in the project. While the filmmaker struggled to put his movie in the right context, the article notes that he ultimately landed on a trio of films—Stanley Kubrick‘s ‘Dr. Strangelove,’ Roberto Benigni‘s “Life Is Beautiful,” and Henry Koster‘s “Harvey“—that would at least offer some indication of the tragicomic tone Waititi was looking to strike. He needed all the help he could get. “Americans, they need everything explained to them,” he told the Reporter. “You just have to keep comparing it to [other] films because a lot of them don’t have any imagination.”
Not Fox Searchlight. Not only did the studio agree to tackle the challenging project, but they also did so with a stipulation: the role of Hitler had to be played by Waititi himself and no one else. “I felt weird about it,” Waititi explained. “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.” Ultimately, Waititi decided that his misgivings were not reason enough to keep the project from getting made, so Waititi agreed.
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And while “Jojo Rabbit” may feel extremely timely to American audiences—who are no strangers to resurgent support for neo-nazi rhetoric—it’s important to remember that Waititi began his project years before white nationalism was thrust into the public spotlight. “It wasn’t something where it felt like, ‘We better make our film now because Nazis are popular again. Yay!’” Waititi explained. “I do believe that things happen when they need to happen, and you can’t force it. Or maybe it’s just that things happen when you notice them.”