`Thor' director goes off on different adventures
Even when your job is to dream up the interplanetary adventures of a Norse god, you might still want to run off and play pirates.
So during the weeks he was editing “Thor: Love and Thunder,” the Marvel movie that opens July 8, Taika Waititi, its director and co-writer, would occasionally take weekends off for a different journey.
He would get outfitted in a flowing gray wig, matching facial hair and temporary tattoos and don deliciously fetishistic leather gear to portray Blackbeard, the swashbuckling, loin-kindling buccaneer of the HBO Max comedy series “Our Flag Means Death.”
This is admittedly not a bad way to spend your spare time, though Waititi did occasionally fret over the trade-offs. As he explained recently, “Sometimes you're pissed off at life, and you're like, `Why did I say yes to everything? I don't have a social life; I'm just working.' But then the thing comes out, you see where the hard work goes, and it's really worth it.”
On TV, Waititi, 46, has had a hand in the FX comedies “Reservation Dogs” ) and “What We Do in the Shadows,” as well as a “Shadows” spinoff, “Wellington Paranormal.” At the movies, you can hear him voice a good guy in “Lightyear” or see him play a bad guy in “Free Guy.”
Waititi is also editing “Next
Goal Wins,” a soccer comedydrama that he co-wrote and directed for Searchlight. He's writing a new “Star Wars” movie for Lucasfilm, a “Time Bandits” series for Apple TV+. He's preparing two Roald Dahl projects for Netflix and adapting a graphic novel by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius for a feature film.
“Sometimes I'll wake up and be like, `Am I having a midlife crisis?'” he said. “Should I even be a filmmaker? Maybe I should have been a carpenter. Maybe I should just be a gardener.”