Taika Waititi and Stephen Merchant Break Down a Scene from 'Jojo Rabbit'

Oh, hello there.

I didn't notice you over there.

Hi, I'm Tiaka Waititi.

And I'm Stephen Merchant.

And we're here to break down a scene

from my new film, Jojo Rabbit.

This is--

Notes on a Scene.

This is notes on a Scene.

Notes on a Scene. ♪ Notes on a Scene ♪

[clattering]

[dramatic music]

The genesis of this project started back in 2010

when I read a book called Caging Skies by Christine Leunens.

And told the poignant story of a young boy

growing up in Nazi Germany during that second World War.

And he discovers that his mother

is hiding a young girl in his attic.

I felt it's very necessary to keep reminding ourselves

that the events of World War II, and also basically

all wars, are something that

need to be avoided at all costs.

And if we stop telling these stories

there's a danger that we'll forget

the events of World War II and there's another deeper danger

that some of those things may repeat themselves.

My initial reaction reading the script

was oh, here we go, yet another boy

and his imaginary Hitler script.

How many of these have I read?

But this one seemed to have a surprisingly

fresh take on that well-worn story.

And at some point every tall Englishman

is asked to play a Nazi in a film.

And I was holding out for the big bucks,

didn't get them with this project.

I got them.

I'm not even sure I got paid.

So we're about to watch a scene in which my character,

who's a Gestapo agent,

Captain Deertz. What, I haven't heard that?

Enters the home of Jojo Rabbit.

It is spooky, it's sneaky, scary Gestapo way.

Heil Hitler.

There's the money shot.

Oh there he is, the big man right there.

[Stephen] Steve.

Money, money man.

I wanted to bring something in to sort of disrupt

the relationship between Jojo and Elsa.

I thought, what better way than to have

their home raided by the Gestapo.

There's Jojo.

Allow me to introduce myself,

I am Captain Herman Deertz of the Falconhime Gestapo.

With me Herr Mueler, Herr Junker,

Herr Klum, and Herr Frosch.

May we come in?

Thank you so much.

Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler.

Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler.

Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler.

Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler.

Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler.

It's always a challenge making a film

that has a mixture of comedy and drama.

But I test my films all the time with audiences.

And then I go and I adjust the film,

and I maybe bring the jokes down over here,

and bring a bit of pathos up.

And it's about just sort of testing it again and again

until you feel like there's a tonal balance

that, where it's not making light

of the serious subject matter.

And it's not just like a full-on drama.

And you do want that in a film.

You want tension, you want conflict.

And you want a audience to worry for the characters

and to feel like the stakes are pretty high.

I always wondered, do they have to Heil Hitler

every time they enter a room?

It seems like they had to do it all the time.

And it just felt like, it would've

just taken ages for them to do anything.

Especially if there's a group of like 30 of them.

And they turn up and they're like,

quick, we gotta go and do our thing.

Hang on, Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler.

I feel like it's something that Monty Python

would've probably done if they did

a sketch full of Gestapo officers.

And then they get to work.

They go in and they start tearing the place apart.

And looking for information.

[dramatic music]

So this film is shot by Mihai Malaimare.

He's a fantastic Romanian cinematographer.

And so he's responsible for just how great the film looks.

Coupled with this wonderful production design.

I wanted to show that they had a bit of money.

Often in these films the circumstances are very grim.

And just from doing research,

Germany at the time was a very very colorful place.

The Germans were very into the latest trends,

and fashions, and textiles, and designs.

The facade in Germany, those colorful

celebration of what they think is,

they're moving into the future, this bright future.

When really behind their facade,

everything was crumbling and falling apart.

[dramatic music]

Hey Jojo.

Hey guys, good to see you.

[Tiaka] Here comes Sam Rockwell.

My bicycle got a flat tire, so I carried it.

Captain Klenzendorf, Heil Hitler.

Heil Hitler.

Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler.

Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler.

Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler.

Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler.

We're not doing anything, we're just watching this movie.

I'm fascinated by this.

This is really good.

So here you'll notice that they say, Heil Hitler.

I think it's a record maybe, 31 times in one minute.

Congratulations.

Is that the right thing to say?

Yeah, thank you.

You're welcome.

No one else has said congratulations.

And the point of having all those Heil Hitlers,

apart from, I think, being quite a funny moment,

is also just to again, point out

just how ridiculous Nazis were.

'Cause they were so obsessed with these rules

that they'd created for themselves,

which I think were rules that I think quite soon

after they created them, they're a bit like, oh no.

Why did we invent this stupid thing?

That's what I like to think about Hitler.

Soon after he adopted that mustache,

he decided he didn't want it.

But then he was known for it and he couldn't get rid of it.

That's of course it, yeah.

Do you think he experimented with other ones prior to that?

He perhaps had that kind of large classic handlebar.

Maybe the sort of.

[Tiaka] Like this, sort of, like that.

[Stephen] Yup.

[Tiaka] And then like that.

He would've had that.

And then he would've, this one time I heard

he grew his mustache so long it went

round the back of his head.

[Stephen] Wow.

[Tiaka] And then up on the top.

And this is all a mustache.

[Stephen] That was all mustache?

It's all mustache. Extraordinary.

And then then tied it into a little bow like that.

And he was very proud of that.

And then also the mustache, he split it off like that.

[Stephen] Split into eyebrows.

[Tiaka] Into eyebrows.

And then connected them there.

But I understand 'cause it was quite

an operation every morning when he woke up.

Oh yeah, just to tie that into the bow.

He had to braid it.

You know what, I'm just gonna have the really tiny one,

beneath my nostrils, that looks like two

very black slugs have crawled out of my nose.

[sighing]

You know Freddy Finkel.

Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler.

Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler.

So usually I do not storyboard.

But actually, I think I probably storyboarded this one

because there's so many people.

But then I got bored of drawing so many people

in the tiny little rectangle.

Is that why later in the movie

there's just much fewer people?

Yeah.

That's right.

'Cause I don't like drawing storyboards.

Yeah, you decided there would only be

two people in every scene, smart.

So, did I miss anything?

No, no, we were just Heil Hitlering the boy.

And then Heil Hitlering yourself.

And then, of course Heil Hitlering Freddy Finkel.

And now we are in the midst of a routine inspection.

So we're talking about Sam's eye here.

He's got a dead eye, or I don't think it's a glass eye,

it's a dead eye.

Oh shoot, I sort of sprayed this thing, I'm sorry.

But that's quite nice, isn't it,

two little pink dots on Alfie.

I think I'm gonna make him more a polka dot guy.

I think it's actually quite keeping with his character.

[Stephen] This is a wonderful insight

into the filmmaking process.

Back to Sam's eye.

We had to find a reason for him not to be

forced to the front lines to be fighting.

And I thought, well maybe he's missing a leg.

That'd be a good reason to not have to go and fight.

Or an arm.

I just don't trust that trick where you stick

your arm behind your back, I don't know if that looks real.

And so I just thought, just have him missing an eye.

And that's the story behind that eye.

Now let's see what happens to these dots

when I press play again.

Oh now it's just on the wall.

You've highlighted my nose.

And what brings you here, Captain?

Oh we were just passing by

and we thought we'd drop off some pamphlets for the boy.

He works for us.

[Stephen] There's a good example of me

using my height for comic effect.

Classic dominant staredown.

Which you're very well known for.

Looking down with those piercing blue--

Oh, you just did it to me then.

Well it was important for me in this scene

that despite the fact we were, please pay attention,

this is important for young filmmakers.

It was important to me that this character's

both kind of buffoonish but also intimidating.

I think it was more just about the sort of style of delivery

being conversational 'cause I think--

There's a danger isn't there,

'cause I was worried it was oh

gonna be a typical Gestapo scene.

But what's really disarming, and what makes your character

even creepier is the fact that he is so sort of casual.

Well in my mind, these men who were in the Gestapo

were often quite petty bureaucrats.

Who probably were not terribly well-respected people.

They'd have been perhaps bank managers

or accountants, nothing wrong with that.

I'm not suggesting they're all Nazis.

They're not Nazis. No.

But I'm just saying, these were probably just regular people

that suddenly got given this station

and they had the power of life and death over people.

They weren't actually doing any of the atrocities

themselves, they were just sort of allowing it to occur.

And that makes them all the more despicable

and all the more abhorrent.

'Cause they're sort of weak pathetic people, you know,

but they've got this little badge

that gives them enormous power.

Exactly.

[Stephen] If you recall in this scene I was already,

as I'm freakishly tall, I'm taller than everybody

who's ever worked with me, and then you stuck me

on a box to make me even taller.

I did do that.

So I'm actually stood on a box there.

This is Sam's ear, that's where you spend

all the money when you work with Sam Rockwell.

On the ears. On the left ear.

And that's why you'll see in many of the shots

in the film it's just from this angle on him.

[Stephen] 10 bucks, 106 bucks.

$106 for that ear.

Oh you know how it is.

Every day we take a call.

Hello, is that the Gestapo.

I believe there's a communist hiding behind my fridge.

We go around to investigate.

It's just some mold.

So not far off.

It's all part of the job.

I think it fits into a long tradition of

movies that've used humor to satirize Hitler,

that date back into the 40s itself

when Hitler was still in power.

Whether it be Chaplin's, The Great Dictator,

To Be or Not to Be, Ernst Lubitsch film,

obviously famously Mel Brooks in the 60s.

It seems strange to me that 80 years later

we're feeling ever so worried that suddenly

this subject can't be mocked.

And again, the subject, you know, the nonsense

of Hitler's ideology and the kind of absurdity

of those beliefs, which when as soon as you

poke holes in them or begin to question them,

they begin to fall apart in your hands.

And that's I think what you dramatize with the little boy.

You know, as soon as he starts to question his beliefs

because there's finally someone that makes him do it,

he realizes that they're sort of built on sand.

And the idea that you can't sort of mock that as a theme

or tear that apart seems weird to me.

It actually offends me.

Yeah, no, me too. I'm offended.

I've offended you?

No, I'm offended by people that think we can't

make films about this subject.

What irks me.

Yeah, say it.

I love the work irk.

What irks me is people who say that comedy is not

an effective tool, or it's not something

to be taken seriously as an art form.

And it's one of the most powerful tools that we have

to fight against oppression, and bigotry, and intolerance.

And again, as you say, to poke holes,

and to make fun of these belief systems

and these people who promote hate.

Yeah, people like us who work in comedy

it's as though we're constantly being accused

that we're not serious.

Or you can't deal with this subject

'cause you won't treat it seriously.

But we're some of the most serious people.

I know I'm certainly very serious.

[Tiaka] I am.

As you can tell from the tone of my voice right now.

And the way that you're staring at me like that.

Yeah, isn't that quite intimidating?

Yeah, we're very serious people.

This is how I get serious.

Ooh, I'm serious now.

I'm serious.