‘Boy’ w/ Alika Maikau

Full Transcript of Technicolor Theatre podcast: Season 3, Episode 3

Aditya is joined by filmmaker Alika Maikau to chat about life in Hawai’i, the tightness of the Maori and Polynesian film communities, and Taika Waititi’s 2010 instant classic, Boy.

The episode aired on January 7, 2021 and can be found here. Full transcript (below) was captured by Madelyn Gee.

Aditya Joshi: Hello, welcome to the Technicolor Theatre, a podcast about representation on film. I’m your host, Aditya Joshi, and joining me today, now that he’s dug 1000 holes in his family’s backyard, is Alika Maikau. How are you doing, Alika?

Alika Maikau: Doing great. Happy to be here. A lot of work digging up those holes — Not a lot of reward either.

Aditya: Well, we’re so happy to have you on the podcast. Before we dive into the film we’re going to talk about today, I would love it if you could just introduce yourself to our listeners, tell them a little bit about yourself, how you identify and the kind of work that you do.

Alika: I’m a native Hawaiian filmmaker, born and raised on the east side of Oahu, Hawaiʻi. I identify as he/him. I’ve lived here my whole life, fortunately, and I went to film school at the University of Hawaiʻi. I’m happy to be in this position where I am able to tell stories that are meaningful and authentic to the place where I’m from, which is one of the reasons why I chose this film.

Aditya: The film that we’re talking about today is Boy by Taika Waititi, a 2010 film about a young boy named Boy who’s living in an Indigenous New Zealand community and his attempts to reconnect with his ex-convict father by helping him search for a buried bag of money in his backyard. Alika, did I miss anything there in the summary?

Alika: It’s just funny again, in thinking about the parallels between what we’re doing with our short and attempting to do with the feature. Our logline is essentially a father recently released from prison trying to reconnect with a son. I didn’t know that was the logline for Boy.

Aditya: When I first pulled up the movie to watch after we decided that we were going to talk about it on the podcast, I saw the logline and it said like, “Ex-con father and boy in Native New Zealand community.” I was like, “Alright, I see the influence,” pretty much immediately. I loved this movie. I think that your short film, which actually might be useful for you to talk about a little bit right now so we all have kind of context going into the rest of the conversation, similar things quite well. I’m excited to talk to you about both of the films.

Alika: Yeah, likewise, and thank you. That’s a huge compliment to me. As I just stated, it is about this father who was struggling to reconnect with his son. It takes place in one location. I have my cat here, who’s going to try to interject here and there. It’s funny, just in terms of our film … maybe not so much the short, but definitely with the feature. … It is much more about this person actively pursuing his connection with his son and his heritage. Whereas with Boy, the father’s sort of moving away from those things in many ways.

I subconsciously probably inherited a lot of themes from this film. I think the first time I saw it was during film school and our professor had brought Taika to talk to us. At the time it was 2010 or 2011, so I was like, “Who is this 6’4” Polynesian guy?” I didn’t even know who he was. I certainly didn’t think he was who he was. But he was so affable, down to earth and generous with his time. Obviously, it’s just been amazing to see the trajectory that his career has been on in the past decades.

Aditya: Yeah, I’d love to know a little bit more about that. First of all, it’s incredible. Taika, especially obviously in the last five years with Thor: Ragnarok and Jojo Rabbit, has become a fixture of the film community and someone that I think as filmmakers, you and I, especially as Asian American filmmakers, we all aspire to reach the heights of Taika. But I’d love to know what it was like the first time you saw the movie. What was your reaction or what your feeling was? I guess maybe how that manifested in your conversation with Taika when you met him?

Alika: I think at the time, when I was in film school, I was still trying to figure out if this was something I was even going to pursue. I was very unsure in terms of how I fit into the filmmaking ecosystem and if this was even a pursuit that I was worthy of. I was very unconfident. So when he came, spoke, hung out or was open to questions, I didn’t ask him anything. I didn’t approach him because I was probably intimidated, just in absorbing that film for the first time and then having him be there.

I had never seen a story that was so authentic to a place without being didactic or over explaining the circumstances or the context for the story. It’s just like, “This is the story. These are the characters. This is the way they talk. You’re either in it, or you’re not.” The film is asking you to come to it. For a film rooted in this specific place in New Zealand, I never saw something like that. That really moved me and I think it sparked something in me that was like, “Okay, I can try to tell stories in Hawaiʻi that are authentic to me without having to sort of explain everything to outsiders.”

Aditya: Amanda and I watched it together and I think we were talking after that, but the first thing that I noticed was just this really incredibly specific sense of place and time. He’s such a distinct voice, and the environment is so carefully and clearly rendered with so much care and love. From the first five minutes of the movie, I’m not usually a huge fan of, “Hi, I am the main character. This is where I live.” But it’s just so funny the way he does it. It’s so helpful, because you never question any element of the setting, the characters behavior, or the authenticity of the characters behavior from that moment on. You’re able to absorb the story, the characters and the emotions without wondering about the place just because you immediately believe that the place exists.

Alika: 100%. That has been sort of the roadmap for what I have been trying to do in my work thus far. I mean, we’ve explored it a little more in my short prior to Moloka’i Bound, which is a more expansive sort of view on the place that I grew up. It’s exactly that just in terms of trying to be as specific as possible in terms of where we’re coming from, but also hopefully done in a way that is orienting to an audience that is unfamiliar with this sort of environment.

Aditya: How did Taika’s portrayal of this particular part of New Zealand compare to the experience that you had growing up in Hawaiʻi? Alongside that, did you feel while you were growing up in film school before you saw this movie, you had seen a lot of films that accurately portrayed Hawaiʻi or I guess the Pacific Islander… insofar as there’s a broad Pacific Islander culture, like that experience?

Alika: For me, I think this was the first film I felt explored what it means to be a modern Polynesian person in where they’re coming from. I hadn’t seen it portrayed as authentically or as compellingly as in Boy. In regards to the way that Hawaiʻi has been depicted, I think a lot of my work is sort of a push back against the image that Hawaiʻi has. The image that’s been promulgated in the mediascape for over a century now in terms of being this paradisiacal place. It’s usually a backdrop in these larger features, TV shows and stuff like that. It’s not to say that it isn’t a beautiful place. It is and I’m so grateful to have been born and raised here, but we’re not without our own issues just like any other place in the world.

That’s something that Boy touches on. It takes place in this really idyllic looking little village and it looks like nothing bad could ever happen there. But inside of that, these are universal themes. I also grew up around sort of similar circumstances I would say to Boy. I didn’t have an ex-convict father or anything. But I had a lot of friends who had those real stories. That is the story that we’re trying to tell in Moloka’i Bound. My roommate, who is the lead actor in Moloka’i Bound, we grew up in the same part of the island in Kahoʻolawe and he was a lot closer to the stories that we’re portraying than even I was. He’s able to tap into something that feels very natural and authentic because he’s really lived it and been around it. That’s what I hope to expand on when we try to make this feature.

Aditya: That makes a lot of sense that I think really resonates with me, not only from an understanding of what you’re saying, but also just the way that I think about even how India is portrayed. Even though it’s a bit more nuanced because I think there’s just more Indians that are in the filmmaking industry in the U.S. I would say Eat, Pray, Love has India as a backdrop the same way that my favorite film I’ve ever seen that is set in Hawaiʻi, which maybe is indicative of the fact that I should expand my horizons, is The Descendants, which is very much what you’re saying. It’s a white family in Hawaiʻi living in this wealthy community and this surfer lifestyle. It’s not about Hawaiʻi as a place, it’s about people who live in Hawaiʻi.

Alika: It’s about George Clooney as a Hawaiian man. The Descendants do a lot of things. Obviously, Alexander Payne is great. I think it was based on a book written by a local author. The other thing is it’s not your fault. It’s not anybody’s fault in terms of like, there really just hasn’t been a lot of narrative feature work out of Hawaiʻi that has permeated the larger scenes. We’re in a really cool and exciting time right now, I think locally. There’s a lot of really talented Hawaiian filmmakers coming out right now with really strong voices and a lot to say. I think that’s gonna start to shift. The more that we can get our voices and our stories out there, the more that we can give people a broader sense of this place that’s so special to us. I just want to do it justice. That’s where I’m coming from.

Aditya: I’m a filmmaker, too. So I fully resonate with that impulse. For me, it’s the Indian American experience in the U.S. that is part of the reason we started this podcast. Films about our communities, minority communities, underrepresented communities rarely get the kind of attention that we want them to get. I try to think of myself as someone who seeks out these kinds of movies, but I’ve never seen Boy or Hunt for the WilderPeople until quarantine started. I think there’s a lot of work we all have to do both in seeing and supporting these films, and then enabling the next generation of filmmakers in these communities to flourish.

I think Moloka’i Bound is a great example of that. I’m excited to talk more about that short, too. Let’s talk a little bit more about Boy as a film thematically. Obviously, the sense of place is very important and I think one of the things that makes us so special. Another thing that I love about it is it does this thing that I’ve said on so many of these episodes already, but it’s probably the thing I look for the most in films about these communities. It manages to be about the community without being about the community. Boy and Alamein, their experiences are informed by their heritage, circumstances and by their culture but it is not a film about coming to terms with being a Native New Zealand Indigenous person. It’s about all those universal experiences connecting with your father, poverty, coming of age, taking on additional responsibility and loss, which makes it I think all the more resonant.

Alika: You kind of hit it all. … I don’t really know what to add to that. That is where I am trying to come from with my work, and maybe not so much in the short, but hopefully in the future of just presenting Native Hawaiians in this space in a way that’s not judgmental. Just, “This is how it is.” Hawaiians are not a monolith. We’re not monolithic in our behavior or thoughts so just trying to explore the modalities of Hawaiian expression but without trying to be preachy about it. I think again that’s what Boy does so well. You get such a full sense of the community, the people in the community, their characteristics, their interpersonal dynamics and the socioeconomic landscape. It paints all of that without sort of holding your hand and being like, “This is how it is here.”

Aditya: Your work and Taika’s work both deal a lot with childhood, coming of age and understanding a sense of self beyond identity. I’m curious what stood out to you the most about the way that Taika conveys childhood and the trappings of it in these communities in Boy.

Alika: What I love about the film is that he allows for that whimsical magical realism, delving into a childhood and the power of imagination at that age. I think whether your life was great as a kid or terrible, I think you’re always sort of imagining that it could be better or it could be different in some capacity. It’s so driven by your imagination whether it’s filling in the shortcomings of your father or the area where you grew up. That is such an integral part of that period in your life. I feel like this film really did a really good job of depicting that.

Not only in Boy’s imaginings of his father as Michael Jackson or all these great sort of bits of him in various vocations but even down to his little brother as well. Him going into his imagination, they did it in a really funny and clever way and that was something that really resonated with me. It’s tough to center a film around kids like this and I think Taika’s so good at directing the kids and getting that sense of childlike wonder that we had but presenting it in a way that still feels palatable and not condescending.

Aditya: I think the magical realism part of this film to me is what elevates it beyond just a really good coming of age movie. The way that you mentioned the Thriller dance fantasy … I remember I particularly called out in my notes about the movie that Taika’s character, Alamein does the haka to scare off commies at one point. It’s all these things about how we see the world as kids when we’re more open to imagination, but also how we see our parents. I think this film does a really great job of unpacking the mythology of family and of parents.

I think a lot of my work deals with that. I really honed in on that when I was watching this movie, but it’s obviously so stark for Boy because his father is not in his life. He’s had to fill in that gap with all these fantasies of what his dad may or may not be doing. He’s winning medals, fighting the communists, dancing like Michael Jackson and driving these dope cars and motorcycles. There’s just a lot of stuff and it’s heartbreaking to watch that fantasy slowly crack over the course of the movie.

Alika: Then it’s not even just the absence of his father, right? This film is so largely absent of adults in general. It starts with men leaving five kids to live on their own. I think, again, one of the things the film does so well is explore when left to your own devices, at that age, it can go in so many different directions. The film just really captures that really well.

Aditya: Funny that you mentioned that. I think it is probably the part that I had the hardest time believing, but I just let it go. In Taika’s rendering of the world, I’m like, “Maybe this happens.” It’s a 10-year-old kid caring for four under-eight-year-old kids. Cooking them bowls of oatmeal and at some points just putting cheese in a box on a plate and giving it to them. It’s so funny. It does enable that magic. I think in some ways it makes it feel like that’s what the world is like when you’re a kid. It’s like the summer, you can go anywhere and do anything. Obviously in this world that Taika has dropped us in, there’s a beach, the guy who lives under the bridge and all this vast expanse of a place to explore. I think it does add something even if it is kind of an absurd situation to be in.

Alika: He’s pretty intentional with what he’s doing.

Aditya: I wonder how you feel about the depiction of family and responsibility that Boy has in the movie. It was great to me, because I think that Asian American families in particular, but I think in the U.S. particularly a lot of immigrant families have this very strong family-centered culture, which doesn’t always feel prevalent in the broader society. I didn’t for a second wonder whether he would actually take care of his siblings, but as soon as the dad showed up, he almost abdicated that responsibility in a way that felt really relatable. I’d love to know what you think about that caretaker dynamic?

Alika: Family is such an integral part of Polynesian culture, across Polynesia, but especially, here in Hawaiʻi. We’re a very family-oriented society, maybe even to our detriment sometimes, but that’s a whole other conversation. When Taika comes onto the scene, and as you said, Boy abdicates those responsibilities. It’s like, “Well, now what does it look like when Taika or Alamein is not accustomed to being in this position and having to now bear that burden as someone who clearly doesn’t want to be in that position?”

He is worse at it than his 10-year-old son is. I thought that was a very interesting dynamic. I also just think it was played really well by Taika. I like when he first shows up with these two friends in the car, and that’s essentially their first sort of introduction to his sons. You can see that he is guilt-ridden and he plays it with the sort of pathos that’s really compelling. It’s sort of fascinating to think about the director/actor dynamic in all of this. It’s not something that I aspire to and it’s not something that I’m just capable of. I always respect directors who can excel at both sides of the frame. I don’t know. Do you act on your stuff?

Aditya: I was about to ask if you have. I have once shot a film in India with my grandfather, that I wrote, directed, edited, produced, etc. It felt like a different thing because I was playing a version of myself and so it felt easier. I didn’t have to get into character. My grandfather was also playing a version of himself. It was very docu-style, in terms of the writing and narration for the short. This is like Taika’s playing … even in Jojo Rabbit, he’s playing Hitler and he’s writing, directing and acting. It’s a challenge that I think takes a lot of dexterity and skill to pull off just because no one’s there to temper your impulses. I think in these early Taika films, you can actually really see where no one is there to temper Taika’s impulses.

There is no director to temper his writing style and no director tempers his acting. For whatever reason, maybe it’s just he’s naturally gifted and it works really well. I think just even the dialogue, the way that they do it with Alamein Sr. and Alamein Jr. calling everyone “Egg” never failed to crack me up. How do you incorporate that kind of spirit? That’s a very specific thing I imagined to this New Zealand community that if you’re from that community, like “Egg for sure. I call people that who are annoying.” How do you think about incorporating very specific dialogue like that into your films and your work?

Alika: Yeah. It’s important to me, if we’re trying to achieve a sense of verisimilitude, I want to use language that is authentic and specific to us but also can be understood without contextualizing it. For example, in this short, the father asked the son, “What do you think about the teachers at the school?” The son says, “Oh, they’re rubber.” That wasn’t a line that I had originally written. It was something that I had talked about with the kid who plays the son. His name is Austin Tucker, who was a wonderful kid we found. The whole production of the short came together extremely rapidly. We had essentially a week to shoot it. I didn’t have a lot of time for big casting calls. But this kid who auditioned for this other film that I was helping my friend cast, and while he didn’t get that film, I thought his pidgin and his vernacular was so authentic that I felt like he would really excel in this role.

Thankfully, that worked out. I just asked him, “What is the 2020 word that kids are using to describe teachers that suck?” He said, “Oh, rubber.” I was like, “Okay, I’ve never even heard that term.” That’s part of the fun is allowing the actors and the people that are playing these roles to bring something that I wouldn’t have thought of. It lends an authenticity and again, just tapping into whatever the current colloquialism is, it gives us sort of a velocity.

Aditya: There’s something really special about being able to immerse yourself in the world of the film without having to know what every single word means. I think it takes a lot of courage to do that. Only using words that everyone would know would make the film I think lose a lot of its sense of place or over-explain everything. Even on my most recent short film that we shot last year, before all this pandemic stuff happened.

We have a whole scene that’s in Hindi conversation and my writing partner and I were directly editing the film back and forth on whether or not we should include subtitles. There’s something kind of cool about it being something only people who understand the language will get in terms of its explicit call outs, but the emotion of the film making what the scene is about so apparent without actually needing subtitles. I think that Taika does this a few times with words that you wouldn’t know.

Alika: I was gonna say they do exactly that. He did. He does that so well in Boy in terms of incorporating his Māori words. I think there’s one line where Taika is like, “I think I should be called shogun or something.” Boy is like, “What’s a ‘shogun’?” He is describing what a shogun is and Boy’s like, “Oh, you mean like ariki,” which means “chief” in Māori. Taika’s character is like, “No, a shogun is a better version of that.” Which is also an interesting insight into where this character’s head is at. He is rejecting where he’s coming from, his traditional values and upholding this other thing, which is ultimately one of his shortcomings.

That happens throughout the film, that sprinkling in of the Māori words and that’s something that I’m very interested in doing as well. I have that same conversation that you have with your writing partner a lot with my cinematographer who’s also my producer. I mean he’s my closest collaborator basically. We go back and forth I think on subtitles here and there but ultimately we leaned on the same place as you just described. It can be very powerful.

Aditya: That’s a good transition.You mentioned Alamein’s aspirations outside of this place that he’s had to come back to get this money. He’s like, “I want to get out of here. I want to go to the city.” Boy is like, “We will buy dolphins, wear tuxedos all the time and live in the city.” I think there’s something really interesting about the fact that it’s set in what is one of the most beautiful places in the world and yet still everyone in this community is like, “I want something better. I want to get out,” in the same way that a character in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri might be like, “Get me out of Missouri.” I wonder if you feel that same thing both in Hawaiʻi when you spend time there but also in the work that you’re producing and the films that you see coming out of your local collaborators and friends.

Alika: That’s a totally relatable impulse. Growing up on — especially on an island — one of the most remote places of land in the world, we can feel really isolated. It can feel like there’s a whole ‘nother world out there beyond my purview that I’m not experiencing and it feels like I’m missing out. To feel that way again in this idyllic backdrop … We have incredible beaches, hiking and there’s so many amazing and wonderful things to offer. But there’s still this longing for things like, “The grass is always greener.” That’s an eminently relatable feeling. It’s something that I’ve managed to sort of reconcile as I’ve gotten older. I’m now just incredibly grateful to be here and I enjoy sort of every aspect of it. I’ve managed to embrace all the things that I used to write about when I was younger.

[QUIET MEOW]

Aditya: There is the cat again trying to try to hang out. Before we move on to another topic, is there anything else about this film that really stuck out to you automatically that you want to discuss?

Alika: I was fortunate enough to go to New Zealand last year to attend a film festival with our last film, and that was actually how I basically became friends with Chapin, who would become the cinematographer for Moloka’i Bound. He was attending the same festival as well with a different film. The festival had all the filmmakers in the same house and me and Chapin ended up sharing a room together. Over the course of the festival, we really got to know each other and we really bonded over our love of films and the inspiration we were feeling from watching all these really high caliber Māori films and being like, “How can we transpose all of the excitement that we’re feeling into a project together?”

That was actually how Moloka’i Bound was born. That was my first time there. Then getting to know a lot of the Māori community. They’re so generous, welcoming and there’s just so many parallels between Hawaiian culture and Māori culture. We share a lot of the same words. That was new to me. Then on top of that, there’s even colloquialisms that they share that we use. In Boy, Alamein says something is “mean,” like it’s cool. Everybody says “mean” here. “Mean” is the most used word probably when describing something as cool. To discover all of these parallels in this film in my time in New Zealand, it was really a special experience.

Aditya: That film festival experience sounds incredible. It was entirely Māori films?

Alika: It was an Indigenous film festival. It’s called Māoriland and it takes place in Otaki. I had a ticket to go back earlier this year in March, and it was literally the weekend before the lockdown and New Zealand closed its borders. They had purchased my ticket and then I almost flew there and maybe would have been quarantined there. There’s worse places to be quarantined. That festival experience that I had last year was so profound and transformative. I really can’t say enough about it. When the festival ended … It takes place in Otaki and me and Chapin’s flight was out of Auckland. They asked us if we wanted to fly to Auckland, or they could rent us a car and we could drive up there ourselves. We took the car option, so Chapin ended up driving us back up to Auckland, and that was a two day road trip.

That was sort of where we just let everything out. I entrusted him fully and he had his camera equipment with him during the trip. He essentially said he was going to be back in Hawaiʻi for a week before he had to leave to LA so he was like, “If you can write something in a week then I’ll shoot it because I have my gear and I have these really beautiful lenses that I really was admiring.” That was the impetus for me to try to conjure this up.

Alika: Awesome. So Moloka’i Bound comes out of that road trip and in the subsequent week that you guys had together in Hawaiʻi. There is something really special about communities of filmmakers and creative people generally who have that kind of connection. I think it sounds like you and Chapin experienced an immediate kinship because you both are Indigenous filmmakers, who have roots in Hawaiʻi, who may write about similar stuff or in similar types of ways. This is not super related to the movie, but I think that I’ve really grown to value that over the last few years and especially during quarantine, as I’ve been writing a ton and relying on the network of of South Asian American filmmakers South Asian, South Asian British filmmakers and writers who I who I know and work with. There’s something super heartening about someone who understands your experience and where you are and can meet you where you are.

Like you said about Taika … We were picking a manager earlier this year for writing. Our current manager is a South Asian woman who read the work and was like, “I get it. You don’t need to explain it. I understand the story. I understand the sense of place.” Seeing Taika in his element in this way, with Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Jojo Rabbit and Boy resonated so much more with me than even watching Jojo Rabbit which I thought was really well done. These movies I think feel like they mean more to me as a viewer and as a filmmaker.

Alika: It feels like they mean more to Taika. Hust to go back to what you’re saying, I’ve been reflecting as well during a lockdown, and it’s so rare to find those collaborators where you do see eye to eye with where you’re coming from or are so aligned in what you’re trying to do. I’ve talked on the phone with Chapin probably over 1000 hours at this point, just in talking about our ideas for the feature film, what we’re trying to do with that and what hopefully works with the shorts. There’s a lot of parallels … Alamein is an ex-convict. My character has been locked up in prison for many years. They’re sort of both in the state of arrested development. The way that they moved about the world five or 10 years ago is still the way that they move about the world when they get out. In a lot of ways that sort of is like, the only way they know how to communicate.

Maybe they communicate better with people of a younger age because they’re on their level. I know, this short doesn’t do that so much. Hopefully, in the future, we can get into the ways in which the shortcomings and pitfalls of that. Also on the flip side of that hero worship, what happens when the people that you’ve been idolizing your whole life fall short or don’t live up to expectations? I think there’s so much to be said for that. I think they touched on it, they explored that really well in Boy. That’s something we hope to try to interrogate in a different way in our film.

Aditya: Yeah, totally agree. Cool. So, what do you think of this film? Do you think this film has a lasting legacy in any way? It obviously has impacted you quite a bit. Do you feel like it has had a broad impact on the Native community, the Polynesian community as well?

Alika: I don’t suppose to speak for the entire Polynesian community. It’s a broad community. It’s just a funny thing. Taika is almost at the center of pop culture right now. He’s almost at the epicenter of it, not only directing a Star Wars episode but being a voice actor in a Star Wars episode. Doing all of the things so he is a cultural touchstone for many Polynesians. I don’t think I’ve met a Polynesian filmmaker that hasn’t seen Boy and that hasn’t been impacted by Boy in some ways. I think one of Taika’s mentors was this woman named Merata Mita, who is sort of looked at as the mother of Indigenous cinema, because she was this important Māori filmmaker who rose to prominence in the ’70s and ’80s, I think mentored Taika and just incubated this whole future generation of Indigenous filmmakers, including myself. I was so fortunate that when I was going to film school, she had actually come over from New Zealand and was teaching at UH for a couple of semesters. I happened to have her for one of the few semesters that she was there for before her untimely passing.

Her legacy is something that I think all Indigenous filmmakers are … We’re all indebted to her in some fashion. It’s at the moment it feels like Taika is the figurehead of that movement. It’s inseparable, their legacies and this film’s legacy, because they’re all tied into each other in a way in my mind. When I was taking Merata’s class, she was the first one that showed us the short film Two Cars One Night. That’s seminal work for me. It’s just really funny watching the feature film, because I don’t know if you’ve seen Two Cars One Night, but it was a short that Taika made I think in 2006. But it ended up being Oscar-nominated. There’s elements of that film in Boy. The stuff where they’re hanging out, where Boy is up in the car and Alamein goes to drink at the bar and stuff.

He’s talking to the other kids. They’re just hanging out in the car. All of that stuff is derived from the short that he did however many years before. It was interesting again to watch it now. I am following his very clear roadmap in a way that I didn’t even consciously understand. He did a really good job of adapting and incorporating the elements of the short film that worked into the feature films. I recommend anybody check that out. It’s on YouTube.

Aditya: It’s also in Criterion and it’s well established canon, especially for Indigenous filmmaking. Generally for shorts, because it launched such a prolific career. It makes you think about how Taika has taken the legacy of that short, Boy and those themes, especially that I think fatherhood is something he explores in every one of his films, like whether actual fathers or surrogate fathers, whether it’s Taika, himself or Hitler. Of the three or four Taika movies I’ve seen, Ragnarok also has some fatherhood, father issue stuff. It’s just the most authentic, grounded and to the core version of that. So it’s cool to hear about the history and iconography of the Indigenous filmmaking movement, because it’s honestly not something I’m super familiar with. I don’t think we get much exposure to it. Especially since I grew up in Kansas City, there’s certainly no exposure to it there. It’s cool to hear that there’s a whole community of films out there that I need to go explore after this. I’ll probably have you send Merata’s full name and some film recommendations?

Alika: I will send you some recs. There’s some stunning work from all over the Pacific diaspora.

Aditya: Last question we ask every guest on the podcast and you’ve already answered it quite a bit, I think. But we’ll pose it to you one more time — How is Boy influenced … we talked at length about influences in the work that you’ve done. How’s it influencing the work that you’re planning on doing and your general sensibilities as a filmmaker?

Alika: I don’t want to repeat myself too much again. I’ve been thinking really hard about how we’re going to approach the scenes. Basically, I wrote this short film and then I wrote the whole feature around it, but I still left the scene as it was written in the short in the feature. I’ve been thinking a lot about how we’re going to approach that. I don’t want to retread old ground. Watching this film, he does a really good job of incorporating the elements that worked in a short while issuing some of the other stuff and adding layers to it. That’s helped me to reimagine how I think we could shoot this thing. It’ll probably be shot in a different location than the steps of the school. I imagine the location will feed into a lot of that will dictate sort of the differences.

In a macro sense, again, the ability to tell your story in an authentic way that hopefully rings true to the place that you’re from. For people that are from Hawaiʻi that will watch it and go like, “Oh, that’s like this. This resonates with me and it feels authentic.” If you can do that in a way that is relatable to people not familiar with where you’re coming from, I think that’s the golden ratio. I think, again, Boy achieves it in spades. It’s really emboldened me to dig deeper into the characters that I’m writing … Specificity craves universality. The more personal and specific I can get with these characters, hopefully something positive and productive comes out of that. In talking about it with you, and this is such a great opportunity to do so, I guess I didn’t even realize how much of an impact this film had on me.

Aditya: That’s amazing. Well, I’m excited to see how your future work incorporates that and whether you reverse Damien Chazelle, Whiplash or not. Before I let you go, anything to plug?

Alika: We were hoping to go into production Fall of 2020. That obviously didn’t happen on the feature. We’re looking again to try to film early next year. Be on the lookout for that. whenever that happens.

Aditya: Is Moloka’i Bound the short going to be streaming anywhere soon? YouTube, Vimeo or just a streaming service?

Alika: I’m not sure. At the moment, it’s still sort of going through its festival lifecycle. It’s the tail end of its life cycle. But there’s some upcoming festivals I think that’ll pop up around different parts of the mainland.

Aditya: We’ll leave it there. When we actually release this episode, we’ll be sure to link the most recent watching opportunity. I haven’t even said congratulations on being Oscar-qualifying, which is how this film and this conversation came to us. That’s a huge deal. As a short filmmaker, I do not underestimate the amount of work that it took to get there.

Alika: Thank you. It was such a crazy road to this point. We had our world premiere at ImagineNATIVE. I don’t know how familiar you are with ImagineNATIVE but that’s essentially the largest Indigenous film festival in the world. It takes place at the TIFF Bell lightbox a couple of weeks after TIFF ends. It was crazy, because during the award ceremony, the festival director announced that the festival had literally just gotten his Oscar accreditation right before they announced the winner of the Best Short Film. That was a totally surreal thing. We’re so grateful to have won it and to be here now. This has been the longest year of all of our lives. There’s so many amazing Indigenous films coming up from all around the world and just films from the larger BIPOC community. It just feels like a really exciting time for all of us right now.

Aditya: Amazing. Well, hopefully, we’ll see you on at least a virtual stage of the Oscars in 2021. But if not, we’ll be sure to pub the links to the short when it comes out and in the future. Thank you so much for joining us. It’s been a great, great time.

Alika: Well, thank you so much for having me. This is really wonderful.

Aditya: You have been listening to Technicolor Theatre, a podcast about representation on film, produced in partnership with MediaversityReviews.com. Our guest today was Alika Maikau, a Hawaiian filmmaker whose most recent short film, Moloka’i Bound, recently won the award for Best Live Action short at ImagineNATIVE Film Festival in Toronto, which qualifies it for Oscar contention. You can find Alika on Instagram (@alika_maikau). Today’s movie that we discussed was Boy by acclaimed New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi. You can find Boy on streaming services for rent. My name is Aditya Joshi and you can find me on Instagram (@aditya.mov). Our consulting producer is Amanda Llewellyn. You can find this episode along with our past archive of Technicolor Theater episodes on MediaversityReviews.com as well as streaming services including Spotify, Apple, Stitcher, Anchor and more.

Mediaversity Reviews is a project that grades TV & films on gender, race, LGBTQ, disability, and more. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to join the conversation!