Hunt for the Wilderpeople is a film I have only ever heard people talk about in adoring terms.
Released a decade ago, it became an indie critical and commercial smash, catapulting its director Taika Waititi from New Zealand to Hollywood, and cementing itself as a high point in the later career of its most prominent actor, Sam Neill.
I was due to speak to Neill, known to many for his roles in the likes of Jurassic Park and The Piano, to mark its anniversary and special UK re-release, in early July. Three days before the scheduled date, the interview was postponed by a couple of weeks. Just days later, I woke to the news that the beloved actor had died, aged 78.
In the aftermath, not only was I (selfishly) devastated to have missed out on the opportunity to speak to someone I admired – and about whom I had only heard the loveliest of things – but the loss was intensified for everyone in a bittersweet way by the outpouring of genuine tributes.
The same can be said of the Hunt for the Wilderpeople’s anniversary, in the wake of Neill’s loss. But Waititi and the team are in London for a special screening, full of love for their late colleague and friend.
When I ask Waititi if he remembers his last conversation with Neill, I’m not expecting him to whip out his phone to check.
‘Let’s see what the date was… April 4th. He said: “Congratulations. You brought the studio, that’s great!” This is the studio that me and Jason Momoa bought in New Zealand. And he took that photo of me, with my car.’
Here the director shows me a photo of himself smiling next to a blue vintage car in what looks like a local shop’s carpark.
But while he answered that question lightly, he’s happy to give more of an introspective follow-up.
Neill, after all, held him in high enough esteem to gamely make cameos as a member of an Asgardian thespian troupe playing Thor’s father Odin (alongside Matt Damon and star Chris Hemsworth’s brother Luke) in the two Marvel movies Waititi directed after Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Thor: Ragnarok and Thor: Love and Thunder.
And this is despite freely admitting he was ‘baffled’ by the role as the MCU was ‘a complete mystery’ to him.
‘He would check in all the time and just see how I was doing. He was a very caring, loving person who just wanted the people he loved to be happy,’ Waititi recalls.
We talk about the remarkable outpouring of love that followed the news of Neill’s death, and how many people – from A-listers he worked with to fans he encountered around the world – had wholesome stories of his kindness and sense of fun to share.
‘That’s sort of what I think you want, right?’ Waititi says. ‘I won’t even know probably when I die! But the idea that you will be missed is a really cool thing. I think in a way it means you’ve lived a good life. People have got good stories about you and no one’s like, “Oh, thank God he’s gone!”’
Looking back at Hunt for the Wilderpeople a decade on, the filmmaker’s fondest memory of Neill on set was how relaxed he was.
‘It’s very easy to get stressed on film sets; you’re running around, you’re trying to put the pieces together. I’d always look over and he’d just have a peaceful smile on his face. He was just very zen about it because he’d been in obviously 100 movies and shows, and so this was just another walk in the park for him. So it was nice, he was a bit of a leveller to have around. He would just keep people at ease.’
Sam was a very caring, loving person who just wanted the people he loved to be happy
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That’s the overriding impression he left on his young co-star at the time too, Julian Dennison, who plays young tearaway Ricky to Neill’s grumpy ‘Uncle’ Hec – husband to Bella (Rima Te Wiata), the patient woman who takes in the foster kid as his last-ditch placement before the child welfare system all-but gives up on him. After Bella’s shock death, Ricky runs away into the bush to avoid being relocated, with Hec going after him, and the pair eventually bond while out in nature together.
To Dennison, Neill was ‘the man’.
‘He was lovely. It was like hanging out with an older cousin or a really, really big brother. He made me feel safe. He made me feel important, as a young person in the film industry.’
Neill’s humbleness also strikes him even more now he’s an adult.
‘I was 13. I’d seen Jurassic Park, but I didn’t know the stature of the man he was, and for him to bring himself down to where I was, this young boy. He made me feel special.’
It also resonates with Dennison, given the similarity between his and Neill’s real-life off-screen relationship and that of Ricky and Hec in the film, and how it develops.
‘You see that journey. Even though Hec hates him, by the end of it you see he was making Ricky Baker feel seen and heard, in a way.’
Waititi also remembers Neill and Dennison as ‘the perfect little duo’, with the veteran actor relishing being in a comedy.
‘He had not got a chance to do much stuff that was fun or that felt adventurous and a bit silly. And he played that foil really well. A lot of actors you work with, they’re like, “Well why can’t I have more jokes? Why can’t I do this?”’
Neill, though, ‘understood his role’ and was happy to let Dennison shine.
‘The two of them would bounce off each other. There was just no ego. He had done his time in the industry and was so happy to support the newer generation.’
I point out how much Neill must have cared for this film, among the dozens of other impressive ones on his CV, to have been happy to talk to press about it for the anniversary, long after any such obligations still existed.
Waititi smiles.
‘We did an interview for the New Zealand 10th anniversary, which was a few months ago. And he said some lovely things about it being one of his favourite things to work on,’ he shares.
When I ask Rachel House, who plays Ricky’s child welfare worker Paula in the film, to describe her ‘dear friend’ Neill to someone who never had the pleasure of meeting him in real life, she struggles to finish her answer without becoming tearful.
‘I was fortunate enough, which I know many of us are from this film, to take away a real friendship. We continued to see each other often, and he was just one of the best. The world is not going to be as good without him in it. He was so kind, so gentle.
We need to let our hair down and celebrate the fact that we’re lucky to be alive. The world needs silliness in its films
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‘He taught me a lot about being a friend, and a lot about friendship. I miss him terribly.’
In terms of the impact that Hunt for the Wilderpeople has had though, House is thrilled to see it as ‘not the quintessential film from Aotearoa, but it is very quintessentially us’. She is perhaps understating its significance though, as it remains the highest-grossing entirely Kiwi-produced film.
‘I think it really proved that our stories can do well internationally,’ House adds, although she admits she never really thought about the international impact it could have: ‘I was just hoping that our country would like it!’
Waititi puts its success down to being a ‘hopeful’ movie.
‘The world is full of cynical and depressing films and art and music, and people taking themselves too seriously, and I think we’re in a time where we need to be doing the opposite, and just laugh at how ridiculous humans are – and society is – that we’re still waging war on each other and treating each other like s**t.
‘I think we need to really let our hair down and celebrate the fact that we’re lucky to be alive. The world needs silliness in its art and in film. And why are we taking the idea of filmmaking so seriously? It’s not even a real job!’
The director also shares that he’s ‘very bored’ of current movies and TV and how they always feature the same characters, and no depth or fun.
He’s also proud that Hunt for the Wilderpeople resisted sentimentality or succumbing to any pressures for it be more ‘Hollywood’, instead retaining its distinct New Zealand flavour.
‘It’s got a bit of everything. It moves between genres a lot, there’s a big car chase for example. A lot of the stuff doesn’t make any sense, but that’s what makes it all work together.’
That and the fact it takes itself ‘really seriously in its presentation of this ridiculous stuff’, Waititi suggests, such as serious music underscoring Ricky’s reign of terror as a ‘bad egg’, which involves horrifying things like… knocking over letterboxes.
For his move to Hollywood, Waititi says Wilderpeople taught him about knowing when to have jokes and when to let go of them, knuckling down in the edit to make sure his films are funny in the right places and emotional in others.
But the magical moment he knew Hunt for the Wilderpeople would work came much earlier on in the process, at the read-through.
‘Usually, those things are pretty disastrous. They’re painful and it takes too long and everyone’s tired, and you’re like “Wow, this film doesn’t really work!”. And it’s just because people have never read the script properly and they don’t know each other,’ he shares. ‘But that one, just off the page, worked so beautifully and I felt so great at the end of it.’
He remembers thinking: ‘If it’s this entertaining and it makes people laugh this much in the room, just around a table eating pizza, the 10 years of f***ing writing it, they paid off and it’s all going to be okay!’
Hunt for the Wilderpeople, the 10th anniversary 4K release, is in cinemas and on digital platforms on August 7. It’s available on UHD and Blu-ray editions from August 17.