Taika Waititi speaks onstage during The Hollywood Reporter Raising Our Voices DEIA Luncheon. Photo / Getty Images
Taika Waititi speaks onstage during The Hollywood Reporter Raising Our Voices DEIA Luncheon. Photo / Getty Images
“As you can tell, there’s a writers’ strike on, so I didn’t write s***,” Taika Waititi quipped as he graced the stage at The Hollywood Reporter’s second annual Raising Our Voices luncheon on Wednesday.
Waititi originally teased that he let ChatGPT have a go at writing his speech, which prompted the director to point out Hollywood’s issues in diversity and representation, both on the screen and behind the scenes.
“Now if AI can do that in eight seconds and it gets it, what’s taking so long? This thing can tell me what the problem is and what we need to do to fix it in eight seconds, and there’s a lot of people in this town who still don’t get it and still kind of refuse to get it and want to be told.”
Waititi then went on to address colonialism and its effect on the filmmaking industry and the world we live in today.
“All of us wanna be working and not having to come and do f***ing panels and speeches in the middle of our day. This is a great thing. It’s good that we’re talking about it. We have to keep talking about it but this is the s*** you’ve got us doing.”
Taika Waititi and Eva Longoria attend The Hollywood Reporter 2nd Annual "Raising Our Voices" event. Photo / Getty Images
The Kiwi filmmaker continued, “You wonder why there is no indigenous stuff out there - this is the s*** you’ve got us doing. Making us come and talk about the problem and tell you how to fix it. You f***ing broke it - you fix it.
“It’s like someone coming into your house, stealing all of your s*** and burning your house down and then saying ‘okay, we need to have a talk about this.’ And then, saying ‘now, you’re gonna rebuild your house and what can we give you to help you rebuild your house that we burnt down”, said Waititi.
“You build the f***ing house. You burnt it down. I’ll come back and hopefully you’ll get it right and if you don’t get it right, we’ll try again.”
The director then spoke about his vision for Hollywood and his hopes for a diverse and representative film-making experience.
“Instead of diversification of the screen, the thing that I really want to see and what I really strive and hope for is a term coined by my mentor Merata Mita, who was the first indigenous and female filmmaker to come out of New Zealand.
Merata Mita, 1989. Photo / Supplied
“She was an activist and she paved the way. She blazed the trail that I’m blazed trailing her”, Waititi laughed at his use of words.
“She is the one who started it all and the term she loved to use was decolonising the screen. What I want to see is a fully Polynesian-controlled Polynesian story that is written by and showrun by [Polynesians],” shared the Boy filmmaker.
Waititi, who was also the cover star of this week’s The Hollywood Reporter, was a keynote speaker at the event, where both Eva Longoria and Niecy-Nash Betts were both given the title of 2023 Trailblazer.
Jessica Betts and Niecy Nash-Betts attend The Hollywood Reporter 2nd Annual "Raising Our Voices" event. Photo / Getty Images
Other industry A-listers such as Amber Midthunder, Gloria Calderón Kellett and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’s Sophia Nomvete participated in the panel discussions at the luncheon.
The event saw Hollywood’s most influential and motivational executives, storytellers and leaders come together to hone in on the role of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in the industry and its future in the media space.
The luncheon also correlated with the release of The Hollywood Reporter’s Forces of Change Power List.
