PARK CITY, Utah – For the vampires of Wellington, New Zealand, life’s no Hollywood blockbuster. Virgins have become impossible to find. The actual sucking of blood, when done imprecisely, leaves stubborn stains on the wall. And your roommate never washes his share of the dishes.
A high-concept, lo-fi and hilarious new mockumentary that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival this week, What We Do in the Shadows offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse at vampires, featuring improv comedians in the starring roles instead of shiny teen heartthrobs. It was written and directed by two of the film's stars, Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, who began their careers as the award-winning New Zealand comedy duo The Humourbeasts. Clement is best known as half of the Grammy-winning, Emmy-nominated musical group Flight of the Conchords.
What We Do in the Shadows updates a 25-minute short Clement and Waititi originally made in 2006 about four vampires who shack up frat-guy style in a dusty, heavily curtained house. Each roommate has their quirks: the cocky and flamboyant Vladislav (Clement), unable to see himself in a mirror, has a hard time picking out outfits; Viago (Waititi), a sensitive neatnik, lays down newspaper before a kill; Deacon (Jonathan Brugh) refuses to do his dishes, even when the chore wheel dictates. The 8,000-year-old Petyr (Ben Fransham), a foul-tempered Nosferatu lookalike, rarely leaves his room tomb.
Shot verite-style with handheld cameras, the film is interspersed with the sort of deadpan sitting interviews that are common in documentaries -- and reality TV shows. “We took the filmmaking part seriously, like we were making a proper documentary,” said Waititi. “A lot of mockumentaries stop trying partway through.”
Waititi and Clement say they produced the film independently on a tiny budget in order to retain creative control over the work. “When the New Zealand Film Commission funds a film, you give them the script to approve,” Clement said. “So a government body is telling you what’s funny. We needed to avoid that.”
The effects, though studiously low rent, were created by high-end talent lifted from the FX crew on Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. “They’d get things done over their lunch break,” Waititi says. “Or they’d finish their day at The Hobbit and work all night on ours, oftentimes for free... I promised them the job would be fast, stupid and funny, and they wouldn’t get as much money but they were guaranteed to have fun.”
