Michael Fassbender Says 90% Of Taika Waititi's Next Goal Wins Was Improvised
Hey, did you know that famed filmmaker Taika Waititi had a new movie in theaters last year? There's a good chance you didn't! Because Waititi's latest, the sports comedy "Next Goal Wins," had a very muted release following a series of scathing reviews. It's somewhat shocking to see Waititi flop so hard after seemingly being on top of the filmmaking world just a few years ago. Barry Levitt's /Film review "awarded" the flick a 2 out of 10, and stated that "'Next Goal Wins' feels like it's made by a director out of ideas — it's a film made up of lazy, visually vacant, and soulless filmmaking." Ouch.
In the film, which is based on a true story and a 2014 documentary of the same name, Michael Fassbender (who also appeared in last year's much better "The Killer") plays Dutch American football coach Thomas Rongen, who is sent to help the American Samoa national team — considered one of the worst football teams in the world. It has all the makings of an inspirational, feel-good story, but it just didn't work out that way.
Interestingly enough, during a recent video interview with Vanity Fair, Fassbender revealed that a large chunk of "Next Goal Wins" was improvised.
Improvisation is a very specific thing
I'm always impressed by filmmakers who are good at improvisation. Learning and delivering lines convincingly is hard enough, but to be able to add your own input to the material — and have it work — takes skill. So while "Next Goal Wins" may not be a successful film, it's still note-worthy that a lot of the material was improved. As Fassbender says, "Improvisation is a very specific thing, 'cause extensively it's like 90% of the movie is improvisation in 'Next Goal Wins.' And you know, you're all doing it collectively. You need a good collection of people to do that."
Fassbender added that it helps to have a filmmaker guiding things, though:
"And, of course, a great director to sort of be pulling all the strings. Make sure that this ship has a rudder and it's going in a certain direction. You've gotta be brave. You've gotta, like, throw yourself into the scene. You've gotta be prepared to fall flat on your face and make a fool of yourself and do it many times. And through that, you discover things in the scene, but really you're not – you discover it afterwards because to really do it well, you've really gotta be present. You gotta listen. You know, that's the great thing about improvisation. You really do have to listen 'cause the other person's throwing something at you and you've gotta be awake and alive."
Of course, I guess you could argue that maybe, just maybe, such a heavy amount of improv backfired in this case, since "Next Goal Wins" ended up being derided in the end. But you have to admit that it takes a lot of effort to attempt this much improvisation, and at least Waititi and company went out there and tried to make it work.