And they were awesome.

I should first back up a bit. You might know Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords, a comedy band from New Zealand composed of Jemaine and Bret McKenzie. Jemaine and Bret also had a TV show that aired on HBO for two seasons, also called Flight of the Conchords. It revolved around fictionalized versions of Jemaine and Bret – former shepherds in New Zealand who come to New York City and fail miserably as they try to make it big as musicians. Nick and I have had a small obsession with their show for a while now. I fell love with their sense of humor, the posters promoting New Zealand hanging up in their completely incompetent manager’s office, their accents, and their music, which they incorporated into each episode.

A few weeks ago, I saw Jemaine post on Facebook that his new film, What We Do in the Shadows, which he and Taika Waititi co-directed and starred in, was going to be playing in Hawaii on Halloween at the Hawaii International Film Festival. He called it “an important documentary about the every night activities of New Zealand vampires.” I was sold. A vampire mockumentary seemed like the absolute perfect thing to do on Halloween.

The movie was ridiculously hilarious – I have never seen Nick laugh so much at a movie. If you are a fan of deadpan comedy and are curious to see what vampires or other supernatural beings might do in their downtime, this movie is for you.

The best part about seeing the movie was that Taika was actually there in Hawaii to give the audience a brief introduction to the film. He explained that the “New Zealand Documentary Board” wrote a letter to him and Jemaine, asking them to follow around this group of vampires in New Zealand and make a documentary. He even read the letter out loud. It seemed legit. After the movie, he answered questions from the audience and told us that he would  be back with Jemaine on Tuesday for another screening.

So we did the only logical thing. As soon as we stepped outside the theater, we got on my phone and bought tickets for Tuesday’s showing so we could hear Jemaine and Taika talk about the film together.

On Tuesday, we went out to dinner at one of my favorite places in Kailua and then got to the movie theater before they were even allowing people to form a line for the movie. Once we were inside, Jemaine and Taika introduced the film. It was even better watching it the second time around and afterwards, they answered a ton of questions from the audience.

After the Q&A, Jemaine and Takia went into the lobby of the movie theater and just talked to fans and took pictures with them. There was a huge mob of people but they talked to each person and took tons of pictures. They were just so laid back, making jokes and having fun. They seemed like genuine people, eager to talk to people and appreciative of everyone’s praises.

I love Nick’s smile in this picture! We were both so excited to get to tell Jemaine how awesome his movie is. Although I am pretty sure he already knew.

What We Do in the Shadows played at the Sundance Film Festival, and Jemaine and Taika said that there would be a wide release of the film in the US on Friday, February 13.

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