The Strange Allure of Geek Magnetism

New Zealand Film Couple Is Drawn to the Lives of Outsiders

Actress Loren Horsley and director Taika Waititi thought a lot about social skills, and the lack of them, while making "Eagle vs Shark." (By Helayne Seidman For The Washington Post)

NEW YORK -- Taika Waititi, an up-and-coming New Zealand filmmaker who is fascinated by outcasts, has made a new movie about geek love. He has likened it to "a head with no body that is trying to lick something just out of reach," which seems an apt metaphor even if you don't entirely know what it means.

Geeks unite! Are we not all outsiders? Isn't life itself a grand quest to lick something just out of reach?

During lunch recently at the Blue Fin restaurant in Times Square, Waititi and his longtime girlfriend, Loren Horsley, who plays the central dork of "Eagle vs Shark," discuss their attraction to losers and underdogs. They're both attractive and poised, but in their defense, that may just be a hardship of the industry.

Loneliness, insecurity: "If you're doing an autopsy, it's like the kind of essential human muscle and blood and bone stuff?" Horsley says, upending her statement into a question, the way teenage girls do.

"Most people in their lives do feel like they are outsiders at some point," Waititi says.

Horsley says she became so subsumed by the shy and self-conscious role of Lily in her boyfriend's film that she had trouble coming out of character.

"I had kind of a crisis about what confidence was and what truth was," she says.

Waititi, 31, and Horsley, 29, have been together for eight years, and they live in a group house in Wellington, New Zealand, along with Horsley's sister and two other friends. (They've also shared digs with friend Jemaine Clement, Horsley's "Eagle vs Shark" co-star, who debuted this week on the new HBO series, "Flight of the Conchords." It's a big season for Kiwi entertainment.)

Horsley is an actress whose roles back home have been mostly in television, and mostly of the "bubbly, blond, chatty" variety. Waititi, who is part Maori, is an artist, actor, screenwriter and director. His short film "Two Cars, One Night," about children waiting for their parents outside a bar, was nominated for an Oscar in 2005. At one point in his career he made a pilot for a film about outcast vampires.

Never thought about the loneliness of being a vampire? Waititi and Horsley did.

"All their friends keep dying," Horsley says.

Lunching with Waititi and Horsley is itself like being a head with no body that's trying to lick something just out of reach. Horsley talks about the essential mystery of human nature and Waititi answers questions with jokes. (Religion? "I'm a commie!") He likens America to a "mothership" of aliens whose "grand plan is to take over the world with their little McDonald's brain stations." The restaurant is noisy, and the Kiwi accents are unfamiliar. There are several moments of confusion, as when Horsley explains her reverence for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.