Bonus Wednesday Video Spotlight: Cathrine Hardwicke and EW’s “Twilight” cover
Catherine Hardwicke (Associated Press photo)
“Twilight” director Catherine Hardwicke gives Entertainment Weekly a first look at her behind-the-scenes diary from the blockbuster hit in EW’s current issue. She also talks about why she left the huge franchise, based on Stephenie Meyer’s mega-popular four-book series, and won’t be back to direct the first “Twilight” sequel, “New Moon.”
According to a news release, Summit Entertainment offered her big bucks to helm the the sequel – “more money than I or anyone in my family has ever seen,” Hardwicke said - but told her she’d be working with a modest budget and in a tight timeframe. Regretfully, she told the studio it needed to find a new director.
“I was devastated,” she tells EW. “I really did feel a strong connection to the people around the world that liked the movie – and to Stephenie and the actors. But I just didn’t think I could make a good movie under those circumstances.”
Hardwicke will bid farewell to the series with a book based on the diary she kept during the making of “Twilight.” ”Twilight: Director’s Notebook” was created by Meyer’s publisher last summer, and then Twilight went on to gross over $350 million worldwide (so far).
“When the movie made enough money, they thought it was worth it,” says Hardwicke. “They said, ‘Now you have three and a half weeks to do it!’ And I was like, Okay, I’m just going to keep writing until they rip this out of my hands!”
“New Moon” is already in pre-production under new director Chris Weitz (“The Golden Compass”). Hardwicke notes that her replacement is working with a better deal than she was promised.
“I know the budget they were talking about with me – they’ve already gone way beyond that,” she said.
But she’s done nursing her broken heart over “Twilight”: ”I’m optimistic that it’s going to be great, and I’m sad that it didn’t work out for me to do it,” she said. “But I’ll do something else cool.”
EW.com has posted four pages of the diary online; to see them, click here. More are in the printed version of the magazine. According to the release, the exclusive excerpt of Hardwicke’s diary includes:
- An original watercolor of Robert Pattinson as Edward – with long hair and brown contacts. “I thought he would look good with long ‘timeless’ hair, so Rob spent eight hours in the chair. Nicole Frank, assistant hair stylist, put in extensions. Rob HATED them. The next day Nicole yanked them out and she and Mary Ann (Valdes, head of the film’s hair department) and Rob started working on the now-famous Edward hairstyle,” she says.
- A diagram of the Forks High School cafeteria, including the Cullens’ table, Pattinson and Kristen Stewart working on scenes, a picture of Stewart with Stephenie Meyer and more.
- Behind-the-scene photos including a look at the staging of the scene where Pattinson’s Edward saves Stewart’s Bella from an out-of-control van, the forest (or “meadow”) scenes and more
Hardwicke’s “Twilight: Director’s Notebook” is due in stores March 17, with the “Twilight” DVD coming out March 21. Hardwicke set a record with the highest opening take ever for a female director when “Twilight” made nearly $70 million in its first weekend.
Looking back on my notes from my November roundtable interview with Hardwicke at the film junket in Los Angeles, I really believe that turning down “New Moon” must have been tough for her. She was already talking about “we” when she spoke about the challenges of shooting the sequel, although she said she wasn’t counting on getting the job until receipts from “Twilight” started coming in.
“‘New Moon’ is much more expensive than the first book because there’s werewolf transformations, CGI, there’s stunts -jumping off cliffs, motorcycle rides. They go to Italy. So we have to make quite a lot of money on this one to be able (to do it right),” she said.
But Hardwicke also said it was important for her on “Twilight” to make her budget and not go over her allotted number of days in shooting or post-production. But it came at a sacrifice for her vision for the film:
“Some days I wanted to get other cool shots, other close-ups, I wanted to give somebody another take, try a different alternative. I had a thing, I knew if I could get three shots I knew I had the scene. These were my priorities. Sometimes you have to combine it, do it in one shot. I had to sacrifice some of my dream and try to make what I had work as well as I could,” she said.
In addition, Hardwicke said she puts enormous pressure on herself to create the best film she can within the constraints of the project, so it’s easy to see why she might not have wanted to take on “New Moon” if she felt the budget and timeframe were too limiting:
“For me, personally, I put my own pressure on myself. Every job I’ve done, as a production designer, I wanted to make every set as excellent, as interesting as I could make it. Every film I’ve done (as a director) I’ve tried to do the best I could within my constraints and budget. So I don’t think that anybody could put any more pressure on me than I put on myself.”
And you can see from some of these video interviews that Hardwicke clearly loved working on “Twilight” and definitely was preparing to make “New Moon.” It was just a shame that it didn’t work out, since she is a talented director. Hopefully, Weitz will prove up to task, particularly with his special effects experience.
-BAM
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