Catherine Hardwicke’s ‘Twilight’ turn will not be soon forgotten – unlike, say critics, her latest, ‘Red Riding Hood’. Despite this, the Texan director remains upbeat
CATHERINE HARDWICKE is on impressively cheery form for someone who's just received a monumental kicking. A few weeks ago, the director's latest film, Red Riding Hood, opened in the US to blood-curdlingly awful reviews. Somehow, she has retained her characteristically sunny composure.
Long-haired and smiley, Hardwicke still carries conspicuous traces of her Texan upbringing – the Texas of Austin-based singer-songwriters, rather than that of oil barons. It would take more than the odd bad review to flatten that spirit.
Now a surprising 55, Hardwicke is, it should be remembered, among the most financially successful female directors ever to have brandished a megaphone. Of that clan, only Phyllida Lloyd, director of the mighty Mamma Mia!, has delivered a live-action picture that made more than Hardwicke's Twilight.
Red Riding Hoodtreads similar territory to that traversed by the teenage vampire-love movie. Remaking the ancient tale as a zippy, Freudian horror flick, the project stars porcelain-skinned Amanda Seyfried as the basket-carrier and Gary Oldman as a werewolf slayer.
As in Angela Carter's The Company of Wolves– and Neil Jordan's adaptation of that story – there is a great deal of metaphorical pondering on teenage female sexuality. "Every new generation discovers those feelings on their own," says Hardwicke.
"When you are five years old, you just find it scary. 'I don't want to go into the dark woods alone.' Then, when you are 12 or 13, you find there's something there you hadn't noticed. You go one way: straight to grandmothers. Or you go another and get in touch with your sensuality." You don't have to work too hard to find a theme in Hardwicke's work. The superficial connections between Red Riding Hoodand Twilightare obvious.
But the new film also has a lot in common with the movie that made Hardwicke’s name. In 2003, having spent years working as a production designer, she made her directorial debut with the brilliantly harrowing Thirteen.
Detailing the wretched falling out between a mother and her increasingly wayward teenage daughter – the script was closely based on its star Nikki Reed’s own experiences – Hardwicke’s picture attempted a more explicit study of the allegorical dilemma facing Seyfried’s naive villager. Will she embrace the sinful wolf or morally upright grandma? “Oh it is similar. Yeah, I know. I was talking to somebody else about that today. When you’re young you have those feelings stirring inside you. Neither film would have a story without that dilemma. When you are trying things out, that’s when you learn things. That’s what is exciting about life.”
Hardwicke's other two features also deal with adolescent confusion. The Nativity Storystarred Keisha Castle-Hughes as a very human Virgin Mary; Lords of Dogtowndealt with skate-borders in hipper corners of Los Angeles. Hardwicke is fast becoming the laureate of disaffected female youth.
The director herself seems to have had a relatively pleasant upbringing. Raised not far from the Mexican border, she does recall a fair deal of violence. Her school principal was stabbed three times. At least two associates were the victims of shooting. But she remembers “a Huck Finn life” involving frolicking in streams and creating home-made rafts. Hardwicke initially studied architecture and designed 120 houses for her dad’s sizable real-estate complex. Then a realisation struck.
“I loved architecture 100 per cent,” she says. “I built those 120 buildings and then I realised people just wanted me to repeat the same ideas over and over again. I wanted to be in a business that encourages creativity and I mistakenly thought that Hollywood was the place to go. Oh, they’ll want me to do good, different work.”
She chortles at her wide-eyed attitude, but admits that her first years in Hollywood were great fun. After a spell at film school, she was invited by a chum to do some production design on a low-budget picture. Her architectural and cinema training meshed together and she rapidly found work on more mainstream films. If you liked the saloons in Tombstone, the distressed tanks in Three Kings or the extravagant penthouses in Vanilla Sky then you are a fan of Hardwicke’s early work.
The opportunity to direct a film came by chance. She had known Nikki Reed since the actress was a child. Aware that Reed was having problems at home, Hardwicke suggested they address them by writing a film script together. The gritty, troubling Thirteenwas the result.
"Yes, I knew her since she was five years old," she says. "I had written several other scripts that had been optioned. Nobody would give me the money to actually make them. When Nikki had those problems and we wrote that script, I realised I could make a film for nothing. I made it for just $1.5 million. Nobody could stop me." Thirteencreated a great deal of chatter. Featuring forehead-furrowing scenes of drug-taking and adolescent sex, the picture opened parents' eyes to their children's problems and offered young people an opportunity to address their own anxieties.
"Oh my God, it got so heavy," she says. "On the Oprahshow, we played it for 40 mothers and 40 daughters. They talked about their experiences after watching the movie in terms of what the characters said or did. Through that, the daughters were able to say things they would never otherwise say to their parents. It was a way into uncovering real traumas."
Looking back from a time when Twilightmania still ruled the world, it seems slightly surprising that a director of loose-limbed, naturalistic problem pictures managed to secure the right to direct the first film in Stephenie Meyer's dreamy, vampire saga. But one must remember that the books did not become a full-blown phenomenon until shortly before Hardwicke's picture was released. Initially, nobody wanted to touch the thing.
“Oh yeah, it was a ‘girl’s movie’. Every major studio rejected it. I pointed out all the talk on the internet, but they said: ‘That’s just the same 400 people posting over and over again.’ The first script wasn’t very good, but I went to Summit Pictures, a new studio, and said: ‘Let’s start over.’ This is very potent. This can capture the idea of falling in love at a young age.”
To everyone’s surprise (including Hardwicke’s) the picture was an astounding success. “It took $68 million on its opening weekend and they all said: ‘Well, everyone’s seen it who wants to see it.’ Then it ended up taking $400 million worldwide. It seems obvious now. But it wasn’t obvious at the time.”
An eminently sensible, unmistakably nice woman, Hardwicke explains how – as the internet chatter built – she had to drag poor old Robert Pattinson, initially unpopular with the Twilightnuts, away from his computer. She knew that, if he hung in there, the fans would come round. So it proved.
What happened next remains controversial. Having delivered a massive hit, Hardwicke seemed certain to direct the sequels. But the second part, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, ended up going to Chris Weitz, director of the financially disappointing The Golden Compass. Many people felt that sexism was at work. Hardwicke has, however, refused to entertain such notions. "It is true that, when you sign on to a movie, the contract says that if the film makes more than a certain amount you have a right of refusal on the sequel," she says slightly wearily. "There were several reasons why it didn't happen. I liked the first book the best. I have never been that big a fan of sequels."
Now for the controversial bit.
“But the real problem was they wanted me to start right away. They wanted me to go straight to Italy and begin immediately.” Either way, Hardwicke had to watch as the project proceeded without her. To this writer’s eye, the aspect that made the first picture so interesting – telling a supernatural tale in rough, naturalistic fashion – was rapidly ditched for a flashier, glitzier approach.
“I don’t think they needed to retain my style,” she says in half-agreement. “They have a different director with different sensibilities. Why would they keep my approach?” And that’s about as sulky as she gets. What a pleasant woman. Teenagers could hope for little better from their film laureate.
