‘Vancouver inspired me ... to direct Twilight’
Catherine Hardwicke, the woman behind the blockbuster no one wanted to make, to talk ‘prep’ at VIFF master class
From the skateboarding film Lords of Dogtown to the worldwide phenomenon that became Twilight, Catherine Hardwicke has had her hands on every aspect of film production.
Learning the ropes as a production designer on films by Richard Linklater (The Newton Boys) and David O. Russell (Three Kings), she garnered a Guinness World Book of Records entry for the biggest opening in film history by a female director for Twilight. The movie grossed $69 million in its first weekend and went on to make more than $400 million. Her latest film is 2015’s Miss You Already, starring Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette.
Hardwicke is coming to a Vancouver International Film Festival master class co-presented with the Directors’ Guild of Canada on Aug. 6. We had a chat with her ahead of the event.
Q: What are you presenting at the VIFF master class next weekend?
I’m excited they invited me to do this thing I call “fix it in prep” — the way I’ve learned different tools from different directors I’ve worked with or ideas I’ve come up with myself in order to prep yourself for your film or your TV show, from rehearsals to diagrams to tracking. I’ll show clips from different projects I directed and how I accomplished that.
Do you feel like you’ve learned more from the directors you’ve worked with or that they learned more from you?
Oh, I would never say that. Are you trying to get me in trouble? (Laughs.) For me — with David O. Russell, Cameron Crowe, Richard Linklater, Lisa Cholodenko — each of those people has superhuman strengths in certain areas. What I think I brought on their teams is that I come from a strong visual background. I’m trained as an architect and in production design. That’s something I could bring to them because they might be hyper concentrated on the story, the characters, the moments.
Do you feel female directors need to have a more comprehensive understanding of the craft from top to bottom as opposed to men?
I think that anybody who’s trying to make a movie, the stronger your skill set is, the better. It’s a given. Even if you’re a white male, it’s still not that easy — you’re asking for a lot of money to get a film made. Somebody has to trust you with millions of dollars and trust they might make their money back. So that’s a challenge. But as we know, historically it’s dominated by one category of person. So how do you rise out of the pack, out of the minority, and prove yourself? That is one way: to have a really strong skill set, for sure.
We’re coming on almost 10 years since you started production on Twilight. Do you remember that process?
It was released in 2008; it seems like we were working like maniacs up until then. But yeah, 10 years — it’s crazy.
You have a Guinness record for the biggest opening in history by a female director for Twilight. It’s impossible to chat with you and not talk about that movie, which of course has a strong Vancouver connection.
Mine (the first instalment in the series) was shot in Portland, but all the other ones were shot in Vancouver. I love Vancouver and I shot Red Riding Hood there and did a lot of production design there. Actually, in a way, Vancouver inspired me to even want to direct Twilight because when I was on a movie I was designing there, I would go hiking in the woods on the weekend. I loved all the moss and everything. When I read (Twilight) I thought, “Well, I’d like to see vampires — instead of dark alleys in Paris — I want to see them in the moss. I want to see them in the Pacific Northwest woods.” So I took pictures I had taken in Vancouver in the woods and Photoshopped in vampires — “Wouldn’t this be cool?”
What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned from that film?
Nobody wanted to make that movie. It was put into turnaround at Paramount. Fox didn’t want to make it. Nobody thought it would make any money. A young girl as a lead and blah, blah, blah. At the time I believed in it because I would see passionate fans online. Even then it was a smaller group of people. The (film) companies said, “That might just be 400 girls in Salt Lake City that are blogging about it.” Even on the Thursday before it opened, they said, “If it makes $30 million we’ll be ecstatic.” I learned so many things. It was awesome to be part of this incredible campaign.
(This interview has been edited and condensed.)