Catherine Hardwicke
Catherine Hardwicke
Catherine HardwickeOctober 21, 1955) is an American film director, production designer and screenwriter. Her works include the Academy Award-nominated independent film Thirteen, which she co-wrote with Nikki Reed, the film's co-star, the Biblically-themed The Nativity Story, the vampire film Twilight, the werewolf film Red Riding Hood, and the classic skateboarding film Lords of Dogtown. The opening weekend of Twilight was the biggest opening ever for a female director...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth21 October 1955
CityCameron, TX
CountryUnited States of America
I used to be an architect, so I have a series I am working on with USA Network that I created and am co-writing.
I just wrote a really cool script. It's called "One Track Mind." It's an origin story about the most successful and the most foul-mouthed, outrageous songwriter in history.
I think it's true that the more sanitized a person is, you can't really relate to that person.
Some of the best stuff in all my movies has been improv.
Sometimes, a scene goes on too long and, with this being a suspense story and murder mystery that you're trying to discover through her heightened paranoia, you don't want scenes that take you on a tangent. Sometimes, you love those scenes, but you know that it's better not to be in the overall film. So, I'm not sad that they're not in the main movie, but I do think it's fun for people to get to watch them, if they want to.
I can go back to my very first movie, Thirteen, and think about that exact moment when I saw Nikki Reed and Evan Rachel Wood do their chemistry read audition together. It just came alive. I was filming it with a video camera and I was like, "I know I can make a good movie now."
When I was just five years old, I loved the scary layer and the symbolical power of the red cloak. I made my mom make me that red cloak, and I had to wear it on Halloween, two years in a row.
As a director, you've got to have quite a few projects going because you never know which one will actually come together with the financing and get the green light.
As a director, when you cut scenes from a movie, you do it with the idea that it is making the story move forward and progress. Sometimes, you don't realize that something is actually a sidetrack for the story, or it takes the tension out of a scene.
Usually, we have some of those nostalgic moments like, "Oh my god, I can't believe we survived that day," because filmmaking is such a wild roller coaster ride.
It's interesting for me to do the commentary with the actors because, as a director, you're so in your own world that you see it from your perspective, your issues and what you were trying to do, and then it's really very fun to hear their perspective on how it was to do a particular scene or how they felt, and sometimes, I didn't even know that, at the time.
When I talk to film students, I always say, "Buy the DVDs and listen to the commentaries, look at the making of, look at the behind-the-scenes," because that's such a great learning tool.
I like doing commentary. As a filmmaker and film student, I think it's really interesting to hear what a director did and how they figured out how to do things. I often like the technical commentaries myself.
If a scene doesn't work on three levels - it's not advancing the story, the characters, and telling me something new - then put it in the trash.