Catherine Hardwicke Praises Heath Ledger, Talks ‘Twilight' at Mediterrane Film Festival Masterclass

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Steps away from set pieces featured in the Gladiator franchise inside Malta's historic Fort Ricasoli, veteran filmmaker Catherine Hardwicke delivered an epic two-hour-plus masterclass fitting of its backdrop during the Mediterrane Film Festival on Wednesday morning.
Hardwicke, who is also currently serving on the island fest's jury, covered nearly all aspects of the craft for the 'Fix It in Prep' session which was moderated by The Hollywood Reporter. She recalled how she made so many of the films on her resume like the gritty drama Thirteen, the skateboarding pic Lords of Dogtown, the beloved teen vampire classic Twilight, the friendship tearjerker Miss You Already, the genre series Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities and more.
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Twilight lore figured prominently in the discussion, much of which has been documented in anniversary interviews and earlier versions of Hardwicke's presentation, including how star Robert Pattinson hand picked her line 'Hold on tight, spider monkey.' She revealed one unique wardrobe choice for Pattinson's fellow franchise star Kristen Stewart who passed on a selection of shirts presented to her for a kissing scene for Bella and Edward.
'We had 10 different T-shirts for her,' Hardwicke recalled. 'She didn't like any of them. When we were shooting, she goes, 'I like your T-shirt.' I'm, like, 'OK,' [and I gave her my shirt] and I got a different T-shirt. That's what she wears in the movie, the T-shirt I had.' She added that Bella started in the film wearing 'more Eart tones' but by the end of Twilight, as her character has grown closer to Edward and the Cullen family, 'she's dressing like the Cullens' with a blue jacket and more vampire-approved color ways.
Hardwicke, who launched the successful franchise based on the best-selling book series, also recalled how she came to direct the first film in the series. 'They gave me the script and said, 'Are you interested in directing any of these?'' she said, noting that it was in development at the time at Summit Entertainment. 'At the time, every studio in Los Angeles turned down Twilight and it was in turnaround. Nobody thought it would make one penny [because it was a young female lead. I read the script and thought it was terrible. I went and read the book and I saw there were a lot of fans that were passionate about it. So I said, 'I want to take a meeting.''
Once she arrived for a meeting with the development team at Summit, Hardwicke claims she offered a bold reaction to the material. 'I took the script and said, 'This goes in a trashcan but we're going to make it closer to the book and what matters in the book. Here are some ideas.' They said, 'OK, we agree with you. We'll hire you.''
The rest is history. Speaking of the past, Hardwicke also recalled how she boarded 2005's Lords of Dogtown starring Heath Ledger, Emile Hirsche and Victor Raskuk about the origins of skateboarding culture in Venice, Calif., in the 1970s.
'David Fincher was supposed to be directing it and he wanted to make it for $75 million,' Hardwicke said of the respected filmmaker who eventually fell out over budgetary and creative issues with executives at Columbia Pictures where it was in development. Hardwicke, coming off the critical success of Thirteen, figured she could find 'a trickier way or cheaper way' to make the film about a sport she was super passionate about.
'Amy Pascal was the studio head at the time, and she liked skateboarding and grew up in L.A.,' she noted of the high-profile Hollywood executive-turned-producer with whom she took a meeting. 'I walked into the first meeting. I was dressed in my Dogtown t-shirt, I lived in Venice and I had Dogtown swag all over, I had a whole plan for shooting the movie and I had skateboards with me. [Amy] had seen Thirteen and she really liked it. I pitched how to do it for a better budget, and I don't know how but I got the job.'
Hardwicke said at several points during the presentation that as a director, she always likes to be where the action is rather than away from the actors sitting in video village. One such anecdote she shared is how during filming one of the surfing scenes in Lords of Dogtown, star Ledger complained that the water was too cold.
'We had been working all day for six hours in the morning, and then after lunch he and the older guys came up and I heard [Heath] say, 'Fuck this, man, it's too cold, I'm not doing this.' At that moment, I swam over to him and he didn't know it was me. I go, 'Hey, Heath, what's up man. I've been in here all morning, it's awesome isn't it?' And he's, like, if she's in here, I can't complain. Let's shoot. Sometimes as a director, you have to do more radical things like you're asking your actors to do. You can't say I want you to do it if you're not doing it yourself. That's my philosophy.'
Hardwicke played a scene from the film that featured Ledger, playing the character Skip Englbom, who was based on a real person, as he is shaping a surfboard while singing along to Rod Stewart's 'Maggie May.' She praised Ledger's effortless authenticity and how he was intent on using that track despite its high price tag.
'Look at all his movies, Heath really works with his body. He has a different body posture in every movie and different vocal qualities,' explained the filmmaker. 'Heath wanted the song, 'Maggie May,' and we could not afford the song because they wanted a zillion dollars. On the day, I had [two songs ready] including the one we had permission for and we could afford. At the end, he goes, 'I fucking hate that song, we need to do 'Maggie May.' I had a take of the other one in the can so I wouldn't get fired from my first studio movie, and then we did 'Maggie May' and of course you see it's integral to the scene. He moves with it, and then we went back and got permission.'
Near the end of the presentation, Hardwicke also teased her latest film, the indie homeless drama Street Smart starring Isabelle Furhman, Yara Shahidi, Michael Cimino, Daniel Zovatto and Skeet Ulrich. The night before she left for Malta, Hardwicke said she finished working on the music for the film, which is set in Venice and follows a group of unhoused as they navigate the streets with their big dreams. Scenes from the film were shoot in her Venice home, which doubled as the film's production office for the quick 20-day shoot.
'[The characters] are all based on real people, and we had one real person [who acts in the film] who really was in the foster care system,' she said of the first time actor who is one of the leads. 'We found housing for him the week before we started shooting with Covenant House, which is a beautiful global organization for kids that have aged out of the foster care system. He got his first apartment and he starred in his first movie.'
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