FILM FREAK CENTRAL: I wanted to start by asking, how did this project come about?
CATHERINE HARDWICKE: Well, I've known Nikki [Reed] since she was five years old, and her dad and I used to go out. After, you know, her dad and her mom broke up, and they got divorced when she was two. And when she turned five years old, her dad and I started dating, and instantly, like, the first day I think we went out I met his daughter and his son. And we just instantly loved each other, Nikki and I and her brother, we had so much fun together. And after her father and I broke up, four years later, I still wanted to be part of her life, and part of the family--so we had the big kind of post-nuclear happy family, you know, I would visit her mom, and her dad, and her brother and her. We would all take turns.

And when Nikki turned, like, twelve, I started noticing, whoops, you know, change. You know, okay, you used to have fun running around in overalls and pigtails, and suddenly you go to school and boys are making fun of you if you're not a hottie, and if you don't have a good ass or whatever. And so bing, the light bulb goes off, if you're a girl, you suddenly gotta change things. And it's confusing. So she started getting really angry with her mom, really angry at her dad, angry at her brother, hating everybody, hating herself, and she was just kinda like obsessed with living up to the beauty thing. Two hours before seventh grade doing hair, make-up, ironing your hair, you know, all of these kind of crazy things, like, matching magazines.

So, I saw all of this stuff, and I thought, "Wow, maybe I could do something that could give her a little bit more creative stuff to do." Like writing, or acting, or learning to surf, looking at art, drawing. So we tried to do all of those kind of activities with just her and her friends. Went to museums: "Hey, look at the composition of this picture, here's something working on a diagonal," you know, things that she hadn't thought of before. Tried to give her Pride and Prejudice to read--noooo. That did not go over too well. Then acting was kind of interesting to her. So, like, we worked on that with a coach, read serious acting books, Ute Hagen, Respect for Actors, the Meisner technique, and Nikki, at like, thirteen years old was really into it. She had a really cool, intuitive grasp of all of these concepts of acting and I thought, She could be good. She has a lot of stuff inside her might be able to come out. You know, she's complicated. She's like an old soul. So, I thought, That's not enough. That doesn't nearly take up enough of her time. With teenagers, you're like, they're bored in two seconds. "What? We just went snowboarding, and we saw two movies tonight--but NOW what are we gonna do?" The kids are saying, "What are we gonna do next?" "Dude! It's, like, 11:30! Haven't we had an action-packed day?"

So I'm like, okay, maybe if we write something together, maybe that's going to be challenging for her. I have the idea: "We're gonna write a screenplay together! We're gonna make a movie together! Even if we grab a digital camera, go to your house and film this, we're gonna make something together!" And she was like, "Okay." She got on board with that idea--she didn't believe me, of course, because I've tried to make other movies, get other projects off the ground, and nothing's ever happened. But this one, after we sat down and we wrote the screenplay, in, like, six days--which is kind of sick, embarrassing, considering how long it's taken me to write other screenplays, before and after. It was just one of those things, it was a weird, like, mission, or something, when we sat down to do it, and she had to go back to eighth grade, so we had a deadline, a cut-off time, when I knew I wasn't going to get to be around her as much--she stayed at my house during that time, and we just tried to focus on it.

Every twenty minutes we'd be writing, and boom the cell phone would go off. Or a favourite song on the radio: "We can't work, we can't work, we've got to sing this! I've got to dance! You've got to learn this move!" I'm like, Nikki, we've got SIX DAYS! Focus! Focus! And then suddenly a light bulb went off in my head, that's the stuff that the movie's about. That's what life is: it's fractured, it's crazy. And that's her life, it's like you're concentrated on this one minute, then you're mad the next minute--and that's gotta be in the movie. That kind of life, and craziness, and sampling of pop culture--mixing lyrics into your conversation. Like, that's cool! That's going in the movie!

So I just tried to harness all that, and as soon as we wrote something, we'd look at the computer screen, and we'd act it out. Right then. Okay, it came just right out of the computer screen, act it out, make it live. If it's not working, change it. The whole script came to life by, basically, acting it all out. So after the end of that thing, it's like, "We gotta make this. I gotta make this." So now there's something crackling, some energy in here, it's just gotta be done. By hook or crook, it's gotta be! (laughs)

What was the division of labour like between you two?
Well, that's kind of what it was for those six days. I'd be like deetle-leetle-leet, typing something, I'd be going, "What would you say to this person?" She'd say, "I'd never say that!" And then we'd act it out, and try it again. Then we'd re-type, and kept working on it until the scene felt alive.

Was it largely based on her experiences, or was it somewhat fictionalized as well?
Oh yeah, it's definitely fictionalized. And it's definitely stuff that she and her friends kind of went through, and other kids that I knew--because I have another surrogate daughter, too, besides Nikki, same age, and those girls all come over and have slumber parties and surf camps at my house, so I'm around a lot of kids. And I was around her and her mom, too, and watching her and her mother, and just trying to put the experiences, like, and make it into something basically dramatic, and 95 minutes long.

Were you nervous about rendering her experiences accurately?
Well, I don't know about nervous, but I cared about getting it right, and making it authentic. In my whole life, I don't try to get nervous--I just try to do it, you know? (laughs)

You're really gung-ho?
Yeah, I was just, like, enthusiastic, I thought, Man, there's something powerful here, there's stuff going on in the culture right now. There are crazy influences and pressures on these girls, that they're dealing with, and trying to navigate, figure out what to do with their bodies and their lives. And I want to get that on film--you know, I want to get that energy on film, so I was just like, "Let's do it." I gotta do it. I gotta make that happen.

Do you think the experiences you touch on in your film are handled well or badly in media in general?
Well, I think a lot of films handle this kind of material in, like, a comedic fashion, in a light fashion, which is great, and it's one cool approach to it, but we were not going for that. (laughs) We were going for, like--

The throat.
We're goin' in! Let's just try to make it real, and make it as authentic as we could. Just go right in there, like, for example, early films of Scorsese, and the Dogma stuff, and Cassavetes--those are the kind of films that, like, affect me, like Dancer in the Dark, stuff that makes me feel something, that's probably one of my influences. Instead of teen comedies! (laughs)

You just answered several of my questions at once.
Really? Whoa! Well, good.

You're a female director in a male-dominated field. Did that make it more difficult to get the movie made?
Yeah, I think it did. I don't want to think that it matters, that there's anything that a woman can't do, but I think that people do. It's harder, it is definitely harder, because the other screenplays that I've written before this, you know, I had them really planned out, they were potent, they were exciting, I had budgets, I had a great way to do them, I had them storyboarded--people would just say, "You're never going to make that movie as your first movie." You know, "A $5-million movie, you'll never going to direct that!" And I'm thinking to myself--unnnngh! I hate to say, how many first-time directors have I worked with, and they had way bigger budgets than $5-million, and they're all guys. I mean, not that there are comparisons, but I do think that it makes a real difference. Yeah, we gotta fight a little harder! (laughs).

You worked extensively as a production designer before doing Thirteen. Is there anything you take from that experience when doing your own films?
Oh yeah. Everything. That contributes to this. Since I've worked with a lot of kick-ass directors, I could take the good and the bad things I saw happening on those sets--the cool things, like Richard Linklater stays cool, you know, even if the actors are having little hissy-fits or something, he stays calm and level-headed--I like that. I'm like, "Okay, I want to be like that, if I can." It's not exactly my personality... And then, like David O. Russell brings a crackling energy, like every moment, it's pretty alive--and radical, I thought, in Three Kings. I just wanted every moment to have that life force in it too. And then Cameron Crowe is very interactive with the actors, he's right there, like with them, every second of the way, giving them adjustments, just right in it with them, that was really cool. But he uses music, you know, and shapes influences on the set--I love that.

All of those things were great learning experiences, but as a production designer, also, we always have a lot of stuff to manage--scheduling, timing, budget, crews, artistic personalities, so all of that was just a great preparation--dealing with a lot less money. Like, on Vanilla Sky, my budget for the set was maybe four times the budget this whole movie was. You look up at Vanilla Sky, and you'll see the cappuccino maker getting a massage by the on-set masseuse. We didn't have that on [Thirteen]! (laughs) It was beans and rice! So yeah. I think I learned a lot from all of those projects that helped me be organized, and more efficient.