Catherine Hardwicke Interview: Going From Fangs to Folklore #Twilight

BURBANK, Calif.—On the Warner Brothers lot here, there is a lovely Wisteria Lane-like cul-de-sac of suburban homes called Warner Village. At least, it's lovely on the outside. On the inside, the houses are all slightly dumpy production offices. For the last several months, one of them has belonged to Catherine Hardwicke, the Texas-born, preternaturally cool director of "Twilight." Last week, she was putting the finishing touches on the DVD extras for "Red Riding Hood," her $42 million twist on the classic tale starring Amanda Seyfried.

"Welcome to our crack house," Ms. Hardwicke, 55, said as she showed a reporter around the space that she and her team have inhabited since last September, when they wrapped principal photography on the film in Vancouver.

In one room, an editor was assembling a video of a Fever Ray song that appears on the film's soundtrack. "She's kind of the Lady Gaga of Sweden," Ms. Hardwicke said of the singer. Elsewhere, another editor was working on a music video for one of the soundtrack's love songs, as well as a distillation of the film into 73 seconds. "At 72 seconds, it just fell apart," Ms. Hardwicke joked.

Continuing the tour of the grounds, Ms. Hardwicke led us to the small forest, regularly referred to as "the jungle," that sits right outside her office. "It's awesome," she said. "It's like the trees in 'Twilight.' There's bamboo and everything." The area is used to shoot projects. Sometimes, the filmmaker said, she would come outside and the area would be dressed up to look like Vietnam. Other times it was used to shoot exteriors for the HBO vampire show "True Blood"—which, let's face it, probably wouldn't be the success it is without Ms. Hardwicke's blockbuster version of "Twilight."

The film made an astonishing $393 million worldwide, and "everyone thinks it's so obvious now," Ms. Hardwicke said. "In hindsight it was a no-brainer."

In reality, it was harder to pull off. "I'm very hands-on and I put a zillion details into every scene," she said. Bella, the character played by Kristen Stewart, who falls in love with the vampire played by Robert Pattinson, "wears my personal shoes. She wears my t-shirt. The treetops scene—that was my idea. [The novel's author] Stephenie Meyer gave me freedom to do what I wanted to do. The directors of the sequels, they didn't have the time and the freedom like I did."

Making "Red Riding Hood," of course, had a similar effect on her. "We had this very tough post-production schedule and we were working 24/7," Ms. Hardwicke, who was wearing skinny jeans, a blazer and sneakers, explained as she pointed out a few ducks in a little moat. "I'd come out here and touch a tree. And there'd be a tour bus driving by saying, 'Look, there's the director of 'Twilight' crying by a tree,' and I'd dive in the bushes."

Though "Red Riding Hood" similarly mixes romance, horror and folklore, Ms. Hardwicke doesn't expect it to approach the "Twilight" phenomenon. "As soon as we put that photo of Rob Pattinson on the Internet, things went crazy," she said. "That's not going to happen too often."

"But I felt limitations with 'Twilight,'" she continued. "I draw crazy stuff in my head. These vampires were supposed to wear clothes like high-school students. Those poor 'Twilight' fans trying to get dressed up on Halloween! At least with 'Red Riding Hood,' they can go further. I've always wanted to create my own world."

After training as an architect, Ms. Hardwicke moved to Hollywood and got a job sculpting characters for director Tim Burton. Her first film, 2003's "Thirteen," showed that she was uncannily in touch with the younger generation. "Twilight," of course, affirmed that. "There's so much stuff going on when you're young," she said, now safely ensconced with her laptop in her office. "There are insecurities that everybody has. And I knew what Stephenie was going for, what it feels like to be madly, obsessively in love."

Like with "Twilight," which found itself on the forefront of projects about the undead, "Red Riding Hood" seems to be ushering in a host of fairy tale films and television series. There are at least two movies about Snow White on track (one starring Ms. Stewart and Julia Roberts), another with Hansel and Gretel as bounty hunters (in 3-D no less), and a re-telling of Jack and the Beanstalk from Bryan Singer ("X-Men").

"I'm glad I'm the first one out of the gate," Ms. Hardwicke said, pointing to her sneakers. "That's why I wear these. I've got to keep running at all times."

wsj KstewAngel