Interview with director Catherine Hardwicke and actress Holly Hunter of THIRTEEN (from mymovies.net)
Questions are in green, Catherine Hardwick is in pink, and Holly Hunter is in gold.
Q. How did you come to work with the co–writer and star of the film, a teenager herself, Nikki Reed?
Catherine Hardwicke: I‘ve known Nikki since she was fiveyearsold and I used to go out with her dad, and I knew her as a cute little fun kid playing with Barbies, and then I went out of town on a movie to Canada, and I came back, one day, and suddenly I‘m sitting over at her mum‘s house and I see this new person walk in. And she is like 12–years–old and she certainly looked like a supermodel, and fabulous, and I was just kind of shocked, because there was a new Nikki there. It only mattered what maybe about three kids at school thought of her. She wasn‘t really reading, or doing anything else… She was waking up every morning at 4.30am to do two and a half hours of hair and make–up before school. But she already looked great, so it was like, ‘wow, why did she need to do that‘?
She was very angry with her mother, her father, herself, everyone, and I started thinking, as a friend, that I loved this kid, and I loved her brother, and I wanted to somehow help if I could. I tried to help her get excited about creative stuff, instead of destructive stuff, or just being bored all the time, so I taught her to surf, and took her to museums, and to art galleries, and read Jane Austin, she hated it. After ten pages of Pride and Prejudice, that went in the trash.
So I thought I had to find something else to get her excited about life and so she said she was interested in acting. Then we took it real seriously, by listening to professional acting workshops and, you know, make something relative to the idea that she was excited about. And then I said, well wait a minute, there‘s really no great parts for 13–year–olds, so we‘re going to have to write our own. I thought this might get her excited about writing and literature, and maybe get her back into Jane Austin, or something.
We started to write a teen comedy, or something, but, as you can tell, we didn‘t quite get the funny bits in there, because when we started watching all the things that were going on in her life, and her friends‘ lives, and her mum‘s, and all these kids that were around now, I started seeing all these pressures, and Nikki started opening up to me and we just decided to start writing about the real stuff, instead of anything we could make up. We just thought the real stuff was more compelling and I did have a hope that maybe it could help her see her mum‘s point of view, or just have some other point of view about her life, so that‘s kind of how we started it.
Q: Holly, why were you gripped by the script from the get–go?
Holly Hunter: Well, the feeling that the movie evokes is exactly what the script evoked as well. It has a sense of emergency, and on the page it had that same kind of urgent, uncensored, very detailed kind of description going on. And I suppose, what I often try to do when I act, is think a lot, an awful lot, before I show up on the set, and then I try not to think at all when she says ‘action‘. What I really want to do is just obey my own impulses, when the camera‘s rolling, and I think the script kind of has that, in fact; it has that non–judgemental, uncensored, unedited version of itself, that I think very much is still intact when you see the movie. I was also very drawn to the fact that, in a way, the movie does not stand in judgement in any of the characters. Even the role of my character‘s boyfriend, played by Jeremy Sisto, you kind of like the guy, even though he is very damaged and broken, and a practising addict. You see he has an ability to love, and a desire to love, and I think this is true of all of the characters, and it really creates a difficulty to categories this people and stand in judgement of them. You more or less can see yourself in each of the character‘s situations.
Q. Has Nikki blossomed in a different kind of way than you expected, Catherine?
CH: She‘s 15 now, she‘s in the second year of High School, she‘s trying to get her driver‘s licence, she‘s trying to get into college, she‘s got a steady boyfriend…
At 13, 14 or 15, your life changes every month, every minute, so she keeps saying.
HH: But also, one of the things that happened during the shoot was that Nikki was actually forced to see her mother in this whole other light. She was compelled to, because the parents came to the set every day, because they were obliged to be there, as she was a minor. And Nikki‘s mum is a great woman, really great; she‘s very alive, very free, very funny, sharp, and Nikki was around her mother, with all these people who Nikki admired, and respected, and was working with, and her mother was a figure of admiration on the set. People really started hanging out with her, and it was a fairly unusual perspective for Nikki to see her mum in. We talked about that a little bit when we were shooting, but I think that made a profound difference in an immediate sense, because the shoot was so fast and so intense.
Q: Do either of you recall any major moments of teenage rebellion in your lives?
CH: We were little angels, Holly and I! Well, I was a little bit more like the girl in the movie who had the Chiwawa on the T–shirt… trying to get in, trying to be cool, but not cutting it [laughs]. I hate to say that was more me.
Q: Holly, you must be dying to tell us about your youth?!
HH: You know, I was so involved with music; I played brass instruments in the band, I was in choir practice every day, so between band practice, which lasted three hours, and choir practice, which lasted three hours, I had six hours, every day, of extra–curricular activities. I just don‘t think I was inherently a rebel, though. I inherently am not.
Q. Given what you were saying about your own background, do you have any sympathies for 13–year–olds now? Would you like to be 13 again?
HH: Oh yes I would, because if you‘re 13 it means you‘re alive. I could never stand in judgement of what time it is in a life….
Q. But the pressures on a 13–year–old now must be vastly different to the pressures you were under when you were younger…
HH. That‘s interesting, but it‘s not actually what really attracted me to doing the movie. I mean, I think that this right of passage has always been something worth remarking on in an artful way. People have been commenting on it, and espousing about it, and arguing about it, and trying to describe it, and trying to unveil the mysteries of this right of passage for as long as we have been around – the Greeks were writing about it. I mean this is something that we have incorporated into our ritualised cultures. Until recently. We don‘t really have that anymore, where it is a recognised period of time we just know it as adolescence. But it‘s been a time, traditionally, of tremendous upheaval – hormonally, brain growth, culturally, peer–wise, the tearing away from your parents, the trying to join the world; adopting different poses, who are you now? Who do you want to be? How can you adapt to your body? It‘s that what is really attracted me. The trappings are different, but the setting‘s the same. Adolescence is a startling time for any kid, and I was no different. But I think that my more experimental years happened later. It didn‘t happen when I was 13. I was a little more paralysed by my adolescence. My experimental, feeling liberated happened kind of later.
Q. This is primarily a story about women and you used a lot of women behind the camera as well. Was this a creative, or political decision?
CH: I think, naturally, a lot of women were probably drawn to this material, because we all went through something like this, or are going through it, or some people are going through it with their daughters, but in each category I tried to find the best, most enthusiastic, qualified person. I think it was probably great on the set, because sometimes I remember hearing someone say to Nikki, ‘I did the same kind of thing; I did that too‘, and ‘I hate it when my brother did that; I‘d get upset too‘, so that‘s kind of supportive and cool…
Q. It‘s both ironic and sad that the film in this country won‘t be seen by teenagers of 13, because it‘ll have an 18 certificate. What you think of that?
CH: I‘m kind of surprised that it‘s more restricted here than in the United States.
HH: In the US, you can see it if you‘re 13 or 11, if you go with an adult.
CH: With our rating system, if you say the F–word twice, you‘re rated R, which means you have to be accompanied by a guardian. But if you kill any number of people, it‘s ok – you know, everyone can go and see it! So I don‘t think we all quite understand the rating system. It‘s definitely a shame that it‘s so restricted here. But maybe, on DVD parents can watch it with their kids because it has been used as a teaching tool a lot in the United States already, as a way of opening up lines of communication and start talking about it. So it‘s definitely a shame that it‘s so restricted here.