I think a lot of people know about the making of the twilight films and some of the behind the scenes stories are pretty well known at this point.
But I have never heard anyone talk about the Catherine Hardwicke cupcake story, and I want more people to know about it:
No one wanted to make Twilight. The rights were picked up by Paramount (where they developed a script that deviated so far from the books Bella rides a fucking JET SKI and has a GUN) but then it got put in turnaround and it was left sitting on a shelf until the rights lapsed. It ended up at Summit entertainment. Who at that point was completely unknown, they had only distributed movies and their attempts at making movies (only two at the time) were massive failures.
No one wanted to make Twilight because no one thought a movie with a young female lead would make any money.
And thats how Catherine Hardwicke got the job.
She was the only one who wanted it.
And she wanted it because she had a vision; she liked that the book felt grounded, that it was set in an ordinary town about an ordinary girl. She liked that it was set in the Pacific Northwest, she loved the idea of large trees and mountains and moss, not a place you would put vampires typically. She thought the book captured how it feels the first time you fall in love.
And Catherine Hardwicke knows teenage girl cinema, her indie darling Thirteen is so intensely in the point of view of a teenage girl, its so focused and personal, she knew she could do that for Twilight.
No one really expected it to make money. During production, Catherine Hardwicke told the producers that online it was looking like there were a lot of fans for this movie, producers told her ‘it’s probably just a hundred girls blogging in Salt Lake City’.
It made over $400 million dollars at the box office.
When directors direct something like this, something that explodes in popularity and makes insane money, its not uncommon for the directors of those movies to get an extravagant present from the studio. Not extravagant as in a gift card, extravagant as in, like, literally a car.
After Twilights opening weekend, where it grossed over 69 million dollars, Catherine went into the studio office.
And they gave her a cupcake.
She is the first and only female director for any of the twilight films. Following this we have three male directors. The budgets exploded, someone, inexplicably, got the DP a tripod. They shot them like blockbusters because they made money like blockbusters. None of them feel the way the first twilight feels. It’s awkward, personal and absolutely gorgeous. Ironically, it’s the only one with a heartbeat.
(I highly recommend this podcast episode where Hardwicke talks more about this experience and goes into detail of her directing choices for Twilight: https://podtail.com/podcast/eli-roth-s-history-of-horror-uncut/7-catherine-hardwicke/)
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