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Compiled by: Jack Foley
Q. As a father of daughters, I thought this was one of the
scariest movies I had ever seen in my life. Can you start telling
us about your emotional journey, once you started to work with
Nikki [Reed] on the script and discovered just exactly what she
had been through?
CH. I've known Nikki since she was five-years-old and I used
to go out with her dad, and I knew her as a cute little fun kid,
with the 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, and her world has shrunk to about this big. 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 4.30, before Middle School, to do two and a half hours
of hair and make-up.
And she did it great, absolutely perfect, and she did it better
than J-Lo's team could have done, you know. 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
let's do drawings, 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, and I thought,
'oh my gosh', that could make her more vain. Not that Holly would
fit in that category, but I was a little bit worried, but 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 out 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, who were all at my house all of a sudden, 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. Did you ever feel that you might be opening up a different
sort of Pandora's Box for Nikki, by encouraging her to go centre
stage? Was she thick-skinned enough for any criticism she might
get?
CH: Most people, I think, have appreciated her performance.
As a first-time performance, I think she did a pretty credible
job; she hasn't got too much criticism that I know of. I think
it gave her some kind of confidence, on one level, that she could
actually first see that somebody listened to her, and cared about
her, and that she could accomplish something. And I think that
helped her have some self-esteem that she was maybe missing. I
think it helped her in some ways.
Q. Has she blossomed in a different kind of way than expected?
A. 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.
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.
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Q. Do you recall any major moments of teenage rebellion in
your life?
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. So did you have the night-time embargo where you weren't
allowed out in the evening's at that age?
CH: Well we had three teenagers in my family - my brother
and sister and I - and a big thing in south Texas was to wrap
houses in toilet paper... I don't know if that's a big thing over
here?
You run out and you get rolls of toilet paper and you, like, throw
them over the trees, and then the house is wrapped, okay. So that
was the big deal, and you'd steal the toilet paper first; that's
part of the excitement.
So we had, it seemed like for about a month, every single Thursday,
Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, our house was wrapped, and
finally my dad got so mad, he got out there and chopped down the
tree cos it was just no leaves anymore; it was just toilet paper
bits. And he said that we all had to stay home, every weekend
night, just watching and guarding the tree and the house. Of course,
that lasted about an hour, and then you'd sneak out the window,
so everybody has your things that you do.
Q. So if you were a good schoolgirl, when did your rebel years
happen?
CH: Well, here's the thing, my dad's a farmer, and we're from
a little, tiny hick town in south Texas, but my dad is kind of
wild. When we would get Time magazine and he would see a picture
of a punk, or something, my dad would try to dress up like a punk,
and so he encouraged us to do stuff [laughs]
Q. This is primarily a story about women, and I believe you
used a lot of women behind the camera as well. Was there a creative,
or political decision, and also would you carry on directing,
and would you carry on encouraging on women?
CH: Yes, yes, no and yes [laughs]. 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.
Or a long-time friend of mine was the editor, Nancy Richardson,
and people that really had a feel for the material, and just really
wanted to do it, because they weren't getting paid too much [laughs].
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...
As for question number two, oh yeah, yeah, I've been trying to
get my chance to direct for a long time, in between every movie
as designer. I've been writing my own scripts, and taking acting
classes and everything. Now I hope I got my chance and I'm working
on several other things, and they all have something with meat
on the bones, in a way. They are about some kind of difficult
or interesting subject.
Q. Do they tend to be stories about women?
CH: Well, several of them are, and then some of them have
men in them too [laughs].
Q. Does this, in any way, equate to the business that you're
in now? Is there peer pressure? And do you have to conform to
what other people think?
A: Rejection, for example, with this script, you were rejected
every single place, when we tried to get financing. Of course,
on a daily basis, but I do shave my legs now!
HH: I don't know. I guess I get used to it. I tend to think
much less about it than I used to. Now, it's kind of over. If
I call in and do a script and someone doesn't want me in their
movie, I just don't sweat it out like maybe I used to. I probably
don't take it as squarely as I did at one point, because I've
been doing it for so long that this has definitely changed.
Q. It's both ironic and quite sad that the film, in this country,
won't be seen by the kids of that age, 13, because it'll have
a certificate that bans them from seeing the movie. I wonder what
you think of that?
CH: I'm kind of surprised that it's more restricted here than
in the United States. Who do you guys have in control?
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 restricted with 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, 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.
Q. Do you share the same view, Miss Hunter?
HH: Oh yeah, I mean I was unaware that kids actually couldn't
see it here. I think some kids should definitely see it, with
a parent, but that would be something for the parent, or guardian,
in the US, to decide.
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