Catherine Hardwicke Quotations

I could go my whole life and say, 'I'm not going to do anything with a love triangle,' but whenever you have a romance, there has to be some obstacle, and even the dumbest romantic comedies have a love triangle or something.

People love to talk, so let them have fun talking,

So many images are saying to girls, 'Show a lot of skin and look gorgeous and sexy.'

I try to learn on each project, try to really feel what the characters are feeling.

There's so many versions of 'Red Riding Hood.' It goes back 700 years.

I was always trying to do architectural jam sessions. But it's not quite as easy as singing or playing a guitar, so I would always see wonderful live musicians and just envy them that I wasn't in that medium.

A great screenplay makes everybody step up to the bar and deliver.

Actually, yeah, I am an artist. I draw.

After 'Inconvenient Truth,' we hit a tipping point where almost everybody in America cares about the environment.

As a director, we work ridiculously hard on every detail, and we do everything to the billionth degree, and mostly people notice nothing.

As a filmmaker and film student, I think it's really interesting to hear what a director did and how they figured out how to do things.

As the director, you cannot control what people do after hours or in their trailers or on break. Why would you want to? But you can't.

Before 'Twilight' was greenlit, I had four projects at four studios. I worked super-hard on all of them, but 'Twilight' was greenlit first.

Can you have it all, as a woman? Can you be a creative artist and have stability and a home life? How much can you stretch yourself as an artist?

For a film, when you condense, you don't want to keep going back to the same setting over and over.

How do you fight when you're trying to pull somebody's arms off or twist their head off? That makes for a different kind of fight.

I don't like the sterility of the casting office.

I had a bunch of other projects that I worked really hard on after 'Twilight,' and the magic just didn't hit.

I respect all the teenagers I work with and feel that everything they have to say is just as valuable as anything I have to say.

I think at any age, you can stay open and creative and excited.

Kids have to experiment a little or figure out where they belong.

Nowadays, to get a movie greenlit, you have to make an incredible effort.

Of course I went and got 'Breaking Dawn' at midnight the night it came out and read it instantly. I was like, 'Yes!'

Obviously, 'Twilight' had its own alchemy that was amazing, just phenomenal. Nobody thought it was going to make any money. Paramount wouldn't make the movie. Fox wouldn't make it. Nobody wanted to do it.

My first movie, 'Thirteen,' and it was very real - almost too real. It was very gritty, with raw human emotion. I'd love to do something like that again.

I have a bunch of movies that are, like, two minutes from being green-lit, or that they've maybe even told me are green-lit. But I never believe it until I see the money.

Starting with 'Thirteen,' my known technique is to cast the lead, then find someone with whom they have incredible chemistry.

Stephenie Meyer said she's ready to move on from 'Twilight,' but you never know.

People are nervous about their kids, and they're worried about the disintegration of families and the type of media culture they're living in.

I still like the idea of having an intimate experience with a movie, but I love watching stuff on my iPad. It's close, and I feel like I'm a part of it, so maybe that makes more sense in some cases.

When you're in a creative flow with somebody - and I had this back in architecture school - you're just so passionate about what you're doing, and if that other person is just as passionate, you'll be madly in love with them. It's just that thrill of creating.

The fact that men and women are nominated this year in films that women have directed is good for women filmmakers generally,

There are some moments where you're so depressed, you cannot see the way, and you're like, 'Whatever. Bite me.' I think all directors feel that way sometimes.

You don't pay the same price for a Ferrari as you do for a Honda Accord. But for some reason, for movie tickets, you're asked to pay the same price for 'Avatar' as you are for some $2 million movie, which is kind of a weird thing when you think about it.

I worked for 20 directors as a production designer, most male. I was on the set to witness firsthand a range of sometimes atrocious emotions - well-documented firings, yellings, fights between directors and actors, hookers, abusive things, budget overages, lack of preparation. A man gets a standing ovation for crying because he's so sensitive, but a woman is shamed.

People love to talk, so let them have fun talking, I think they have an interesting, wonderful connection, so you knowWhat does dating mean? I don't know. I couldn't say. People love to talk, so let them have fun talking.

You can't really just think, "Oh, I want to make something that is going to appeal to every single person in the world." You have to just try to make a movie that comes from your heart.

For Twilight, I wasn't thinking it was going to be a crazy success, or anything. It had been rejected by all the major studios. Nobody wanted to make it and they didn't think it would make any money, but I read the book and I thought, "Wow, I want to capture that feeling of just being crazy in love. I wonder if I can do that in a film." That was my challenge.

I thought, "If I can make you feel what it's like for that first super-passionate love, other people might like that too," and, of course, they did.

Even after I had just done Twilight, which made $400 million at the worldwide box office, I could not get financing for three or four projects that I really loved and I thought people would love because they didn't fit some studio or investor's model of thinking, "This will definitely make money." It's a business and a film does potentially cost millions of dollars, and they have to think that they're going to get their money back somehow.

Hardly any filmmakers can just make anything they want. Obviously, there are some exceptions, like Steven Spielberg, but he has that mainstream mentality and the kinds of films he loves to make are the kind that appeal to this big, mass audience.

Since I was a little kid, I did like fairy tale. I did dress up like Little Red Riding Hood. My mom had to make me a cape.

I thought it would be quite a challenge to direct a mystery thriller. I hadn't really done something like that.

We read about secret lives that people have on the Internet, or alternate lives of a serial killer where the whole family didn't know that their dad or their brother or their child was that. There are all the things in our heart that no one really knows, and I thought that that was interesting territory to explore.

You actually do confront your dark side, your impulses, or your feelings of sibling rivalry in Cinderella or whatever. You admit that they exist and then you work through them and conquer them and come out living happily ever after having learned something. That's one reason why the fairy tales keep having traction and meaning.

We love those beautiful, Latin American stories where there is an element that's more mysterious and wonderful. I think as a child a lot of us love the idea of the star and more of the supernatural elements.

I was told 50 percent of the population gets cancer. Everybody is going to be affected.

When you're in the editing process, you try different things and you get creative ideas.

As a director, you try to do things that are going to touch the human experience somehow, and emotions that mean something to people. You search for those projects and you hope to realize the potential in a project.

If a scene doesn't work on three levels - it's not advancing the story, the characters, and telling me something new - then put it in the trash.

I like doing commentary. As a filmmaker and film student, I think it's really interesting to hear what a director did and how they figured out how to do things. I often like the technical commentaries myself.

When I talk to film students, I always say, "Buy the DVDs and listen to the commentaries, look at the making of, look at the behind-the-scenes," because that's such a great learning tool.

It's interesting for me to do the commentary with the actors because, as a director, you're so in your own world that you see it from your perspective, your issues and what you were trying to do, and then it's really very fun to hear their perspective on how it was to do a particular scene or how they felt, and sometimes, I didn't even know that, at the time.

Usually, we have some of those nostalgic moments like, "Oh my god, I can't believe we survived that day," because filmmaking is such a wild roller coaster ride.

As a director, when you cut scenes from a movie, you do it with the idea that it is making the story move forward and progress. Sometimes, you don't realize that something is actually a sidetrack for the story, or it takes the tension out of a scene.

As a director, you've got to have quite a few projects going because you never know which one will actually come together with the financing and get the green light.

When I was just five years old, I loved the scary layer and the symbolical power of the red cloak. I made my mom make me that red cloak, and I had to wear it on Halloween, two years in a row.

I can go back to my very first movie, Thirteen, and think about that exact moment when I saw Nikki Reed and Evan Rachel Wood do their chemistry read audition together. It just came alive. I was filming it with a video camera and I was like, "I know I can make a good movie now."

Sometimes, a scene goes on too long and, with this being a suspense story and murder mystery that you're trying to discover through her heightened paranoia, you don't want scenes that take you on a tangent. Sometimes, you love those scenes, but you know that it's better not to be in the overall film. So, I'm not sad that they're not in the main movie, but I do think it's fun for people to get to watch them, if they want to.

Some of the best stuff in all my movies has been improv.

I think it's true that the more sanitized a person is, you can't really relate to that person.

I just wrote a really cool script. It's called "One Track Mind." It's an origin story about the most successful and the most foul-mouthed, outrageous songwriter in history.

I used to be an architect, so I have a series I am working on with USA Network that I created and am co-writing.

I really wanted our male characters to be a lot stronger. We gave them careers, lives.

People are more likely to help other people who look exactly like them. They will hang out at the bar and on the golf course with them.

Now there are three guys who directed "Twilight" films that had a gross of a gazillion dollars. All those "Hunger Games" guys, the "Divergent" guys. All those people. When they are looking for the next big director, they see they have a track record. So there's 20 people that spun off of "Twilight" that have more qualifications than any woman.

I directed the first "Twilight" movie. It was in my contract that I could have gone on to do the other films, but I didn't feel as connected to the other books.

Of course, the male-directed films make more money.

Most of the female-directed films, if they got distribution, would have fewer dollars to support the film and play in fewer theaters than the men. Because the female-directed films go to smaller companies. So the gap starts widening.

The truth is, most of those female stories that are contending for Oscars are directed by men. Let's be honest. I looked at the 44 Oscar contenders in Variety that someone wrote up - there was not one directed by a woman. All the ones that were getting an Oscar pitch with the money and everything behind them were by men.

Meryl [Stripe]spoke out about the low percentage of female critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Why are there 760 male critics and just 168 women? You are immediately [biased] on what kind of films you are being told to go see. What are you told are good films? Male films.

When I read the 'Twilight' book, I didn't see it as fantasy. I saw it as a love story.

Every filmmaker's just going to keep trying to make it the best you can make it: make it as potent and interesting and entertaining and exciting and tough and sexy as you can.

Every day I'm intrigued and sometimes outraged by things that no one talks about. Current is a chance to be heard, and send think-bombs out into the world.

There are 2,000 young-adult novels published a year, and hardly any of them ever break out.

I've worked on really big budget movies as a designer - 'Vanilla Sky,' 'Three Kings;' I've been in that world, and you can just see people get nervous.

The script for 'Thirteen' is tight, and not because of the now-famous six day writing spree, but more because it started out as 15 pages longer.

You have a big success, and it's still not easy to make a movie.

What does 'dating' mean? I don't know. I couldn't say.

You don't watch 'A Beautiful Mind' and say, 'This is how every mathematician is.'

Everything is so aggressively marketed at every age: if you're not in Baby Gap, you're not cool. That's how everybody's grown up, so they don't even know it could be another way.

Some directors I worked with didn't even know how to read a blueprint, understand a plan.

Back in medieval times, Victorian repression hadn't come in yet. People were bawdy and wild and more in touch with their true natures. If you look at the Bosch paintings or Bruegel, you see, when people are dancing, they're totally cutting loose.

Zombies, mummies - they're disgusting and gross. You don't want to make out with a mummy. At least, I don't.

I had always liked, well, who didn't love Lestat and fall in love with 'Interview with the Vampire,' and 'Nosferatu,' and Coppola's 'Dracula' with the awesome costumes? So I loved all that.

If you decide to tell a kid that looks don't matter, she can prove you wrong every day. Because they see it everywhere. That is age-old, going back to the Greeks, but now we're bombarded nonstop.

I've had meetings where there were literally, like, 12 angry men in a room and me. And even when everyone shot me down, I somehow dug in one more time.

That gets you access to double to pool of actors, funding, musicians, whatever you need,

As you study vampire legend throughout history, it goes back to almost every culture. South Africa, Indonesia, crazy places have that legend and that idea of immortality.

I'll literally pay three Hollywood readers who don't know me to read my scripts under the radar and give cold comments. And at the early screenings of my movies, I'll hand out questionnaires that can be filled out anonymously so people can be brutally honest because, to your face, they won't be.

I hope I haven't grown up. The cliche for all artists is that you don't want to lose that child inside. I think when you get sedentary and set in your ways, you can lose a lot of that spontaneity and creativity. I hope I'm holding on to that.

Sometimes, you don't realize that something is actually a sidetrack for the story, or it takes the tension out of a scene.

The boys in junior high get really lewd and say outrageous stuff to the girls. If somebody yelled the stuff at me that I've heard at junior high schools I've visited, I'd be scared and humiliated.

I don't think about age. It's more about the spirit. I've known Nikki since she was five. And Nikki is a special spirit.

I don't like to watch a movie where it's just kind of like all one note, dee-dee-dee-dee. I want spikes of adrenaline and highs and lows and exciting tension release.

Being in construction my whole life - I was trained as an architect - I always had to work with guys. And I always did my homework and then challenged them to figure it out faster than me. They don't want to be shown up by a woman.