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FROM BEHIND THE SCENES TO BEHIND THE CAMERA
While attending the Sundance Film Festival in the midnineties, Catherine Hardwicke took in a screening of John Cassavetes' classic A Woman Under the Influence. Years later, her memories of the tragic Longhetti family would influence the making of her own film about a family in turmoil. Just as Cassavetes mined his life for the subject of his films, and used family and friends to make them, Hardwicke's feature thirteen, about a teenage girl's radical transformation from mommy's little girl to an out-of-control teen, closely resembles the events in the life of its star, co-writer, and close friend of Hardwicke's, thirteenyear-old Nikki Reed. Along with helping Reed's family at a difficult time, the film signifies Hardwicke's fifteen-year journey to the director's chair.
Studying architecture at the University of Texas in the early eighties, Hardwicke quickly realized that she was from a different mold than most people in the conservative world of architecture. "I was a little out there for architecture school," Hardwicke admits. "I would dress up like my building design and do a little mini striptease to show the evolution of the building and people were like, 'Wow, dude, architecture really doesn't encourage that type of creativity.'" After getting her degree, she enrolled in the UCLA graduate film school to feed her creative cravings and eventually won a FOCUS Award for an animated short she made there. Her architecture background led her to a career in production design, where she's established herself as one of the best. Having worked with the likes of Cameron Crowe, Richard Linklater, and David O. Russell, Hardwicke studied the directors of the films she designed in hopes of one day becoming a director herself. "I always told them I really want to make my own movies, and they were all very generous and gave me tips," says Hardwicke, who points out that being able to work with directors in the early stages of production proved beneficial. "As you're riding around with the director locationscouting, you hear a lot of conversations and you start piecing them together, so I think that...