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If anyone was right for the job, Catherine Hardwicke was.
"Lords of Dogtown," a project based on the 2001 documentary "Dogtown and Z-Boys" - about a radical band of Venice, Calif., skateboarders who turned the sport upside down (and sideways) in the 1970s - was in the works at Sony Pictures.
Hardwicke, who had just dazzled audiences and critics with her 2003 directing debut, a gritty exploration of teen sexuality called "Thirteen," knew many of the Z-Boys personally. She lived in Venice, by the beach.
"I surf at the same break they surf at, and I know that world," explains the filmmaker, who worked as a production designer through the '80s and '90s and built the ramps for the 1986 skateboard movie "Thrashin'."
The only problem: David Fincher, the director of "Seven" and "Fight Club," had been hired by Sony to direct the studio adaptation of Stacy Peralta's documentary.
"A lot of my friends were on it when David Fincher was in preproduction," recalls Hardwicke, 49, on the phone from Los Angeles. "They were working in the art department, and I was just getting more and more jealous every time they talked to me about it."
But then Fincher and Sony had a parting of the ways - a disagreement over budget and philosophy....