BELLINGHAM, Wash. — Director Catherine Hardwicke made movie history when she brought the bestselling book "Twilight" to the big screen.
Today the director does workshops at film festivals all over the world - including an upcoming one at Bellingham's Cascadia International Women’s Film Festival - helping female filmmakers make epics of their own. Her reason?
"Well I think we've been having the male gaze for many, many years, over a hundred years in film, thousands of years in the world,” Hardwicke said.
Hardwicke's first film featured the female gaze: Oscar nominated "Thirteen" - a dark coming-of-age movie that won her best director at Sundance, and scared parents of teens everywhere.
She followed up with "Lords of Dogtown," capturing how a handful of California kids revolutionized skateboarding in the '70s and got famous doing it.
But she's best known for "Twilight" and she's good with that.
“I love that it's a movie that people love, it's pretty great,” Hardwicke said.
She only directed the first movie in the series but Twi-hards maintain hers is the best.
Scenes like the vampire baseball game are "Twilight" canon because of Hardwicke's supermassive commitment to her vision.
Evening asked her via Zoom if she knew the scene would become legend:
“Well I wanted it to be as great as I could make it, and with Supermassive Black Hole, the song, and baseball camp training, it was kinda our bonding experience for the actors,” she said, adding that the training was needed because the only person in the cast with a clue about playing baseball was Jackson Rathbone (Jasper), who showed off some bat handling moves in the scene.
“So, we were just really just trying to figure out what would be different for vampires when they play baseball? And we had so much fun doing it!,” she said.
The movie knocked it out of the park financially also, grossing more than $408 million at the box office, "Twilight" remains her most successful film - so far. Hardwicke continues to make movies. And continues to encourage other women to do the same.
“We need to see more women out there, faces of women doing stuff, women directing and we want to hear more stories about women,” Hardwicke said.
Catherine Hardwicke will be the honored guest on April 26th at the Cascadia International Women’s Film Festival in Bellingham. Her movies "Miss You Already" and "Twilight" will also be screened at the festival. Click here for tickets and more information.
KING 5's Evening celebrates the Northwest. Contact us: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Email.