WHAT WENT WRONG - Twilight

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

It's easy to bash Twilight, with its glittering, brooding, and mouth-breathing; but love it or hate it, the highly anticipated adaptation crushed at the box office. This week Chris & Lizzie explore the numerous obstacles that stood in the way of director Catherine Hardwicke and why the remaining films in this young adult, female-driven franchise were all directed by men.Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why won't you just make me a vampire? I've never been more excited to talk about a movie than I am about today's choice. I cracked open a bottle of your wife's wine that you guys don't drink. I watched the movie. It was certainly not my first time viewing it. I can't wait to hear about what I think was your first time viewing it. But before we get there, we have a couple of shoutouts for some lovely, and also not so lovely reviews that we got.

So I'll let you do that. But keep it brief, Chris, because I want to get to Twilight. Keeping it brief, guys. Thank you for the ratings and reviews on iTunes. We rely on these. A couple good ones. Five stars well deserved from transducers.

Had to look up what that was. He listens to a variety of podcasts, but ours is his or her favorite. Doesn't actually say that, but going to assume it. Says it's a relief to listen to Lizzie and Chris inform, analyze, and chuckle. their way through critiques of movies they loved or hated. They say we have appealing voices.

Oh, that's good. I actually feel like I have a horrible laugh. I will call that out now. David sometimes puts it on repeat when he's editing and boy is it awful. So I'm sorry for that. Helen Killer 89, very interesting riff on Helen Keller. Party on Dudes. Says the podcast is unbelievably good. We got a happy birthday. That was great. We did get a request to go into more detail on the backstory. of source material. Get ready for today, my friend, because I've read them all. Yep, we're doing that for you today. That is for cardamom churios.

Thank you for the review. We're going to give you a deep dive in the way you might not have wanted. And then DLDACA did feel that there's an unprofessional quality to the podcast due to eating and drinking sparkly water. Yeah, that's exclusively neat that they're calling out there. Try to limit. We're going to try to limit that going forward. I have my non-sparkly water right in front of me. But we, guys, we don't want to make you listen to us eat, but we thought you'd like it.

So I guess we're sorry. And you know, it's just one voice saying they didn't like it. Who is to say that there weren't tens more that did like it? It was followed by four ASMR fetishists who are all like, oh my God, this is great. They're my audience, so I'm going to play to them. No, we are. We appreciate the review. D-L-D-H-C-A.

Guys, that's all on the review front. Please keep them coming. We do really appreciate them. And Lizzie, I must say, today's movie, which can I reveal? Yeah, I already did. For this first time. Today's movie is Twilight, which I had never seen before. Hell yeah.

And I mean, I'd seen like a couple scenes from it, but I'd never seen the full movie. My wife had never seen it either. We watched it together for the first time. And I can tell you that no sex happened on screen. and no sex habit after watching this movie either. And David, you could feel free to cut that. But this is like the least sexual movie. Like it's so horny yet not.

It's a very, it feels like Mormonism. It does. Like that, I mean, we'll get to it. But I will say, had a very fun experience watching this movie. Yeah, I want to say right at the top here, for anybody who is coming to this podcast as a place to hear, people trash twilight uh that's not what you're going to get because quite frankly i both i don't even want to say i ironically love it i i love all of these movies um and and the books and i'll get

into that in a little bit um i'm aware that they're a bit of a mess but i think that that they are hilarious and amazing so um if you're here for that just get out of the room now because this is not for you if you are a twy hard don't worry i i think that we're going to do you just and also if you're a Twyheart who was mad at Catherine Hardwick, stick around because I think you might owe her an apology. And that's all I have to say about that. Well, Lizzie, let's dive in. You better hold on tight spider monkey. Okay, Twilight was released November 17th, 2008. That's the L.A. premiere and then I think it was wide released a couple days later. It is based on the novel of the same name by Stephanie Meyer. More on that in a little bit. Directed by Catherine Hardwick,

starring Robert Pattinson, of course, as Edward, Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan, Peter Fassanelli as Carlisle, Anna Kendrick as Jessica, I think, was her name. Taylor Lautner, who honestly, we're not even going to get to a bunch in this episode. Anna Kendrick, low-key, best part of the movie, just saying. She's very funny. Taylor Lautner as Jacob, Nikki Reid, Elizabeth Reeser, Kellyn Lutz,

Jackson, Rathbone, and many, many more as various members of the Colin Klan. Now, the basic plot, if I may, sum this up, is Bella Swan, a clumsy bland and yet irresistibly hot teenager moves from Phoenix, Arizona to live with her father in wet, cold, icky forks, Washington. Shockingly... I just realized they actually, she has no character traits. Yeah, yeah, I'll get into that in a second. I have a theory about that. It's not like she's good at something or she's into something. No, no.

They don't do anything with her. No, she's bad at everything, which is part of the appeal. So, shockingly, things start to turn around when the hottest guy in school negs are into falling in love with him. But plot twist, he's a cold, sparkly vampire, and hijinks loosely involving werewolves, vampire baseball, and prom ensue. And I love it. It's, there are a lot of choices in this movie. That's what the kids say these days. And the baseball sequence, which hopefully we'll get to later.

Yeah, we're going to get to a lot of the action sequences. Also, using Muse. I have to say right at the top, I forget every time before I watch this movie how insane the soundtrack is. It's bonkers. Yeah. It is an angsty set of needle drops. I mean, they're great, though. Like, I have to say, they chose, like, really good ones.

Now, let's get into a little bit of background on the novels themselves before we jump into the development of the movie. I do want to say to that one reviewer a while back who got mad at me for saying that Bonfire of the Vanities was too long, I'd like to proudly announce that I have read all of the Twilight books, which I assure you are longer when combined than Bonfire of the Vanities. And boy, are they a hoot. I read them prior to this podcast just for fun. I read them in college. We actually all watched, we watched like a bootleg version of Twilight in my roommate's bedroom. And I just remember all of us looking at each other and continuing to say, what is this?

And then we proceeded to watch it like every year from there on out. Yeah. Twilight, the novel, was released in October of 2005. It was, as we said, written by Stephanie Meyer. Within one month of its release, it had reached number five on the New York Times bestseller list and eventually reached number one. The book would top the bestseller list again three years later when the first movie was released. The second book, the same thing. Second book, I think, actually knocked one of the Harry Potter books off of the top of the bestseller. Yeah, I remember it was like the Twilight Harry Potter Hunger Games vying for... Hunger Games actually comes a little later, which is interesting.

And it does very much feel like it was born of Twilight in some ways. So Stephanie Meyer has said that the idea for Twilight came to her in a dream. Basically, a girl fell in love with a vampire who loved her, but also wanted to drain her of her blood. So that's pretty standard vampire fair. I was going to say, like, took a dream sequence to land at that plot line. All right, fair enough. The plot of parts of Dracula. Honey, I just had the most original dream.

Whatever. She wrote the book in about three months, and she did it just for the fun of it. She was doing it because she enjoyed it. Honestly, good for her. Yes. That's incredible. Seriously. Made it a ton of money.

Oh, you have no idea how much money she made. I don't. So she literally just writes this thing because she's having fun. She does it quickly. She ends up sending it to her sister, who is like, this is some hot teen vampire money. and suggests that Stephanie send it out to some literary agents. She sends out inquiry letters to a bunch, and she was either ignored or outright rejected by all but one of them.

And the one that responded, it was actually the mistake of a newly hired assistant who didn't realize that YA novels usually are significantly shorter than Twilight was. So normally it would not have gotten through the door anywhere. But this one assistant read it anyway, liked it, gave it to her boss, and that boss ended up signing Stephanie Meyer. So she ends up getting $750,000 for the first three books alone. There are four books in the whole series, by the way, but five movies. Now, interestingly, the book actually receives very positive reviews when it comes out,

which is not necessarily the same sentiment that the movie is met with. But the book is kind of heralded as like an interesting take on teenage sexuality and the sort of like repression that teens, and I think particularly teens who are parts of more strict religious groups, yeah, can feel about sex. So that is interesting. And when we're referring to the religious aspects of the book, it is worth mentioning. So Stephanie Meyer is Mormon. Although the book itself, I don't think intentionally necessarily was imbueing it with a lot of sort of religious undertones, except that they are present. It does deal a lot with original sin, the soul, temptation, good and evil.

It also opens with a quote from the Bible, so I don't think her argument that it's not a religious thing necessarily works. Something to remember about Twilight and the movies themselves is that they opened the door for young adult or YA content to become mainstream and known as a massive moneymaker. Like when you're thinking about Harry Potter, I'm aware that that is YA, but it's not... But it wasn't YA like this.

That was YA. It was actually younger when they started. And so we grew up with them, and it was far more chaste than this. Like, Harry Potter was an adventure book. This is a book about teen sexuality or the lack thereof. Exactly. And, yeah, so it is very different in that sense. It is, and you're totally right. It targets an older demographic than I think we'd really seen before with any massive franchise.

And think about what came after Twilight in terms of the Hunger Games, Divergent, and, of course, This is not YA, but eventually 50 Shades of Gray is born of the Twilight franchise. It's all just like, let me imagine my younger self in this very sexy situation. Yeah, well, the whole thing is, you know, it's, he wants her so badly. Like, they want to have sex, but to have sex. It's life and death. Yeah, it would kill her if they did it. Which is such as it is in real life.

No. What? It is, yeah, it is a bit of a messed up message, I think. No, and there's a very famous scene. They're in her bedroom and it's getting hot and heavy. And then all of a sudden she pushes him off of her and he's up against the wall being all angsty. And then Carmel looked at me and she was like, oh, my God, this movie's so Mormon.

Like all of a sudden when my wife grew up with a lot of Mormon kids in her community, so she knew them quite well. But yeah, it was striking in that moment. And it's like it's all about the family. family and I don't know, it was interesting. Yeah. No, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on. Also, I just want to warn you up front, Chris.

I'm probably going to make you watch more of these at some point because there's just, there's too much. I really didn't, I didn't think this was a good movie, but I didn't mind watching it. Like, I enjoyed parts of it. It's very fun to watch. It's very fun. Yeah, it's absurd. So let's rewind a little bit to the spring of 2004.

So this is before Twilight's been released. Stephanie Meyer has a very hot. manuscript now that she has the agent who's been shopping it around. Paramount Pictures steps in in, I believe, a bidding war and snaps up the film rights. Now, Paramount begins developing the project all before the books even get released, which is important to remember because their version of Twilight looks a little different than the end result that we know and love. It was actually a full-blown action movie, the way that they were developing it. According to Twilight producer Mark Morgan, there was a whole plot line involving the FBI, tracking the vampires, hiding in trees,

and then getting picked off one by one by the vamps. I kind of want to watch that movie. It also featured Bella fighting back much more prominently, a change I actually wouldn't have minded seeing. Her dad dying, which is rude. I love Charlie. And her becoming a vampire in the first movie, which, as all of us know, doesn't happen until the fourth movie, fifth movie.

I was expecting it to happen at the end of this one. They really set it up. She gets like the arm bite. She's like turning into a zombie. No, no, they really drag that out. The whole rest of the plot is her being like, why won't you just make me a vampire? And then Robert Pattinson's like,

I don't want to take away your soul. And that's it. I just told you the whole rest of the other movies. And I'm still going to make you watch them. Okay. Catherine Hardwick described Paramount's initial development as the CIA coming after the vampires on jet skis. Hey, that sounds fun.

And also Bella being a track and field star. So it's interesting, something you called out earlier about her having like, no. That's cool. Give her something to do. No. So she really doesn't in the book. And like this obviously veered very far off of the book, which again would be strange, except for the fact that the book hadn't come out yet and didn't have the same kind of call following.

Right. So they were looking at this more as like a jumping off point versus something you had to remain extremely faithful to. Also, the thing about Bellaswan very briefly, and there have been a lot of sort of think pieces written about this that are very fun to read. But I think that her being a boring sack of nothing is actually very intentional. And the point behind that is that it offers kind of a shell for... Yeah, the audience can be, like, or the reader can put themselves into her. Exactly. The whole time you're thinking, well, if he loves this bag of air, then he's definitely going to love me.

So you end up inserting yourself. into the story. I'm just like Bella, but I also like turtles. He's going to love me. I have something interesting about me. Exactly. Morgan, the producer, also called out that this version of Twilight almost certainly would not have landed in the hands of an indie director like Catherine Hardwick. They were going a very, very different direction. Now, Chris, did you see Paramount's logo at the top of Twilight? No, Summit. There you go. A subsidiary of Lionsgate. Well, it was not a subsidiary of Lionsgate at the time. So yes, you very famously see the logo for Summit and Entertainment, and here is why. Boy, was this fun. The script, the script that we just described,

written by Mark Lord, gets completely drowned in development hell, which you may be able to tell, considering we're hearing things about jet skis and FBI agents and trees and like, it's just, it's a mess. In 2006, so the book has already come out and they just keep kind of sitting on this, Paramount loses interest and puts Twilight in turnaround. And really quickly, just what turnaround is for folks because we might not have covered it before. So if a studio spends time and money developing a project, but they feel our take's not working or we can't take on the risk of making this or our slate is full, there could be any number of reasons why they decide. And it's not necessarily that they think it's a bad property. It could just be like, you know what,

we don't have the right people to make this or we have a competing project that we don't want to get in the way of. They put it, it's called putting into the turnaround. And what that basically means is they're offering it up to other studios to buy. But they have to buy out the quote dead money of the initial studios investment into the project. So if they've spent a ton of money on drafts and revisions with writers, you could have millions of dollars against this script. So it means that the upfront initial investment on top of buying the right, you know,

the underlying rights, the IP from Paramount, is going to be higher because you have to buy out the amount of money that they've spent on a script thus far. So when projects get put into turnaround, it can be really dangerous for the project because it's even less appealing than it was when it first started out because somebody's whiffed, you know, kind of struck out on it. That's not a good sign. And you have to pay this higher upfront cost to get moving again with it. Now, Karen Rosenfeld, an exec at Paramount, who still really believes in the project, tries to broker a deal to co-produce it with Fox. But again, the deal falls through. is hesitant about the budget that they think would be required to do this. They just don't want to do it. So the

really important thing to note about what Chris just said is that they still hold the rights. So it's in turnaround because they're kind of offering it up, but they still hold the rights to the, um, the movie rights to the book. So Rosenfeld has a lunch meeting with the president of summit who casually asks her what Paramount project she'd love to bring with her. Uh, she was obviously thinking about bouncing. And she mentions Twilight. Now, he reads it, realizes it is a pile of money. And then basically, they just sit back and wait for Paramount to keep twiddling their thumbs until April of 2007 when Paramount lets the rights expire.

So Summit literally immediately swoops in and buys them. And probably April 2007, we just hit a recession. Paramount's looking at like, what do we not really feel like we need to like re-up on? And so they let it expire. Yeah. Actually, it's interesting. full articles about like the witch hunt that happened at Paramount after Twilight was released, because they were trying to figure out how they let this happen. That they literally spent the

money to buy a lot of money to buy these book rights, let them expire and let somebody else buy them. And spent the money to get the script written with the jet skis and everything. So somebody effed up big time on Paramount's side. Now, Summit had started in the early 90s as mostly a distributor, I think, but then starting in the early 2000s, they were trying to make their mark as a full-fledged production company. And with Twilight, they would find the franchise that would finally put them on the map, much to Paramount. It was basically, they were kind of copying the model that New Line Cinema did. If you guys go back and listen to our episode on like Island of Dr. Moreau or town and country, you can listen to New Line Cinema kind of did the same thing. Now, Summit knows they need to act

fast because thanks to Paramount sitting around, they're already behind the ball a little bit. The book has been out. Right. It's been out for two years at this point. So they hire Melissa Rosenberg, who will get to in just a second, to start writing the screenplay basically immediately. They're like, we needed a draft in like three weeks. And then they hire Catherine Hardwick to direct. Now, Catherine Hardwick was best known at the time for 13, a movie that I love. And I watched when I was 13, which is probably too young to watch that movie. Too young to watch that movie. Loved it.

And Lords of Dogtown, also pretty fun. Now, at the time, Rosenberg was also known for a party of five, the O.C, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, and her first feature, Step Up. She's amazing. I didn't know she wrote Step Up. Yeah, she also goes on to do Jessica Jones and a bunch of other stuff. So Summit had actually handed Catherine Hardwick four or five scripts prior to all of this, including Twilight, and she turned all of them down. But then she actually goes back and she reads the book. She really responds to the book itself and asked to take the project on provided she can rework the script with Melissa Rosenberg, which they do.

And they actually work really well together. You do have Catherine Hardwick to blame for the sort of Bella's voiceover narrative thing that's happening throughout the movie. I was wondering. That is her. They actually also apparently worked really well with Stephanie Meyer. Like, you'll fans notice that it was an extremely faithful adaptation to the book almost to a fault. To a fault, yeah, in certain places. But Stephanie Meyer was very happy with like how much they let her have input,

especially given that she was not a super experienced writer at that time, and they still really wanted her there. I'll be honest, there are a few lines of dialogue that I'm guessing must have been from the book because no good screenwriter would have allowed them to stay in that movie. She actually talks about this. There's one in particular, which is the one about the lion and the land. The lion and the land. Oh, thank God.

Because when I heard that I was like, there's no way that the screenwriter wrote that. But what it was is like, and this has to do with the fact that Summit or that Paramount sat on the rights for so long is it had become such a, and it already existed in people's heads so much that Stephanie Meyer. Can you drop the line? It's like, well, it not even dropped the line. She read the scene and she was like, Melissa Rosenberg's line actually was way better than what I had written. Like, she's a better writer than me. However, people have that line tattooed on their bodies. Like, they're going to be pissed if they watch this movie and we've changed it.

And you know what? She's right. Like for the people that really did, she's 100% right. And I think it's interesting that she's like, yeah, Melissa's a better writer than me. Now, two things put stress on the production right away. First of all, it's 2007, which means the writer's strike is right around the corner. Hold on. First rule of what went wrong. If there's a writer strike pending, don't rush the project to finish it before the writer's strike happens. But they do. So Melissa Rosenberg is furiously trying to finish the script for Twilight. and turn it in before the strike starts. She's actually a strike captain and was heavily involved in supporting the WGA.

So she was not... Hold the line. I'll be right there. She was like, finishing up the last drafts. The second thing is that they want to make this movie really cheap. They just didn't really have the money to do this movie the way it needed to be done. So Summit comes to Hardwick initially with a budget of around $41 million. That is including what it called.

to buy the rights from Paramount and marketing. So they must have had like a $25 or $30 million production budget. Yes. That's crazy. It's almost nothing. I mean, the Harry Potter movies are like, you know, pushing $100 million at that point. Yes. So when you watch this movie and you're like, wow, how, why does this look like this?

This is why it looks like that. It is some its fault. I think it's well shot. It is well shot. There's just no big set pieces. Well, it's extremely rushed and production is as well. So based on what you know, you just said that there's, actual budget was probably somewhere around 25 or 30 million, go ahead and subtract 4 million

more from that because they came to her right before production started and said that you need to cut 4 million more dollars. So she goes back to work furiously cutting the most expensive stuff they can, all of the big action sequences. Which, by the way, guys, cutting $4 million from a movie that size, losing over 10% of your budget is virtually impossible. And the reason is most of your money is tied in in what's called above the line spending. That's your producer. user's fees, you're directing salary, and what you're paying, your top billed actors. No matter how many scenes you cut, those numbers don't change. Your insurance doesn't really change. Your marketing costs obviously aren't going to change. So at the end of the day,

all you're doing is you can cut shooting days, VFX, and stunt work, basically. But your shooting day is going to be between $75,000 and $150,000, you know, a day. So you've got to cut a lot of days to get to $4 million. So they do, and they also cut one of the things you just mentioned, which I'll get to in a moment, but all told the budget that the total budget for Twilight was $37 million for everything. It's crazy. Now, you may wonder what they cut.

As Chris just mentioned, one of the biggest things you can cut is any VFX, which is exactly what they do. They actually cut all of the CGI from this movie, which I did not know prior to the. this research. Everything that you see in this movie is practical wirework. Oh, right, when they're like running up trees. Yes. He's giving her a piggyback ride up the mountain. Including that banana's moment where she hops on his back and they shoot up the mountain. All of a sudden, it becomes Georgia the jungle. I love it. And it is so shocking. Well, they had to completely rework that. That was supposed to be. And she's like completely nonpluss. Yeah, you can tell it's like this like,

they do this like speed up effect, you know, and that's, it's very simple how they end up accomplishing what they need to accomplish. Yeah, it looks kind of insane, but they did do it. And also that shot where you see them at the top of the tree on the, that's real. That's not them. Yeah, I thought that looks pretty good. The stuff where they were like at the tops of the trees, I was like, that, I was impressed. I thought that looked pretty great. It was the speed up stuff where I was like, this looks like zoomed up security camera. It's like, that was a little rugged. So let's actually hear Kristen Stewart talking about the experience of them having to do all of the stunts practically. And there was like a couple, a couple days of being on a harness attached to Rob.

It was really cool that we didn't have to be on a green screen. I mean, most of us, you read the script and you're like, okay, effects movie, green screen movie, but we didn't have the money to do that. We really pulled it off in person, so. But the wirework, though, I mean, that's, is that exhausting? I've always heard people say how tiring it is just hanging around. It really is. Yeah?

Yeah. Pressure points, armpits, start to kill. Yeah. Your armpits. I got to say, I turn to Carmel. the middle of this movie and I was like, this feels like we're watching Kristen Stewart do a Kristen Stewart impression in this movie because it was like before I think Chris, it was Pete Kristen Stewart doing the like Kristen Stewart like hiding her head, you know, angsty sort of thing. It was

I don't know. I just found it very charming. It was very funny. She's super young, which is something else to call out. Oh no, she was like 16 or 17 I think in this movie. Yeah. Yeah. And she's good. It wasn't bad. I was just, it just was funny. It is there's some moments in this that a lot of this. So Kristen Stewart is hired first of the two leads. And then they're basically doing chemistry tests off of her to find their Edward. Now, a couple other people got extremely close to booking the part over Robert Pattinson. And in fact, Ben Barnes, who you'll recognize now as the sort of asshole brother-in-law of Jimmy Simpson on Westworld.

But he was in the Chronicles of Narnia prior to this. He was actually the frontrunner ahead of Robert Pattinson. The other person who was in strong contention was Jackson Rathbone, who ends up playing Jasper. Oh, who plays a different vampire. Yeah. Right. Now, it seems pretty clear that the chemistry test is 100% the reason that Patinson got the part over Ben Barnes.

He actually almost lost the job a couple of times because nobody was convinced that he was the right person for this job except for Catherine Hardwick and Kristen Stewart. Now, the first time is when he shows up to a meeting with the summit executives looking really rough. Catherine Hardwick was like he showed up with a dirty shirt, like looking rough as hell with a really bad hair-dye job from his last project. And the executives are basically sitting there just going, this man is not hot. I don't understand. So Catherine Harwick and Kristen Stewart both continue to champion him and they are the reason that he holds on to the part. Now, production begins with pretty much all the filming actually happening in Portland, Oregon, which surprised me. I thought this was going to be in Canada, but it was. not. Robert Pattinson actually almost gets fired again once they are already shooting because he is frowning too much during the production. So let's hear him telling the story himself. This is Robert Pattinson on the Howard Stern show talking about this. I mean, I just thought, you know, considering now, now the Twilight's known to be this very emo thing. I mean, there was a period. I was just, you know, I thought it was very, very serious. I always just kind of thought at the time

it's like 21 that you haven't, if you're going into a relationship with someone, the way to make it really intense is if you can barely talk to each other, you can barely touch each other and it's incredibly serious all the time. I mean, it's kind of like what teenage relationships are like, and that's what sort of makes it feel like that. But everyone kind of wanted it to be like, no, they should just be like happy and having fun. That's what people want. And that's the sort of teen romance thing.

You wanted it brooding a little bit. Yeah, and now that the whole series is known as like a brooding thing. But yeah, they're kind of, I remember the producer's giving me a copy of the book, like every single instance where my character smiled and stuff. They'd highlighted everything. So you put your foot down, you said, hey, listen, man, I don't see the character that way. I'm not going to be smiled. I got the same, but I got a different color highlighter and highlighted all the time when he frowns and go like that. Did your agents put pressure on you and stuff to say, hey, you better just get with the programmer.

They're going to fire you. Oh, yeah. They came, they flew up and said, like, you got to, because I thought I was pretty safe. Right. And they flew up and they're like, yeah, you've got to, you have to do the opposite of what you're doing now, or you're going to get fired today. So how did you hold your ground? I mean, how did you know what to do?

I didn't. I literally came back off. I came back off the lunch. I was like, hi. I love that. I love that. And he was also best known as a member of another major franchise, which was the Harry Potter franchise.

He was Cedric Diggery in that. That was really his only claim to fame prior to this, whereas Kristen Stewart was much more prominent on the Indian. circuit at that time. Someone else who was quite dower on set, despite her peppy character, was Anna Kendrick. No! She was evidently very surprised that she'd even gotten the job in the first place, describing it as, quote, such a blow-off audition.

I just want to say this. I love Anna Kendrick. I think she's an amazing actress. I think she's wonderful in this. She's such like a ray of light in this very damp, dark movie. I don't love that she constantly craps on Twilight. She has done a bunch of... Oh, I don't know.

I didn't know she did. She does. And we'll play a little bit of it for you here. Here is her account of her experience shooting the first movie. The first movie we filmed in Portland, Oregon, and I just remember being so cold and miserable. And I just remember my converse being completely soaked through and feeling like, you know, this is a really great group of people.

and I'm sure that we would be friends in a different time, but I want to murder everyone. Although it was also kind of bonding. There was like something about it that was like, you know, like you go through like some trauma event. Like you imagine like people who survive like a hostage situation. And you're kind of bonded for life. Okay. Oh, yeah. She has talked about it at great length and how much she kind of didn't enjoy it.

and kind of, she's described her character as like an idiot and, you know, she's not 110% wrong there. I'm just saying there's something sort of unappealing about somebody trying to distance themselves from a project the amount that she has. I mean, I get it. She's not the lead. No. I don't know. I think it's hard.

I think it would be very hard if you were a young actor and you got an opportunity to be in a franchise and you can't really turn that down. and then you're not a lead and then all of a sudden you're contractually obligated to go back and make another one of those movies that you don't want to do when you're in the middle of making

up in the air. That is what happened. However, they actually, and we may get to this if we do New Moon at a later date, but they actually reworked the production schedule of New Moon to accommodate her filming up in the air

even though they were not required to. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that's great on them. I'm saying, literally like the type of work that she wants to do. Oh yeah. It was not this. Like very clearly. Yeah, exactly. That would be frustrating. Now, the weather wasn't just a challenge for Anna Kendrick. It was also a huge issue for Catherine Hardwick who, Chris, guess how many days she had to shoot this entire movie? 35. Okay. It's more than that. She had 50 days. But that's 50 days for everything. And not to mention the fact that they were dealing with weather that would change by the hour from being sunny to rainy and so many of the big scenes.

are outside. It was a huge, huge problem. I used to live there. Can't rely on the weather. Exactly. Now at some point during this process, Taylor Lautner is hired. I'm not even going to go into this

because we will get into him quite a lot more on New Moon. Now, some other fun on set stuff. Robert Pattinson hated the contact lenses that he had to wear as a vampire. Those are so uncomfortable. Yeah, they're horrible. I wore fake contacts once for a comedy show.

I wanted to slice my eyeballs out. It was awful. Well, apparently Kristen Stewart, who had to wear like regular brown contacts because she doesn't have brown eyes, was like, what are you complaining about? Like, the contacts are fine. And then when she actually gets turned into a vampire and had to wear them, she was like, I'm going blind. Like, these are horrible. Also, though, her eyes with color correction, she almost already looks like a vampire. It was a little odd. Yeah, it makes her very sort of sallow looking when she doesn't have her own color eyes. Robert also injured himself during his first. day on set. The first scene that they ever shot was the one at the end in the ballet studio,

which required a lot of wirework from him and the fight scene. Yeah. Cam Gigandet playing James. Why didn't they make her a ballerina? They like end the movie in her ballet studio. Anyway, sorry. Continue. Because she's not good at anything, Chris, and you have to just be okay with that. Now, he says that on his second take, he tore his butt cheek, um, and they had to have a physical therapist come in and massage his butt for the rest of the week and he couldn't finish the scene. Other fun stuff,

Nikki Reed, who plays Rosalie and who you also may recognize from 13, which she co-wrote. Yeah, she's awesome. I love Nikki Reed. You may notice that this is the only movie. Who wrote it when she was 13? When she was 13.

Yeah, with Catherine Hardwick, who is her stepmother, maybe? They have some sort of pseudo-child relationship. You might notice This is the only movie in the franchise where she's not wearing a wig. That is because she naturally has very beautiful, super dark brown hair. And for this first movie, they decided to try bleaching it, which for anybody who doesn't know, bleaching really naturally dark hair is horrible.

It took her 36 hours to get the first full bleach done. And then you have to re-bleach it every other day because the roots start to grow in. So it actually started to cause balding. She was losing chunks of her hair that like maybe have not returned. Just like a real vampire. Yeah, really rough. So she had to wear wigs for the rest of production because this movie caused her to lose her hair. I will say I found all of the other vampires very charming in their family.

They're having a good time. I feel like they have the best parts because they get to show up and do the fun stuff. Yeah, exactly. I was like, oh, this is a fun group. Now, on the opposite end of the spectrum, Taylor Lottner hated his. wig, I think for obvious reasons, as it is hilarious. Oh, my God, that wig is so rough. I was like, I turned to Carvell and I was like, is he wearing a hoodie or is that a wig? I was shocked. Oh, poor Taylor Lautner. No, that's the wig. I felt so bad for him. That looked so uncomfortable and

it didn't look right. It was bad. It's gone by the second movie. But we will get more into that later because he almost did not keep his job. Now, despite all the challenges that she faced in terms of budget and time frame, Catherine Hardwick delivered the final product pretty smoothly, under budget, and in the time frame they asked her to shoot it. Now, Chris, can you guess how much money Twilight made in just its opening weekend? Opening weekend, it came out in 2008. I'm going to guess $52 million. $69 million. Wow. That's a great opening weekend for a movie at that budget. their money back and then some in the first weekend. And if you're wondering, like, oh, maybe they spent a ton more on marketing they're not telling you about, no, they really didn't.

They relied on the interest. The fact that they had waited so long after the book actually helped them because they relied completely on the interest of fans to drive this and of websites like, I think Entertainment Weekly did like a countdown to Twilight thing. Overall, the film grosses $393 million worldwide, and that is just the first movie. This, despite the fact that allegedly an executive at Summit told her the movie might be interesting to about 400 girls in Salt Lake City at most. She said they basically kept coming to her, and when she would ask... It's probably the same thing that they said about the book, you know?

Yeah. Well, sort of. I mean, there was... I think the people saw the book as a moneymaker. I think what was happening here from her perspective was that these kind of comments would come up every time she would ask them for more time. or more money. And they were like, your movie doesn't matter. It's not interesting. You need to do it for the budget that we've given you. Right. Hmm. Now, after the success of Twilight, Summit immediately wants to

start on the sequel, New Moon, which by the way, is my personal favorite in the series. They literally wanted Catherine Hardwick to start pre-production immediately. And I'm not talking like a month later. I'm talking like days later. By the way, New Moon gets released, the movie gets released almost exactly one year later on November 20th, 2009. So they were not kidding about how quickly they wanted this to happen. Yes. Oh my God. Now, Hardwick was fully on board to continue directing the franchise. She was excited with one condition. She said, I'm not doing a rush job on this one. She felt that she had not had enough time or money to make Twilight essentially to make it a good movie. She was like, I couldn't do what I wanted to do with that. So it's not that she didn't want to do it.

didn't want to be forced to do a super rushed job. Again, there were also a lot of loose ends to tie up, one being the fact that they did not have a script for New Moon when they were saying, we want you to go ahead and start pre-production. There's also the loose end of deciding whether or or not to recast Taylor Lautner, which is a big thing that we will get into if we decide to cover New Moon. New Moon, by the way, Lizzie's favorite, lowest rated on Rotten Tomatoes, just saying it. Well, they're wrong. That's just a bunch of Edwards' stands who went on there because he's not in the movie for most of it. So basically what happens is Summit comes back to her

after her very reasonable requests for more time and more money to make New Moon. And they just say, we're in a recession. Literally anybody would be lucky to have this job and we don't need you. And they drop her and they move forward without the person who had been instrumental

in the development of the look and feel of the entire franchise. Yeah, because the first movie looks more indie in a good way than you would expect. Well, and it's seven. a lot of the tone for the rest of the series. It really did. Like, you can't discredit her for that. And the tone is a little jarring at times. Like, because there are times where, like, I don't know what movie I'm in right now. When we go into, like, the baseball sequence.

Love it. And then all of a sudden we go in, it's like a muse music video, a vampires playing baseball. And then, like, new vampires come out of the fog. And then someone gets wind of A lot of Dutch angles. Bellus, Musk, and then, like, a race war breaks out. It was, wild. Love it. Now Hardwick told Vanity Fair that she thought getting jobs after Twilight wouldn't be a problem. After all, she had delivered a massive hit on an impossible budget and time frame, but she was wrong. She said she couldn't even get in the room for some jobs as rumors had begun to swirl about her being difficult to work with on set. Right. Which, by the way, is not substantiated by anybody who actually worked with her directly on Twilight. And is also the code for

Yeah. When that's applied to women, it's a very different. Yeah. When you hear that applied, I think this is getting better, but in general, when you hear that applied to a woman in a creative setting, I would just say give it a second look and maybe don't take that at face value. So she then had to sit back and watch as all four of the remaining Twilight movies would go on to be directed by men. Catherine Hardwick said, quote, none of them were directed by women. That was a heartbreak for me. There are other best. bad-ass women out there that could have done those. She said, quote, there's lots of projects like that. It goes on and on. There are stories written by women about women and given to male directors over and over and over. The one through line for all of Twilight, however, does remain Melissa Rosenberg, who continues to write all of the scripts and frankly do a great job. Yeah. So that wraps up my coverage of 2008's Twilight. Yes, I probably will do more if you, our lovely listeners, are interested.

promise that there is quite a lot more behind the scenes drama that I could not fit into one episode. We didn't even get to Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson's on-set relationship and subsequent public breakup and also the horrible way that fans treated both her and his future girlfriends. There's also a lot of Taylor-Lotner drama, Victoria being recast as Bryce Dallas-Haward in her horrific wig. You think Taylor-Lotner's wig is bad? Just for a little treat, Chris and our listeners, I want you to Google Bryce Dallas Howard in Twilight Eclipse and then just take a moment to breathe in her wig. Oh, you mean the CGI added hair of the girl from Brave that they put on her head? Yeah, that's accurate. Oh, wow. So we- Yeah, they really did recaster. It looks like they just went

kind of more hardcore with the whole vampire look in general. Honestly, I think this series has more questionable wigs than Nicole Kidman's closet. It is, they really, they go a, strange direction with their wig budget and I love it. I'm really glad this movie brings you so much joy. And audience members, I hope it brings you as much joy as it brings Lizzie. It should. Which of course brings us to what went right. Whole movie.

Love the whole thing. No, you know what? I actually, I hadn't watched this in a little bit. This was probably my annual semi-annual viewing of it. I may have watched it earlier this year with my beloved college roommates. But I have more appreciation for Kristen Stewart, actually, than I did the first time that I watched this. Because I will say, I remember watching Twilight as a 19-year-old and just being such a jerk and laughing at it and laughing at her and her performance. And the older I get and the more I watch it, I actually think she does a good job with the material that she's given.

Because especially when you're given nothing, she's given nothing. When you read the book and you realize how boring that character is, it's kind of impressive what she was able to actually imbue it with. And also, I think we all know at this point, given what she's done, that she is a good actor. Oh, this is great. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to say Kristen Stewart. I actually, I think she really carries this in a way that I wasn't expecting.

Fair enough. My what went right. I feel, I'm going to give it a backhanded compliment, which is, I think, I think. feel like this movie is what gave us Robert Pattinson. Yeah. As we now know him, like indie, angsty, grimy Robert Pattinson, who's in high life and good time and good time. Whatever. And the lighthouse. And I really like grimy Robert Pattinson. I'm sure we'll like Batman Robert Pattinson. So it gave us that. But also, I do, I think that actors as a whole do a very good job with like not much and I think that I'm sure Catherine Hardwick has to be behind a lot of that honestly yeah no no no absolutely because there's not much

story here basically nothing happens until the last 30 minutes of the movie and even then it's precipitated by a baseball game that's literally insane like if you were to that actually I would say the baseball scene is what went right because if you were to give that to most directors I think they would just be like, no, we need to have the CIA come in on jet skis. Like that's how you have to fix that scene. Like, they're like, we can't do this. It's too crazy. And Catherine Hardwick just said, we're going to put this muse song on.

And we're going to do like weird zoomy speed up stuff and wirework. And it's going to be bonkers. And, you know, it's, I wouldn't say it like works. But it's fun. And I did want to call out when I pulled this movie up on Amazon, 4.7 out of 5 stars on Amazon with almost 20,000 ratings. Wow. A lot of twi-hards on Amazon.

When you scroll down, it kind of oscillates between, it's basically one-star reviews and five-star reviews. Great film, great cinematography. I don't understand why there was a good amount of hate when it came out. I'm a 26-year-old male,

and I love this movie. Cinematography is great. I like the cool colors. The acting isn't bad. It has a great soundtrack. And I was like, nothing this guy's saying is wrong. So he really likes this movie, great.

But then the next review was also completely valid. It says, it's garbage. We all know. know it's garbage, one star, and then the actual review is just, Edward, I've killed people, Bella, that's okay. Edward, I want to kill you, Bella, I trust you. That's also basically the dialogue of the movie. So both things can be true. They are both true. However, keep in mind that the thing that the first person said was specific to the movie itself, that the critique of the second person is critique of the actual source material. That is the book. That is the whole, the whole plot line,

of the book is that he wants to kill her with his I'm sorry, that's it. And I guess also his mouth, which is, it's just all, it's gross. When you get into it, it's actually gross. And we will get into it more. I cannot wait. Guys, we hope you enjoyed this episode

on Twilight, Catherine Hardwick's Twilight, who should have directed the rest of them. She really should have. And also, please, if any of our listeners out there have not watched Twilight yet, just leave your preconceived notions at the door. Do me a favor. Go watch Twilight. You are welcome to DM me angrily on

Instagram if you're furious for the $2 that you spent renting it. It's on sale right now on Amazon Prime. But seriously, like... I think it's always on sale. Shut up. But seriously, go watch it and then hit me up because I would like to hear if you have a different appreciation for it after having heard how Catherine Hardwick made it. Thanks again, guys. As always, send us your recommendations. We've been lining up bunch of good ones that you guys have been sending us. We have some fun special guests coming up in the near future that we're very excited about. And as always, please give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Or just tell people about the podcast. Tell a friend. Actually, yeah,

it's more important. Tell a friend. Yeah. Tell a friend. Yay. What went wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing and music by David Bowman with cover art from Uthana UOos.