Catherine Hardwicke talks about the challenges of filmmaking

American director and production designer Catherine Hardwicke is known for films including Thirteen which she wrote with Nikki Reed, The Biblically themed The Nativity Story and scored the biggest opening weekend for a female director with Twilight.
Her latest offering Red Riding Hood is based on the classic fairy tale, and The Fan Carpet caught up with her on the red carpet where she talks about Leonardo Di Caprio and the challenges of film making.
What was it about Amanda, Max and Shiloh that made you cast them?
Well Amanda first is drop dead gorgeous, but also really soulful and spicy and funny, fearless and sexy – smoking hot. And then I wanted to find two boys that you would believe they could have a connection to her and there would be some life and some spark. So when we had like eight guys we did the chemistry test and you find who’s sparking off of each other. And those three were really good together.
Max and Shiloh are really the opposite to one another, so different, so that was kind of cool.
Leonardo Di Caprio was backing this movie, did he have a lot of input and what did he think of the end result?
Well he came a couple of times to Vancouver and was there on set and he said ‘I want the wolf to be a bad ass, I want it to be a gangster.’ So we kept making the wolf tougher and unpredictable and scary. He looked at the casting tapes, and he worked a lot of the script in the ear days even before I was on.
I think he had a lot of fun, I was with him the first time he saw it, a very early screening.
Were there any challenges while you were making the movie?
Every challenge and every movie is so hard, you’ve got this much money and this much time and as the director you’re just trying to make it work. Get everybody on board and let’s all focus and so creating a whole fairy tale world that we hadn’t seen before. Other movies I’ve done it had to look like the real world but this one; we got to make our own world. I wanted the costumes to be like something we’ve never seen before.
How would you compare the chemistry between the gus in this fin to rob and Kristen in Twilight?
Well this is a different dynamic, because right at the beginning of the movie Amanda is in love, deeply and passionately in love with Shiloh. I don’t know if you have read the novel, but they’d been in love since they were kids, so they want to be together. And suddenly there’s this other guy, Max’ character, that you think is going to be kind of plain but he turns out to be pretty neat.
She’s wondering ‘could one of these guys be a murderer?’, questioning everything in her life, starts getting paranoid so it’s a whole different dynamic.
Are you still in touch with Robert Pattinson since you made his career?
Well he’s pretty busy, I’ve bumped into him, and it’s really fun to see him. He’s got a lot going on right now.
What other dream projects have you got coming up?
There’s one that’s a sci-fi project that could be really cool, there’s a wild adaptation of Hamlet with Emile Hirsch; that’s a current day version. You never know when the money is going to dry down, it’s hard to get movies made but I’m trying.
RED RIDING HOOD IS OUT ON FRIDAY 15 APRIL