'Nativity Story' director to hold workshop in Sisters

Last updated Dec 19, 2006 12:0pm0

Sisters will host the acclaimed director and filmmaker Catherine Hardwicke for two special film presentations and a mini-workshop for aspiring filmmakers.

Her skateboarding picture "Lords of Dogtown" will have a special showing on Thursday, December 21, at 1 p.m. at Sisters Movie House. Hardwicke will host this event, and it is free of charge. She will be available for a question-and-answer session after the screening which is designed to provide insight for potential filmmakers in the community. To make reservations, call 549-8833 or e-mail Sisters Movie House at [email protected] The seating is limited.

Hardwicke will also be available after the special showing of "The Nativity Story." "The Nativity Story" will be shown on Sunday, December 24, at 12:30 p.m. at Sisters Movie House. Following the screening will be a question-and-answer period and an opportunity to meet the director in person.

Lisa Clausen, owner of Sisters Movie House, said, "This is an amazing opportunity for young filmmakers to meet such a talented and engaging innovator."

Hardwicke's parents live in Sunriver, and her sister lives in Sisters, which she thinks is a fun play on words. Hardwicke will be visiting her sister over Christmas.

"My sister set it (the workshop) up," she said. "Maybe it will inspire some aspiring filmmakers."

Hardwicke said of the time that she will give to the community, "I will totally go into what ever details anyone wants to know about how you put it together - how we make choices; how we put the movie together; what the director thinks about - just how you make it happen."

She explained that she has experience in almost all aspects of filmmaking.

"Whatever people are interested in, I can give them my perspective on it," she said.

Hardwicke will only be in Sisters for a short period of time, arriving just after midnight early Thursday morning and leaving the day after Christmas. The short stay will be filled with family commitments, but she is pleased to take the time to help anyone who is interested in becoming a filmmaker.

Although short, she values the family time. "A lot of my family came to the premiere ("The Nativity Story") in the Vatican, but it was so busy over there, we really didn't have time to catch up," she remarked.

Hardwicke's career as a budding director is on the rise.

"This ("The Nativity Story") is my third first director position in film making," she said.

She has accumulated an extensive background in the many areas of the film industry and a number of second position credits for directing (see related story, page 14).

"The Nativity Story" opened nationwide on December 1.

"The Nativity was one of the super fast track movies of all time," Hardwicke said. "I didn't get the script until the middle of January, and I had to have all elements delivered nine months and two weeks later."

She described how she made a backwards calendar, scheduling everything backwards so that she would know when she had to start each part of the process. It was all a rush.

She remembered, "Three days after interviewing for the position of director, I was on a plane to Jerusalem."

In describing a little of what she faced and how it was accomplished, Hardwicke said, "We had international casting on the Internet. I was doing location scouting and would fly to Morocco or Italy to look at locations and then come back to watch the people who auditioned to play Mary in London and then the ones who auditioned in France. Then, I would go on a little whirlwind trip to meet the actors in England and France. It was pretty incredible.

"We did many crazy and intense things to get it done on schedule," she said. "We built Nazareth and Bethlehem from scratch using really natural looking materials."

Hardwicke is working on her next project.

"I just got back from a location in New Mexico where it was pretty darn cold, too. I am working on a film called 'The Monkey Wrench Gang.'" She explained, "It was a cult classic book from the '70s. It is about some of the original eco-activists - four eccentric, fun and crazy characters who love the land and are willing to fight for it."

Hardwicke has had a long and varied film career

Catherine Hardwicke was born October 21, 1955, in Cameron, Texas. She grew up in McAllen, Texas which is on the border with Mexico. She moved after graduation from high school to California and attended the UCLA film school during the 1980s. While in school she made an award-winning short film titled "Puppy Does the Gumbo."

Although Hardwicke began her professional career as an architect, she spent most of the 1990s working as a production designer and collaborated on such films as "Tombstone," "Tank Girl," "2 Days in the Valley" and "The Newton Boys."

Hardwicke designed the production for "Three Kings" which was released in 1999; the film was directed by David O. Russell and starred George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube. A year later, she collaborated with director/screenwriter Cameron Crowe and actor/producer Tom Cruise on "Vanilla Sky." These two films are exemplary for their original use of color-manipulation techniques to complement the narrative.

In early 2002, Hardwicke planted the seeds for what would become her debut feature film when she began collaborating on a screenplay with teenager Nikki Reed. Reed was the daughter of one of Hardwicke's former boyfriends, and they had remained friends through the years. Together Reed and Hardwicke created the script for "Thirteen" by drawing on many of Reed's real life experiences as a teenage girl who had rebelled out of control against her single mother and in the process spun into the worlds of sex, drugs and petty crime.

The resulting film was both captivating and harsh in the honest manner it depicted modern teenagers. Even before its release, the film gained certain renown when Hardwicke was honored with the 2003 Sundance Film Festival's Director's Award for a drama.

Building on the success of "Thirteen," Hardwicke again explored the world of rebellious teens for her next project, "Lords of Dogtown." In this film she went to the streets of Venice, California to reproduce the day-to-day adventures of the Zephyr Skateboard Team, who are known for revolutionizing the sport of skateboarding. In the process they elevated the sport to new heights and themselves to celebrity status.

The project had remained in the development phase for years, with Fred Durst and Jonas Akerlund originally slated to direct the film. Rewrites resulted in delays that caused schedule conflicts, and in the fall of 2003 Hardwicke was given the opportunity to take over the project. The result was the achievement of her goal in creating movies that remain true to their subject.

This year, Hardwicke directed the biblical film "The Nativity Story" for New Line Cinema. Released less than a month ago on December 1, the film is attracting considerable interest. A special showing of the film is scheduled at Sisters Movie House on at 12:30 p.m., Sunday, December 24.