The more I listen to my telephone interview with The Twilight Saga: New Moon co-star Nikki Reed, the more I'm convinced that Catherine Hardwicke did most of the heavy lifting on their 2003 screenplay collaboration, the superb teen drama, thirteen.
I haven't heard that many conversational crutches ("like," "you know," etc.) since interviewing Taylor Lautner last year.
Reed became Hollywood's "it" girl when thirteen was released, earning several critics group citations and award nominations for the semi-autobiographical script and her performance. Hardwicke -- who also directed Twilight but was dumped from the sequels -- shared credit but deferred to Reed in interviews because, hey, it was a better story that a teenager was pouring sordid personal experience into a script.
Since then, Reed hasn't produced another screenplay and roles slacked off, to the point that playing Rosalie Hale in the Twilight flicks is a good career move. I couldn't avoid asking Reed why we haven't seen another screenplay from her.
"Actually, I’ve made some pretty decent attempts," she said before dropping this tell-tale remark: "They were solo attempts, and that might be what the issue was."
Or, it could be Reed's emancipation from her divorced parents at age 14, after turning family issues into a movie.
"I was trying to go to high school while living by myself," she said, "which resulted in me dropping out of high school and then going back to take my equivalency (test), taking college courses and trying to pay rent. Meanwhile, I was also exploring the writing aspect. I think in the next year or so that’s what I’d like to focus on."
I asked Reed if it was difficult wrapping her head around such success at an early, unsupervised age. She reportedly did the kinds of illegal and immoral things that thirteen portrayed teenagers doing.
"That’s a very loaded question," she said. "But yes it was. To this day I’m still trying to figure out how to, like, dissect what I’m actually trying to say and represent with this film, so I can do it the right way.
"In a sense, one could walk away and feel exploited, just torn. My family was put on the line, in the interest of doing something really honest and real. On the other hand, I might’ve done it all differently if I had the chance to redo it."
The rest of the interview -- the stuff Twilight fans want to read -- will be published next week online and in Weekend.