Catherine Hardwicke knew her film Thirteen would leave an impression, which is why she wasn’t surprised at the challenges that came with getting the R-rated project produced.
“We made it by hook or crook, you know? And for no money. I got paid three bucks the whole time,” Hardwicke, 67, told Yahoo! Entertainment on Friday, August 18. “But when we finally made it, people were like, ‘Oh, it’s powerful. It’s moving. It’s relevant in a way to what people are going through.’”
Thirteen, which was released in 2003, told the story of an honors student Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) whose relationship with her mother took a turn after a new friend Evie (Nikki Reed) introduced her to sex, drugs and crime.
According to Hardwicke, the movie was produced with a $2 million budget raised through independent equity financing. She shot Thirteen in less than a month in Los Angeles.
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“I like elevating things. I wanted you to feel how the hormones are raging and what it feels like to be a kid when everything matters,” Hardwicke recalled in the interview. “We really tried to [show] what it felt like to be a teenager, and just going through all the crazy pressures from the outside world.”
The Twilight director said rejection didn’t stop her attempts to get the film made, adding, “I mean, every studio and every financier said, ‘No, we can’t make it. How could we make a movie that’s gonna be R-rated with an unknown 13-year-old girl in the lead?’ Everybody said no.”
After the film’s debut at Sundance Film Festival in 2003, Fox Searchlight Pictures acquired the distribution rights for Thirteen. The movie subsequently had a limited release later that year and grossed $4.6 million at the U.S. box office. It isn’t clear how much Hardwicke was paid after distribution.
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Thirteen has since continued to find new fans even two decades after its original release date.
“Even now on TikTok, there’s like 1.6 billion interactions with Thirteen. People are seeing clips and they’re writing in the comments, ‘That happened to me last week with my mom,’” Hardwicke noted. “So because it was quite honest and had real emotions, it’s still relevant to a lot of people.”
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Hardwicke went on to praise the cast for using their own experiences to inspire their individual performances. “That’s my little baby. I saw what Nikki Reed was going through at 13, Holly Hunter, Evan Rachel Wood, their performances are still so strong if you watch it now because they put their hearts into it,” she explained. “They felt it. They lived it on the day. So I love that film.”
After cowriting Thirteen with Reed, 35, the pair have had many discussions about reviving the cult classic. “We have talked about [it], I talk to Nikki a lot,” Hardwicke concluded. “We really wanna do a TV series where we see other 13-year-old girls: Thirteen Afghanistan, Thirteen Detroit. You know, let’s see how other 13-year-old girls are navigating their transition into adulthood.”
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