Did you hear Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke was shit canned? Yup. The visionary behind the non-vampire movie currently making a bazillion dollars has been unceremoniously fired before she even had a chance to lay her hands on the second script. Ohh the humanity. And you know what’s even worse? Supposedly, she was fired for having a vagina. Hell, fire and brimstone. What is this world coming to? Call Sojourner Truth and Gloria Steinem. We’ve got a march to organize.
Actually, on second thought, let’s hold off on the march and the outrage and hoopla and just breathe. Inhale and exhale a few times with me. Okay great. Now that we’re all cool and level-headed, let’s examine the facts. Practically before Twilight even finished production, Catherine Hardwicke started bitching about money. In almost every single interview she did, the director rambled on about how hard it was to work within her reported thirty-seven million dollar budget. Speaking to UGO, Catherine even said, “You know (a second one) is probably going to cost at least twice as much as the first one. We’ll see.” That doesn’t exactly sound like an artist obsessed with completing the vision she started.
And then we have the studio. Summit Entertainment has been astoundingly forward in telling the whole world they have no intention of throwing money at Twilight sequels. So, we have a studio desperate to save money and a director hell-bent on getting eighty million dollars for round two. That, my friends, is what we call a squabble. Maybe even an actual fight. Two dissenting opinions with little motivation to budge. And you know what happened? Neither budged.
So, what the hell is everyone complaining about? Apparently, some people think Catherine Hardwicke is entitled to the second movie since the first one hit black. Well, that’s a fucking laugh fest right there. Four different directors have done Harry Potter movies. God knows how many have lent their talents to James Bond. Twilight is bigger than Catherine Hardwicke. It might even be bigger than Stephenie Meyer. No one is entitled to crap in Hollywood, least of all a mediocre director with a history of making mediocre movies (Lords Of Dogtown, Twilight itself).
Oh, but that’s right. She wasn’t fired for being mediocre. She was fired for being a woman. She was shown the door for being “difficult” and “irrational”, which are two adjectives that scream discrimination since they’re frequently applied to women. Well, you know what: women frequently are difficult and irrational. Yeah, I said it. And you know what? Most honest women will admit just as much. This isn’t some finger-pointing pestilence to slight the fairer sex; they are just irrational. You know what men are? Controlling and arrogant.
No one is honest anymore. No one has the guts to say what the hell is really going on. Catherine Hardwicke was, more than likely, fired over money. The studio can’t say that because it makes them look like cheapskates. So, they fired her for being irrational and difficult (which she may very well have been). If she was a man complaining about money, the result would have been the same and the reasons given different.
Crying about perceived injustices is easy. Directing a movie worth remembering is hard. Catherine Hardwicke has done neither. I suggest her fans remember that.
