Wednesday, June 30, 2010

[BellaAndEdward] 'The Twilight Saga': We talk to screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg

 

Jun 30 2010 06:53 PM ET

'The Twilight Saga': We talk to screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg

Categories: Movie Biz, Twilight
Liz-Allen-MelissaImage Credit: Liz Allen and Melissa Rosenberg from publicistMelissa Rosenberg has been Stephenie Meyer's big-screen translator since the first Twilight movie debuted back in 2008. With a new director coming on to each film, Rosenberg's constant presence has helped ensure Meyer's story stays constant throughout the saga. Also, in Eclipse, since director David Slade isn't a writer, all the words spoken by your favorite characters came straight from Rosenberg's computer. We checked in with the screenwriter, who recently left her day job as showrunner of Showtime's hit series Dexter to direct her attention completely to the Twilight series. The California native took a break from pre-production on Breaking Dawn to chat with us.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did writing Eclipse compare to the last two books?
MELISSA ROSENBERG:
For me, Eclipse was my favorite book of the first three, for sure. The triangle comes to a head and that creates some really tense conflict, which is always good when you're trying to write scenes. This is the third act of the story because Breaking Dawn goes off into completely new territory. That, and the huge battle we build to throughout the movie, was compelling. What was funny was Eclipse ended up being the hardest to write. That big battle happens in the third act, so it was all about pulling some of the conflict and danger forward to lace throughout the story. It became quite the challenge. But in the end, it was quite fun because I got to fill out some of the mythology, such as the character of Riley, the newborn army, Victoria, and everything that was going on that you can't do in the book because it's from Bella's point-of-view.
Was there conferencing with Stephenie for those scenes?
Oh yeah.
Do you write and then show her, or do you talk to Stephenie ahead of time?
A little of both, actually. One of the things she did that helped me with enormously was she let me read The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner in advance, and that was really useful in terms of what was going on outside [Bella's world], so I was able to imagine it. I would come up with stuff and bounce it off of her and she gave me the short story and I pulled a few ideas from that.
How did you keep the momentum going throughout the story since the battle is at at the end?
It was about threading all the danger and the threat through the beginning and the middle of the story. It was a real challenge. It was also a challenge because Bella is our way into the movie. Bella is our point of view. Because of the two guys fighting over her in the story, she's so reactive. Which is fine for a book. It works beautifully. For a movie, you can't have your lead just standing there reacting. It was a lot about how to keep her active in the middle of this tug-of-war.
How did you make her more active?
Small things. In the book, Jacob shows up at her workplace and talks her into getting on the back of the motorcycle. He sort of steals her away. In the movie, it's really Bella that decides to do this, and she initiates that in front of the school. It's a small change. But these moments add up. In the book, there are some scenes of her being affectionately kidnapped by Alice. That was pulled out to keep her strong and keep her active.
Have you experienced celebrity from being a part of the franchise?
People don't recognize me in the street, so it doesn't really change my life. But people know my name, and it helps me get great restaurant reservations in New York. That completely surprised me. When I most feel it is when I go to an event of some sort, and it's lovely. Screenwriters are so rarely acknowledged for what they do. Most people don't understand what we do. So it's just great, and always surprising.
How was working with [Eclipse director] David Slade?
In all honesty, it was terrific. Now, I'm working with [Breaking Dawn director] Bill Condon on the next one. I think someone just chooses well. I had a really great collaboration with all four directors.
What was this collaboration like?
There was more of a collaboration because David is not a writer, so he kept me more involved throughout the production. Basically with Chris [Weitz] on New Moon, I handed him the draft and moved off to Eclipse. He's a terrific writer so he was handling production rewrites. Same for Catherine [Hardwicke]. But with this one, I was much more involved, for better or worse. Pretty much every word up there is mine. I shouldn't say that, they'll know who to blame it on. [Slade] is very, very respectful of the script and kept everyone on the page. He planned in great detail ahead of time. He wants it all on the page locked before he starts shooting, so he can really design some great shots and great sequences. My favorite part was he did a lot of storyboarding in advance. I'd have a script, it'd have an action sequence. He would then take that sequence and storyboard how he wants to see it. He would then walk me through the storyboards, and I'd put it back into the screenplay the way he wants to do it. So, it'd be on the page and it would be this back and forth. He'd be sorta acting it out. He's a very animated guy! He thinks in visual terms. So, it was a lot of fun.
Do you have a favorite moment of the film?
I have a couple of them but one is a small moment. It's one of my favorites: When Bella tells Charlie, her dad, that she's a virgin. I just love that! Their chemistry together is fantastic. That Billy Burke is so funny!
Do you find it challenging to deal with the religious overtones in the books?
What's always kind of amazed me is that Stephenie and I probably are polar opposites in terms of our political and spiritual beliefs. I'm raised in a hot tub from Marin County, [Calif.]. I couldn't be further left. She's a very religious Mormon. In truth, we've never talked politics. We've never talked religion. We just haven't. It hasn't come up. The only thing that comes up is that I swear like a truck driver and she doesn't. And I drink and she doesn't drink. But she doesn't ever judge me for either of those things. It's important for me that I not violate my own beliefs and I won't write something that does. It was interesting that within all of these movies, certainly within Breaking Dawn, you can peel away some of the stuff that is more to the right and some of the anti-choice stuff and there is a core, real human experience. You don't have to go there. You can tell the story without doing that. That was important to me, but I had to respect her beliefs as well. I can't violate her beliefs. It's kinda where the blue and the red come together. At the core of it, it's about a woman choosing to have a child. That is as pro-choice as you get. That doesn't violate anything that Stephenie believes in, and that doesn't violate the story. It's about finding the common ground. What's really important: These are Twilight movies. This is entertainment. It is not the forum to be making political commentary. It's just not. Nobody wants to turn this into a referendum on abortion. It's inappropriate.
Do you think the scene with Edward refusing Bella enforces the conservative views?
Yeah, but you have the other side of that. The other part of that conversation is Bella asking, "What are you, a dinosaur?" She has her own values that are every bit as legitimate. She doesn't admit he is right, and she isn't ashamed to have asked him to do that. It comes down to you can be who you are. There's nothing wrong with someone believing that. It's only when you start forcing other people to believe the same thing. It's about a girl who is embracing and embodying her own sexuality. She's unapologetic about that. I don't think there's anything wrong with a portrayal of a young girl who has sexual desire. I think that's something we avoid a lot – this concept that girls are actually desirous. So I'm pleased to have this character who's um…you know…randy! There's nothing wrong with it. It's a very healthy place to be.
How has your relationship with Stephenie evolved over the years?
It's been great. When I started out, I was nervous. She's the author of these books. I was really worried she was going to subsume my process. So I kept her at bay for the first half of the first one. In the middle of writing it, I met her and went, oh, wow, my fears are completely unfounded. She is someone who is really collaborative and not precious about the work. If there's a better idea out there — if I saw a scene different then she saw it, she's really open to it. Which is…shocking. Once I got that about her, I began to use her as a resource a great deal more. Since then, that's only deepened and expanded. She's been a great collaborator, I'd have to say one of my favorite collaborations, ever. She's one of my main sources. Whenever I'm stuck on something, I'll call or email her for ideas.
Were you hoping there would be two Breaking Dawn movies?
Initially, I went back and forth. At first, I thought one. Then, when I got more into the story and thought, you know what, this is two. It's a lot in one book. We would have had to cut out so much to do one movie. The nature of the book is sort of two movies. There's before she's a vampire and then after she's a vampire. We'd be giving short shrift to both sections to try and do it as one.
How will it feel to leave the Twilight franchise?
I left Dexter after the fourth season, too. Twilight and Dexter — they've been my worlds for the last four years or so. Part of me is very excited about doing something new. I'm ready to branch out and explore other worlds and characters. The other part of me is sad to leave them and a little bit nervous. I'm comfortable in these worlds. I know I can write Dexter and Twilight. It's always anxiety-provoking to go into new worlds and have to get to know a whole new language.

Cas
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[BellaAndEdward] Eclipse Review from EW

 

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)


Details Release Date: Jun 30, 2010; Rated: PG-13; Length: 124 Minutes; Genres: Horror, Romance; With: Taylor Lautner, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart

WHAT\'S A GIRL TO DO? Taylor Lautner and Robert Pattinson vie for  the affections of Kristen Stewart in The Twilight... | The Twilight  Saga: Eclipse, The Twilight Saga, ...
Image credit: Kimberley French
WHAT'S A GIRL TO DO? Taylor Lautner and Robert Pattinson vie for the affections of Kristen Stewart in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Critical Mass

How other reviewers grade this film
58 reviews
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The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is like some broodingly repressed wide-screen youth-pop melodrama from the 1950s — and I mean that as a compliment. The story, at heart, is earnest and humorless teen romantic glop, but its feelings aren't fake, and the movie is compulsively watchable; it has a passionflower intensity. In case you haven't been keeping up, the plot — and the blood — have thickened a lot since the first Twilight film two years ago. In that initial, relatively uncomplicated chapter, the ever-so-mildly dark and alienated Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) fell for the dashing vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) because of his pasty-faced erotic appeal (sideburns, James Dean hair, golden eyes, eternal stricken look), but also because he offered himself up as the ultimate protector: swoony and chivalrous, a spangly-skinned knight of the woods who vowed to guard her innocence.
In Eclipse, adapted from the third novel in Stephenie Meyer's girl-power-meets-retro-Harlequin fantasy series, Bella now needs to be saved from no one so much as herself. She loves Edward so completely that her fears about his "otherness" have been all but dissolved. She can't wait to go over to the undead side, and to lose her virginity, too — though Edward, ever the gentleman, has other ideas. He'll agree to make her a vampire only if she marries him (he seems to propose about every third scene). The more idealized their love becomes, the more it attracts danger like the storm clouds roiling over the Pacific Northwest.
In Seattle, an army of fresh, hungry vampires — ''newborns'' — has gone on a rampage. Since they've only just recently been ''converted'' and still have remnants of human blood, they're more ruthless and insatiable than older vamps; their genesis may be revenge, but we can sense its ultimate effect — to destroy Bella and Edward. The other threat to the couple's love comes from Jacob Black, the snub-nosed Quileute Indian werewolf played with quick responses and a rock-steady gaze by Taylor Lautner, who's like the young Matt Damon in the body of Marky Mark. Prior to Eclipse, Jacob nurtured his crush on Bella mostly from afar, but now he emerges as a furious, literally hot-blooded rival for her affection. When she insists that she's with Edward, he narrows those dagger eyebrows and basically says: You love me — you just don't know it yet. Which is a little scary. In Eclipse, Edward and Jacob square off like two king jocks, each devoted to making Bella his prize. Confronted with this much ardent male protection, a girl could die.
As always, Stephenie Meyer is not the most seamless of storytellers. She sets up soap opera horror-movie situations that stutter and ramble forward, muffled by those declarations of adolescent devotion and by Bella's own tentative, hemming-and-hawing nature. The movie, directed by David Slade (Hard Candy) from a screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg, attempts to turn the passive Bella into more of an aggressor, the brave one who yearns to dissolve Edward's caution. Yet there are moments when Kristen Stewart's acting gets a little too moody and remote. That said, she sulks and pines gorgeously, and the film, though it could have used a sharper narrative, coasts along on all that nakedly intense teen emotion. Pattinson, like James Dean, holds back so much that it's cathartic when he finally lets loose. And the battle between the newborn vamps and a coalition of Edward's vampire clan and the werewolves is thrillingly shot and edited. It's not just a war of F/X but a true demon power struggle.
The Twilight movies, like the books on which they're based, are often mocked. But that's only because we're still, on some level, getting used to the novelty of a highly contemporary blockbuster saga that's this rooted in old-fashioned, borderline masochistic girlish romantic rapture. The movie version of Eclipse, with its dueling boy-monster hunks — a chaste orgy of male gazing — revels in the power that Bella experiences by giving herself over to the powerlessness of love. The movie is about a girl's primal dream of being desired. That may well be corny, but it's also an essential antidote to summer-movie hardware. B+

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[BellaAndEdward] the twilight saga eclipse breaks box office records with midnight grosses

 

GO TWILIGHTERS/TWIHARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!


Categories: Box Office, News
Twilight fever is showing no sign of abatement with the film's third installment. In fact, fans of the series seem even more juiced up than usual. The film grossed in excess of $30 million from its midnight shows Tuesday in over 4,000 theaters across North America. This estimate surpasses the previous midnight record holder, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which earned $26.3 million last November, and now holds the new industry record as largest midnight gross ever. The film — starring Kristen Stewart, Rob Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner — has received the largest North American release ever, bowing in 4,408 theaters on Wednesday. Twenty-nine additional theaters will be added by Friday for a total of 4,437.
Eclipse marks the first Twilight film to receive a summer opening, a decision that seems to be playing out incredibly well for Summit Entertainment. Stay tuned over the weekend as we report the complete results.

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Monday, June 28, 2010

Re: [BellaAndEdward] List mommy announcement...pics

 

What a little darling!
 
Cheryl
----- Original Message -----
From: Juliana <3
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2010 1:20 AM
Subject: [BellaAndEdward] List mommy announcement...pics [2 Attachments]

 

Ok as requested here are some pics of my little angel :-)

--
<3 Juliana
 

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Re: [BellaAndEdward] Re: List mommy announcement...pics **For Juliana

 

 
Thanks, Juliana!!!
Delilah is such a sweetie!!!!
I love her soooooooo MUCH...
 
She and Riley kind of look a little alike :-)
They are both so cuddley!!!!
I just want to squeeze her everytime that I hold her...
But I don't, because I'm afraid that if I hug her too tight she will cry...
 
Wishing you and your baby all the best :-)
Hugs and Kisses!!!
Luv ya!
Tracy
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Juliana <3
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2010 11:49 AM
Subject: Re: [BellaAndEdward] Re: List mommy announcement...pics **For Juliana

Awww your grand-baby is adorable! Congrats and thank you!!!

<3 Juliana

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 5:14 AM, Tracy <tracy120552@hotmail.com> wrote:
 

 
 
AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW :-)
You're baby girl is BEAUTIFULLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!
She is soooooooooooooooooo Adorable!!!
Riley Annabelle reminds me of my grand-daughter Delilah-Marie...
Here is her photo album if you would like to see her...
 
Hugs and Kisses!!!!
Luv ya!
Tracy
----- Original Message -----
From: Juliana <3
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2010 1:20 AM
Subject:  List mommy announcement...pics [2 Attachments]

Ok as requested here are some pics of my little angel :-)

--
<3 Juliana
 




 

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[BellaAndEdward] Re: List mommy announcement...pics **For Juliana

 

 
 
AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW :-)
You're baby girl is BEAUTIFULLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!
She is soooooooooooooooooo Adorable!!!
Riley Annabella reminds me of my grand-daughter Delilah-Marie...
Here is her photo album if you would like to see her...
 
Hugs and Kisses!!!!
Luv ya!
Tracy
----- Original Message -----
From: Juliana <3
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2010 1:20 AM
Subject:  List mommy announcement...pics [2 Attachments]

Ok as requested here are some pics of my little angel :-)

--
<3 Juliana
 

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RE: [BellaAndEdward] List mommy announcement

 

congratulations.  :)


----- Original Message -----
From: Juliana [mailto:3 To: BellaAndEdward@yahoogroups.com,breakingalltherules@yahoogroups.com,Cullen_Corner@yahoogroups.com,LionAndLamb_Fanfic@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sun, 27 Jun 2010 22:34:43 -0600
Subject: [BellaAndEdward] List mommy announcement

Hey all it is your list mommy here. I think some of you knew I was pregnant..probably from my pregnancy-hormone induced spam rant haha, but I just wanted to let everyone know my little girl was born. Her name is Riley Annabelle and she came into the world on May 10 (yeah I know I'm just now getting around to posting lol) at a wopping 4 lbs1oz and 18 inches.. I know she is tiny. She was completely on time just super tiny, but totally healthy :-) We are doing great and she is growing like crazy- she is already over 7lbs and definitely has her mommy's attitude lol. Anyway I just wanted to share my news- love u guys

--
<3 your list mommy/owner
           Juliana
 



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