Most films about 13-year-olds tell stories of
childhood, usually with an air of innocence still prevailing over the
story. Yet the stories of the teens in Catherine Hardwicke's thirteen are remarkably adult - including tales of drugs, sex, addiction and obsession, just to name a few.
And
before anyone accuses her of trying to shock audiences with extreme
tales, keep in mind that a 13-year-old co-wrote the script: Nikki Reed,
who also stars in the film with Evan Rachel Wood and Holly Hunter.
"It's
a movie, but it its definitely true to my 13th year, but I cannot say
that it is autobiographical because if I do then you would assume that
every detail happened to me, and it didn't," says Reed, now 15.
The
film follows Tracy (Wood), a 13-year-old child of divorced parents who
secretly cuts herself while trying to fit in to the cool crowd at
school. Living with her single mother (Hunter) and her brother (Brady
Corbet) and her mother's ex-addict boyfriend (Jeremy Sisto), Tracy
quickly bonds with cool girl Evie (Reed), who introduces her to the
world of shoplifting, drugs and sex.
It definitely isn't The Lizzie Maguire Movie, but Reed says she doesn't find those kinds of films to be realistic.
"I think people watch those movies because they're not true to their lives," she says. "Like Gilmore Girls,
people watch that show because nobody has a relationship with their
mother like that so they watch that show because it makes them feel
good. I watch that show."
"People totally forget what they did at
that age. I've had a lot of people, like college kids that we talked to
last week that said, 'I'm am so shocked.' And I said, 'How old were you
when you first dabbled in sex or drugs?' And the guy was like, 'Well,
11,'" adds Hardwicke.
"We sort of forget and we get shocked - not
everybody because not everybody went through this, but a lot of people
did. I grew up in a little tiny hick town in South Texas but we had a
lot of issues there with the drug smuggling and the make-out parties. I
mean everything was happening then and that was a long time ago in a
little remote town that was not even LA."
Reed agrees that this is not just an urban issue.
She
says: "I lived in a small town in Illinois for one year, in a town that
wasn't on the map, so it was like non-existent. It does go on there;
it's just a little bit different. The basics - the drugs, the sex, the
piercings - all of that goes on.
"All kids go through rebellious
phases and in small towns, actually where I lived, it's even more
extreme in some cases because they have nothing to do. At least in LA
we have something to do."
If some people feel a 13-year-old is
too young for sex or drugs, the reality is it's happening even at
younger ages. While Hardwicke considered including this in the film,
she ultimately bulked.
"A lot of parents have told me about their
kids that are six, seven years old, the girls that are doing Christina
and Britney's stripper moves - they know the moves exactly from the
videos," she said.
"I thought, OK this is what is really
happening - people as young as six years old are doing this, maybe I
should touch on that. But honestly I couldn't go there, even though I
think it's real. I had to back off from some of the real stuff that you
hear about."
Just because thirteen is more realistic than most other teen films, that doesn't necessarily mean it has an agenda.
"I
don't think of it having a message," Reed says. "Our movie is what it
is. Like, here's thirteen, we're just going to set it out there for
you, take away from it whatever you can. We're not hoping that people
are going to go there and learn something and come back better parents
or know more about their kids. We're just hoping that it will provoke
conversation. People can talk about it. Catherine always says it will
be a safeguard, which it has been so far."
"In a way we made a
movie hoping that it could help, like open up dialogue and have kids
talking to other kids about issues that they're going through,
struggling with and parents," adds Hardwicke. "We've shown it to
therapists, teachers, policy-makers in DC, because I think there are
certainly some issues here, like all the arts funding is stripped out
of schools, these kids really have nothing creative to do with their
time they mostly just do destructive stuff. If you find a way to
express your issues, struggles and problems through the arts, writing
or music or something, there's a little more hope."
Which is
specifically how the film got made. Reed, who was having a hard time
with her parents, started writing the script with Hardwicke, her
father's ex-girlfriend, as a way to deal with her problems.
"Both
my parents read the script; they had nothing to say about it - nothing
at all actually, they just cried," Reed says of her parents' reaction.
"Looking at them I can feel what they're feeling but neither of them
have said anything to me. I don't think they're going to. I think they
were just like, 'I don't really care if it's real or not. Obviously
since she made this, she's not in it anymore, so we're happy and we're
not going to hammer her about it."'
While the film didn't provoke conversations between Reed and her parents, it did help her deal with past problems with them.
"Now
that I've had to think about it so much I've come to appreciate things
in other people that I didn't," she says. "Like the father character -
I see that my dad and Travis, they might not be the best father but
they're definitely trying and I see that now more."
Thirteen will be released in Australia in March.KRT
