From a first-time director and two teenage actresses comes a raw and revealing insight into urban adolescence in 2003, a provocative portrait of what teens today are thinking, doing, feeling and going through. Winner of the Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival, Catherine Hardwicke’s THIRTEEN is a unique project co-written with then-13-year-old Nikki Reed who lived many of the events seen on screen. Together, they forged a fast-and-furious, unblinking picture of the cliques and clashes, hidden dangers and secret rituals, dashed hopes and unrelenting dreams of two American girls looking to make their way in a new world for which few maps exist.
What does it mean to be THIRTEEN right now? It has always been the age when establishing identity, individuality and a sense of one’s importance in the world become the imperative. But in today’s America, the pressures on 13-year-old girls – media-fueled expectations to be sexy, gorgeous, cool and in control – have never been greater. Low-rider jeans, body piercing and petty crimes have become the outward symbols of a generation that is desperately trying to find its own spirit.
Hardwicke explores this territory with honesty, clarity and passion in THIRTEEN, using a hyper-kinetic camera to capture both the unhinged joy and high angst of hitting modern adolescence full force. The story follows the transformation of Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood), who begins as a promising, pig-tailed student still playing with teddy bears and Barbie® dolls. But when Tracy enters the hyper-sexualized peer-pressure cooker of junior high, she witnesses the power and hipness of Evie Zamora (Nikki Reed, co-writer of the script), who has become widely known as “the hottest chick in school.” Ultra-popular, model-gorgeous and bewitchingly snobby, Evie represents everything Tracy suddenly wants, and needs, to be.
At first Tracy has no hope of being accepted into Evie’s elite clique. She’s got the wrong attitude, the wrong friends, definitely the wrong look. But Tracy learns to remake herself, step by step, into the ultimate ideal of a 2003 teen. She discovers how to do the makeup, the clothes, the hair, the act.
She cracks the code of popularity, gains Evie as a mercurial best friend, and even starts winning attention from boys. And yet, the further Tracy dives into premature adulthood, the higher the stakes get. She loses the closeness she once had with her hard-working mother (played by Oscar-winner Holly Hunter), starts failing classes, and despite her seething hatred of her mother’s ex-addict boyfriend (Jeremy Sisto), becomes a drug abuser herself. Despite it all, Tracy is still THIRTEEN, caught in a whirlwind of emotion in which everything she does, everything she says, all that she wants, seems to matter in a huge way. And…she still has her whole life in front of her.
Thirteen marks Catherine Hardwicke’s feature film directorial debut. The screenplay was written by Hardwicke & Nikki Reed. Starring Holly Hunter, Evan Rachel Wood, Nikki Reed, Jeremy Sisto, Brady Corbet and Deborah Kara Unger, the film is produced by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte and Michael London. The executive producers are Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Liza Chasin & Holly Hunter.
“The other type of best friends are two girls who are truly inseparable…They have their own language and codes. They wear each other’s clothes. They may even have crushes at the same time on the same person.. . It’s almost certain they’ll break up. . . and then they’ll make up, then break up, then make up.” — Queen Bees and Wannabes, Rosalind Wiseman*
At the core of THIRTEEN are two girls, both desperate to be popular and wanted, who become best friends. Tracy is an over-achieving student who, angry at the unfairness of life, turns her focus to over-achieving at rebellion. Meanwhile, savvy, manipulative Evie turns out to be a lost and lonely child looking for love, or anything to hold onto in a world that seems to only value her looks and boldness. But it is the raw portrait of the girls’ friendship – fueled by need, complicated by jealousy, rife with intimacy – where the power of their story lies.
Hardwicke advised her co-writer Reed, whose life closely resembled Tracy’s, not to take on the main role. “For Nikki to play herself would have been very, very hard,” notes the director. “I also felt that Nikki didn’t quite have the innocence that you want to see in Tracy because she had already been through it all and come out the other side.”
Hardwicke began the process of searching for a girl of 13 with the maturity and presence to take Tracy from a shy innocent to a hardcore teen rebel. It wasn’t an easy task, as many girls turned down the role purely out of fear of the edgy subject matter. Then Hardwicke came across Evan Rachel Wood, already a veteran actress at 14, who had been seen in such features as PRACTICAL MAGIC and known to television viewers for her role on the acclaimed series “Once and Again.” “There was nobody else like Evan,” sums up Hardwicke. “The fact that she even existed made me realize this movie was really going to happen.”
Wood had never seen a script so close to real teenage experiences before she read THIRTEEN. “Everything you see right now is sugar-coated and this wasn’t the fluffy pink version of being a teenage girl I’m used to seeing,” she observes. “It was about the people I really know – girls I’ve seen who have fallen into this same kind of black hole.”
Wood continues: “I think it’s a story anyone my age can relate to because it’s about that time when you’re not a kid and you’re not an adult so you don’t really know who you are but at the same time you want so badly to be accepted. And sometimes I think you let the wrong people into your life because you have no place else to go.”
Most of all, Wood felt the character of Tracy could make a difference to other teen girls. “THIRTEEN is a movie that really holds a mirror up to your face if you’re that age,” she says. “I think it will open a lot of teenagers’ eyes and it will also open a lot of parents’ eyes to what kids are going through today. It’s good for people to see how someone like Tracy gets to rock bottom and how she has to finally make a choice: can I get my life together or will I stay lost forever?”
While Wood was auditioning for Tracy, Reed made the decision to audition for the role of Evie. When producer London met her, he was impressed despite her lack of experience. “Nikki is a truly compelling and extraordinary person and knowing that she had lived through this whole story made her even more fascinating,” he says. “She was perfect for Evie.”
Reed became increasingly fascinated by the character of Evie, who, though a “bad girl” by most definitions, turns out to have a whole lot more to her than anyone can see on the surface. “Evie’s just a really, really hurt little girl,” comments Reed. “She’s so insecure that she projects confidence and she’s so lonely that she really attaches to people like Mel. I think she just wants people to love her and she’s starving for attention. But she’s also become used to having power. Other kids are scared of her and cower away. That’s why she likes Tracy – because Tracy takes her on. At first it’s a game for Evie, to see if she can make Tracy become just like her, but then Evie realizes that she is the one who wants Tracy’s life. It’s a hard thing to face for her.”
For Reed, ultimately Evie’s story is about how tough it is for young girls to see the effect they’re having on their families and their futures. “Someone like Evie doesn’t realize how much she’s hurting other people or herself,” she observes. “But there are moments in the film when I think the audience can really see how much she wants to have a family, to be loved, to communicate honestly.”
The first time the girls met at Hardwicke’s house, they talked her into letting them spend the night, during which they filmed each other with Hardwicke’s digital camera. “That night, she let us just be girls and really have fun. We stayed up all night together and that made it seem like we’d been friends for a long time,” says Reed. Adds Wood: “We bonded right away at the sleepover and, from then on, it felt natural for us to behave like best friends.”
In addition to Nikki Reed, THIRTEEN gave a number of talented kids and teenagers their start in film, including: Brady Corbet as Tracy’s younger brother, who will star in the forthcoming special-effects adventure THE THUNDERBIRDS; Vanessa Anne Hudgens, who plays Tracy’s rejected friend Noel (and also stars in THE THUNDERBIRDS); Brandy Rainey, appearing as the tough girl who threatens Tracy at the film’s climax, who has since appeared on several television shows; and the rappers Mo-McRae and Javá Benson, who have already journeyed on to several prime-time television guest-spots.
Directed by: Catherine Hardwicke
Starring: Holly Hunter, Evan Rachel Wood, Nikki Reed, Jeremy Sisto, Brady Corbet, Deborah Kara Unger
Screenplay by: Nikki Reed
Music by: Mark Mothersbaugh
Cinematography by: Elliot Davis
Film Editing by: Nancy Richardson
MPAA Rating: R for drug use, self destructive violence, language, sexuality – all involving young teens.
Studio: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Release Date: August 20, 2003
