The screenwriter: Melissa Rosenberg
Tackling a literary giant:
“I was less aware of the phenomenon when I first took this on,” Twilight screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg admits. “As soon as I became aware of how much it was, I stopped researching. I didn’t want to know the extent of it.”
Staying true to the book:
“Something I would have done regardless,” Rosenberg says. “I am a fan of the book. It is really compelling storytelling. For me, as a writer, it is a gift to be given that strong a starting point to play. In adapting the book, I was most conscious of was that Stephenie feel that I had done her book justice. It was very gratifying when she liked it.”
A striking movie:
Those revisions that Meyer sent in red that were 90 percent utilized, were fantastic, yet Rosenberg was found elsewhere during that process. “I was on the picket line,” she said.
“I handed in my script on October 31 and the strike happened the next day. The adjustments were so light, there was nothing structural.”
When Rosenberg got the green light for the screenwriting process to begin, there was five weeks on the clock before an almost certain writer’s strike.
“You can’t write a script in five weeks unless you don’t shower or pet the dog or talk to your husband or eat snacks. You can! Catherine Hardwicke, who is also a writer, was an instant sounding board, editing right behind me with instant feedback. I was able to write specifically to what she wanted to do as opposed to going through many drafts. We were shorthanded. It was a great collaboration and the only way the script would have gotten written and green lit as fast as it did.
Anticipation is making me wait:
“I started to (look into fan eagerness) and I went on IMDB exchange and people started talking about whether I was going to do a decent job or not. About 10 of them said, ‘she did Dexter, this is going to be great, this is going to be perfect.’ And you get to the eleventh one and they’re like, ‘I hated Dexter.’ I was so wounded,” she laughs. “I cannot read this, there could be 100 positive ones, the one little person ruins it.”
The Manifesto from Meyer
“When I first heard about it, I was really worried about being dictated to about what I can and can’t write,” Rosenberg remembers. “I was protective of my own creative process, which we all are. But then I got the Manifesto and there was nothing on there that I wouldn’t have done anyway. You don’t kill characters. Of course, if you kill Jacob, you don’t have a sequel. The manifesto was basically – adapt the book. That was my intention, it was easy for me.”
A timeless romance
“The great romantic movie is if you can capture longing. If the obstacles are strong enough, then I think you have a great structure for a romantic movie,” Rosenberg says. Twilight delivers that in droves.
“I think that was so beautifully captured in the book. I think that’s why it’s as popular as it is because we’ve all had that experience of longing. It’s a universal experience. It’s the surprise and the tension building up to it.”
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