![\"\"](\"https:\/\/photos1.blogger.com\/x\/blogger\/7991\/933\/1600\/981111\/nativitystory-catherinezechariah.jpg\")
<\/a>It\u2019s time for more extended and deleted quotes from the Nativity Story<\/a><\/i> junket! The interviewee this time is Catherine Hardwicke, director of this film, as well as Thirteen<\/a><\/i> (2003) and Lords of Dogtown<\/a><\/i> (2005). Portions of this roundtable interview, which took place in L.A., already appeared in my first junket report<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n
Asked how she made the transition from the \u201csex, drugs and rock \u2018n roll\u201d of her previous teen-oriented films, she replied:<\/p>\n
CH:<\/b> This movie is about the most famous teenager in history, who had maybe the biggest obstacles that she had to face and the most extraordinary challenges, so in a way you could say it\u2019s part of my teen trilogy. (laughs)<\/i> But I think that the idea of realizing that this woman was only 13 or 14 years old and had to face these enormous challenges at such a tender age, which is an age that I am familiar with\u2013 Because many of my friends, like Nikki Reed, have gone through so many difficult things at that age, which is why I made the movie [Thirteen<\/i>], because Nikki and her family were suffering, and in that film, in Thirteen<\/i>, I tried to take you into the house of a real teenager and feel what it was like to be in a battlefield, between her and her mother, and try to create something that could be a healing experience for other families. We were on Oprah<\/i> for an hour, where they showed the movie to mothers and daughters and discussed the issues, and we did things with all kinds of groups all over the country, using it as cinema therapy as kind of a healing tool. And Dogtown<\/i> was [about] boys that came from a difficult family life, parents that just weren\u2019t engaged. And so, in this case, two thousand years ago, how similar is that to teenage life now? I mean, there are still struggles with the parents, but of course Mary had this extraordinary situation, being told that she would bear the Son of God, and then having people looking down on her, not believing her, [and treating her like an] outcast. How did she find faith in herself and inner strength to overcome this? So I felt there was some kind of continuity, and I tried to do similar things, to really take you back to Nazareth, and to take you back into real-life, real-person, real situations that you could relate to. If you\u2019re a guy, how would you feel if your fianc\u00e9e that you love so dearly comes back home and she\u2019s pregnant, and you know you\u2019re not the father, and she says it\u2019s going to be the Son of God? I mean, that\u2019s a tough one for any man to get his head around, y\u2019know? (laughs)<\/i> And it had never happened before. And why would god choose her<\/i>? She\u2019s a poor peasant. And no one knew how extraordinary she was at that moment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Asked if her version of Mary might be a tad modernized \u2014 as in, for example, the scene where she walks out after being told that she will marry Joseph, a man she does not love \u2014 Hardwicke replied:<\/p>\n
CH:<\/b> When you read about life at the time, biblical times, and how children were much more obedient and parents had probably more power than parents seem to have today\u2013 And parents did make that decision for a daughter, but still, you know, human nature is the same, and if somebody tells you you\u2019re going to marry this man, and that\u2019s not somebody that you felt a connection with or any reason to [marry], and you still wanted to be a child and you didn\u2019t understand, how would you really feel if that happened to you? So I think we tried to\u2013 She doesn\u2019t say anything against her parents, it\u2019s just a feeling that she leaves, she leaves and she has to think about it, process this, and you hear her inner thoughts: \u201cWhy are they forcing me to marry this man?\u201d She doesn\u2019t protest and say that she won\u2019t, she\u2019s just trying to process it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Asked why the Joseph of this movie is so much younger than the traditional portraits of Joseph as an older man<\/a>, she made some comments about life expectancy in the first century and the \u201csalt and pepper\u201d in Oscar Isaac<\/a>\u2018s hair, and then she added:<\/p>\n
CH:<\/b> My niece is 20, and she saw the trailer. She goes, \u201cEw, he looks so old!\u201d So maybe to you and I, he didn\u2019t look that old, but to a young girl, she\u2019s like, \u201cHe looks so old, why would you like him?\u201d So some people think he looks older.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And, most tantalizing of all, when she was asked about the absence of any depiction of synagogue life in the film, despite reports that a synagogue had been built on the set, there was this exchange:<\/p>\n
CH:<\/b> You see the rabbis standing in front of it in one of the first shots in Nazareth; you see the soldiers passing by it, also. And we did film a scene inside the synagogue, too, and it will be on the DVD as a deleted scene. I hate to say, it\u2019s my own fault, because I did the scene in about 15 minutes, and I just didn\u2019t do that great a job of the scene. It\u2019s not my best work, so it didn\u2019t quite make the movie. But it\u2019s going to be on the DVD.<\/p>\n
PTC:<\/b> What happens in<\/i> the scene?<\/p>\n
CH:<\/b> In the scene, it was part of kind of the shunning sequence, so you saw of course the men sitting on the one side and the women sitting on the other side, and you saw Joseph and Joaquim sitting together, but the other men weren\u2019t exactly looking at him, so they were kind of\u2013 There was a distance. Now other Jewish scholars are another reason I didn\u2019t put the scene in the movie. Jewish scholars told me that really when you go to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, you have the shawl over your head, the prayer shawl, and you are not supposed to be judging people when you\u2019re in church, and so it was maybe wrong to show that they were kind of judging Mary. You\u2019re really supposed to be looking straight ahead and having your own relationship with God, not a judgmental relationship, thinking about your own sins. So in a way the scene probably wasn\u2019t accurate.<\/p>\n
PTC:<\/b> So that scene was supposed to specifically be Yom Kippur?<\/p>\n
CH:<\/b> Yes. When you see Herod in the Yom Kippur scene \u2014 you know, pass your sins onto the animal \u2014 I wanted to see Herod, how the wealthy dealt with Yom Kippur and I wanted to see how the peasants\u2013 But I think I got it wrong.<\/p>\n
TM:<\/b> Although if they of course had been violating tradition in order to judge them, that would have made the scene powerful in its own way. They succumb to temptation.<\/p>\n
CH:<\/b> It was one of those\u2013 You\u2019re going to see\u2013 I\u2019d love to see what you guys think when you see the DVD, because it was questionable whether it was\u2013 I didn\u2019t want to be disrespectful to the Jewish faith, and I felt that was a little bit on the edge of possibly being disrespectful. I thought it would be powerful, but then, if these were devout Jews and they knew what that day was about, then they should not be passing judgment on others, in the synagogue especially. I don\u2019t know if I made the right decision, but you\u2019ll see, when you see the DVD.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Stay tuned for even more interviews from the junket!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s time for more extended and deleted quotes from the Nativity Story junket! The interviewee this time is Catherine Hardwicke, director of this film, as well as Thirteen (2003) and Lords of Dogtown (2005). Portions of this roundtable interview, which took place in L.A., already appeared in my first junket report. Asked how she made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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