Thirteen is the controversial and brilliantly voracious account of what young, suburban teenage girls get up to when they ditch their Barbies. The film received much attention upon its US release, earning former production designer Catherine Hardwicke the coveted Best Director award at the Sundance Film. Predictably, condemnations arrived from the usual churchy suspects relating to the film’s depiction of 13-year-old girls engaging in sexual acts, drug-taking, shop-lifting, drinking, self-mutilation and screeching at everyone in their immediate vicinity. For most though, Thirteen will be a gripping yet disturbing trip down memory lane thanks to its easily identifiable fucked-up protagonists, its astute representation of jealous, quasi-sexual adolescent best-friendships, and its honest account of cutting.

Indeed, it’s this aspect of Thirteen which has proved the most explosive, but those searching for root causes as to why young girls cut themselves could do a lot worse than sit through the film. It rightly locates teenage self-mutilation as simultaneously being a pathetic attention-seeking device, an erotic charge, idiotic peer mimickry and a quickfire release from pent-up aggression and frustration. But, Hardwicke isn’t out to play the alarmist Reefer Madness, “Parents! Do you know what your kids get up to!” card. Perhaps Thirteen’s most valuable observation is that for most, such behaviour is a phase; one which will probably last no longer than the brambled tears on the wrist.
Hardwicke should know. She co-wrote the script with 13-year-old star Nikki Reed, and it’s based on Nikki’s own (even more) youthful days spent in the midst of a ‘bad crowd’. Not wishing to re-enact these less than halcyon days, Nikki opted to take the role of teenage bad-girl Evie in the film version, while the compelling Evan Rachel Wood essays Tracy, the fallen angel whose liberal, bohemian mother Melanie, played by Holly Hunter, remains blissfully unaware of her daughter’s leisuretime activities.
It’s a typically off-kilter role for Hunter, who also championed this film as co-producer. The Georgia-farm born actress has after all worked with the Coen brothers four times to date (though her cameo role in Miller’s Crossing was cut out), while chalking up credits elsewhere in controversy courters such as Crash and The Piano (for which she won an Oscar). The 44-year-old Hunter is also known for being a guarded and enigmatic interviewee, but she and director Hardwicke were more than happy to discuss the award winning Thirteen recently.

Has it been extremely difficult bringing this to the screen?
Hardwicke: I’ve known Nikki since she was five years old because I used to go out with her dad, and I always knew her as a fun little kid. I went out of town on a movie and when I came back I saw this new person walk into the room. She was twelve years old and she looked like a supermodel. I was shocked, there was a new Nikki there. Her world had shrunk, so the only thing that mattered to her was what three kids at school thought. She wasn’t really reading or doing anything else. She was just waking up every morning at 4.30 to do two-and-a-half hours of hair and make-up before school. And this was a 12-year-old! She was very angry with her mother, her father, herself – everyone. I started thinking as a friend that I loved this kid and I loved her brother since they were kids, and I wanted to help her in whatever way I could.
So what did you do?
Hardwicke: I wanted to help her get excited about creative stuff instead of destructive stuff, or just being bored all the time. So I taught her to surf, and I took her to museums and art-galleries and we did drawings and we read Jane Austen. She hated that. Then she said that she was interested in acting. So we took that very seriously, reading about acting and listening to professional workshops in order to run with the idea that she was excited about. Then I said that there were no great parts for 13 year olds so we would have to write our own. I thought maybe this would get her excited about writing and literature. We started to write a teen comedy, but we didn’t quite get the funny bits in there. When I started watching all the things going on in her life and her friends’ lives and her Mom’s life I started seeing all these pressures they were under. And they would open up to me. So we decided to write about the real stuff which was more compelling than anything we could make up. That’s kind of how we started.
Does the finished movie strongly reflect the script that you initially read, Holly?
Hunter: Oddly enough it does. The feeling that the movie evokes is exactly what the script evoked as well. It has a sense of emergency, and on the page it had that same kind of urgent, uncensored, very detailed description going on. What I try to do when I act is think a lot, an awful lot, before I show up on the set. And then I try not to think at all when she (Catherine) says action. I really want to just obey my own impulses when the camera’s rolling. I think the script has that non-judgmental version of itself that is still intact when you see the movie.
What especially struck you about the screenplay?
Hunter: I was particularly drawn to the fact that the movie doesn’t stand in judgment of any of its characters. Even my character’s boyfriend, played by Jeremy Sisto. You kind of like the guy even though he’s very damaged and broken and a practising addict. You see that he has an ability and a desire to love, and I think that’s true of all the characters. It makes it more difficult to categorise these people and stand in judgment of them. And you can more or less see yorself in each of the characters’ situations.
Has Nikki been changed by being in the film?
Hardwicke: I think it gave her some kind of confidence on one level, that someone listened to her and cared about her and felt she could accomplish something. I think that helped her have some self-esteem that she was maybe missing. She’s 15 now, in the second year of high school and trying to get a driver’s licence, as well as trying to get into college. She also has a steady boyfriend. At 14 or 15 your life changes every minute of every month. She keeps changing.
Hunter: One of the things that happened during the shoot was that Nikki was absolutely forced to see her mother in this whole other light. Nikki’s Mom is a great woman, very alive and very free. So all these people on the film who Nikki admired and respected and was working with, were people who greatly admired her mother. People really dug hanging out with her. It was a very unusual perspective for Nikki to see her Mom in. We talked a little bit about that when we were shooting.’
Did you both have moments of rebellion in your own teenage years?
Hardwicke: I was a little bit more like the girl in the movie who had the Chihuahua on her T-shirt. Trying to get in and trying to be cool but not cutting it. I hate to say it, but that was more me.
Hunter: Adolescence is a startling time for any kid. I was no different. But my more experimental years happened later. When I was a teenager I was involved with music, I played brass instruments in a band and had six hours each day of extra-curricular activities involving that. I actually believe that is the major contributor to me not rebelling. But I’m not inherently a rebel though.
Does the film make you glad you’re not 13 any more?
Hunter: I would love to be 13. If you’re 13 that means you’re alive. I could never stand in judgment of what time it is I’m alive.
But the pressures on teenagers are greater now, are they not?
Hunter: I think this rite of passage has always been something worth remarking on in an artful way. People have been commenting on it and arguing about it and trying to describe it and trying to unveil the mysteries of this rite of passage forever. Different cultures ritualise it, but we don’t really have that any more. We just know it as adolescence, a time of tremendous upheaval in all sorts of different ways.
Thirteen is now on selected release