“You better hold on tight, spider-monkey.”
An oft-quoted, infinitely meme-able piece of dialogue fromTwilighthas a funny origin story.
“I was kind of worried,” she says.
Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson in ‘Twilight’.Deana Newcomb/Summit
“And I thought, ‘I wonder if he’ll like to say any of these.'”
Hardwicke left the final choice up toRobert Pattison, who would be delivering the dialogue on screen as Edward.
If you do, you’ve got the option to say them.’
And he said, ‘I like spider-monkey.'"
Pattinson, who was not a big star at the time, was often overcome by his nerves.
“That’s kind of intimidating.”
But she kept reminding him to get through a scene without self-critiquing.
However, she adds, he had no trouble at all with the “spider-monkey” scene.
Hardwicke hand-selected Pattinson to play vampire Edward Cullen,despite studio doubts.
The director had all four finalists for the role come to her house and read with Stewart.
However, Hardwicke’s biggest challenge wasn’t casting or coaching actors through their own self-consciousness.
It was something altogether more…sparkly.
“That made me quite nervous, the sparkling,” she says.
“Because we had a tight budget on the firstTwilight and sparkles cost a lot of money, okay.
CGI is expensive.”
She ultimately decided that the moment would have to be brief to get the most bang for their buck.
“And I was like, ‘Oh no, we need to limit it.’
We made it a moment of a reveal where he steps into that beam of light.”
“That did not look good,” Hardwicke adds.
Watch theEW Comic-Con YouTube feedfor more exclusive content.
