'Eclipse's' Slade: They Just Told Me Don't Make Edward Ugly

The Wrap: Coming off dark movies like �Hard Candy� and �30 Days of Night,� David Slade seemed like an unlikely choice for the highly anticipated �Twilight Saga: Eclipse.�

David Slade�s indie debut, 2005�s�Hard Candy,� a critically lauded thriller starring Patrick Wilson and then unknown Ellen Page, was about a photographer and his subject who engage in a deadly game of cat and mouse. He followed that with his first studio film, �30 Days of Night,� based on the comic book by Steve Niles.

That vampires-run-amok saga fared poorly at the box office, but prepared the director for his latest, �Eclipse.�

So, how did you get hired? Were you on a list?
No. I had met with Summit on a couple of projects that didn�t come to fruition. They seemed to like me, and when it came to �New Moon,� they asked me -- but I never even got to say yes before Chris was doing it.

So when this came up -- they sent me a script for �New Moon� and they sent me the script for this -- I read it and I thought this one was superior. One of the things for the director is you got to have a good story. Even if you have the most expensive budget in the world, or even if you�ve got the best actors in the world, the story is what�s going to sell it.

Also, being completely candid, how often do you get the opportunity to do a romance if you�ve done two horror movies? So it was a great way to test myself.

Was it hard joining a huge franchise?
It wasn�t anything that concerned me. The important thing was to make the best movie I could.

In terms of the cycle of the novels, this one is more mature, more grown-up, a lot darker, a lot more scary. So it was going to be a different look, a little bit of difference in the performances.

But at no point was there ever a dichotomy between serving the phenomena and making a film. I felt that if I tried to focus too much on the phenomenon, the fans and the other films, that I would go crazy.

Is a project like this director-proof?
It�s not director-proof. I don�t believe anything�s director-proof. I think Christopher Nolan proved that when he directed the Batman franchise -- he elevated Batman so high above what everybody expected.

But Joel Schumacher made a hash of Batman, and they still made lots of money.
I never thought of that. But I�m not a filmmaker who kind of deliberates too much about my career. I just saw it for what it was and thought I�ll go and meet them and talk about it. So then when we talked about it, they went, �Wow, great! Your ideas seem to match ours. We want you to meet someone else.�

And the next meeting I�m meeting the author. And it was really quick. The first meeting to being offered the film was, essentially, two weeks. It wasn�t any big life choice to make. It wasn�t, �Oh God, am I going to sell my soul to the devil?�

Summit has so much riding on the �Twilight� series. Everything must have been a committee decision.
You can get every single person who needs to make a decision at Summit into the bathroom. So it�s not as many as you think.

Summit is a studio like any other studio, and in this day and age, you have to know how to work with studios. But the main thing is, as long as you�re on the same page when you go in, you stay on the same page. You�ll have your ups and downs, but mostly you can make the film that you want to make.

What did they want input on?
Largely big general points like, �Don�t make Edward ugly in this scene. Make sure he�s not in the sun because he should sparkle.�

What author Stephenie Meyer�s role? You can see her fingerprints all over the script.
There was a lot of discussion in pre-production on the script. She would come in, and she would be an advisor. So we called her a lot because we were doing things that were out of the book as well as in the book. But we knew there wasn�t time for a lot of discussion.

�30 Days of Night� was considered a box-office disappointment. Is it a career choice to do something like this, which, good or bad, is bound to make a boatload of money?
�30 Days of Night� -- I�m campaigning to get a director�s cut released on DVD. I�m fairly happy with the film they put out, but there is a different film, a darker film.