ROBERT PATTINSON SINKS HIS TEETH INTO TWILIGHT - PART TWO

The actor details his first, interesting, screen test, the scene it turned into and his opinion of the books
By EMERSON PARKER, Contributing Writer
Published 11/17/2008

Vampires are hot right now. Well, actually, vampires have been hot for a long, long time but now seems to be the time where they are buzz worthy and not just something found in books or an occasional film here or there.
Maybe it started with BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and ANGEL. But since then rabid following of fans have attached themselves to MOONLIGHT – the failed vampire series on CBS – TRUE BLOOD, the brutal HBO romance series and big time have fans gone batty over the upcoming vampire film TWILIGHT based on the books of Stephenie Meyer.

But for star Robert Pattinson, vampires … eh no big deal.

“There’s such an obsessive following for vampires,” Pattinson says. “It’s really strange. I don’t know why.” And for Pattinson he’s never read any books about vampires other than Dracula, which he read after he got the part in TWILIGHT. It is something that has never interested him.

Luckily or unluckily for Pattinson, his very first screen test didn’t give him a lot of time to prepare or ease into the part of a vampire – he did it on the director’s, Catherine Hardwicke, bed.

“As as soon as I met Kristen, we were doing a scene where—it’s a big scene in the book—where I try and kiss her for the first time and then kind of lose control of myself, and I almost kill her,” Pattinson says. “And that was the first thing we had to do, on the director’s bed. It was pretty intense.
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That same scene was re-shot later in production where it turned out to be extremely easier as, well, it wasn’t on the director’s bed for one but it involved more pieces rather than just one long extended scene.

“There was something about that specific scene which could show so much about the story, and so we just kind of spent three days doing it instead of one day, and just got loads more coverage and stuff,” Pattinson says. “And I think it ended up being a lot better. I mean, it’s just so difficult to shoot, like, the actual transition between, when does a kiss suddenly start turning into, you know, murder? It was just like very subtle little things, which involved lots of little shots.”

No so subtle is Pattinson’s opinion about Meyer’s series of books, just ask him. “It was hard for me to get through the first time,” Pattinson says. “Especially when you’re trying to picture yourself in the role. I like the second book a lot more than the first one as I thought the second book was pretty moving.”

But it at least gave him an understanding of what his and the other characters were like and what he need to do in order to make a great film. “I really wanted to make the movie not seem like a kind of cash-in, you know, sort of flash-in-the-pan movie,” Pattinson says. “The core story is very strange. It’s like a really, really bizarre story, and it hasn’t really been done before to such a detailed extent. So, I was trying to play that.”

For Robert Pattison, getting the role of Edward in TWILIGHT is probably the best thing career-wise that could have happened to him. Well … maybe. It depends on how successful the film franchise will be. We know that the book series from author Stephanie Meyer is insanely popular with fans everywhere grabbing at whatever they possibly can in terms of news about the film (which comes to theaters Nov. 21).
But this could have a very HARRY POTTER effect in terms of getting a number of movies under Pattison’s belt – a relatively unknown before TWILIGHT – if the film does as well as the books. Books in which, much like his co-star Kristin Stewart, he had no idea about.

“I didn’t know how big [the Stephanie Meyer following] was when we were shooting,” Pattison says. “When we first started shooting, it kind of, it got bigger and bigger and bigger—like, when we first started, no one showed up at the set, and then, on the last day, there were about 100 people outside the set screaming. Everyone knew everything. But at the beginning, no one I talked to had heard of it, and now everyone’s heard of it.”

And those fans. Oh boy those fans were something Pattison wasn’t expecting. “It’s scary because teenage girls especially are notoriously flippant in their affections for celebrities, so it’s kind of scary,” Pattison says. “The fans of the book are very, very loyal to the book and to Stephanie Meyer. And I got a 100 percent negative reaction when I got cast, I mean, literally 100.”

That just meant that Pattison had to make the proper adjustments to his character, working on Edward, finding out what drives him and moves him and that he’s an enigma but one that’s more of a perfect creature in the wilderness, Pattison explains. So it was only fitting that his choice for the role didn’t fit with everyone’s expected image of Edward.

“Everyone has projected their own image onto him,” Pattison says. “The amount of different people who the fans wanted was so varied. People were saying like Leonardo DiCaprio and stuff. And the guy’s supposed to be 17. It’s completely crazy. But then I met Stephanie Meyer and she kind of gave me the okay. And literally overnight, all the fans – like virtually all of them – completely changed their minds. So now, if anyone says anything negative, people will attack them, and say ‘No, Stephanie says he’s right!’”