twilight

Gus Van Sant’s Twilight Audition Didn’t Go So Well

Gus Van Sant is at Cannes right now promoting his new movie Restless, but if all had gone according to plan, he would have been working on a different teen romance set in the Pacific Northwest: Breaking Dawn, the final Twilight two-parter. Van Sant was one of three directors considered for the gig (both he and Sofia Coppola lost out to Bill Condon), and his attempt to win over a meeting full of Summit production executives was a novel experience, he tells MTV: “I got very nervous. There were like 15 people [in the room]. I had never really auditioned or gone into a job interview in that way since maybe 1988 or ‘87. I guess I was unprepared for that. Usually people just hire me.” Though Twilight star Robert Pattinson had recommended Van Sant for the gig, the director thinks his pitch was ultimately underwhelming. “I was talking about the book and really all I was saying was ‘OK, this is great, let’s go do it.’ That was my pitch and I think they’re used to something else,” he said. “They’re used to, like, a 40-minute dissertation with perhaps visual aids and a pep talk about how fantastic this project is going to be, and I just didn’t know how to do that.” [Hollywood Crush/MTV]

Gus Van Sant’s Twilight Audition Didn’t Go So Well