Since directing “Twilight” in 2008, Catherine Hardwicke has directed TV projects like “Under the Bridge” and Guillermo del Toro’s “Cabinet of Curiosities” and directed indie films with the likes of Toni Collette and Drew Barrymore. She’s shot from London and Rome to Mexico. But for her latest feature, “Street Smart,” Hardwicke tells the stories of people in her own neighborhood – Venice, California – where she shot “Lords of Dogtown” 21 years ago. Venice has always been a magnet for dreamers and creatives, but in the past few years, tensions have heightened as residents grapple with the effects of the sizable unhoused population in the area.
In this timely and personal film, Hardwicke wanted to capture the lives of skateboarders, artists and musicians who strive to live in freedom while confronting their often-traumatic pasts amid a streetscape sometimes marked by violence, drugs and mental illness. She cast first-time actor Isiah Hilt alongside pros like Yara Shahidi, Isabelle Fuhrmann, Michael Cimino, Sally Struthers and Skeet Ulrich, and wrote the screenplay with Nic Sheff (“Beautiful Boy”). “Street Smart” premieres June 18 at the Bentonville Film Festival in Arkansas and does not yet have a distributor.
Hardwicke spoke with Variety during her judging duties at the Tribeca Festival, where she was on the U.S. Narrative Feature jury.
How did the idea for “Street Smart” get started and how did you start working with Nic Sheff?
Nic had lived on the streets, and he found all the kids to be like normal kids. They all had their dreams, their goals, and they helped each other, and they made a family. So I said, “Wow, that coincides with a lot of things I’ve been dealing with here on Venice Beach with kids living right around the corner from me on the street during Covid who were beautiful singers and musicians.” I bought tents for some people, and then helped them get into a youth hostel.
You cast one of the lead roles, Drex, with a skateboarder you met through a friend, and he was homeless at the time – how did that work?
I walked down to the skate park in Venice, and I met Isaiah, and I showed him the lookbook, and I said, “This kid’s father’s in prison, and the mother has all these issues, and he’s aged out of the foster care system,” and he said “That is my story.” So many of the things lined up with his real life, it was incredible.
The week before we started shooting, Covenant House (a local housing provider) helped us get an apartment for him, so he got his first real apartment the week before we started shooting, and we set up his first bank account that he’d ever had. It was very heavy.
How did you end up casting Sally Struthers, who plays a foul-mouthed local garage owner and den mother of sorts?
Sally sent in her own tape. She did all the scenes at her house, she acted out all the scenes, and then she showed up with a carload of stuff, and said “Here’s all my clothes, let’s see what we can do.” She’s going to come to Bentonville too.
Is there a throughline from your first film, “Thirteen,” about troubled teenage girls in the San Fernando Valley, to the 1970s skateboarders of “Lords of Dogtown” to this film?
The girls in “Thirteen” were going down a self-destructive path, but the boys in “Lords of Dogtown” were taking their difficult circumstances and becoming creative. That’s the same thing with a lot of these kids that I met who were on the street. They wanted to make things, they would get out there and sing their songs that they just wrote, and then, of course, the skating. Isaiah is a professional skateboarder, and he also is a tumbler. This is kind of the new wave of creative kids that have fallen between the cracks.
How did you want to reconcile that creativity and energy with the darker things that can happen to people on the street?
I felt optimistic for the kids –part of it really came from Isaiah. He has the most unbelievably traumatic childhood. You could see the scars, those were not makeup effects — yet he still remains positive. He teaches skateboarding to kids, and he’s like the most fun teacher any kid has ever had. Most of us had a big safety net, and he just didn’t have that. So I love the idea that these are beautiful spirits, they just need a little nourishment, a little water, and fertilizer to blossom.
Those are his real students in the film. One of his student’s fathers is Darren Boghosian, a UTA agent, and then also Harry Gregson-Williams, the composer, his son is taught by Isiah, so he’s got all these cool kids that love him.
How does the music in the film tie in with the cast and storyline?
We had a lot of fun with the music. Paris Jackson is in the scene working at the youth hostel, and she has her new song that’s about to come out in that scene. Tyson Ritter, who’s the lead singer of The All-American Rejects, he plays Bunny’s son, who works in the garage, and he has a song that he wrote for the movie, and another one that’s just coming out on their new album. Isaiah has the last song in the movie, that was his song, and he’s singing it, rapping on it. And two other actors have songs that are in the movie, so that made it sort of organic.
What are some responses you would like to see to the numbers of people living on the streets?
I hope that we can open up the floodgates to build more housing and find a way that is an easy enough entry point so that people don’t feel too intimidated and terrified or have too many rules. I used to be an architect, and I actually designed low-income housing projects back in Texas. You’re trying to find a way to make the housing a little bit feel personal, feel a sense of ownership and community, and all of the things that we hope that people could feel excited about and be environmentally conscious, grow their own food, all of those things. One of our characters, he’s really into culinary stuff, he’s got his little basil plants and things. I would love to go back into architecture and design some cool housing in L.A.
What was the concept for the place where the young people lived in the film — the abandoned, graffiti-covered hospital? You show how some of the neighbors are upset with it, but it provides a place of some kind of stability for them.
It’s not perfect, but there is a gate at night that you can lock. A lot of the girls that I talked to that were living on the street, that’s one of the toughest things, going to the bathroom. You’re vulnerable, and you have your little flashlight on in your tent, and people can see you’re in there by yourself, so it’s very scary at night. It was an abandoned mental facility and then we added all the graffiti and the tents.
What did you think about some of former L.A. mayor candidate’s Spencer Pratt’s ideas for managing the homelessness crisis: that people should forced into mandatory treatment in a remote location, that type of thing?
How would that really be carried through? How practical is that? How could you really achieve that in a humane way? It sounds a bit dicey, don’t you think?
Why do you think we’re seeing fewer of the YA-type movies like “Twilight” these days?
I’ve recently had a couple meetings — I think it’s changing because people are starting to realize, the romantasy segment, BookTok, all of that, it’s really very popular right now. There may be an absolute explosion in the next two years. I think I think so many studios and streamers are really trying to develop product in this genre because women are just owning their power and their sexuality. I started reading one where the mother was a general and the sister is a dragon, all the women were bad asses.
Did you see Kristen Stewart’s movie, “The Chronology of Water”?
I went to the L.A. premiere, and I was able to speak to Kristen for a long time. I thought it was almost just like watching a painting. I could be in a beautiful gallery, watching that movie, with deep feeling, and an intense beautiful story. She did a great job.