Please let the sheep go where they're told. Clad in a sunhat, shorts, and white button-down shirt to ward off the 95-degree heat in the ancient Italian city of Matera, director Catherine Hardwicke watches as a crewman spreads his arms in front of the flock on the hill. Mary, seated on a donkey, and Joseph, leading both, wait patiently for their cue. Tanned, costumed shepherds, reclining in the shade of a rocky outcropping off-camera, shoot the breeze in Italian. Large beetles flit above calf-high grass, and the TV monitors in the blue tents where the producers are watching flicker impatiently.
“Silencio! Silencio!” The cameras are ready to roll. The lone shepherd sitting on the rock a few steps away from the couple readjusts the sheep in his arms.
“Motore!” (“Rolling!”) Action. Joseph steps forward, leading his young bride carefully down the path. Only a few moments later, they’re back for another take. And another. Three hours later, Mary and Joseph will still be heading down the hill. After all, they’re on Hollywood time. In order to get everything pictureperfect for “The Nativity Story,” a film about the year preceding Jesus’ birth, cast and crew aim to spend an entire day shooting just three pages’ worth of dialogue.
Unlike projects like “The Da Vinci Code,” however, “Nativity” is not seeking publicity with controversy: Mary is a virgin, Jesus is definitely the Son of God, and there are no killer albino monks in sight. And unlike epics like “The Ten Commandments,” this film spans a fairly short period of time and focuses specifically on Mary and Joseph.
“Every time that the Nativity story is presented, it’s always presented as an event-based story,” says screenwriter Mike Rich, who in December 2004 was inspired to write the script after reading cover stories on the subject in
Time and
Newsweek. “They rarely approach it as a character story.”
Rich decided to change that. He began researching the story and, in December 2005, in the
midst of the holiday bustle, he sat down to work. Using the Gospels and the magazine articles as his guides, Rich completed the first draft in five weeks. He also had a little help from his parish in Beaverton, Oregon, where his pastor assured him, “You’re going on the prayer chain.”
It’s lunchtime, and Mary and Joseph, along with various shepherds and crew, are lining up for the buffet at a restaurant across the street from the set. Hardwicke, her dirty-blond hair swept into a short ponytail, pulls up a chair. It’s only the third time she’s been in the director’s seat, having made the transition from production design and, before that, architecture. But Hardwicke doesn’t scare easily, so despite the relative newness of her role, the extreme heat, and, oh, by the way, the pressure of directing a film about the most beloved woman of all time, Hardwicke seems as relaxed as if she just dropped by for tea and cookies.
