A movie about 13-year-old girls who have threesomes with older men, get high on pot, prescription pills and nitrous oxide and wear outfits that would make Christina Aguilera blush has audiences at Sundance reeling.
But perhaps the most shocking thing about “Thirteen” – which was the first film at Sundance to sell its distribution rights – is that it was co-written by a 14-year-old girl, who based the tale on her own, real-life experiences.
Parents, be warned: She says your kids are probably doing the same things, too.
“I think this movie is an eye-opener, I really do,” says Nikki Reed, who also makes an impressive acting debut in the film.
“Parents are in denial a lot of the time – everybody knows what they did as a teenager, but somehow when they grow up, it all disappears.”
“Thirteen” – which also stars Holly Hunter and Evan Rachel Wood in an extraordinary, star-making performance – is an in-your-face drama about young girls who go off the rails.
Wood plays Tracy – the character modeled on Reed – a studious but troubled teen who lives with her single mother (Hunter) in Venice, Calif.
When Tracy starts middle school, she falls in with the wrong crowd – a group of midriff-baring, thong-exposing, multi-pierced bad girls led by Evie Zamora (Reed).
Soon she is cutting class, stealing from Melrose Avenue shops, having sex with older guys and fighting constantly with her mother.
“There was a lot of stuff that didn’t make it into the film,” says the precocious Reed who, with her thick makeup and sophisticated dress, looks 10 years older.
“I kind of went through a rough period. I could have kept going down that road and then off the cliff and into the ocean.
“I’m lucky I didn’t. I took what I had and I made something positive out of it. There is still so much drama in my life, but I’m not a sad person anymore.”
A way of helping herself heal, she says, was co-writing the screenplay with “Thirteen” director Catherine Hardwicke, who met Reed when she started dating her father.
“I was shocked at what was happening in our culture,” says Hardwicke, who sports blue-tinged dreadlocks and occasionally slips into teen vernacular herself.
“Nikki and her friends were obsessed with the beauty myth. She’d wake up and do a couple of hours of hair and makeup before school – and she was in the seventh grade!
“As adults we’re shocked that kids can be so obsessed with sexuality but that’s what we’re feeding them, that’s what they’re surrounded with.”
Hardwicke says “Thirteen” should serve as a wake-up call to parents everywhere.
“People might think, ‘Oh, it’s set in L.A.,’ but my niece is at a Baptist private school in a small town in Texas, and she got voted ‘Best Ass’ in her school yearbook.
“Whatever happened to ‘Most Likely to Succeed’?”