By Rick Bentley
McClatchy Newspapers
LOS ANGELES -- The third installment in the girl-meets-vampire saga, "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," hit theaters Wednesday. Here are tidbits about the film from the cast, director and screenwriter.
* It doesn't take Robert Pattinson long to get into character. All he has to do to become Edward is slip in the contact lenses that give him vampire eyes.
"They make me miserable as soon as I put them in. That's what creates the pouting and brooding character," Pattinson says.
* The toughest scene for Pattinson was when Edward and Jacob (Taylor Lautner) have a candid chat in a tent during a winter storm.
"We had to go back and reshoot the scene. I don't know what happened, but I freaked out the first time we did it," Pattinson says.
* "Eclipse" features the long-awaited first kiss between werewolf Jacob and Bella (Kristen Stewart).
Lautner says, "Bella is a fantastic kisser."
* To help Stewart react to Jacob as a werewolf, Lautner put on a green body suit, used to create the special effect, so he could be in the scene.
* There's more action in "Eclipse" than the previous two movies combined, but it didn't mean extra work for Stewart.
"The action was absolutely everyone else's responsibility. I just stand behind people who are stronger than me the entire time. I didn't even get to run around as much as I did in the second movie," Stewart says.
n Director David Slade met with each actor before filming to get their views on their characters. He used other meetings to add his own ideas for the performances.
* If you look closely, you'll see Bella's bedroom is different from the previous two movies. It's four feet wider because Slade needed extra room for the lenses he used to shoot the movie.
* Weather created problems, again.
"Sunlight was the big problem," says director David Slade. "It would have been perfect for any other movie but not for us."
* "Twilight" writer Stephenie Meyer was on the set during filming, but not to deal with the script. She was there in case the director or actors had a question about a character.
"She has a back story for all the characters," says "Eclipse" screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg.
* Adapting "Eclipse" to a film script was the hardest of the three movies for Rosenberg because most of the action takes place in the last third of the book. She had to find a way to move some of that action to the early moments of the film. Her solution was the army of Newborn vampires.
* Although it might not look like it, the actors who play vampires spent four hours every morning in the makeup chair. They had to be sprayed completely to create the pale, shimmering skin.
* Nikki Reed, who plays vampire Rosalie Hale, had a temperature of 102 degrees when filming an emotional scene where Rosalie and Bella talk about what it means to become a vampire.
* Reed quit smoking three months before the filming of "Eclipse." She knows that's why she was able to handle the action scenes.
* There will be a few deleted scenes on the DVD, including Bella and Angela (Christian Serratos) talking about guy troubles. Slade loved the scenes but says they didn't fit the flow of the movie.