Several years after Catherine Hardwicke helped kick off "Twilight"

fever by helming the series' first film, the director is opening up about the ups -- well, more the downs -- of being involved with the franchise.

"Every one of those scripts sucked," she told New York magazine's Vulture blog about the first five screenplays for the 2008 adaptation handed to her by Summit Entertainment. "Oh, Lord, did they suck. I thought the script was horrible, but then I looked it up on the Internet and I thought, 'OK, it's based on a book and people tend to like it. There's gotta be something there.' "

After some research about the fandom behind the franchise and some in-depth discussions with Summit about how she wanted to rewrite the script and how she wanted the film to look, she changed her mind.

"So I read the book and I thought it captured that feeling of being madly in love," she said. "And I thought, 'That's kind of a good challenge, to see if, as a filmmaker, I could make you feel that giddy, crazy.' "

Her reservations about the film were addressed, but Hardwicke does still have one slight regret. In the interview, she recalls the burgeoning on-set romance between "Twilight" megastars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. There were, however, two causalties of that romance. Pattinson was dating "Twilight" co-star Nikki Reed at the time, and Stewart was involved with Michael Angarano.

"He's a wonderful actor," Hardwicke said of Angarano. "He was in [Hardwicke film 'Lords of Dogtown,'] one of my favorites, so I felt pretty bad because I love him and they were such a great couple."

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