10 stories you might have missed: How Gus Van Sant lost 'Breaking Dawn'

Hitfix: Gus Van Sant talks about his shot at directing 'Breaking Dawn'
When the directing gig for "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn" became open a number of well known Hollywood filmmakers auditioned for the job including Sofia Coppola, Bill Condon and Gus Van Sant. After Summit and "Twilight" creator Stephenie Meyer came to a consensus on who was best for the difficult job of translating "Dawn" to a two-part motion picture, Condon was chosen over his fellow prestige picture auteurs. Now, Van Sant is finally speaking publicly about what happened during what he describes as a "nerve wracking" meeting with Summit.

In an interview with MTV News in Cannes, where Van Sant was promoting his new film "Restless," Van Sant went into detail about the sit down.

"I got very nervous," Van Sant told the outlet. "There were, like, 15 people. I had never really auditioned or gone into a job interview in that way since maybe 1988 or '87. I guess I was unprepared for it. Usually people just hire me.

The "Good Will Hunting" helmer continued, "In this case, they wanted me to talk about their project, which really needed to follow very closely the book and which the outline was following very closely the book. There was a certain amount of room for illumination on their own project, but they were the experts. I was talking about the book, and really all I was saying was, 'OK, this is great, let's go to it.' That was the pitch. I think they're used to something else. They're used to, for those of you who might audition for film jobs, a 40-minute dissertation with perhaps visual aids and a pep talk about how fantastic this project is going to be. I just didn't know how to do that."

Truth be told, word is Van Sant was the most unprepared of the three candidates because it appeared he hadn't read the book yet. Probably not a good idea.

You can watch Van Sant's discussion with MTV about it here.

via @twilights247