There’s a line from one of the “Twilight” movies that has had fans howling with laughter for years.
Thirty minutes into the Chris Weitz-directed film, a long-haired Taylor Lautner’s Jacob Black greets Bella (Kristen Stewart) warmly when she arrives at his house with “Bella! Where the hell have you been, loca?”
Lautner has European ancestry and plays a werewolf from the Quileute Tribe. What’s the deal with “loca?”
When the second “Twilight” movie, “New Moon,” arrived in theaters in November 2009, it was certainly an odd line that stood out from the rest of the script. But over a decade later, following a 2020 “Twilight” renaissance that took over social media, the line has sparked a craze of memes, recreations, fan-made merch and even tattoos.
Part of the appeal of the bizarre line is the mystery of how and why it made it in the film, with no similar counterpart in Stephenie Meyer’s 2006 book of the same name.
With the films returning to select theaters for a limited time beginning Oct. 29 in honor of the “Twilight” book’s 20th anniversary, we got to the bottom of the “loca” mystery.
A ‘Twilight’ oral history: Behind-the-scenes movie secrets from the saga’s actors, crew
‘Twilight’ screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg shocked to learn she wrote Jacob’s ‘loca’ line
While recently speaking with USA TODAY for an oral history of the “Twilight” movies, the saga’s screenwriter, Melissa Rosenberg, was shocked to learn that Jacob’s line has garnered a massive fan following.
“I honestly don’t remember” she says. “I would have hardly been making it up, it being a very common phrase in general, but I guess the usage” stood out.
She even checked “New Moon’s” script to confirm the line was originally intended to be in the film.
“I’m looking at the script now and I will tell you, I have not pulled this script up in a long time,” Rosenberg said. Then, with a note of surprise, she concluded: “It’s in the script. Yeah, I wrote it.”
It’s been twenty years since the first “Twilight” ever published and the Twihard fandom hasn’t shown any sign of stopping.
On June 2, 2003, a 29-year-old Stephenie Meyer woke up from a vivid dream about an “average” girl falling in love with a “beautiful, sparkly” vampire who had to fight his bloodlust to sit near her in a secluded meadow. This eventually became Chapter 13 of Meyer’s “Twilight,” which was published Oct. 5, 2005.
The first-time author unwittingly hit the gas on an international bestselling four-book franchise, which was adapted into films that released in breakneck succession from 2008 to 2012 and raked in $3.4 billion at the box office. Starring Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner, the films quickly became a cultural phenomenon.
(Mario Anzuoni, REUTERS)
In honor of the 20th anniversary of “Twilight,” USA TODAY entertainment reporters KiMi Robinson and Edward Segarra interviewed more than 20 cast and crew members − from the director, screenwriter, musicians, and hair and makeup artists behind the cameras − to the actors who brought fan-favorite characters to life. Robinson and Segarra found that the people who worked on the multibillion-dollar franchise look back warmly, remembering the friends they made and the executives who gave them their break. For most, there’s still a lingering feeling of bewilderment.
(JASON REDMOND, REUTERS)
Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner
(Juan Naharro Gimenez, Getty Images)
Taylor Lautner doesn’t remember saying his ‘loca’ line
Lautner himself noticed an uptick in references to the “loca” line in recent years and expressed a similar confusion to Rosenberg’s. In more than one interview, he’s explained that he regularly receives requests to deliver the line in public and admitted “I didn’t even remember saying it.”
“I just didn’t understand it. I still don’t,” he told the “Chicks in the Office” podcast in 2023. “Now I know it’s a thing. At first I didn’t understand why people were asking me to say it.”
USA TODAY has reached out to Lautner’s rep for comment.
Who wrote Robert Pattinson’s ‘spider monkey’ line?
Another one of the most quoted lines in the films is one delivered by Robert Pattinson in 2008’s “Twilight.”
“You’d better hold on tight, spider monkey,” he says after his teen vampire character, Edward, flies out of his bedroom and latches on to a tree as Bella clings to his upper body, newly getting indoctrinated into his supernatural universe.
Director Catherine Hardwicke told USA TODAY during a sit-down interview at her home in August that the line was a last-minute addition during filming.
“The night before (filming), I was thinking, ‘Wow, we don’t have any dialogue in this scene,'” she said. “So I wrote, like, 10 lines, and I said, ‘Rob, if you want to say any of these, go for it.’ That’s the one he picked.”
Rosenberg was happy to hand Hardwicke all of the credit.
“‘Spider monkey’ was her!” she said. “I was like, all right, something has got changed, and that was not my line.”
Regardless of the quirkier moments in the films’ scripts, Rosenberg believes the five movies stand the test of time.
“Typically I don’t rewatch something I’ve done. But I think I was in a hotel room or something, and one of (the ‘Twilight’ movies) was on. I was watching and going, ‘Hm, these aren’t bad,'” she said. “I ended up watching the whole run, and was pleased with them.”