Photo Gallery: ''Breaking Dawn - Part 1" In the days leading up to Monday's "red" carpet premiere of "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1," Rose Tyler of Clifton camped out in a massive tent city constructed near the Nokia Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. The wristband she snagged enabled her to stand near the black carpet, the perfect place to see and interact with the movie's stars parading by.
Twi-Moms mingle with two “Twilight” stars. From left: Kelly Tobin, Peter Facinelli, Gabby Vittoria, Lee Orlando, Kellan Lutz and Kara O’Grady Aves. With "Breaking Dawn — Part 2" slated to bow in 2012, this first part — which opens nationwide at midnight and has a special open-to-the-public screening at 8 tonight in Manhattan (check-ins begin at 6 p.m.) — is the beginning of the beloved epic's end.
"This is my first time here in L.A., and it's 'cause it's the last movie of the saga," Tyler said on her cellphone from L.A. on Friday. "I wanted to make sure that I made it, 'cause who knows what might happen a year from now?"
Tyler is not a starry-eyed teen. She's a 32-year-old Twilight Mom, one of about 47,300 members of twilightmoms.com, an online community for grown-up "Twilight" saga fans around the globe. Twilight Moms — or Twi-Moms — are part of a pop-culture-phenomenon-within-a-phenomenon: Women beyond their teen years who are addicted to Stephenie Meyer's vampire novels and the movies they've inspired.
"While these books were definitely aimed at a younger demographic, mothers saw those books hanging around and everybody was talking about it. They picked them up and they were pretty compelling. And then, of course, the movies come out and they're aimed at a wider audience," says popular culture expert Robert Thompson, who's based at Syracuse University.
"It's like 'Harry Potter.' You tell a rousing story, you're probably going to get more people than just the target demographic."
Though many Twi-Moms do indeed discover the saga through their teenage daughters, you don't have to be a mother to join the club. You just have to be 21 or older — and obsessed with the saga of the human Bella Swan (played by Kristen Stewart), her brooding, protective vampire lover, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), and her best friend, werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner).
"Her character writing is so good, you get so completely engulfed with what's going on with them … as they're going through high school, and it brings you back to that time where the most important thing in the world was whether or not he was gonna call you to go out on Friday night," says Kara O'Grady Aves, 37, a Twilight Mom from Nutley who is married but not yet a mother. "It's fun escapism."
Aves, who does lighting for TV and theater, flew to Los Angeles last weekend for the Monday premiere, even though she'd already seen "Part 1" at an L.A. screening the weekend before. She became a fan after randomly picking up "Twilight" to read on a Key West vacation, and soon wound up on twilightmoms.com.
For Gabby Vittoria, 33, a Twilight Mom from Freehold who has two children, the obsession started in the summer of 2008, when she "devoured" the first three books in the saga the week before Meyer's "Breaking Dawn" came out. Of course, she ran out and bought that, too. "I just couldn't get the characters out of my head," Vittoria says. "It was the strangest thing. I never had a book affect me like that before."
Soon she stumbled upon twilightmoms.com. Vittoria also co-founded an offshoot, Volturi Ventures, local Twi-Moms who plan events (such as tonight's screening) as fund-raisers for the official Twilight Moms charity, Alex's Lemonade Stand, which helps kids with cancer.
Vittoria, who has a newborn at home, did not go to L.A. this time, but she's gone there twice before for "Twilight" — once to camp out for the "New Moon" premiere, and to attend last year's "Eclipse" premiere (and party).
Of the "Twilight" saga's appeal, she says, "It brings you back to your first love. I've been with my husband for almost 14 years now. And it just brings you back to [a time] when you're first … discovering each other."
E-mail: rohan@northjersey.com
