“We met in a fancy hotel room, but Britney greeted me wearing a T-shirt and jeans with no make-up at all,” she remembers. “She was a normal teenager who just happened to have a whole lot of talent. I mean, she was so likeable! And I knew that if I could put on film what she projected in that room, we could make a wonderful movie.”
“The story and the characters are the most important thing to Shonda, and she and I agreed that we wanted to put Britney in a story that was nurturing to her,” Carli explains. “In fact, the very first time Britney talked with us about the film, she stressed that she wanted to make a movie that means something, and that didn’t talk down to her peers.”
“I didn’t want just a simple teen movie,” agrees Spears. “I wanted to touch hearts, and say to other girls out there that they’re not alone in what they’re going through.”
In Crossroads, Spears plays Lucy, a nice girl who studies hard at school and lives alone with her dad (Dan Aykroyd) in a small town in Georgia (Spears herself was born and raised in the small southern town of Kentwood, Louisiana). One day, however, on the spur of the moment, Lucy decides to go along with two friends - Mimi (Manning) who has a Hollywood singing audition lined up; and Kit, who claims to have a fiancé waiting for her in LA - on a trip to California in search of the mother she has never seen.
Kim Cattrall
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Complicating what might otherwise have been an all-girl outing is the driver of the car, Ben (Anson Mount). And, while Crossroads rarely takes the road most travelled, two of the things that any Spears fan might have predicted happen before the end credits roll: Lucy, rather than Mimi, ends up with a singing career; and Lucy is the one who finds true love.
“Lucy is very confused with her life,” says Spears. “She wants to please her dad, who has a dream of her becoming a doctor. But then again, she wants to fulfil her own dreams; and for now, her dreams are to be reunited with her mother and to become a singer. I really love the message of the movie: about friends sticking together and helping each other through their problems, and pursuing their dreams.”
There is, of course, one other key element in Crossroads: the music. But this is not a soundtrack-driven movie, where the story is just there to provide links between the songs. Indeed, there won’t be a soundtrack album released to cross-promote it. Instead, Spears has to face up to the considerable acting challenge of pretending not to know how to deliver a song to a crowd, and to go through the whole development from nervous first-timer to successful performer.
Dan Aykroyd
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“We set up the idea that Lucy could sing and dance in the beginning when she’s bopping around her room using a spoon for a microphone,” explains Davis. “We did this so that, when Lucy busts out with ‘I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll’ in a karaoke bar, it doesn’t come out of nowhere that she’s got some talent. And we didn’t choreograph the scene, either, so that audiences would feel they were seeing Lucy sing, and not Britney.”
“I took myself back to when I had to prove myself to people who didn’t know who I was, since that’s how Lucy would have felt,” recalls Spears. But she couldn’t help enjoying the climax of the film, where the story-line (sort of) coincided with the peak at which her own career now finds itself.
“That’s when I could be a little bit of Britney again,” she says. “That’s when I could let loose, go crazy and have fun!”
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CROSSROADS
Zomba Films
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Prod: Ann Carli; Exec prod: Clive Calder, Larry Rudolph, Johnny Wright; Co-prod: Robert Lee, Jonathan McHugh; Dir: Tamra Davis; Scr: Shonda Rhimes; Ph: Eric Edwards; Prod des: Waldemar Kalinowski; Cost des: Wendy Schecter; Ed: Melissa Kent; Mus: Trevor Jones; Mus super: Daniel Carlin.
With Britney Spears (Lucy), Anson Mount (Ben), Zoë Saldana (Kit), Taryn Manning (Mimi), Kim Cattrall (Caroline), Dan Aykroyd (Pete), Justin Long (Henry), Jamie Lynn Spears (Lucy aged 10).
International distribution: Summit Entertainment.
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Spears (above, centre) plays Lucy, who goes on a cross-country trip with her friends Mimi (Taryn Manning, left) and Kit (Zoë Saldana) in search of fame - and the mother she has never seen (Kim Cattrall, below right), while her over-protective Dad (Dan Aykroyd, below left) is left behind.