Posted on 12/08/2001 3:09:12 PM PST by Pokey78
FOR an aspiring starlet such as Britney Spears it could be the unkindest cut. Following test-screenings of her debut film, the pop idol famous for her varying states of undress has had to reshoot some scenes wearing more clothes. Spears, who celebrated her 20th birthday last week, has given herself five years to make her name resonate as loudly in Hollywood as it does with the MTV pop generation. But problems are mounting two months before the release of Crossroads, a film financed partly from her personal fortune, estimated at £35m. The singer plays Lucy, a poor white girl who drives across America with two female schoolfriends and a hijacked male to be reunited with her mother in Los Angeles. Along the way, comic misunderstandings and mayhem ensue. The film was to have opened with Spears capering at length in her underwear around her bedroom. The dance has been curtailed and ends with her putting on her school uniform rather than skipping downstairs semi-naked to embarrass her father, played by Dan Aykroyd. In another scene, the reputedly celibate star was originally filmed in her underwear preparing to go to bed with a man she has picked up in a bar. To avoid parental censure she has now reshot it wearing a shirt, even though she wore less during her Las Vegas concert broadcast live across America last month. Some of her lines have been cut, including “What is so great about me?”, and a scene in which she arrives in California has been reworked to concentrate less on Spears and more on her screen mother, played by Kim Catrall, the Liverpool-born siren in Sex and the City. Audiences at test screenings held over the past few weeks in New York and California complained that even at 105 minutes — short by current Hollywood standards — Crossroads went on for too long. The film, described by its director Tamra Davis as a comedy about growing up, is planned to be merely the first step in the intended transformation of Spears from pop princess to screen goddess. She is expected to follow it with a cameo appearance in the third Austin Powers film, provisionally entitled Goldmember. Spears has also been approached to play a small part in the film adaptation of the musical Chicago with Kevin Kline, Renée Zellweger, Richard Gere and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The singer has already lasted longer than critics predicted when she burst on to the pop scene three years ago with Baby, One More Time. Her third album, released last month, sold 750,000 copies in its first week, twice as many as Michael Jackson’s latest. The career move from popular singer to Hollywood was pioneered by Bing Crosby in the 1930s. David Bowie, Courtney Love and Mark Wahlberg, formerly the rapper Marky Mark, have all won critical plaudits, but Sting’s celluloid career stalled after he appeared in a nappy in Dune, David Lynch’s science fiction epic. Younger pop stars are traditionally “road-tested” for their cinematic appeal in films that require them to play a version of themselves. The Beatles proved their talent for surreal comedy in A Hard Day’s Night, but the Spice Girls made only a short-lived splash with Spice World. Mariah Carey’s Glitter failed at the box office this year. The makers of Crossroads do not seem unduly perturbed by the initial audience response. A studio executive insisted last week that the version shown at the screenings had been in a “rough form” that lacked final sound and visual quality. “It is unfair to make judgments from this because it is a work in progress,” he said. “Changes will be part of the process of making a great Britney movie for release in February. She will sing, dance and cavort in skimpy clothes, just like her fans expect her to.”
Incredible how toilet behavior is now mainstream. We need help... hellllp...
I am not familiar with what you are referring to. Would you explain? Thanks in advance.
If so, I hope she does Playboy first.
I will see you in couple of weeks after the flames die down.
Yours,
I will rent this "film" just to see her. I am mad that they've changed the underwear scenes.
I don't know what it is about her but she looks so good to me that I'll even watch her videos. And I can't say that for any other "Poor musician" no matter how good they look.
There is SOMETHING about her!
A friend of mine predicted it will be a double photo shoot, her and Anna "no wins" Kournikova.
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