MTV INTERVIEW
(Questions in red and answers in blue)
Selling
over a million albums in one day apparently isn't enough for the men of 'NSYNC,
who've now spotted another field they've yet to conquer... the unfettered
expanses of the silver screen.
The
fivesome officially announced its intentions to make and star in a feature film,
set to begin production in early 2001, and other than knowing that the guys will
be playing fictional characters in a movie that'll have something of a musical
slant, it's been quiet-on-the-set as far as details are concerned.
MTV
News' Chris Connelly cornered the fivesome at Universal Studios, Florida, while
the guys were staging a movie premiere for a teaser trailer. He asked all the
tough questions, and as you'll see, the film's plot could turn out to be very,
very thick indeed... especially if Chris Kirkpatrick gets his way.
*
* *
Chris
Connelly:
Guys, why are we here?
Lance
Bass: We
have no clue.
Joey
Fatone:
Just for the heck of it.
J.C.
Chasez: We
always like to hang out at...
Chris
Kirkpatrick:
...dark places.
Lance:
No, we're here filming a trailer for a movie that we are going to be doing next
year. We're faking a Hollywood premiere today. We're bringing it to the Cannes
Film Festival.
MTV:
What's
the purpose of bringing it to Cannes? Why shoot a trailer?
J.C.:
To spark interest. We want to create an awareness. We just want everybody to
know that it's going on and everybody to see it and hopefully, over time, take
it seriously.
Lance:
You've got to have your official press conference announcing what your project
is going to be, and what better place to do it than the Cannes Film Festival?
We're gonna be producing the film. We're gonna be writing it, starring in it...
Justin
Timberlake: Well, I don't know about starring in it.
Lance:
Yeah, we haven't decided if we're gonna hire ourselves yet to be the main
characters.
Chris:
I wouldn't hire me.
J.C.
[to Chris]: Yeah, you have too much of a temper.
Justin:
I wouldn't hire me, either. I ask for too many things on my rider.
Chris:
I'm too much of a snob.
Lance:
What's really great is, it's an 'NSYNC project. It's something that the group is
gonna be doing, and it's fun for us. We're all gonna have writing credit.
Chris:
I think I have enough credit. This is gonna put me under.
MTV:
What's
the plot?
Justin:
You just
wanna know everything! How 'bout I give you my underwear size?
Joey:
You think
just because you guys are MTV, you gotta get everything...
Chris:
I'll
tell 'em.
MTV:
Yeah, see?
He'll tell us.
Joey:
We're trying to keep everything under wraps just so it doesn't blow way out of
proportion, as far as details and things, 'cause we're--
Chris
[interrupting]:
I can give you a basic idea.
Justin:
Like Joey
said, we want to try to keep it at a certain level right now. It's cool
everybody's here so we can film the mock premiere, but it's funny. We announced
that we wanted to do a movie, and everybody's like, "Hey, you're doin' a
movie!" That was way back, like, half a year ago. Now that everything's in
order, we just kind of want to keep it contained until everything comes out.
J.C.:
We just don't want to give it all away, because we're not shooting it till next
year.
Justin:
It's all about me.
Chris:
I'll tell them. Basically, the idea that we're going for is that the five of us
are late for a show, and we have this bus, and it's a double-decker bus, and
when you go inside of it, it's really actually big...
Lance:
It's
nothing like "Spice World," I promise. We actually have a budget for
this one.
J.C.:
What's the
budget?
Joey:
Five
dollars.
Lance:
We've got a tremendous budget. We're gonna have some amazing actors. We're
hoping that it might be a musical.
MTV:
You
guys could hook up with a major studio, but you've gone with Total Film Group, a
small production company with not that many films under its belt. Why did you
decide to do that instead of hook up with a major?
Lance:
Creative control.
Joey:
A lot of
control.
Chris
[interrupting]:
Dinosaurs! Dinosaurs escape from their zoo-captive place.
Lance:
Oh, wow.
Chris:
And we go
after them.
J.C.:
Well,
[movie studios] have a thousand other things going on. You want to make sure
that the focus is on you. Total, they're putting their heart and soul into it,
so we feel good about what they're doing, 'cause they want to do the best they
possibly can do. It's not just another thing that they have to do.
Lance:
We have the ideas for it, and we know what's going to be good. We're afraid that
someone's going to take it and kind of go in a different direction with it.
Joey:
We
want something that's gonna be--
Chris
[interrupting]:
An alien comes down and lands on this planet!
MTV:
This
guy's a pitchmeister! This guy is good!
Lance:
We're still talking, so it could possibly be.
J.C.:
I mean as far as the movie's concerned, it's the same thing, even, even with
this latest album, you know what I mean, we wanted complete creative control, we
wanted to run, we wanted it to be solely what N'Sync is about, and I think, you
know, when we go do a movie, I think we want it our way, that way it doesn't get
cheesed out and you know, it just doesn't feel like it's not us and what we
wanted to do. We don't wanna feel like we lost control at any point so again,
that's why we got with a small film company instead of a giant one, and uh, we
wanted people who believed in us."
MTV:
You guys just finished shooting the video for "It's Gonna Be Me." What
was that like?
Justin:
The cool thing about it is, we actually got Kim Smith, the girl that was in
"Bye, Bye, Bye"--
J.C.:
To come back.
Chris:
She was nice enough to come back.
Lance:
She's the new Alicia Silverstone of videos.
MTV:
She's an honorary member of the band now.
Justin:
And we don't mind at all!
Lance:
We got back with Wayne Isham too. Incredible director.
Chris:
This is the last directing thing he said he's ever gonna do.
MTV:
Really? He's finished with videos now?
Lance:
This almost killed him.
Chris:
After this, he's done. He's goin' into porn.
MTV:
Will some of you guys go into directing? How interested are you in that?
Joey:
Well, not as far as porn, but...
Justin: The thing is, we kind
of halfway produce and direct every time we do something. Usually it's our
concepts that are used for the videos. That's like everything else that that we
do. We direct our music. We help direct our videos. We're heavily involved in
everything we do, so maybe one day we'll just get enough money where we can just
blow it all and direct our own video.
J.C.: [We've got] experience.
Lance: That's the good thing
about doing this movie. We've had all this experience in the videos and
everything. We actually get to create some and direct this movie too.
Joey: It's kind of like a long
video.
Lance: There you go. It's like
a two-hour video.
MTV:
And a wide one, too. A very wide one. Now, are you going to be able to come
up with a new record while you're on tour? There's been some talk that you might
try to write and record.
J.C.:
Oh, yeah.
We're nonstop, man. We're workaholics.
Justin:
A lot of the songs that were on the last record, we did while we were on the
road.
Chris:
The thing is, that's what we're focused on. We've got our tour, and we're doing
this [trailer] tonight. When we get out on tour, we're focused on what we're
doing. Half the time after the shows, we'll go to the back of the bus and start
jotting down ideas. J.C.'s got his laptop, Justin's got some stuff he brings...
everybody's got their own little stuff they bring up to their rooms to fiddle
with. We're always writing. We're always spitting out ideas. We're not gonna
push anything. If we have a piece of crap in October, then we're not gonna
release a piece of crap, you know? But if it's good quality and we like it, and
we think that we want to release it, we'll release it. [Looks at Lance] Mr.
Hollywood just dropped his glasses! Get that on camera!
Lance:
What? I totally played that off!
MTV:
Guys, I think we have to let you go.