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.

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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.