Britney Who?
In 2000, months before she took on the Crossroads project, the buzz about Britney Spears somehow had not reached Shonda Rhimes. But she didn't have baby Harper yet. "At that point I was a person who didn't really watch that much television, didn't pay that much attention to who was on the radio." A producer friend convinced Rhimes that the project would be fun, and the next day the two of them were on a plane to catch the pop star's concert in Chicago. "We were sitting in the front row, and I looked behind me and the audience was filled with teenage girls–and gay men–who were madly in love with Britney. I suddenly found her fascinating–that kind of power [Spears wields] with young girls, the amount of devotion they had to her, made me see the possibilities in a movie."
For the script, Rhimes deemphasized Spears' megawatt persona and gave more gravity to an ensemble story. "I definitely felt [that] if there was any message I wanted that film to give, it was that friendships are powerful and can extend beyond race, class, and social standing." Sounds noble enough, but critics pounced on it. Rhimes swats off their bad reviews as a horse flicks flies from its tail. "I never thought the critics were going to say Crossroads was a brilliant movie. My goal was for 12-year-olds to think it was brilliant." In the end, everything worked out for Rhimes: "I became a rock star" to the preteen set and, even better, "that movie bought my house."
http://www.wga.org/writtenby/writtenbysub.aspx?id=883
