File this one under the “Oh good God, please make it go away” category. If you’ve read The Movie Blog at all over the last year or so, you know how much I detest the whole “singers who think they can be actors” thing. Well, Britney Spears is now taking it to the next level… She wants to direct.
The director is the key person in any movie. The person most responsible for how well it turns out… yes, far more important than the actors (any actor will tell you that in a heartbeat). It takes great skill, talent and knowledge of the medium to do it well. So here comes Britney Spears (who in general I have no problem with) deciding she can be a director.
And what has prepared her for taking on the most difficult and important job in film making? Years at a prestigious film school? No. Training in a good directors program? No. Years of solid film projects working along side of some great directors to gleen some of their wisdom? No. As far as I can tell, these are her qualifications:
1) She’s famous and figures that means she can do anything
2) She’s directed a music video
Britney Spears has ventured behind the camera to co-direct her first pop video – in preparation for her assault on Hollywood. The “Toxic” beauty put her directorial skills into practice when she helped create the promo for her tune “Do Something” in New York last month. And Spears hopes the video will show studio heads she has the talent to score success as a movie-maker – especially since she’s already devoting much of her spare time to writing scripts for big screen musicals. She says, “I made a cute video for ‘Do Something.’ We shot the entire thing in a record-breaking five hours. I even came up with all the choreography and styled the entire shoot myself. I’ve been working on writing and hopefully directing a musical that makes fun of Hollywood.”
Ummm… will someone please inform Ms. Spears that getting the video done as fast as possible is not the earmark of a good director. Also, someone please inform her that “directing” a music video is not the same as directing a motion picture. Hell, the director for Catwoman was a good music video director. On the up side, I seriously doubt any studio will hand the reigns to any project over to her. Look, get some training, learn the art, take a few years to understand the medium, actually be around the industry for a while (having cameos in a bunch of movies doesn’t count)… and then why not… take a shot at it and see what happens. Being famous doesn’t qualify you to direct… but it dosen’t disqualify you either. Just do it right.
