TODAY'S CULTURE
kel: Hello, multi-media exposition!
lise: Man, this was edited so many times, do you remember?
kel: This is another scene that I took to the chopping block. Originally there was a whole excerpt from the YM article, I think?
lise: Yeah.
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TODAY'S CULTURE
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August 16th, 2006 |
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"All Grown Up And Out of Things to Say" by June Wellinscott
I sat down with Justin Timberlake to discuss his newly published autobiography last week. I feel as though I should admit as a writer that I've interviewed Justin Timberlake before. In 2000, I was a junior string writer for YM magazine, a fact I have long since erased from my resume. Then, I asked Timberlake if he was dating Britney Spears and he grinned and said, "You can't believe everything you read, Brit's like my best friend, you know what I'm sayin'?" Not all that much older or more experienced than his teenage fan base, I think I wanted to believe that he was telling me the truth. This time around, Timberlake sits down for our interview and asks me not to describe him as NSYNC's former front man. "You can't be the former front man to a band that hasn't broken up yet, you know what I'm sayin'?" he says. All grown up, Timberlake is not as easy to take at his word. Especially with rumors swirling around the music world that he has made obvious his lack of interest in uniting with his former band members for another album or tour, but also refuses to allow the group to be publicly dissolved for fear that it would negatively impact his solo career. The only other mention of his former band comes toward the end of our conversation: Timberlake's phone goes off and he gets up to take the call. "From Chris," he says by way of explanation, "sorry." His assistant makes a crack about them still being in sync after all these years, and Timberlake shrugs, diplomatically not answering. As for the book itself, it seems that somebody forgot to tell Timberlake that when you go through puberty on national television, you have to give away a few more secrets to make a bio topic worth the reader's time. His book, instead, seems to read like a fluff teen mag interview of days gone by. Timberlake asks himself a softball question, Timberlake answers a soft ball question. The only thing more painful is when Timberlake asks himself a softball question and then deflects it. Timberlake did not allow his manuscript even to be copy-edited, and this coupled with the blandness of his chosen subject matter itself makes a mediocre final product.
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lise: Three things about this page that I have to say: A. it's sponsored by nike.com very deliberately, and B. the fact that Justin didn't let anyone copyedit his manuscript still makes me laugh. It was an early joke, a hint of his obsessive nature and psychosis, that we were determined to include. And, C. isn't Justin publishing a memoirs soon? It'll be interesting to see if he does the softball route or not.
kel: A lot of the feedback that we got on this story was about the multi-media aspect of the narrative. And, really, the reason that we told the story that way is there was a lot to set up about Justin's character that was easier to do if we weren't restricted to Lance's POV. If we hadn't gone this route, we probably would have had to do something with Lance/Justin alternating POV, and then we would have had to write one of the scalpings.
lise: Not that I wouldn't have loved to write one of the scalpings - we had a whole bunch of scenes, from Justin's POV, that were going to be a blast to write. But they probably would have weakened the narrative.
kel: The writing process of this story was very chaotic, towards the end, the writing would come in waves. There was a point where we realized that we hadn't established Chris and Justin's closeness as well as we should have, so we went through all the scenes and added random moments of Chris and Justin, like here where Justin gets a phone call from Chris during the interview.
It's kind of meta, in some ways, because they're mostly moments that are considered classic timbertrick moments in canon -- this one is a take on some interview Justin gave during his solo promo where the interviewer took note of the fact that Justin said "love you" at the end of his phone call with Chris, I'm pretty sure.
In vapid conclusion, my favorite part is the image of Justin asking himself a softball question and then deflecting it. I can totally see it: Did I sleep with Janet Jackson? Well, that depends on what you mean by "sleep."
lise: next!
