American Cheerleader

Name: Jessica Bendinger
Nickname: JB or Dr. J
Best known for: Writing the screenplay for Bring It On, and writing and directing Stick It
On the horizon: Her first published young adult book, The Seven Rays

AC: Okay, so you’re famous in the cheer world for putting out projects like Bring it On and Stick it. Where did you get your inspiration for Bring it On? Jessica Bendinger: I was obsessed with watching cheerleading competitions on ESPN. I was so blown away by the sheer athletic ability and the size of a Large Coed varsity squad performing. It was truly extraordinary.

I even did a music video before I wrote Bring It On, and had cheerleaders from New Jersey come and do tricks for the video, because nobody had used cheerleaders yet. I was impressed by their athleticism and that was really where it all began.

AC: All from a few cheer competitions on TV? Jessica: From watching those competitions and then through my experience of loving hip-hop.

AC: Hip-hop and cheerleading? How do those two things mix? Jessica: One of my first jobs was writing about hip-hop for Spin magazine. I interviewed Public Enemy and Salt ’N Pepa. When I finally got to Hollywood and was pitching my first idea, my agent told me to write about what I loved. And what I loved was cheerleading and hip-hop.

So a friend of mine suggested I put the two together—like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup—and I thought, “It’s so crazy it just might work.” I took two things that I would talk about for free and made money writing about them. I wrote what I loved.

AC: Can you tell us a little bit about your cheer background and how it’s influenced your professional and personal life? Jessica: I think I first saw cheerleaders when I was really little. They seemed so glamorous and pretty in their uniforms. When I heard they were having tryouts for the Pop Warner football team in 4th grade, I went, learned the cheer and made the squad. I had a really good time.

AC: How has cheer influenced your professional and personal life? Jessica: There’s teamwork involved whenever you’re trying to organize a group of people, regardless of what you’re doing. I’m 100 percent sure that cheerleading was my first experience with teamwork. Cheer instilled in me that sense of team spirit and rooting for something. Really, cheerleading at its core is about supporting other people in their endeavors. This is almost a spiritual concept for me.

AC: What’s a typical day like for you? Jessica: The beauty of my days is that they’re varied. But usually it begins around 6:30 am, when my dogs wake me. I go to the Coffee Bean and sit and chat with friends. Then I get out and exercise—usually hike with the dogs for a few miles—and go home and start on my to-do list of the day. I have four interns and a production coordinator, so I give everybody their assignments and start on my own assignments (right now, it’s developing and writing my next movie).

AC: When did you know you’d hit it big? Jessica: We’d been trying to get Bring It On made for a while, and Tom Hanks really loved the script. At one point I had a meeting with Tom Hanks and N’Sync. Tom wanted to do an N’Sync movie in the same vein as That Thing You Do, and hesaid the only way he’d do the movie was if I wrote it. There I was, sitting in a room with N’Sync (who hadn’t even heard of Bring It On yet) and Tom Hanks. It was insane.

AC: Can you spill some N’Sync scoop? Anything you want to share about Justin? Jessica: They all ordered grilled cheese and French fries. I asked them if they ordered it because they were so “in sync.” They said that it was the one thing that no matter where you were in the world that was really hard to mess up. I can’t believe I was sitting next to Justin Timberlake and now he’s in my book!

AC: How do you stay grounded and positive in Hollywood and how do you deal with rejection? Jessica: I don’t know if I always do. I think you have your good days and bad days. But if you know in your heart that you’re never as good as your great press, and you’re never as bad as your bad press, and that life isn’t a destination, it’s a process, then you’ll stay grounded.

AC: Did you always want to write books? Jessica: I’ve always loved writing. And before I loved writing, I loved reading. I was shuttled around a lot growing up and was constantly getting on planes to see people, so I coped by escaping into a book. Stories and daydreaming were my ways of surviving the emotional rollercoaster of my childhood. Books became my peaceful eye of the hurricane and my parents really indulged that.

I remember when Harry Potter started taking off, reading about JK Rowling and I was just so happy for her as a woman. As a businesswoman I was like, “Wow, that’s just so cool. Maybe someday…” So, JK inspired me, and when Simon and Schuster offered me a book deal I said yes. I didn’t know what I was doing and writing fiction was really hard, but I’m glad I did it.

 

AC: How did you come up with the idea for The Seven Rays? Jessica: I was researching a movie idea after 9/11, and I’d read a lot about people who had psychic experiences during that tragedy, like dreams that were premonitions and stuff. I became really interested in writing a story of this young woman who has gift and starts seeing things, but doesn’t know what it is. How terrifying would that be, if you had a psychic ability or healing ability and it just showed up unannounced?

AC: Music is a big theme in the book. Was this a conscious decision? Jessica: Music has always been my first love—my mother’s a professional jazz trombone player and my dad was a musician who wrote jingles for TV commercials.
A song is like a quick piece of an emotional connection. It’s a really fun way to connect to an audience emotionally. There are a couple of music references in the book. One is the moment between Beth and Richie, where he’s inadvertently selected her favorite song and it’s very loaded with meaning. I listened to the second part of the song, “I think that she knows” by Justin Timberlake about 10 times a day as I was writing that sequence.

AC: So there’s a soundtrack to your book? Jessica: Yes. When you get to the end of the book, there will be a soundtrack available. We’ve been working on it for a while. I’ve basically been going around to all these artists I admire, asking for songs that relate to the book. There will be a legend in the book telling where the song would play or if you were watching it as a movie, where the music would cue. And we haven’t finished the deal yet, but the idea is that if you have the digital version of E-Reader, the song will cue in the correct spot.

AC: What do you hope readers will take away from the book? Jessica: My first hope is that people are entertained and inspired. But really, I just want readers to feel like they are more than they think they are. I really want to inspire this idea in people that we all have a special destiny, we can all do more than we think we can.

AC: The book seems to be spiritual, without being preachy. Are you a spiritual person? Jessica: I’m a very spiritual person; I absolutely have a reliance on faith. I think there’s nothing scarier than standing in the unknown of a story you have to tell. I’m an optimist, so I think my spirituality is based in that. I believe the glass is half-full and that everything happens for a reason, and it’ll all work out in the end.

 

AC: Working in Hollywood you must get to meet a lot of celebrities—who have you been starstruck over meeting? Jessica: I met Tom Cruise for the first time this year. I saw Katie Holmes at a benefit at USC and she stopped to say “Hi,” [Ed Note: Jessica worked with Katie on First Daughter, which she wrote the screenplay for] and I was so star struck over Tom. I didn’t want to stare at him like everyone else did, so I ignored him. Finally he was like “Hi, I’m Tom.” I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “Your daughter’s beautiful.” I lost all brain coordination in that moment.

Also, once I was on my way home before Bring It On came out and I was passing by my friend Mary McCormick’s house and stopped to show her the trailer. I ran up to her house and there was this gorgeous guy sitting on her stoop with no shirt on. He was one of the most beautiful guys I’d ever seen in my life and he had this Irish accent. It turned out to be Colin Farrell before he was famous. So, the first person I showed the Bring It On trailer to was Colin Farrell, in my friend’s living room.

AC: Do you plan on writing more books? Jessica: I definitely have a sequel in mind for The Seven Rays. There will be at least one more book, possibly more, and I’ve kind of outlined a couple others in very rough forms.

AC: You’ve conquered the movie and book worlds and you mentioned that you’ve just started your own music label. Can you tell us more about that? Jessica: My label’s called Be Records—I’m giving AC the scoop! Our first project is The Seven Rays Soundtrack.

AC: What advice would you give a teen who’d like to go into script or book writing? Jessica: Whether you’re writing in a diary, in your journal, or have a file on your laptop with ideas, it’s just important to write. And don’t judge it. Give yourself permission to write badly…permission to fail is the ultimate freedom.

AC: In your journey to the top, was there ever a time you wanted to give up? Jessica: There’s a saying that I love: “Success is a terrible teacher.” I think you really learn the best from making mistakes. I used to get devastated by mistakes, but then I realized it’s all going to be OK, and that the world will keep on turning. Your worst mistake—unless you’re a brain surgeon with a mother of five on your table—doesn’t matter. As bad as things feel, you’ll learn from them and move on. You’ll learn so much more from a big mistake than you could from a big success.

AC: In The Seven Rays, most of your characters have special powers. If you could have any power, what would it be? Jessica: I love the idea of being able to pick up an object and feel the story behind it or look at something and see the story. As a storyteller, I just think that would be such a cool thing.

AC: If you could throw a dinner party and invite five people to it, who would it be? Jessica: I love this question! I’d definitely want Oprah, for sure, because she can talk to anyone. I’d want someone who’s funny, like Wanda Sykes or Howard Stern or Louise C. Kaye or Jerry Seinfeld. Maybe JK Rowling for the female writing category. I’d want a really articulate music person—someone who’s really lived and has a lot to say—like Madonna. I’d also invite a big thinker, like one of those guys who wrote the Freakanomics books. That would be amazing!

AC: What’s the best advice you ever got? Jessica: I was sitting with a friend of mine, and I was telling her how frustrated I was about a situation I was in and she asked me if I respected a soul’s journey? I said, “Yeah I do. I respect everybody’s soul and journey.” And she responded, “Then you have to respect their right to get it wrong.” That was the hardest thing to hear, but it’s helped me get through some really hard times. People have to live their own lives.

***Pick up Jessica’s book, The Seven Rays, in bookstores nationwide today!