Tamra Davis Shares Her Memories Of The “Magical Moment” Of Directing Britney Spears In ‘Crossroads’

Tamra Davis is just so cool. That was the only thing I could think after (and during) our Zoom chat last month as part of Decider’s This Is What A Director Looks Like piece. Much of this is due to the clear passion and enjoyment she has for directing, plus the confidence and wisdom she’s earned after directing films such as Billy Madison, Crossroads, Guncrazy, and Half Baked, as well as the desire to help other women succeed in the business. All very cool! And since she, and all the women I spoke with, had such intelligent and insightful things to share, here is a deeper look at her unique career.

It really kicked off in the late 1980s, during her mid-20s, when Davis made an amateur music video, mostly for fun, that caught the attention of the record company. When they reached out, she was worried that she was in trouble for using the song without permission. Instead, they wanted to hire her. “I was so nervous,” Davis said. “I went in and he was like, ‘How did you make this video? What did you do?’ I was like, I just shot it with the school film equipment, Super 8. It was all that shaky, handheld gritty-looking stuff. Nobody had seen that before. I immediately got a job. He was like, ‘I want to pay $50,000 to make this band look like that. I want you to go meet this other friend of mine, who’s the head of Warner Brothers because he’s going to flip when he sees your work.’”

Though making music videos wasn’t quite what she had planned on doing. “I was prepared to do a feature,” Davis said. “That’s what I came out of film school thinking, but I was basically laughed at. There was no way they were going to give a girl who’s 26 years old her first feature, it was not even a thought. Immediately I got jobs doing music videos, and I worked my ass off and I made short films. It wasn’t like [I was] planning on being a music video director. I created the new look that changed [music videos] and they didn’t care if a girl directed it or who. They were like, wow, you came up with a new style. Here’s a job. I got to do alternative bands, The Smiths, Depeche Mode. I was doing all college cool.”

It was those short films during college that helped shape her style, and ultimately, her career ahead. “I used to make short films, like Super 8 films. I did one on punk rock and other things when I went to LA City School, film college. When I felt like I could translate my vision to film, and then when I showed them in the audience, and the audience responded the highest towards my movies, I think that’s when I first felt like a director. I felt like I was able to communicate in the language, that I had talent to do it. You learn that in film school, because you sit there and you watch 20 to 30 other students’ films, and you’re like, oh, mine worked. Then people are waiting to see what you’re gonna do next. So I think I got original confidence from film school.”

That’s not to say everything is a total breeze for her now. In fact, Davis admits she still gets super nervous showing her work to others, even decades into her career. “When you make films like that, and you have to show them, you understand that. If you just made films, and nobody sees, it’s not going to help you. But to show, which is the hardest thing in the world, to find out whether or not you can do it, it’s honestly harder to watch a movie in front of people than almost anything. I still get nervous. I still am freaking out because you want the people especially you invest so much in it, and you really love the people you’re working with, and you want them to be happy with it. I just did a pilot and I watched it and the editor loved it. I’m like, I can’t wait for them to see it. I think it’s good. If he likes it, he’s one of the biggest editors in the world, but I still am nervous as heck waiting, you know?”

The advice Davis wants to pass on to aspiring directors is simple: “You have to be always saying yes to yourself. You have to film things yourself. You have to show things yourself. You have to submit to film festivals. You have to go to meetings. That’s all you, that’s your commitment. I felt like I had a crisis in my career where I was on a giant movie and then they fired me. I was at home and I was like, Oh my god, my career’s over. I made a short film, it was called No Alternative Girls and I filmed things that I loved. Nobody in Hollywood could tell me I’m not a director, all I have to do to be a director is pick up a camera and tell the story and I’m a director. So I was like, fuck you Hollywood, I’m a director. If I sat in my bed and cried, I would let them win. I made that short film and then in less than two weeks, I got a call to replace a director on Billy Madison. You have to fly in with all the confidence in the world. Even if you don’t think you have the confidence, nobody knows that. Just pretend.”

It’s certainly advice she took herself when it came to directing 1995’s Billy Madison. “I love all my movies because I have to become the biggest fan in the world of what I’m doing,” she explained. “It has to be authentic to me. If I don’t feel that then you won’t feel that as an audience. Universal wanted me to do Billy Madison, and I met with Adam [Sandler], we got along but he wanted his friend to do it. They were shooting for three days, the studio was unhappy, they pulled the plug on a Wednesday. On Thursday, I was on a plane with the head of the studio flying up there and then by Monday we were shooting it so quickly. So Adam and I had to become [ready], we were both in survival mode. You have an opportunity here. Adam had to survive, too, it was his first film, if he messed up, he would have never had a career. I had to figure out how he’s funny and how to be his biggest fan and love him and think he’s the cutest boy in the world. He had to figure out how to be funny and relaxed and have a good time and not be worried about it and it just was great. We had the best time, he likes making girls laugh, and [co-writer Tim Herlihy] is hard to make laugh, so he and I would just sit there and we had the best time in the world and I loved it. It was so much fun.”

And while we were on the topic of her iconic films, another I had to ask about was 2002’s Crossroads, Britney Spears’ feature film debut (which is hard to find on streaming sites these days, much to Davis’ chagrin). In reflecting on her experience with the film, she said, “I was invited to a film festival in London where they were showing it and I was like, yeah, I’ll go I’ll watch it and talk, that’s fun. It’s held up. It’s such a good movie. I love it so much and I had the best experience.

“I originally said no and then Ann Carli was one of the producers. She was like, I’m working with this new unknown writer, Shonda Rhimes, other friends had hired her. It was the small group of ladies that I loved that were the producers. Then she said, ‘Would you go meet Britney?’ I said yes, I met Britney, I flew to Las Vegas, it was the craziest experience. She was controlling everything. She knew what she wanted. She did it in a sweet Southern girl way, but there wasn’t anybody in that room that she didn’t want in. There wasn’t any deal, there wasn’t an outfit she wouldn’t wear that she didn’t decide. I hung out with her the whole day and she just convinced me. She said, ‘I want to do the rehearsals, I will do anything.’ We were together for a year and it breaks my heart now, I just watched Framing Britney Spears and she just posted a thing about Crossroads and my friend Ann spoke with her. It was one of the best times in her life, too, it was like a magical moment.”

Crossroads was a bit of an outlier at the time, and even today, considering it credits a female director, writer, and trio of stars, but Davis is currently feeling a lot of optimism about women’s representation across the industry these days. “It has shifted radically after the #MeToo movement. I’ve been directing, I’m still there. I’m so grateful anytime I get a job, I love it. I fight for my jobs, I try to get them, I’m so excited because I cannot believe what’s happened over these last few years with all these opportunities, and people finally realizing that they have not been hiring women and we need that voice. I’ll be on shows now where it’s only women directors. I did P-Valley, was all women. Now I’m on shows where it’s like at least three women directors or everybody behind the camera’s a woman; it’s unbelievable, the shift.”

One thing that has not shifted so much for her is her on-set uniform, which she has mostly stuck to throughout the years. “As a girl, you have to consider what you wear, because what you wear projects how you want to be perceived. When I was younger, I went through a punk rock era, so I wore really simple, boyish clothes. I tried not to look too cute or sexy because I knew that I didn’t want to be perceived like that. Also a lot of the people that I worked with, especially early in my career, I just didn’t want them to think of me as somebody that you date. I wanted them to think of me as somebody that they have to listen to. Even now, my directing outfit is so specific. I like wearing button-down shirts. I don’t like to show any cleavage. I don’t wear heels. I don’t show legs. I wear nice clothes, but they secretly are fancy. I try to look almost more like my crew. I try not to stand out.”

She also wants other women to know she is there for them as they continue to grow within the male-dominated field. “To my ladies out there, I’m really am trying to mentor them and support them. You only get good at it by how many times you do it, directing really is like that. You’re always in an almost crisis situation. It’s like this actor hasn’t shown up, or the dress just ripped, we have only an hour left of sun, it’s constant. So you have to know, oh, I’ve done this before, I’ve been there before, I know how this happens, I’m calm in this situation. It’s a confidence. But usually you get that confidence because you’ve done it a bunch of times. I just want to make sure they succeed and they have the support system that they can ask questions and they can have somebody to talk to if they’ve never done it. If you’ve ever done a dinner table scene, that’s one of the hardest things in the world to do. I don’t want them to think that they’re not good only because this is their second job. I wasn’t that great on mine, nobody’s that good on their second job.”

When I asked about her favorite part of the job, Davis put her hands on her chest, on top of her neon hoodie just over her heart, and sincerely replied, “I love, love, love my job. There’s the magic that happens when you’re directing an actor and you see the magic that they do or when your DP and you look at it and you’re like, Oh my god. It really is the people that you get to work with and the talent is outstanding. You have to enjoy it. To enjoy those moments and these relationships where you get to work with these incredibly talented people, and then also to deliver content that actually has a beautiful impact on the audience and moves the audience to a social way that you want the world to go. I feel like that’s why I do things and also to help support other women and to give them that opportunity. If you see there’s a woman’s name there, there’s some little girl that saw that and was like, Oh, I maybe can do this job.”

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