Today in Enjoyable Reading: An Oral History of Bring it On

• Courtesy Universal

Let’s congratulate MTV for finally doing something right—presenting this super fun and interesting oral history of 2000’s Bring it On—the best cheerleading movie ever made starring Kirsten Dunst, Gabrielle Union, Eliza Dushku, and of course, Jesse Bradford as Eliza’s dreamy brother Cliff. (SQUEEEEE!!!)

There’s so much good stuff to read here… for example, Gabrielle Union’s description of why she took the role of Isis, head cheerleader of the Clovers:

GABRIELLE UNION (Isis): There were a ton of teen movies at the time that I passed on that were not committed to getting it right. The reason why I even took the table read of “Cheer Fever” [Bring it On‘s working title] was because the cheerleading movie I wanted about bank robbing [“Sugar and Spice”] – they didn’t want to go black on any of the characters. So it’s interesting, the group that didn’t want to commit to diversity didn’t seem to do well and the movie that was about righting the wrongs did well, and that included diversity. I remember at the table read my character being a combination of Foxy Brown and about eight other Blaxploitation characters sort of rolled into a cheer-lawyer-defender type person.

(Executive producer Max) WONG: She was like, “You know what, I’m not down with Foxy Brown. I want this character to be super real because I am representing — I will be perceived as monolithic and I don’t want to be that, because that’s what happens when you’re not white and in a movie.”

• Courtesy Universal

And do you remember how dirty this movie was? I saw it recently and not only did it hold up amazingly, it really had an intelligence as well as an edge that’s missing from many of today’s flicks. Take for example the “finger” scene:

WONG: There’s a scene where Nathan West’s [cheerleader] character actually puts his finger inside of Clare Kramer’s character [Courtney] when he picks her up — and originally he sniffs his finger. The ratings board had a conniption.

TOM BLISS (Producer): That was the most controversial shot of the movie It had to be trimmed, actually, to make sure we got the right rating.

WONG: Larry Vock, the editor, figured it out — how many frames Nathan West can lift his hand. So he still does it, you still know what he’s doing and he holds his finger up, it just doesn’t run all the way to his nose.

(screenwriter Jessica) BENDINGER: I went to a screening of “Bring It On” last summer and I brought a bunch of friends and I was like holy s–t, this is bad! You couldn’t get away with it now.

There’s a lot of great stuff to read in this thing, so check it out, and BRING… IT… ON!