No, they didn't want a Britney Spears-style pop song - they wanted a Britney Spears song in the film. And I like Britney Spears; I like pop culture; I like Madonna and Michael Jackson as much as anybody else. - but I had a very different kind of a film that I was trying to make. And in the late '90s, I was really adamant that there would be no songs in the movie - because all animated feature films seem to have these awful formulaic songs. I think that's a law somewhere - "Animated film for kids? Put some crappy songs in it!" Like when we pitched Warner Brothers while we were in Annecy. They took us out on a boat and were really wooing us - until I got to the point where I said, "I need it in writing that there will be no songs." And it was pretty much, "Swim back to shore." [laughs] That was it. That was the end. But Nickelodeon did agree to no songs. In writing. So this pop-song thing was probably the turning point in the whole affair for me; this was about a year-and-a-half in. I mean, we had a great time with Nickelodeon - they were a lot of fun, the actual executives that we worked with. I really liked them. We would go to New York, where Viacom is, or we would go to Paramount, and we always had a wonderful time. But one day after lunch we sat down ... and the executive there turned to me and said, "Okay. We can get $12 million right now if we put a pop song in the movie. So, Jeff - do you see somewhere in the body of the film where we could put a Britney Spears or an N'Sync song?"
