Disney Stars Throw Off Their Past in ‘Spring Breakers’

Kevin Scanlon for The New York Times

Selena Gomez, left, and Vanessa Hudgens.

By BROOKS BARNES

Published: March 8, 2013 

LOS ANGELES — Selena Gomez got her start in “Barney & Friends” and became a cherub-cheeked teen idol on “Wizards of Waverly Place,” a Disney Channel series that has its final hurrah on Friday. But Ms. Gomez was not at a trendy hotel here to discuss Disney. (Eye roll: As if.) On her mind was her new movie — a druggy, violent, hypersexualized tale of innocence squashed called"Spring Breakers.”

• Gosh, We’re Bad Now! (March 10, 2013)

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From left, Ashley Benson, James Franco and Vanessa Hudgens in “Spring Breakers."

That R-rated film, which not-so-coincidentally arrives in theaters on Friday, signals an attempt by Ms. Gomez, 20, to transition to a more grown-up image. And she is not alone: “Spring Breakers,” written and directed by Harmony Korine (“Kids”), also stars Vanessa Hudgens, a starlet who is equally eager — maybe more — to leave behind her squeaky-clean work in Disney’s “High School Musical” series.

“Disney is a machine, and I’m grateful for it, but I feel like being part of that environment made me crave the reaction from other projects even more,” Ms. Gomez said. “Creatively this is where I wanted to go.”

Ditto for Ms. Hudgens, 24. “I want people to look at me not as that girl from ‘High School Musical,’ but as an actress they admire,” she said. “With ‘Spring Breakers’ I’m looking for a reaction for sure. I want to shock people.”

Uh-oh.

John Bramley/Walt Disney Pictures

Ms. Hudgens and Zac Efron in the 2008 film “High School Musical 3: Senior Year.”

The transition out of children’s entertainment is perhaps Hollywood’s trickiest professional maneuver. Changing an acting style is hard; children’s shows tend to turn on “overdone, hammy, jokey performances,” noted Paul Schneider, chairman of Boston University’s film and television department. And the public doesn’t make it easy, said Jeffrey McCall, a media studies professor at DePauw University, adding, “We project images onto entertainers, and we are hesitant to change those impressions.”

If Ms. Gomez and Ms. Hudgens wanted to leave their good-girl personas behind, they found the right movie. “Spring Breakers,” which also stars James Franco, 34, as a white-trash rapper and drug dealer (just a week after he’ll be seen in Disney’s “Oz the Great and Powerful”), is “Natural Born Killers” meets an MTV reality show.

Mr. Korine’s film follows four college students who are desperate to escape their everyday lives. They rob a restaurant to pay for their trip, land in some trouble once in Florida and get bailed out of jail by Mr. Franco’s metal-toothed brute, Alien. Ms. Gomez plays Faith — hint, hint — who goes along with it to a point, despite her religious upbringing. Around the time the women start wearing hot-pink ski masks and wielding AK-47’s Faith decides enough is enough, leaving her friends to descend deeper into a depraved fever dream.

In one extended scene likely to get attention Ms. Hudgens’s character, Candy, holds a loaded gun while Mr. Franco’s thug simulates fellatio on it.

Richard Cartwright/Disney Channel

Selena Gomez, center, with David Henrie and Jennifer Stone in “Wizards of Waverly Place.”

“It was an amazing opportunity for us,” Ms. Hudgens said. “Selena and I are both young, finding our footing, wanting to grow.” Ms. Gomez added, “I’ve never been part of a movie I would watch over and over again, and I’m really proud of it.”

Mr. Korine, 40, whose films include “Trash Humpers” and “Julien Donkey-Boy,” said he deliberately cast actresses with saccharine images to make a point about the underbelly of what he calls “pop mythology” — the extreme party that many young people dream about and corporations cash in on. Ashley Benson, 23, known for “Pretty Little Liars” on ABC Family, a Disney-owned channel, also plays a leading role.

“It was a conceptual stunt,” Mr. Korine said, referring to the casting. “Well, it wasn’t just a conceptual stunt. That’s a bonus. If you didn’t know who these girls are, that they came to my movie representing something, the film would still be the same.”

Rarely has a movie arrived with so many additional agendas. Ms. Gomez, Ms. Hudgens and Ms. Benson are all working to “age up” their images, to use Hollywood lingo. Mr. Korine, tired of making itty-bitty experimental movies that (almost) nobody sees, wants a taste of the mainstream. Several critics, reviewing “Spring Breakers” as it has bounced along the festival circuit, have used the word “sellout” to describe the film.

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Ms. Gomez in “Spring Breakers.”

Is Mr. Korine “effectively satirizing” vapid MTV exploitation shows, asked Guy Lodge in a Variety review, “or merely complicit in the glossy meretriciousness of the culture they represent?”

Ms. Gomez and Ms. Hudgens have both been cycled through the celebrity tabloids for their romantic relationships. (Ms. Gomez has dated Justin Bieber, and Ms. Hudgens and Zac Efron were once a couple.) And both actresses are seeking to change how moviegoers and studios see them.

But they find themselves at different professional stages and thus lean into “Spring Breakers” with varying intensity.

Ms. Hudgens, who became a star in 2006 by playing the brainy romantic lead (opposite Mr. Efron) in the “High School Musical” movies, is more removed than Ms. Gomez from Disney. But she has not had a lot of success since. She tried a romance called"Beastly” and the fantasy thriller “Sucker Punch”; both flopped badly. “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” was a success, but she played only a supporting role.

So she needed something extreme.

“I’m so normal and boring in real life, which is part of what made this part so fun,” said Ms. Hudgens, fiddling with a white rose she had plucked out of an arrangement in the hotel’s lobby. “I’m more the type to stay home with a cheese plate and a glass of white wine.” (After “Spring Breakers,” Ms. Hudgens will star in Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete Kills,” a bloody action movie about a Mexican arms dealer.)

While younger, Ms. Gomez is the bigger star. “Wizards of Waverly Place” ranks as one of the larger hits in Disney Channel history. She has a clothing line called Dream Out Loud, a perfume (marketed as “the scented embodiment of the star herself: fresh and sweet with warmth from within”) and more than 40 million Facebook “likes.” Next month Ms. Gomez will release a single from her coming fourth CD, which will be distributed by Disney.

But her movie career has so far been mediocre, to be generous. “Ramona and Beezus” was a dud in 2010. The PG-rated “Monte Carlo” the following year was a bit stronger, taking in $39.7 million worldwide. But family films were clearly not a promising road for Ms. Gomez.

So in “Spring Breakers” she parties hard in a Day-Glo bikini and has a disturbing scene with Mr. Franco in which he, his hair in corn rows, fondles her face at length and coos that she “looks about 15.” But Faith also bolts before the killing starts, about 45 minutes in. Ms. Gomez said she would not have taken, say, the role Ms. Hudgens plays, because it would have amounted to the kind of slash-and-burn approach to career growth that Miley Cyrus failed to pull off.

“It’s as far as I could go at this point in my life and career,” she said. “It’s me kind of taking baby steps.” Ms. Gomez added, “But I know that people will judge my involvement in the movie as a whole. I’m prepared to accept that.”

Disney had no comment about “Spring Breakers.” But executives there said privately they doubted that Ms. Gomez, who will headline the Radio Disney Music Awards on April 27, knew exactly what she was getting into.

The young actress refuted that notion, saying that her mother, who is also her manager, was the one who suggested the part.

“My mom is a Harmony fan and read the script,” she said. Ms. Gomez watched Mr. Korine’s movies with her mother and discussed the role with her agent. “I understood why they thought it could be an interesting choice,” she said. She flew to Nashville, where Mr. Korine lives, and auditioned for him in his living room, running lines with his wife, Rachel Korine, 26, who ended up joining the film in a lead role.

“Harmony said, ‘Are you ready to leave your world behind for now and just come be with me and the girls?’ I just said, ‘I’m definitely ready and willing,'” Ms. Gomez recalled. “He looked past what I seem to be publicly and really took a chance on me.”

Ms. Gomez seems a tad tired of discussing “Spring Breakers” and its effect on her image. “It’s the obvious media angle,” she said with a sigh. (One of her next movies is the dark comedy “Behaving Badly,” which has been described as “'Ferris Bueller’ on crack.”)

She also echoed what Disney executives have long said when their stars move on and adopt sexier personas: Viewers, even young ones, can differentiate between actresses and the roles they play. Of people criticizing her for “Spring Breakers,” Ms. Gomez said, “I think they’re not giving my fans enough credit.”

Still, she said she was taken aback to see so many “Wizards of Waverly Place” devotees at the Toronto International Film Festival screening for Mr. Korine’s film.

“The first four rows were girls from 17 to 20,” she said, “and they all had our posters and my ‘Wizards’ book, and I was like ‘Oh, my goodness!'
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