The 2001 musical comedy "
"Josie" was written and directed by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, creative partners who grew up 10 minutes from each other in Pennsylvania but didn't meet until they attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
Kaplan told Insider that writing and directing an original musical like "Josie and the Pussycats" was an opportunity they couldn't pass up, even though neither had ever written a song before.
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Critics weren't too keen on the film either. In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers called the movie a "harmless girlie trifle" that lacked "any kinky action," while Roger Ebert said the Pussycats were "not dumber than the Spice Girls, but they're as dumb as the Spice Girls, which is dumb enough" in his half-star review.
The initial reception for "Josie and the Pussycats" suggested it was a film doomed to be forgotten, written off as a feel-good "girlie" movie that missed the mark.
But in recent years, the movie has begun to resonate more with audiences. And with newfound appreciation from critics and fans alike, "Josie and the Pussycats" has finally received some positive recognition two decades after its release.
Why did this famous flop become a cult classic? Does it still hold up for cast and crew two decades later? And how on earth did Eugene Levy end up in the film?
On the movie's 20th anniversary, Insider spoke with Kaplan and Elfont, as well as Reid and Cook, about the legacy of this "totally jerking" film.
Based on characters introduced in the Archie Comics, "Josie and the Pussycats" follows three young women - Josie (Cook), Val (Dawson), and Melody (Reid) - in a ragtag rock band who are discovered by big-shot record executive Wyatt Frame (Cumming).
The only problem is Frame's boss, Fiona (Parker Posey), is secretly colluding with the US government to hide subaural, pro-consumerism messages in the Pussycats' songs. Their plan is to brainwash America's teenagers through music, leading to total mind control.
As the Pussycats, Cook, Dawson, and Reid not only had to look the part of aspiring rock stars but had to learn the basics of their characters' instruments too.
Since authenticity was important for Kaplan and Elfont, the movie's stars headed to a three-week band camp, where Cook learned to play guitar, Dawson honed her bass-playing skills, and Reid set out to become a drummer.
"We had to drill them on getting comfortable with their instruments. We had actual musicians show them where their hands should go on the guitar," Elfont said. "We wanted them to look like they were playing the real chords, not just moving their hands up and down quickly."
Cook agreed, telling Insider: "It was very important to them for the movie to never just seem like an impersonation of itself, with regard to the musical element. The music had to be true."
She added: "I think that Deb and Harry are incredibly cool. And the idea of being fakers or posers would have been totally blasphemous to them."
The filmmakers were so dedicated to the actresses' musical training that when Reid's drum coach wasn't there, Elfont said he stood in to show the actress exactly what she should be hitting when.
Reid said she had trouble "separating her hands from her feet" in the early days of camp.
"I was, like, 'I'm never going to be able to do this.' And we had to do it for about two months, every day for about - I don't know - five hours a day," Reid said. "None of us knew how to do anything. We were, like, 'Oh gosh, we're never going to make this - like, we're going to get fired.' And it just worked itself out, you know?"
While all three ended up playing their instruments during the movie's scenes, Josie's vocals were provided by Letters to Cleo singer Kay Hanley instead of Cook, who said she wasn't as confident as a vocalist.
"I feel like I got away with murder because I didn't really do any of the recorded stuff," Cook told Insider. "I just got to pretend - the way people sing into hairbrushes at home."
Behind the scenes, an all-star team of artists assembled to write, produce, and perform the soundtrack, which went gold after its release.
Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds led the charge as the executive producer, and teamed up with Gigolo Aunts' Dave Gibbs on half of the songs. Fountains of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger produced and wrote tracks as well. And Counting Crows' Adam Duritz, the Go-Go's Jane Wiedlin, and others also contributed to the film's iconic soundtrack.
Kaplan and Elfont joined the list of legendary musicians, embarking on their first foray into writing music. They cowrote tracks, including "Three Small Words," "Come On," "DuJour Around the World," and "Backdoor Lover."
"I've always been slightly musical, but it was a whole other deal going in and working with professional songwriters," Elfont said. "It boosted our confidence to the point that we thought we could write songs."
And while the Pussycats' songs remain pop-punk classics, those tracks weren't the only original music written for the film. Another fictional group - the ill-fated boy band DuJour - plays an important role, and they also had their own memorable tunes.
DuJour's songs, Kaplan said, were some of the most entertaining to write because they contain numerous double entendres. The subversive catchy hit "Backdoor Lover," for example, is quite clearly about sex.
"That was a blast. To get away with that and not have anyone say, 'No, sorry you can't make a song about butt stuff,'" Kaplan joked.
Both Reid and Cook had appeared in popular films before "Josie and the Pussycats" - Reid in "American Pie" and Cook in "She's All That." Dawson was still relatively early in her career, but that didn't stop the three women from becoming close, especially after long days of filming.
"None of us knew each other at all beforehand. It was an intense bonding experience," Cook said.
"It was the first movie I ever did that was a 'girl movie' and we had so much fun," Reid added. "It was kind of like sleepaway camp."
"Imagine three girls basically going on vacation, becoming rock stars," Reid continued. "Going out at night and having dinners, having fun, studying your scripts together, playing our instruments in the room."
She touted the film's costumes as being a special part of filming. As to be expected for a film set in 2000s Hollywood, most of the costumes in "Josie and the Pussycats" involved low-rise jeans, belly tops, and sky-high heels, which led to some discomfort, Reid said.
Our costumes were so small and we had to wear heels. So as soon as we'd get out, you'd see three pairs of Ugg boots lined up, all waiting for us.Tara Reid
It was the "little things like that," Reid said, that made shooting the movie "amazing."
Reid also defended her character Melody, the childlike and naive drummer of the Pussycats who seems to be the group's token "dumb blonde" - a mainstay in late-'90s and early-2000s teen movies.
"I fell in love with Melody, and yeah, she seemed ditzy," Reid said. "But if you really look and watch the movie again, she's not. She seems clueless, but then all of a sudden she comes to these revelations."
"Really, what attracted me to Melody was that this was a girl that had such belief in this band, and her heart was so pure," she said.
The movie takes a dark turn about a half hour in, when Fiona (Posey) descends into the underground epicenter of the operation with numerous world leaders.
There, she hopes to convince her guests that they, too, should be molding children's "Play-Doh" brains.
Fiona plays an educational video hosted by Eugene Levy, who appears as himself to make the case for hiding "subliminal messages in rock 'n' roll music."
"We had written some other celebrities in it," Elfont said. "At one point it was Chris Rock, then at another point it was somebody more music-connected."
People didn't want to be in the 'Josie and the Pussycats' movie.Harry Elfont
Eventually, they landed on Levy, who was asked to appear in the cameo as a favor, Elfont said.
"It happened because our executive on the movie was also the executive on 'American Pie 2,'" he added, referring to his other film. They brought their cameras to the set of Levy's "American Pie 2" to shoot the scene.
Levy has since become a household name after creating and starring in the award-winning "Schitt's Creek." But when the cameo was shot, the actor was coming off major roles in "American Pie" and "Best in Show." As Elfont said, Levy's appearance only became cooler with time.
"He said he did it because he thought his kids would find it funny, which now is funny because he must've been talking about Dan," Elfont said, referring to Levy's son Dan, who also created and starred in "Schitt's Creek."
"And it's just so weird because like now it's the coolest cameo ever, because he's now Eugene Levy from 'Schitt's Creek,'" Elfont added.
The movie's final scene - in which the Pussycats play a live concert for the first time - was an emotional experience for the cast and crew.
Reid said that it "was a moment of pure bonding when we did it."
"I think every actor wants to be a rock star and every rock star wants to be an actor," she said.
And Cook, who makes an emotional speech to the Pussycats' young fans at the start of the concert before reuniting onstage with her love interest, Alan M. (Gabriel Mann), said the scene is unforgettable.
"I remember it feeling just as epic and special and massive in scope as the movie depicts it," she said. "It was also at the end of an incredibly fun and bonding, and also physically taxing, shoot. So the whole day was emotional and spectacular in all the very best ways."
Despite Kaplan and Elfont's unique vision, the film - with its slyly subversive message of staying true to yourself, even when trapped in a capitalist hellscape - was mostly misconstrued by critics, who took the hundreds of tongue-in-cheek product placements in the film at face value.
The lukewarm reception influenced the filmmakers' careers in a notoriously difficult industry, though they eventually went on to write and direct episodes of shows such as "Mary + Jane" and "Liza on Demand."
"It's not that we weren't offered any work after that. We were offered scripts to direct," Elfont said. "We were still viable directors, but I think because the experience was hard, we ended up saying no to a lot of things just because we wanted to really love it."
"The takeaway was it was hard to have the movie come out and not do well," he added.
Cook said that most film critics didn't exactly fall into the movie's target audience.
"It's easy to write off the lack of critical attention - or should I say appreciation - that we could have gotten to the fact that they weren't the demographic, that's an easy out," Cook said of critics, who are largely white and male. "But they just quite simply didn't get it. It just sort of seemed to fall on deaf ears."
The movie's satirical tone may have gone over critics' heads, but "Josie and the Pussycats" still holds a special place in the hearts of cast and crew.
Its feminist undertones and promotion of individualism and free thought also began resonating with viewers in the years since its release, earning Kaplan and Elfont's film a cult following.
In 2017, Mondo released the "Josie and the Pussycats" soundtrack on vinyl, and the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles hosted a screening with a concert for fans - exposing a whole new generation to the magic of the film.
Since so many people have now latched onto "Josie and the Pussycats," with its unforgettable characters and catchy soundtrack, the cast and crew said they ultimately would not want to go back in time and change a single aspect of the movie.
The Ace Hotel concert was "pretty cathartic," Elfont said, "having been through the failure of the movie, to see a packed house full of rabid fans who knew every word of the movie and every word of the song."
I'm just surprised how long it's held on. We didn't really know how many people had seen the movie until basically Twitter.Deborah Kaplan
According to Kaplan, Elfont alerted her that people were talking about "Josie and the Pussycats" on Twitter shortly after he joined the social-media platform. Elfont told Kaplan that numerous fans had reached out to him about the 2001 film.
"It's a movie for the outcasts, the weirdos, and the artists. It's not a movie for the class presidents. It's for everyone else, which is kind of where we'd rather sit," she added.
Both Cook and Reid were similarly enthusiastic about the movie's newfound popularity.
"What's interesting about it is that it became such a cult film. I think it really deserved that," Reid told Insider.
Cook added that the film's popularity ballooned because of "pure word of mouth. This is not anything other than people just actually liking the movie ... It caught zero lucky breaks - it completely made its way by itself."
"I'm just really happy that we're talking about it all these years later," Cook added. "My God, I still can't believe I got to be in that movie."