In the Know / A LOOK AT THE WEEK AHEAD : None Dare Call It ‘Crossover’

Will the Dixie Chicks fly to the top of the charts this week? “Fly,” which hits the charts on Wednesday, is the country trio’s follow-up effort to the smash debut “Wide Open Spaces,” which has sold 5 million copies and is still lingering in the Top 40 two years after its release. The success of the first album and the trio’s recent appearance among pop and rock counterparts on the high-profile Lilith Fair tour have created a buzz of excitement about the potential for crossover success for the new collection. Retailers and industry observers say “Fly” has a chance to debut at or near the top of the album sales charts this week and that first-day sales alone were close to 75,000 copies. “They’re not your typical country act,” says Bob Feterl, regional manager for Tower Records. “They had a really wide appeal.” While Shania Twain (and, more recently, Garth Brooks) have wooed pop audiences by drifting outside the country genre, the Dixie Chicks are keeping loyal to their roots, their manager says. For instance, unlike Twain, the Chicks have declined to offer any pop-leaning remixes (subtracting the fiddle or pedal steel, for example) of their songs to radio or video programmers. “We have never sat down and had a conversation about crossing over into pop because it’s not an option,” says manager Simon Renshaw.

Emmys Mark Start of Festive Fall

This hasn’t been a particularly festive last few months for the television business, with layoffs, belt-tightening and mergers all over, while production flees to Canada as networks and studios plead poverty. Yet that won’t stop the start of the fall TV season from being commemorated with a series of parties, beginning with the various festivities leading up to Sunday’s nighttime Emmy Awards. The Writers Guild, Directors Guild and Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (in conjunction with the trade paper Variety) will all host events for nominees this week, while Home Box Office and “Entertainment Tonight” will spring for lavish post-show bashes on Emmy night. Other TV kickoff events to woo talent and executives are planned over the next few weeks at Sony and Warner Bros. This week also includes two awards ceremonies in New York: MTV’s Video Music Awards, traditionally one of the year’s hottest tickets, being televised Thursday, and the more stately News and Documentary Emmys, which will be handed out Wednesday. A few new TV series premiere this week, too, but at least in Hollywood circles, it sounds like only the C-list types will be home to watch them.

A Little Film That May Open Big

Jeff Franklin, the writer-director of “Love Stinks,” can be forgiven if he’s a bit nervous this weekend. His $4 million independent film, billed as an “unromantic” romantic comedy, is finally hitting the big screen in a big way. A new Los Angeles-based production and distribution company called Independent Artists is releasing the film Friday in about 1,000 theaters nationwide. “We’re really hoping this becomes a little word-of-mouth picture,” Franklin said, “because we don’t have a big budget.” Big budget or not, the film has attracted good advance buzz, but there was a time when Franklin, the creator of the hit TV series “Full House,” wondered if his movie would ever be released at all. First, he had trouble selling the “boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy can’t get rid of girl” screenplay, so he decided to make it himself. With a paltry budget, Franklin knew he couldn’t lure big stars like Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey, but he found that Hollywood is crawling with acting talent wanting to do a good script regardless of the budget. For the lead roles, he landed French Stewart of NBC’s “3rd Rock From the Sun” and Bridgette Wilson, who has appeared in such films as “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and “Billy Madison.” But Franklin nearly fell over when supermodel Tyra Banks walked in the door and asked to audition. “Obviously, she makes more money combing her hair than we were able to give her,” he said, “but she loved the role and loved the film. We asked her to step outside and gave her the part on the spot.” Franklin even got up the nerve to ask Warren Littlefield, then-president of entertainment at NBC, if he would like to play a network president in the film. “I thought, ‘This will never happen,’ but he loved it. He said, ‘I’m going to make time for this.’ ” Originally, PolyGram intended to release the movie, but Universal acquired the company and it was promptly dismantled. That’s when Independent Artists stepped in to save the day.

--Compiled by Times staff writers