Speaker 1: This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners.
Speaker 1: Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is
Speaker 1: a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Britney Spears
Speaker 1: are insane. She was once offered ten million dollars for
Speaker 1: her virginity. At the peak of her fame, thirty to
Speaker 1: forty five, predatory paparazzi followed her every move every day
Speaker 1: during twelve to fourteen hour shifts. One company logged forty
Speaker 1: thousand hours of stalking her, accrued between only eight men.
Speaker 1: Her father tormented her childhood with anger and alcohol issues,
Speaker 1: and decades later a judge granted that same man a
Speaker 1: conservatorship over Brittany. His turbulent track record be damned. But
Speaker 1: despite the challenge is thrust upon her between her family
Speaker 1: and a constant media frenzy. Britney Spears may great music,
Speaker 1: unlike that music. I played a few at the top
Speaker 1: of the show that wasn't great music. That was a
Speaker 1: preset loop for my melotron titled Candid Camera MK. Two.
Speaker 1: I played you that loop because I can't afford the
Speaker 1: rights to low By, Flow Rider and T Paine, And
Speaker 1: why would I play you that specific slice? Of boots
Speaker 1: with the fur cheese? Could I afford it? Because that
Speaker 1: was the number one song in America on February first,
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, and that was the day that
Speaker 1: Jamie Spears was granted a temporary conservator ship over his daughter,
Speaker 1: a temporary conservator ship that would stretch on for thirteen years.
Speaker 1: On this episode Predatory Paparazzi, I'm not so a temporary
Speaker 1: conservatorship and this is extra extra, This just in Britney Spears.
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace Land. Jamie Spears
Speaker 1: knew he had to be fast if he wanted to
Speaker 1: get away with it. His legs trembled, he could barely
Speaker 1: keep his knees from buckling. The ground swayed before him
Speaker 1: like a ship tossed around at sea. But it was
Speaker 1: the preschooler squirming in his arms that slowed him down
Speaker 1: the most. Jamie's sloppy steps sunk into the Louisiana dirt.
Speaker 1: As he trudged towards the car, his labored exhales cast
Speaker 1: out the odor of liquor on his breath, a sterile
Speaker 1: smell so strong that had overpowered the scent of the
Speaker 1: family crawfish boil he was leaving behind. Perhaps, just perhaps
Speaker 1: Jamie was so hammered that afternoon that no one had
Speaker 1: bothered to see what he was up to. Jamie couldn't
Speaker 1: do any harm when he was slumped on the sofa,
Speaker 1: wasted right, couldn't start trouble at a lighthearted family affair
Speaker 1: centered around finger looking Southern fair wrong. He could saunter
Speaker 1: off and slip behind the steering wheel. Jamie hampassedly buckled
Speaker 1: his daughter Brittany into the back seat. Now no more
Speaker 1: than five years old, Brittany already knew better than to
Speaker 1: ask questions. She was all too familiar with her family's routine.
Speaker 1: Daddy drinks, Daddy picks on mama. Daddy and Mama fight
Speaker 1: until they run out of breath. Brittany runs off to
Speaker 1: her on Shonda's trailer until the screaming stops, until her
Speaker 1: own internal terrified screaming stops. Returns home. Don't complain about
Speaker 1: the mystery made on any plate, and go on with
Speaker 1: your business. Jamie slammed the door on Britney's doughide expression
Speaker 1: in the back seat. Muscle memory helped him get behind
Speaker 1: the wheel. He slumped in the front seat and aimlessly
Speaker 1: jobbed the side of the steering wheel with his keys.
Speaker 1: Where was the goddamn ignition? Jamie was so wasted, he
Speaker 1: swore he saw an arm reach inside and knock the
Speaker 1: keys from the ignition, and the arm spoke to him
Speaker 1: in a familiar Southern drawl, asked him if he was
Speaker 1: out of his mind and how much he had to drink?
Speaker 1: Or was that Willie his brother? Shit, it was Willie,
Speaker 1: It was all real, Like a reflex. Jamie slugged the
Speaker 1: face attached to that arm right in the face, and
Speaker 1: the blow bowled Willy over. Jamie wabbled out of the
Speaker 1: front seat of the car and rolled up his sleeps.
Speaker 1: A full on family feud broke out, and each brother
Speaker 1: had the same question, what the fuck do you think
Speaker 1: you're doing. Britney, still secured in the back seat, had
Speaker 1: a front row view of what her family did best,
Speaker 1: knocked down, drag out fights. She kicked and wailed, trying
Speaker 1: to flag down a family member before someone lost a
Speaker 1: tooth and Britney lost any more of her childhood innocence.
Speaker 1: Just as Jamie raised his fist to hit Willie one
Speaker 1: more time, her mother Lynn scampered over the break up
Speaker 1: the brawl. After all, she was used to putting it
Speaker 1: end to fights with Jamie. She did it all the
Speaker 1: time in the eighties and nineties. Life with Jamie Spears
Speaker 1: was not stable. Not when he cheated on Lynn in
Speaker 1: their own trailer, now when he changed careers from welder
Speaker 1: to chef to small business owner. Not when he was
Speaker 1: pounding drinks and picking fights with his own family, saying
Speaker 1: Lynn was surely too stupid to have finished her ardor
Speaker 1: and college degree. The Spears didn't nickname him Captain red
Speaker 1: Ass for nothing. But just as Britney saw nothing out
Speaker 1: of the ordinary when she watched her parents' marriage dissolved
Speaker 1: argument by argument, Jamie didn't see the dysfunction either. He
Speaker 1: came from his own busted childhood, stained by the day
Speaker 1: he matured from boy to man. When his mother left
Speaker 1: the house one afternoon, he never returned. Instead, they found
Speaker 1: her corpse in a cemetery, led out just a few
Speaker 1: feet above the final resting place of her infant son,
Speaker 1: Austin Wayne. A shotgun rested by one bare foot was
Speaker 1: used to pull the trigger. It was the kind of
Speaker 1: scene that could really fuck up not just one family,
Speaker 1: but two. As a result, Jamie was an unstable man,
Speaker 1: passing trauma from one generation to the next, floating through
Speaker 1: a sleepy, hard working, but equally unstable town called Kentwood.
Speaker 1: With the population of barely more than two thousand people,
Speaker 1: the town rest ninety miles north of New Orleans, a
Speaker 1: rural contrast to the extravagance of the Big Easy. Kentwood's
Speaker 1: median annual income is only half of the national medium,
Speaker 1: and the Spears weren't exactly breaking it in themselves. Lynn
Speaker 1: brought home a modest school teacher's wage, while Jamie dedicated
Speaker 1: himself to a venture he called Total Fitness by Jamie,
Speaker 1: a quote unquote health spa built in a barn near
Speaker 1: the Spears residence. More accurately, he owned a gym with
Speaker 1: a hot tub and a steam room in charge members
Speaker 1: three hundred dollars a month, and the luxury of the
Speaker 1: concept was novel at first, but interest in Kentwood's new
Speaker 1: spa eventually tapered off. Neighbors were no longer paying up
Speaker 1: to kick back, and Jamie grabbed his gun and resorted
Speaker 1: to dire measures to provide for his family. When the
Speaker 1: fridge was empty in the Spears household, the food on
Speaker 1: the table was rabbit. When there was a rabbit, squirrel
Speaker 1: would do all freshly caught, skinned and cooked in the
Speaker 1: Spears backyard. Brittany never questioned that either she knew much
Speaker 1: of her family's income was funneled into the dance and
Speaker 1: gymnastics lessons. She enjoyed so much she had to haunt.
Speaker 1: Her mother enjoyed the lessons as well, bringing out the
Speaker 1: child's star. Brittany was Lynn's final attempt to make the
Speaker 1: Spears a happy family, Like a flimsy band aid slapped
Speaker 1: over a shotgun wound in the Endless classes calm some
Speaker 1: of the chaos and the Spears household better. Yet they
Speaker 1: removed Brittany from the house so she wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: remove herself from Lynn and Jamie inevitably broken to nasty
Speaker 1: bouts of fighting. But the lessons did more than get
Speaker 1: Brittany out of the house. They put her on stages,
Speaker 1: on screens. She made her debut on Star Search at
Speaker 1: age ten, belting the old Jud's tune love Can Build
Speaker 1: a Bridge with remarkable maturity. She was an understudy for
Speaker 1: a role in the off Broadway show Ruthless. As a
Speaker 1: pre teen, Britney sailed closer to stardom when she was
Speaker 1: selected as one of the seven new recruits for the
Speaker 1: hit Disney Channel show of The Mickey Mouse Club in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, and Brittany fought for that spot twice.
Speaker 1: The agent's adorater during her first audition, but ultimately passed
Speaker 1: when they realized she was only eight years old. The
Speaker 1: second time, she beat out twenty thousand other children for
Speaker 1: her spot as a mousequetier working long days in Orlando, Florida.
Speaker 1: Of the seven recruits in nineteen ninety three, four would
Speaker 1: assent to superstardom, justin Timberlay, Christina Aguilera, Ryan Gosling, and
Speaker 1: of course Brittany herself. But in the mid nineties, no
Speaker 1: one would have guessed if Britney Spears would be the
Speaker 1: child's star to come out on top, especially when The
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse Club said see you Real soon for the
Speaker 1: final time in nineteen ninety four and stopped filming new episodes.
Speaker 1: When Brittany returned to Kentwood, things were not the same.
Speaker 1: They were worse. When The Mickey Mouse Club ended, so
Speaker 1: did Britney's weekly one thousand dollars paychecks, the same checks
Speaker 1: that were helping keep squirrels and rabbits off their dinner plates.
Speaker 1: There was also a new Mouth defeat. In addition to
Speaker 1: big brother Brian, who is three years older than Brittany,
Speaker 1: little sister Jamie Lynn, was born when Brittany was nine
Speaker 1: and a half, Employees at the health spa went unpaid
Speaker 1: and the family's Ford probe was repoded. Phone lines were cut,
Speaker 1: Total fitness by Jamie collapsed. Eventually, Jamie was filing for bankruptcy,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't sweating it too hard. Jamie knew Brittany
Speaker 1: was about to come through for the Spears family again.
Speaker 1: His teenage daughter just linked a development deal with Jive
Speaker 1: Records to pivot from silver screen to pure pop star.
Speaker 1: Jive Records the home base of Nsync, a tribe called
Speaker 1: Quest and Aliyah aka the Big Ones. Why daughter is
Speaker 1: going to be so rich? He's going to buy me
Speaker 1: a boat, he told the senior director marketing at Jive.
Speaker 1: At the moment, Jamie's financial woes were the last thing
Speaker 1: on his mind. Brittany was about to go big, way big.
Speaker 1: He could smell it. The cover of Rolling Stone, a
Speaker 1: single topping the billboard hot one hundred ten million copies
Speaker 1: sold worldwide, an American bubblegum teen dream come true. She
Speaker 1: even had a hit single already in the can Hit
Speaker 1: Me Again or something like that. TLC didn't want it,
Speaker 1: and the Backstreet Boys didn't want it, but Britney seized
Speaker 1: the opportunity and flew all the way to Sweden to
Speaker 1: record it. Jamie might not have known much about show business,
Speaker 1: but he knew for damn sure the record labels didn't
Speaker 1: fly nobody's halfway around the world. His daughter was going
Speaker 1: to be a star, and he was going to get
Speaker 1: that fucking boat. Britney Spears counted the dots hovering at
Speaker 1: her periphery one dozen, two dozen, three dozen, and maybe
Speaker 1: there were even four dozen, but she couldn't tell for certain.
Speaker 1: When they kept darting around so frantically, closing in on
Speaker 1: her against the hood of her white convertible. She didn't
Speaker 1: need to count them one by one anymore. She had
Speaker 1: played this game enough times to estimate with precision three
Speaker 1: dozen for sure, she concluded to herself. Brittany blinked in
Speaker 1: an attempt to clear her vision. She narrowed her eyebrows
Speaker 1: and looked straight ahead. Dots be damned. She eased her
Speaker 1: foot down on the gas pedal the Mercedes and crept
Speaker 1: forward with hesitation, not unlike the hesitant look plastered on
Speaker 1: Britney's face, one hand cupped over her mouth, teary eyes
Speaker 1: shielded with designer shades, the kind of look you wear
Speaker 1: when you've just been informed we've lost all visitation rites
Speaker 1: for your children. It was October two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: Britney's son Sean and Jaden were legally in the care
Speaker 1: of her ex husband, Kevin Federline. Now, as the judge
Speaker 1: just informed her in the courthouse, she was leaving or
Speaker 1: attempting to leave anyways, but the dots weren't having that.
Speaker 1: The dots were always there when bad news found Brittany,
Speaker 1: the dots made bad news out of her reacting to
Speaker 1: bad news. Photo hungry pricks Brittany, Look this way, Brittany.
Speaker 1: Her foot slipped and pressed down harder on the gas pedal,
Speaker 1: and the convertible lurched forward before she gets slam on
Speaker 1: the brake. Her descent down the ram of the parking
Speaker 1: garage lasted longer than a world tour. She eased her
Speaker 1: foot on the pedal one more time, and the speedometer
Speaker 1: crept from zero miles an hour to three, and then
Speaker 1: the screaming started. Whoa, whoa, wow, Wow, whoa. The horde
Speaker 1: of Paparazzi finally backed off, discussed, and heard their faces.
Speaker 1: From where they were standing, all the paths heard it
Speaker 1: an audible crack as at tire crushed at Paparazzo's foot
Speaker 1: under the weight of Britney's Mercedes. Brittany saw her chance
Speaker 1: and made her ungraceful exit, peeling out into the street.
Speaker 1: The greedy photographer in question wagged his proof to a
Speaker 1: fellow cameraman, pointing out the filthy tire mark that grays
Speaker 1: the top of his socked foot. Poking out from a
Speaker 1: pair of sandals serves him, right, I mean, what kind
Speaker 1: of man wears sandals to work anyways? Right? But I digress.
Speaker 1: The guy didn't know whether to cry in pain or ecstasy.
Speaker 1: He had much more than a broken foot. He had
Speaker 1: a headline and a lawsuit against Britney Spears jackbox in
Speaker 1: the late two thousands. Britney Spears was an industry, but
Speaker 1: covering Britney Spears that was an empire. There was no
Speaker 1: Instagram in two thousand and seven, no TikTok. There was
Speaker 1: barely even Facebook. If the public wanted to hear about
Speaker 1: a celebrity's life. They needed newsstand staples like people Okay,
Speaker 1: US Weekly. Nobody was liking photos of carefully curated interior
Speaker 1: design or Latte Fomer. They were searching out photos of
Speaker 1: costly couture, designer drugs, and sloppy penthouse parties, the kind
Speaker 1: of excess that makes the of your stomach feels sick,
Speaker 1: so sick you almost kind of like it. It was
Speaker 1: an error that was before the explosion of social media
Speaker 1: and before the recession of two thousand and eight. It
Speaker 1: prompted magazines like US Weekly to have a weekly photo
Speaker 1: budget of one hundred and forty thousand dollars and if
Speaker 1: the staff wanted photos of Britney Spears that week, well,
Speaker 1: let's just say they can easily exhaust that budget for
Speaker 1: only one or two photos to be Britney Spears in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles in two thousand and seven meant to be
Speaker 1: the most sought after, most snapped celebrity on the market.
Speaker 1: Paparazzi made a business out of Britney Spears a business
Speaker 1: and took a piece of Britney Spears and gave it back.
Speaker 1: One exclusive photo of Brittany doing literally anything came with
Speaker 1: a price tag of tens of thousands of dollars. Stills
Speaker 1: and videos of a bald Brittany ramming the tip of
Speaker 1: an umbrella into the four explorer of one Pushy pop
Speaker 1: you know, the one, racked up close to four hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars well. By the fall of two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: long after the day Brittany took clippers to her scalp
Speaker 1: pre dented that unlucky paparazazzo's car, exclusive photos of Britney
Speaker 1: Spears didn't exist anymore. They didn't exist because between thirty
Speaker 1: and forty five, paparazzi followed her every move, every single day.
Speaker 1: They pursued her with the hopes that she'd be willing
Speaker 1: to give it up a real hyper sexual industry term
Speaker 1: meaning as celebrity will indulge a paparazzo and pose for
Speaker 1: a memorable photo or two. Paris Hilton gave it up
Speaker 1: all the time, but Britney Brittany was a wild card.
Speaker 1: She only gave it up some of the time and
Speaker 1: not so much. In two thousand and seven, there were
Speaker 1: regulars in the game who proudly flaunted their aptitude for
Speaker 1: ambushing Brittany. There was Hollywood dot tv, the outlet responsible
Speaker 1: for capturing incidents like the aforementioned foot mutilation. Then there
Speaker 1: was X one seven online, a celebrity gossip site that
Speaker 1: claimed to have earned three million dollars in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven from Britney photos alone, a whopping one fourth
Speaker 1: of revenue from the paparazzi photos. That year, one group
Speaker 1: of eight men working under the group named MBF for
Speaker 1: X one seven Online log forty thousand man hours stalking
Speaker 1: and shooting Brittany. A leaked memo from the Associated Press
Speaker 1: even stated to staff that anything Britney does is news.
Speaker 1: They had her obituary saved in drafts at the time, too.
Speaker 1: Britney spears wanted dead or live dark. Hollywood's most patient
Speaker 1: and well paid photographers practiced doorstepping, a term for literally
Speaker 1: waiting outside of a celebrities driveway or doorstep until they departed.
Speaker 1: Cops often rousted paps three to four times a day
Speaker 1: at Britney's residence, and they scattered like roaches, only to
Speaker 1: circle back later for another chance at their predatory Pulitzer
Speaker 1: Prize moment and their days spent doorstep. It could last
Speaker 1: anywhere between twelve and fourteen hours. But once the a
Speaker 1: lister in question was on the move, that's when the
Speaker 1: real fun began. Fuck a stop sign, Peel through those
Speaker 1: red lights, make that pedal go all the way down,
Speaker 1: all the way to the metal. God damn it. Paparazzi
Speaker 1: couldn't be bothered with traffic laws because even if they
Speaker 1: did catch a ticket, the fine would pale in comparison
Speaker 1: to the money they were about to make. Their recklessness
Speaker 1: was matched only by their stamina. When it came to
Speaker 1: car chases. To catch a frame or two of Brittany's behavior,
Speaker 1: paparazzi happily trailed her for up to four hours. The
Speaker 1: exhaustion was not an option, not when a single click
Speaker 1: of a button could earn you a down payment on
Speaker 1: the house in Beverly Hills. If Britney vomited on herself
Speaker 1: in her car, if she stepped out of her convertible
Speaker 1: without a pair of panties, if she so much as
Speaker 1: walked with her dog London in her arms, they were
Speaker 1: there to document it. Another sloppy entry into Hollywood's diary,
Speaker 1: paired with a snarky, hypercritical caption. Often the media circus
Speaker 1: crowded Brittany to the point of near blindness. Only a
Speaker 1: month prior to crushing the paparazzo's bones to bits, Brittany
Speaker 1: hit a parked car on her way to pick up
Speaker 1: some vitamins. As they trailed her convertible and jumped in
Speaker 1: front of it. Brittany diinged another car in the parking lot,
Speaker 1: and then she picked up her pills and left. And
Speaker 1: the incident not only racked up a hit and run charge,
Speaker 1: but revealed that Brittany was behind the wheel lot a
Speaker 1: license and that was the final fuck up in her
Speaker 1: custody battle with Kevin. But if people followed your every
Speaker 1: step sip, smoke and shopping spree, someone, we'd catch you
Speaker 1: fucking up eventually, plaster some sort of oop. She did
Speaker 1: it again. Headline on there and you've got supermarket checkout gold.
Speaker 1: A camera greeted Brittany in every direction literally. It's a
Speaker 1: well known tactic that the paparazzi work in threes, boxing
Speaker 1: a celebrity into a triangle that they can't turn away from.
Speaker 1: The days of a virgin of bubbly Britney Spears had
Speaker 1: passed the sweet Southern bell, prancing around in a Catholic
Speaker 1: schoolgirl uniform, collecting accolades, collecting fans worldwide, really winking at
Speaker 1: risk a behavior was in early odds phase. Now the
Speaker 1: public demanded a disaster, David, and the paparazzi's involvement ensured it.
Speaker 1: Her misery meant that there was money to be made.
Speaker 1: And you can say the media wasn't always this invasive,
Speaker 1: but it was. The disrespect was always there, it just
Speaker 1: wasn't so visceral at the time. Are your breasts real?
Speaker 1: Are you a virgin? Did you fuck Justin Timberlake? Never mind?
Speaker 1: Justin just went ahead and answer that one for you. Slut.
Speaker 1: One man offered Brittany ten million dollars for her virginity
Speaker 1: in two thousand, when she was barely eighteen. Now, when
Speaker 1: rumors of a sex tape with Kevin Federline started spreading
Speaker 1: via US Weekly, a judge wouldn't even hear Brittany out
Speaker 1: for a case of defamation. Their logic, Brittany had been
Speaker 1: disrobing in public for almost a decade. Now, Brittany did
Speaker 1: this to herself. People, the media, the powers that be
Speaker 1: always wanted the public to think Brittany did this to herself.
Speaker 1: Whether this was an unflattering photo, an overwhelmed meltdown, or
Speaker 1: a nasty, hypersexual rumor. They never mentioned the pushing, the groping,
Speaker 1: the greedy hands of the world's trashy tabloid readers. But
Speaker 1: Brittany was about to fall into a new set of hands,
Speaker 1: a set of hands so greedy they wouldn't let her
Speaker 1: go for thirteen years. We'll be right back after this
Speaker 1: word word word. Hands slapped the windows, fists pounded on
Speaker 1: the car's hood, Fans left handprints every time Britney's limo
Speaker 1: paused for a stop sign. She couldn't peek it much
Speaker 1: through the tinted windows, but she knew reporters how to
Speaker 1: be tagging along too, obscuring the brilliant neon of the
Speaker 1: Las Vegas strip with their own camera flashes. An empty
Speaker 1: bottle of booze rolled around the back seat and clinked
Speaker 1: against Britney's heels. For once, Brittany felt grateful for the commotion.
Speaker 1: It filled the silence between her and the boy toy
Speaker 1: sharing the back seat with her positioned an awkward few
Speaker 1: feet apart from each other. She preferred the sound of
Speaker 1: harassment to the sound of their strained relationship. She preferred
Speaker 1: the sound of harassment to the feel of harassment too,
Speaker 1: and the limo halted at the ornate lobby of her
Speaker 1: hotel last stop. Brittany burst through the limo door, embraced
Speaker 1: for the worst ahead with every ounce of energy in
Speaker 1: her five foot four frame, but the crowd outside consumed her,
Speaker 1: swallowed her in a sea of microphones, spit her up,
Speaker 1: disheveled and disorient her. Mystery man shouldered his way through
Speaker 1: the crowd by her side and got a similar smack
Speaker 1: down When he then passed along to a smattering of
Speaker 1: tabloids bearing Britney's face on the cover. He literally smacked
Speaker 1: them down off a nearby newsstand. Images of her face
Speaker 1: covered the floor, and the mob marched right over them.
Speaker 1: Privacy was a luxury, Brittany learned, so too was personal
Speaker 1: space luxuries that she one of the most lucrative pop
Speaker 1: stars in the world, somehow couldn't afford. The irony made
Speaker 1: the glistening luxury of her presidential suite feel meaningless. Pointless
Speaker 1: even once inside, Britney stormed off to the bathroom. Everyone
Speaker 1: could step the fuck out of her way for good.
Speaker 1: The boy Toy two, he launched a vase filled with
Speaker 1: exotic flowers at the wall and frustration. But Brittany was
Speaker 1: already turning away, away from him, away from fame, away
Speaker 1: from everybody. Enough, she locked herself in the bathroom and
Speaker 1: acted mechanically. Faucet on, pearly gown off, bathtub filled, step
Speaker 1: inside and sink sink. Blood matted in her hair from
Speaker 1: a paparazzi inflicted gash to the back of her head,
Speaker 1: the bathwater turned a sickly shade of red. It didn't matter.
Speaker 1: All she needed to do was sink, sink, sink. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, that's how Britney Spears pictured her
Speaker 1: final unraveling. Alone, abused, entirely misunderstood. She acted out her
Speaker 1: worst fears in the video for her song every Time,
Speaker 1: a bawling ballad from her album in the Zone. Hard
Speaker 1: to believe such a downers on the same record as Toxic,
Speaker 1: the single that solidified her name in the long term
Speaker 1: pop game, the song that proved that once Brittany got
Speaker 1: passed the hole not a girl, not yet a woman
Speaker 1: phase and into the totally a woman phase, she could
Speaker 1: fucking But back to every Time. The video hands at
Speaker 1: reincarnation for Britney Spears the soul while Britney Spears, the celebrity,
Speaker 1: sinks to the bottom of the bathtub. And five years later,
Speaker 1: that wasn't quite how Britney Spears' life actually unraveled. She
Speaker 1: got the bathroom detail right. Though. Brittany was shouting through
Speaker 1: the door of her private bathroom, I'm fucking hot. No
Speaker 1: cop was going to tell her to cover up. Not today.
Speaker 1: January two thousand and eight, Brittany clutched her son Jaden
Speaker 1: with a grip that was so tight it was almost painful.
Speaker 1: Her bare back rested against the bathroom door. She bounced
Speaker 1: them up and down in her lap in an attempt
Speaker 1: to sue them in spite of the circus waiting on
Speaker 1: the other side. The police wanted her to put on
Speaker 1: a sweater. They said, uh uh, keep your sweater. I'll
Speaker 1: keep my kids. How about that? The time for Brittany
Speaker 1: to return her son Sean and Jaden to her ex husband,
Speaker 1: Kevin Federline had passed hours ago, but Brittany wasn't ready
Speaker 1: to get them back or give them up, which is
Speaker 1: how she Just hours prior, Brittany and Kevin stood face
Speaker 1: to face in court, staring each other down over custody
Speaker 1: of their children. Kevin had already won a request for
Speaker 1: temporary full custody of both boys, and now he was
Speaker 1: trying to make it permanent. Brittany could bear the weight
Speaker 1: of almost anything, of an alcoholic father, poverty, being pushed
Speaker 1: around by news outlets, just begging her to have another breakdown,
Speaker 1: but she couldn't take the idea of losing her sons forever,
Speaker 1: not to her backup dance, her ex husband, not to anybody.
Speaker 1: The thought chilled her, and she pressed Jaden further into
Speaker 1: her naked chest. She knew she was supposed to give
Speaker 1: the boys back. At seven PM, a court appointed child
Speaker 1: monitor had even buckled Shawn into his car seat, ready
Speaker 1: to return to dad, and that's when Britney scooped up
Speaker 1: Jaden and bolted for the bathroom. Confounded, the child monitor
Speaker 1: called the cops, and then the cops invited a steady
Speaker 1: stream of additional cops as a situation, and Brittany grew
Speaker 1: more agitated. She rejected their sweater even more aggressively than
Speaker 1: their attempts to retreat Jayden. It was past ten PM
Speaker 1: now and Brittany had lost all sense of time. Her
Speaker 1: thoughts tumbled from her lips in incoherent sentences, and the
Speaker 1: bathroom reeked a sweat, the air stale from hours spent
Speaker 1: during the police standoff. She didn't know it was eleven
Speaker 1: o'clock with the cops finally coaxed her out of the bathroom,
Speaker 1: or why they coaxed her out of the bathroom, but
Speaker 1: in doing so, they scooped Jaden to so called safety.
Speaker 1: In the music video for every time, paramedics retrieved Brittany
Speaker 1: from the bathtub and wheel her limp body outside on
Speaker 1: a gurney. In real life, they strapped her to the
Speaker 1: gurney under a white sheet before they brought her outside
Speaker 1: to the ambulance. The next scene played out exactly the
Speaker 1: same as in the video. It was life imitating art
Speaker 1: imitating life flashes, friends in fucking disregard for the severity
Speaker 1: of the situation, vultures. This was two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: Brittany had already righteously lashed out with her two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven album Blackout, a tipsy burst of pop perfection
Speaker 1: meant to be played on the brink of slipping in
Speaker 1: between states of consciousness of the club and loving every
Speaker 1: second of it, despite the fact that it was Britney's
Speaker 1: first album to not debut atop the Billboard two hundred.
Speaker 1: Blackout illuminated the public demand for Britney's music, not just
Speaker 1: their pr mishaps. The record sold more than one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty thousand copies of the day had dropped and
Speaker 1: set a new record at the time for weekly digital
Speaker 1: album downloads by a woman. Its iconic sleeves earned it
Speaker 1: a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Speaker 1: Musical Archive. Blackout was peak pop perfection, built on embracing
Speaker 1: life's imperfections. Brittany admonished the media with edgy auto tune
Speaker 1: on the album's second single, Piece of Me, and the
Speaker 1: paps let the threat roll out their lenses and accepted
Speaker 1: the challenge and their response, give me More. Paparazzi hungrily
Speaker 1: wove their cars in between six police cruisers and ambulance
Speaker 1: and a fire truck to climb the summit Britney's mansion,
Speaker 1: purchased post divorce. A helicopter surveyed the full scene, a
Speaker 1: mosaic of unwelcome guests, grambling for unflattering photos of a
Speaker 1: woman during a mental health crisis. An ambulance rushed Brittany
Speaker 1: to Cedar sign I Medical Center on a fifty one
Speaker 1: to fifty hold medical speak for a person who was
Speaker 1: in danger to themselves or others as a result of
Speaker 1: a mental disorder. Individuals on a fifty to one fifty
Speaker 1: are supposed to be subject to seventy two hours of
Speaker 1: involuntary psychiatric hold for treatment and evaluation. If the situation
Speaker 1: doesn't improve, it can be upgraded to a fifty two
Speaker 1: to fifty, which entails of the fourteen days of intensive
Speaker 1: psychiatric treatment. But Britney never got that far. Instead of
Speaker 1: seventy two hours, Britney barely lasted twenty four. During her
Speaker 1: brief stay. She not only temporarily lost visitation right through
Speaker 1: their boys, but gained an unwelcome visit from doctor Phil
Speaker 1: in her hospital room, chatting her up from material to
Speaker 1: use in his next episode. She was, as the celebrity
Speaker 1: pseudo psychologist put it, in dire need of both medical
Speaker 1: and psychological intervention. Privacy and personal space were luxuries that
Speaker 1: she had almost forgotten. Fuck this back to the summit,
Speaker 1: Brittany went. If only she had stayed for the full
Speaker 1: seventy two hours, the next decade of her life might
Speaker 1: have gone much differently. One dozen motorcycle officers, two police cruisers,
Speaker 1: two police helicopters. The team of cops moved in tandem,
Speaker 1: securing what they called the package within the safety of
Speaker 1: their human barricade. And the package, of course, was Britney spears.
Speaker 1: The caravan forced a path on the driveway of the
Speaker 1: summit to move the package as swiftly as possible. They
Speaker 1: lumbered down the hill with confidence. The paps scattered on command,
Speaker 1: the exact same paparazzi who jammed the driveway shut for hours,
Speaker 1: hence the extraordinary police escort. The sheer number of unwonted
Speaker 1: cars and people that evening pushed to Los Angeles City
Speaker 1: councilmen to propose new legislation that would guarantee celebrities in
Speaker 1: LA a personal safety bubble with twenty five yards. Their
Speaker 1: presence was that dangerous and that expensive for the city.
Speaker 1: The total cost of Britney security for one hospital ride
Speaker 1: was twenty five thousand dollars. The paps crowding the driveway
Speaker 1: muttered amongst themselves as the ambulance cruised by, so much
Speaker 1: for the suicide tip off they had received. Brittany was
Speaker 1: clearly very much alive. Boohoo, But then again they lost Brittany.
Speaker 1: Who were they harassed night after night, day after day,
Speaker 1: and who would bring those easy millions earned from forcing
Speaker 1: themselves into somebody else's meltdowns and mental health crises. They
Speaker 1: could consider that their chance for a jaw dropping snap,
Speaker 1: because life at Camp Britney was about to go radio silent.
Speaker 1: January thirty first, two thousand and eight, another fifty one
Speaker 1: to fifty hold for Brittany, only four weeks into the
Speaker 1: new year. Jamie Spears her dad was ready to pounce
Speaker 1: this time. As police and paramedics wieled Brittany to the
Speaker 1: UCLA Medical Center, Jamie got out of pen a paper
Speaker 1: an old Captain Redass started spilling out a hodgepodge of
Speaker 1: legal jargon. He was about to file a request for
Speaker 1: a temporary conservatorship of his daughter. Hold up. The word
Speaker 1: conservatorship has been thrown around hundreds of times in the
Speaker 1: past two years, but rarely is it explained in detail.
Speaker 1: A conservatorship is a legal arrangement put into place when
Speaker 1: a person is unable to care for themselves or their finances.
Speaker 1: In some cases, conservators work on behalf of a person
Speaker 1: who is not capable of fulfilling their basic needs finding food, water, shelter, clothing.
Speaker 1: Other times, conservators control all of someone's financial assets lest
Speaker 1: the conservative be duped into giving their money away. Jamie
Speaker 1: filed for both types, a conservatorship of Britney's person and
Speaker 1: her estate. It shouldn't be surprising that most conservatives ships
Speaker 1: assist elderly people who are forget, gullible, or generally confused.
Speaker 1: What is surprising is that Jamie Spears filed for a
Speaker 1: temporary conservatives ship for his twenty six year old daughter
Speaker 1: and checked off orders related to dementia placer as the reason.
Speaker 1: Jamie Spears, the man who tormented his family with his
Speaker 1: anger and alcohol problems, was asking for complete control of
Speaker 1: his adult daughter because she suffered from so called dementia
Speaker 1: like symptoms. A Superior Court commissioner placed Britney under Jamie's
Speaker 1: care via a temporary conservativeship on February first, two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, one day after her second mental health emergency.
Speaker 1: One day. Jamie had been waiting for this, waiting for
Speaker 1: six weeks to be exact. His scapegoat for the situation
Speaker 1: was a man named Sam let Feet. Sam had suspiciously
Speaker 1: squeezed himself into Britney's inner circle at a time when
Speaker 1: Britney's in her circle barely existed. In two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: she had no manager. Instead, she had Sam, her quote
Speaker 1: unquote life coach. But from where Jamie was sitting, Sam
Speaker 1: was Britney's undoing, the devil, perched on her shoulder, whispering
Speaker 1: nonsense in her year at all hours. There was only
Speaker 1: room for one bad guy in Britney's life, and that
Speaker 1: was Jamie. And Sam had sway, too much sway, a
Speaker 1: dangerous amount of sway and kind of get from crushing
Speaker 1: pills into someone's food. They also claimed on the day
Speaker 1: of Britney's bathroom stand off that Sam informed her that
Speaker 1: Kevin called the house and stated that she could keep
Speaker 1: the boys for a few more hours. He even lived
Speaker 1: at the Summit in his own private bedroom only two
Speaker 1: doors down from Britney's bedroom. With that privilege came his
Speaker 1: self appointed datus as gatekeeper to Brittany. He welcomed some
Speaker 1: paparazzi inside and barricaded certain loved ones out. Sam Lutfi
Speaker 1: had the inn, Jamie wanted him out. On February first,
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, Jamie Spears gained complete access to Brittany,
Speaker 1: more access than Sam, more access than the thirty to
Speaker 1: forty five daily paparazzi could ever imagine, more access than
Speaker 1: Brittany even add to herself. Her dad gained the ability
Speaker 1: to speak with their doctors to examine her medical records
Speaker 1: to okay, every single person Brittany worked with to enforce
Speaker 1: around the clock security. He was a conservator of her
Speaker 1: person now and the co conservator of her estate, alongside
Speaker 1: a lawyer named Andrew Wallett. And that's the guy's real name,
Speaker 1: Andrew Wallllett. You could say that a father decided to
Speaker 1: step back into his daughter's life to help her break
Speaker 1: a self destructive cycle of chaos, but more evidence would
Speaker 1: point towards the fact that one man saw the chance
Speaker 1: to see he's control over a massive amount of talent, money,
Speaker 1: and celebrity, and he took it and called the situation temporary.
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Brennan in this episode of Disgraceland is to
Speaker 1: be continued. Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is
Speaker 1: produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode
Speaker 1: can be found on the show notes page at disgracelampod
Speaker 1: dot com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member,
Speaker 1: thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And if not, you can become a member right now
Speaker 1: by going to disgracelampod dot com slash Membership. Members can
Speaker 1: listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free, Plus you'll
Speaker 1: get one brand new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted
Speaker 1: bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise
Speaker 1: and events. Visit disgrayslampod dot com slash membership for details,
Speaker 1: rate and review the show, and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Facebook at disgracelampod and on YouTube at YouTube dot
Speaker 1: com slash at disgrace Slampod, Rock a Roller He the
Speaker 1: bed Don Man