Britney Spears (Pt. 1): Trauma Pop

No musician owned pop music quite like Britney Spears at the turn of the century. After graduating from Mississippi tween queen to full-fledged American superstar, her fame exploded at a time when tabloids circled celebrities like prey. 30 to 45 predatory paparazzi would follow Britney’s every move during 12 to 14 hour shifts, eager to document the collapse of her marriage and social circle. As her public image crumbled, it’s no wonder Britney ended 2007 with a bald head and a “blackout.” The conservatorship that came next, however, surprised everyone—even Britney herself. This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including domestic violence and suicide. If you're thinking about suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. This episode was originally published on July 12, 2022. For the full list of contributors, visit ⁠disgracelandpod.com⁠ https://www.disgracelandpod.com/ To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠ https://disgracelandpod.com/membership. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ https://mailchi.mp/doubleelvis/disgraceland-email-newsletter Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ https://www.instagram.com/disgracelandpod/ ⁠YouTube⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@disgracelandpod ⁠X⁠ https://twitter.com/disgracelandpod (formerly Twitter) ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ https://www.facebook.com/groups/491024204626127/ ⁠TikTok https://tiktok.com/disgracelandpod See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is exactly right.

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• 1:43Speaker 04

  This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information.

• 1:50Jake Brennan?

  Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

• 1:59Jake Brennan?

  The stories about Britney Spears are insane. She was once offered $10 million for her virginity. At the peak of her fame, 30 to 45 predatory paparazzi followed her every move, every day, during 12 to 14-hour shifts. One company logged 40,000 hours of stalking her accrued between only eight men. Her father tormented her childhood with anger and alcohol issues. And decades later, a judge granted that same man a conservatorship over Britney, his turbulent track record be damned. But despite the challenges thrust upon her between her family and a constant media frenzy,

• 2:41Jake Brennan?

  Britney Spears made great music. Unlike that music I played few at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron titled Candid Camera MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to "Low" by Flo Rida and T-Pain. And why would I play you that specific slice of "Boots with the Fur Cheese"? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on February 1, 2008. And that was the day that Jamie Spears was granted a temporary conservatorship over his daughter.

• 3:20Jake Brennan?

  A temporary conservatorship that would stretch on for 13 years. On this episode, predatory paparazzi, a not-so-temporary conservatorship. And this is extra, extra, this just in, Britney Spears. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land.

• 4:09Jake Brennan?

  Jamie Spears knew he had to be fast if he wanted to get away with it. His legs trembled. He could barely keep his knees from buckling. The ground swayed before him like a ship tossed around its sea. But it was the preschooler squirming in his arms that slowed him down the most. Jamie's sloppy steps sunk into the Louisiana dirt as he trudged towards the car. His labored exhales cast out the odor of liquor on his breath, a sterile smell so strong that it overpowered the scent of the family crawfish boil he was leaving behind. Perhaps, just perhaps, Jamie was so hammered that afternoon that no one had bothered to see what he was up to. Jamie couldn't do any harm when he was slumped on the sofa, wasted, right?

• 4:52Jake Brennan?

  Couldn't start trouble at a lighthearted family affair centered around finger-licking southern fare. Wrong. He could saunter off and slip behind the steering wheel. Jamie haphazardly buckled his daughter Britney into the backseat. At no more than five years old, Britney already knew better than to ask questions. She was all too familiar with her family's routine. Daddy drinks, daddy picks on mama, daddy and mama fight until they run out of breath, Britney runs off to her Aunt Shonda's trailer until the screaming stops, until her own internal terrified screaming stops, returns home, don't complain about the mystery meat on your plate, and go on with your business. Jamie slammed the door on Britney's doe-eyed expression in the backseat. Muscle memory helped him get behind the wheel.

• 5:35Jake Brennan?

  He slumped in the front seat and aimlessly jabbed the side of the steering wheel with his keys. But where was the goddamn ignition? Jamie was so wasted, he swore he saw an arm reach inside and knock the keys from the ignition. And the arm spoke to him in a familiar southern drawl, asked him if he was out of his mind and how much he had to drink. Or was that Willie, his brother? Shit, it was Willie. It was all real. Like a reflex, Jamie slugged the face attached to that arm right in the face, and the blow bowled Willie over. Jamie wobbled out of the front seat of the car, rolled up his sleeves. A full-on family feud broke out, and each brother had the same question. What the fuck do you think you're doing?

• 6:18Jake Brennan?

  Britney, still secured in the backseat, had a front row view of what her family did best: knock down, drag out fights. She kicked and wailed, trying to flag down a family member before someone lost a tooth or Britney lost any more of her childhood innocence. Just as Jamie raised his fist to hit Willie one more time, her mother Lynn scampered over to break up the brawl. After all, she was used to putting an end to fights with Jamie. She did it all the time.

• 6:46Jake Brennan?

  In the 80s and 90s, life with Jamie Spears was not stable. Not when he cheated on Lynn in their own trailer, not when he changed careers from welder to chef to small business owner, not when he was pounding drinks and picking fights with his own family, saying Lynn was surely too stupid to have finished her hard-earned college degree. The Spears didn't nickname him Captain Red Ass for nothing. But just as Britney saw nothing out of the ordinary when she watched her parents' marriage dissolve, argument by argument, Jamie didn't see the dysfunction either. He came from his own busted childhood, stained by the day he matured from boy to man when his mother left the house one afternoon and never returned. Instead, they found her corpse in a cemetery, blood out just a few feet above the final

• 7:30Jake Brennan?

  resting place of her infant son, Austin Wayne. A shotgun rested by one barefoot was used to pull the trigger. It was the kind of scene that could really fuck up not just one family, but two.

• 7:45Jake Brennan?

  As a result, Jamie was an unstable man, passing trauma from one generation to the next, floating through a sleepy, hard-working, but equally unstable town called Kentwood. With a population of barely more than 2,000 people, the town rests 90 miles north of New Orleans, a rural contrast to the extravagance of the Big Easy.

• 8:06Jake Brennan?

  Kentwood's median annual income is only half of the national median, and the Spears weren't exactly raking it in themselves. Lynn brought home a modest schoolteacher's wage, while Jamie dedicated himself to a venture he called Total Fitness by Jamie, a quote-unquote "health spa" built in a barn near the Spears' residence. More accurately, he owned a gym with a hot tub and a steam room and charged members $300 a month. The luxury of the concept was novel at first, but interest in Kentwood's new spa eventually tapered off. Neighbors were no longer paying up to kick back, and Jamie grabbed his gun and resorted to dire measures to provide for his family. When the fridge was empty in the Spears' household, the food on the table was rabbit.

• 8:50Jake Brennan?

  When there wasn't rabbit, squirrel would do. All freshly caught, skinned, and cooked in the Spears' backyard. Britney never questioned that either. She knew much of her family's income was funneled into the dance and gymnastics lessons she enjoyed so much. She had a hunch her mother enjoyed the lessons as well. Bringing out the child star in Britney was Lynn's final attempt to make the Spears a happy family, like a flimsy Band-Aid slapped over a shotgun wound. The endless classes calmed some of the chaos in the Spears' household. Better yet, they removed Britney from the house so she wouldn't have to remove herself when Lynn and Jamie inevitably broke into nasty bouts of fighting. But the lessons did more than get Britney out of the house. They put her on stages, on screens.

• 9:35Jake Brennan?

  She made her debut on Star Search at age 10, belting the old Judd's tune "Love Can Build a Bridge" with remarkable maturity. She was an understudy for a role in the Off-Broadway show Ruthless as a pre-T. Britney sailed closer to stardom when she was selected as one of the seven new recruits for the hit Disney Channel show The Mickey Mouse Club in 1993. And Britney fought for that spot twice. Agents adored her during her first audition, but ultimately passed when they realized she was only eight years old. The second time, she beat out 20,000 other children for her spot as a Mouseketeer, working long days in Orlando, Florida. Of the seven recruits in 1993, four would ascend to superstardom: Justin Timberlake,

• 10:20Jake Brennan?

  Christina Aguilera, Ryan Gosling, and of course, Britney herself. But in the mid-'90s, no one would have guessed that Britney Spears would be the child star to come out on top, especially when The Mickey Mouse Club said, "See you real soon" for the final time in 1994 and stopped filming new episodes. When Britney returned to Kentwood, things were not the same. They were worse. When The Mickey Mouse Club ended, so did Britney's weekly $1,000 paychecks, the same checks that were helping keep squirrels and rabbits off their dinner plates. There was also a new mouth to feed. In addition to Big Brother Brian, who was three years older than Britney, little sister Jamie Lynn was born when Britney was nine and a half.

• 11:03Jake Brennan?

  Employees at the health spa went unpaid, the family's Ford Probe was repo'd, phone lines were cut, Total Fitness by Jamie collapsed. Eventually, Jamie was filing for bankruptcy.

• 11:17Jake Brennan?

  But he wasn't sweating it too hard. Jamie knew Brittany was about to come through for the Spears family again. His teenage daughter just inked a development deal with Jive Records to pivot from silver screen to pure pop star. Jive Records, the home base of N'Sync, a tribe called Quest and Aaliyah, AKA The Big Ones. "My daughter's going to be so rich, she's going to buy me a boat," he told the senior director of marketing at Jive. At the moment, Jamie's financial woes were the last thing on his mind. Brittany was about to go big, way big. He could smell it. The cover of Rolling Stone, a single topping the Billboard Hot 100, 10 million copies

• 11:58Jake Brennan?

  sold worldwide, an American bubblegum teen dream come true. She even had a hit single already in the can, "Hit Me Again," or something like that. TLC didn't want it, the Backstreet Boys didn't want it, but Brittany seized the opportunity and flew all the way to Sweden to record it. Jamie might not have known much about show business, but he knew for damn sure that record labels didn't fly nobodies halfway around the world. His daughter was going to be a star. And he was gonna get that fucking boat.

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• 13:17Speaker 03

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• 13:49Jake Brennan?

  Brittany Spears counted the dots hovering in her periphery. One dozen, two dozen, three dozen. Maybe there were even four dozen, but she couldn't tell for certain when they kept darting around so frantically, closing in on her against the hood of her white convertible. She didn't need to count them one by one anymore. She had played this game enough times to estimate with precision. "Three dozen for sure," she concluded to herself. Brittany blinked in an attempt to clear her vision. She narrowed her eyebrows and looked straight ahead, dots be damned. She eased her foot down on the gas pedal of the Mercedes and crept forward with hesitation. Not unlike the hesitant look plastered on Brittany's face, one hand cupped over her

• 14:30Jake Brennan?

  mouth, teary eyes shielded with designer shades, the kind of look you wear when you've just been informed you've lost all visitation rights for your children. It was October 2008. Brittany's sons, Sean and Jaden, were legally in the care of her ex-husband, Kevin Federline, now, as the judge just informed her in the courthouse she was leaving, or attempting to leave anyways, but the dots weren't having that. The dots were always there when bad news found Brittany. The dots made bad news out of her reacting to bad news. Photo-hungry pricks. "Brittany, look this way, Brittany." Her foot slipped and pressed down harder on the gas pedal. The convertible lurged forward before she gets slammed on the brake.

• 15:12Jake Brennan?

  Her descent down the ramp of the parking garage lasted longer than a world tour. She eased her foot on the pedal one more time and the speedometer crept from zero miles an hour to three. And then, the screaming started, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!" The horde of paparazzi finally backed off, disgusted and heard their faces. From where they were standing, all the paps heard it, an audible crack as a tire crushed the paparazzo's foot under the weight of Brittany's Mercedes. Brittany saw her chance and made her ungraceful exit, peeling out into the street.

• 15:45Jake Brennan?

  The greedy photographer in question wagged his proof to a fellow cameraman, pointing out the filthy tire mark that grazed the top of his socked foot, poking out from a pair of sandals. Serves him right, I mean, what kind of man wears sandals to work anyways, right? But I digress. The guy didn't know whether to cry in pain or ecstasy. He had much more than a broken foot. He had a headline and a lawsuit against Brittany Spears. Jackpot.

• 16:11Jake Brennan?

  In the late 2000s, Brittany Spears was an industry. But covering Brittany Spears, that was an empire. There was no Instagram in 2007, no TikTok, there was barely even Facebook. If the public wanted to hear about a celebrity's life, they needed newsstand staples like People, OK, Us Weekly. Nobody was liking photos of carefully curated interior design or latte foamer. They were searching out photos of costly couture, designer drugs, and sloppy penthouse parties, the kind of excess that makes the pit of your stomach feel sick, so sick you almost kind of like it. It was an era that was before the explosion of social media and before the recession

• 16:52Jake Brennan?

  of 2008, and it prompted magazines like Us Weekly to have a weekly photo budget of $140,000. And if the staff wanted photos of Brittany Spears that week, well, let's just say they could easily exhaust that budget for only one or two photos. To be Brittany Spears in Los Angeles in 2007, meant to be the most sought-after, most snapped celebrity on the market, paparazzi made a business out of Brittany Spears. A business that took a piece of Brittany Spears and gave it back. One exclusive photo of Brittany doing literally anything came with a price tag of tens of thousands of dollars. Stills and videos of a bald Brittany ramming the tip of an umbrella into the four explorer of one pushy pap, you know the one, racked up close to $400,000.

• 17:37Jake Brennan?

  But by the fall of 2007, long after the day Brittany took clippers to her scalp or dented that unlucky paparazzo's car, exclusive photos of Brittany Spears didn't exist anymore. They didn't exist because between 30 and 45 paparazzi followed her every move, every single day. They pursued her with the hopes that she'd be willing to give it up, a real hypersexual industry term, meaning a celebrity will indulge a paparazzo and pose for a memorable photo or two. Paris Hilton gave it up all the time, but Brittany, Brittany was a wild card. She only gave it up some of the time, and not so much in 2007. There were regulars in the game who proudly flaunted their aptitude for ambushing Brittany.

• 18:20Jake Brennan?

  There was Hollywood.TV, the outlet responsible for capturing incidents like the aforementioned foot mutilation. Then there was X17 Online, a celebrity gossip site that claimed to have earned $3 million in 2007 from Brittany photos alone, a whopping one-fourth of revenue from the paparazzi photos that year. One group of eight men working under the group name MBF for X17 Online logged 40,000 man-hours of stalking and shooting Brittany. A leaked memo from the Associated Press even stated to staff that anything Brittany does is news. They had her obituary saved in drafts at the time, too. Brittany Spears wanted, dead or alive. Dark.

• 19:01Jake Brennan?

  Hollywood's most patient and well-paid photographers practiced doorstepping, a term for literally waiting outside of a celebrity's driveway or doorstep until they departed. Cops often roasted paps three to four times a day at Brittany's residence, and they scattered like roaches, only to circle back later for another chance at their predatory Pulitzer Prize moment. And their days spent doorstepping could last anywhere between 12 and 14 hours. But once the A-lister in question was on the move, that's when the real fun began.

• 19:33Jake Brennan?

  Fuck a stop sign, peel through those red lights, make that pedal go all the way down, all the way to the metal, goddammit. Paparazzi couldn't be bothered with traffic laws, because even if they did catch a ticket, the fine would pale in comparison to the money they were about to make. Their recklessness was matched only by their stamina. When it came to car chases to catch a frame or two of Brittany's behavior, paparazzi happily trailed her for up to four hours. Exhaustion was not an option, not when a single click of a button could earn you a down payment on a house in Beverly Hills. If Brittany vomited on herself in her car, if she stepped out of her convertible without a pair of panties, if she so much as walked with her dog, London, in her arms, they were there to document it.

• 20:15Jake Brennan?

  Another sloppy entry into Hollywood's diary paired with a snarky, hypercritical caption. Often, the media circus crowded Brittany to the point of near blindness. Only a month prior to crushing the paparazzo's bones to bits, Brittany hit a parked car on her way to pick up some vitamins. As they trailed her convertible and jumped in front of it, Brittany dinged another car in the parking lot, and then she picked up her pills and left. The incident not only racked up a hit-and-run charge, but revealed that Brittany was behind the wheel without a license. And that was the final fuck-up in her custody battle with Kevin.

• 20:49Jake Brennan?

  But if people followed your every step, sip, smoke, and shopping spree, someone would catch you fucking up eventually. Plaster some sort of "Oops, She Did It Again" headline on there, and you've got supermarket checkout gold. A camera greeted Brittany in every direction, literally. It's a well-known tactic that the paparazzi work in threes, boxing a celebrity into a triangle that they can't turn away from.

• 21:12Jake Brennan?

  The days of a virginal, bubbly Brittany Spears had passed. The sweet southern belle prancing around in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform, collecting accolades, collecting fans worldwide, merely winking at risque behavior was an early aughts phase. Now, the public demanded a disaster, daily, and the paparazzi's involvement ensured it. Her misery meant that there was money to be made. And you can say the media wasn't always this invasive, but it was. The disrespect was always there, it just wasn't so visceral at the time. "Are your breasts real? Are you a virgin? Did you fuck Justin Timberlake? Never mind, Justin just went ahead and answered that one for you, slut."

• 21:53Jake Brennan?

  One man offered Brittany $10 million for her virginity in 2000, when she was barely 18. Now, when rumors of a sex tape with Kevin Federline started spreading via Us Weekly, a judge wouldn't even hear Brittany out for a case of defamation. Their logic, Brittany had been disrobing in public for almost a decade now. Brittany did this to herself. People, the media, the powers that be, always wanted the public to think Brittany did this to herself, whether this was an unflattering photo, an overwhelmed meltdown, or a nasty hypersexual rumor. They never mentioned the pushing, the groping, the greedy hands of the world's trashy tabloid readers. But Brittany was about to fall into a new set of hands, a set of hands so greedy, they

• 22:37Jake Brennan?

  wouldn't let her go for 13 years.

• 22:42Speaker 07

  We'll be right back after this word, word, word.

• 22:47Speaker 01

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• 23:51Jake Brennan?

  Hands slapped the windows, fists pounded on the car's hood. Fans left handprints every time Brittany's limo paused for a stop sign. She couldn't peek at much through the tinted windows, but she knew reporters had to be tagging along too, obscuring the brilliant neon of the Las Vegas Strip with their own camera flashes. An empty bottle of booze rolled around the backseat and clinked against Brittany's heels. For once, Brittany felt grateful for the commotion. It filled the silence between her and the boy toy sharing the backseat with her, positioned an awkward few feet apart from each other. She preferred the sound of harassment to the sound of their strained relationship. She preferred the sound of harassment to the feel of harassment too. The limo halted at the ornate lobby of her hotel.

• 24:36Jake Brennan?

  Last stop.

• 24:39Jake Brennan?

  Brittany burst through the limo door and braced for the worst. She forged ahead with every ounce of energy in her 5'4" frame, but the crowd outside consumed her, swallowed her in a sea of microphones, spit her up, disheveled and disoriented. Her mystery man shouldered his way through the crowd by her side and got a similar smackdown, one he then passed along to a smattering of tabloids bearing Brittany's face on the cover. He literally smacked them down off a nearby newsstand. Images of her face covered the floor, and the mob marched right over them. Privacy was a luxury, Brittany learned. So too was personal space, luxuries that she, one of the most lucrative pop stars in the world, somehow couldn't afford.

• 25:22Jake Brennan?

  The irony made the glistening luxury of her presidential suite feel meaningless, pointless even. Once inside, Brittany stormed off to the bathroom. Everyone could step the fuck out of her way for good, the boy toy too. He launched a vase filled with exotic flowers at the wall in frustration, but Brittany was already turning away. Away from him, away from fame, away from everybody. Enough. She locked herself in the bathroom and acted mechanically. Faucet on, pearly gown off, bathtub filled, step inside and sink, sink. Blood matted in her hair from a paparazzi-inflicted gash to the back of her head. The bathwater turned a sickly shade of red. It didn't matter.

• 26:07Jake Brennan?

  All she needed to do was sink, sink, sink.

• 26:14Jake Brennan?

  In 2003, that's how Britney Spears pictured her final unraveling. Alone, abused, entirely misunderstood. She acted out her worst fears in the video for her song "Every Time," a bawling ballad from her album "In The Zone." Hard to believe such a downer is on the same record as "Toxic," the single that solidified her name in the long-term pop game. The song that proved that once Brittany got past the whole "not a girl, not yet a woman" phase and into the "totally a woman" phase, she could fucking own it. But back to "Every Time," the video hints at reincarnation for Britney Spears's soul while Britney Spears's celebrity sinks to the bottom of the bathtub. And five years later, that wasn't quite how Britney Spears's life actually unraveled.

• 26:59Jake Brennan?

  She got the bathroom detail right, though.

• 27:03Jake Brennan?

  Brittany was shouting through the door of her private bathroom, "I'm fucking hot!" No cop was going to tell her to cover up, not today. January 2008. Brittany clutched her son Jaden with a grip that was so tight it was almost painful. Her bare back rested against the bathroom door. She bounced him up and down on her lap in an attempt to soothe him in spite of the circus waiting on the other side. The police wanted her to put on a sweater, they said. Uh-uh. Keep your sweater. I'll keep my kids. How about that? The time for Brittany to return her son Sean and Jaden to her ex-husband Kevin Federline had passed hours ago, but Brittany wasn't ready to give them back, or give them up, which is how she saw it.

• 27:45Jake Brennan?

  Just hours prior, Brittany and Kevin stood face-to-face in court, staring each other down over custody of their children. Kevin had already won a request for temporary full custody of both boys, and now he was trying to make it permanent. Brittany could bear the weight of almost anything, of an alcoholic father, poverty, being pushed around by news outlets just begging her to have another breakdown. But she couldn't take the idea of losing her sons forever, not to her backup dancer ex-husband, not to anybody. The thought chilled her, and she pressed Jaden further into her naked chest. She knew she was supposed to give the boys back at 7:00 PM. A court-appointed child monitor had even buckled Sean into his car seat, ready to return him to Dad. And that's when Brittany scooped up Jaden and bolted for the bathroom.

• 28:30Jake Brennan?

  Confounded, the child monitor called the cops, and then the cops invited a steady stream of additional cops as the situation and Brittany grew more agitated. She rejected their sweater even more aggressively than their attempts to retrieve Jaden. It was past 10:00 PM now, and Brittany had lost all sense of time. Her thoughts tumbled from her lips in incoherent sentences, and the bathroom reeked of sweat, the air stale from hours spent during the police standoff. She didn't know it was 11 o'clock when the cops finally coaxed her out of the bathroom, or why they coaxed her out of the bathroom, but in doing so, they scooped Jaden to so-called "safety." In the music video for "Every Time," paramedics retrieve Brittany from the bathtub and wheel

• 29:14Jake Brennan?

  her limp body outside on a gurney. In real life, they strapped her to the gurney under a white sheet before they brought her outside to the ambulance. The next scene played out exactly the same as in the video. It was life imitating art imitating life. Flashes, frenzy, fucking disregard for the severity of the situation, vultures.

• 29:38Jake Brennan?

  This was 2008. Brittany had already righteously lashed out with her 2007 album "Blackout," a tipsy burst of pop perfection meant to be played on the brink of slipping in between states of consciousness at the club and loving every second of it. Despite the fact that it was Brittany's first album to not debut atop the Billboard 200, "Blackout" illuminated the public demand for Brittany's music, not just her PR mishaps. The record sold more than 120,000 copies the day it dropped and set a new record at the time for weekly digital album downloads by a woman. Its iconic sleeves earned it a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Musical Archive. "Blackout" was peak pop perfection built on embracing life's imperfections.

• 30:22Jake Brennan?

  Brittany admonished the media with edgy autotune on the album's second single, "Piece of Me," and the paps let the threat roll off their lenses and accepted the challenge, and their response, "Give me more." Paparazzi hungrily wove their cars between six police cruisers and ambulants and a firetruck to climb the summit Brittany's mansion purchased post-divorce. A helicopter surveyed the full scene, a mosaic of unwelcome guests scrambling for unflattering photos of a woman enduring a mental health crisis. An ambulance rushed Brittany to Cedar Sinai Medical Center on a 5150 hold, medical speak for a person who is in danger to themselves or others as a result of a mental disorder. Individuals on a 5150 are supposed to be subject to 72 hours of involuntary psychiatric

• 31:06Jake Brennan?

  hold for treatment and evaluation. If their situation doesn't improve, it can be upgraded to a 5250, which entails up to 14 days of intensive psychiatric treatment. But Brittany never got that far. Instead of 72 hours, Brittany barely lasted 24.

• 31:26Jake Brennan?

  During her brief stay, she not only temporarily lost visitation rights with her boys, but gained an unwelcome visit from Dr. Phil in her hospital room chatting her up for material to use in his next episode. She was, as the celebrity pseudo-psychologist put it, "in dire need of both medical and psychological intervention." Privacy and personal space were luxuries that she had almost forgotten. Fuck this. Back to the summit, Brittany went. If only she had stayed for the full 72 hours, the next decade of her life might have gone much differently.

• 32:24Jake Brennan?

  One dozen motorcycle officers, two police cruisers, two police helicopters. The team of cops moved in tandem, securing what they called "the package" within the safety of their human barricade. And the package, of course, was Britney Spears. The caravan forced a path down the driveway of the summit to move the package as swiftly as possible. They lumbered down the hill with confidence, the pap's scattered on command. The exact same paparazzi who jammed the driveway shut for hours, hence the extraordinary police escort. The sheer number of unwanted cars and people that evening pushed a Los Angeles city councilman to propose new legislation that would guarantee celebrities in L.A.

• 33:07Jake Brennan?

  a personal safety bubble of 25 yards. Their presence was that dangerous and that expensive for the city. The total cost of Britney's security for one hospital ride was $25,000. The pap's crowding the driveway muttered amongst themselves as the ambulance cruised by. So much for the suicide tip-off they had received. Britney was clearly very much alive. Boo hoo, but then again, if they lost Britney, who would they harass night after night, day after day? And who would bring those easy millions earned from forcing themselves into somebody else's meltdowns and mental health crises? They can consider this their chance for a jaw-dropping snap because life at Camp Britney was about to go radio silent.

• 33:51Jake Brennan?

  January 31, 2008. Another 51-50 hold for Britney. Only four weeks into the new year. Jamie Spears, her dad, was ready to pounce this time. As police and paramedics wheeled Britney to the UCLA Medical Center, Jamie got out a pen, a paper, and old Captain Red Ass started spilling out a hodgepodge of legal jargon. He was about to file a request for a temporary conservatorship of his daughter. Hold up. The word "conservatorship" has been thrown around hundreds of times in the past two years, but rarely is it explained in detail. A conservatorship is a legal arrangement put into place when a person is unable to care for themselves or their finances.

• 34:35Jake Brennan?

  In some cases, conservators work on behalf of a person who is not capable of fulfilling their basic needs: finding food, water, shelter, clothing. Other times, conservators control all of someone's financial assets, lest the conservé be duped into giving their money away. Jamie filed for both types: a conservatorship of Britney's person and her estate. It shouldn't be surprising that most conservatorships assist elderly people who are forgetful, gullible, or generally confused. What is surprising is that Jamie Spears filed for a temporary conservatorship for his 26-year-old daughter and checked off "orders related to dementia placement" as the reason.

• 35:17Jake Brennan?

  Jamie Spears, the man who tormented his family with his anger and alcohol problems, was asking for complete control of his adult daughter because she suffered from so-called dementia-like symptoms. A Superior Court commissioner placed Britney under Jamie's care via a temporary conservatorship on February 1, 2008. One day after her second mental health emergency. One day. Jamie had been waiting for this, waiting for six weeks, to be exact. His scapegoat for the situation was a man named Sam Lutfi. Sam had suspiciously squeezed himself into Britney's inner circle at a time when Britney's inner circle barely existed. In 2008, she had no manager.

• 36:00Jake Brennan?

  Instead, she had Sam, her "life coach." But from where Jamie was sitting, Sam was Britney's undoing. The devil perched on her shoulder, whispering nonsense in her ear at all hours. There was only room for one bad guy in Britney's life, and that was Jamie. And Sam had sway. Too much sway. A dangerous amount of sway. The kind you get from crushing pills into someone's food. They also claimed on the day of Britney's bathroom standoff that Sam informed her that Kevin called the house and stated that she could keep the boys for a few more hours. He even lived at the summit in his own private bedroom, only two doors down from Britney's bedroom. But that privilege gave his self-appointed status as gatekeeper to Britney.

• 36:45Jake Brennan?

  He welcomed some paparazzi inside and barricaded certain loved ones out. Sam Lutfi had the in, and Jamie wanted him out. On February 1, 2008, Jamie Spears gained complete access to Britney. More access than Sam. More access than the 30- to 45 daily paparazzi could ever imagine. More access than Britney even had to herself. Her dad gained the ability to speak with her doctors, to examine her medical records, to OK every single person Britney worked with, to enforce around-the-clock security. He was a conservator of her person now, and the co-conservator of her estate alongside a lawyer named Andrew Wallett.

• 37:30Jake Brennan?

  And that's the guy's real name, Andrew Wallett. You could say that a father decided to step back into his daughter's life to help her break a self-destructing cycle of chaos. But more evidence would point towards the fact that one man saw the chance to seize control over a massive amount of talent, money, and celebrity, and he took it and called the situation "temporary." I'm Jake Brennan, and this episode of DisgraceLand is to be continued.

• 38:16Jake Brennan?

  DisgraceLand was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a DisgraceLand All-Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership. Members can listen to every episode of DisgraceLand ad-free, plus you'll get one brand-new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelandpod.com/membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook

• 39:00Jake Brennan?

  @disgracelandpod, and on YouTube at youtube.com/AtDisgraceLandPod. Rock-a'roll.

• 39:09Speaker 00

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• 39:12Jake Brennan?

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