![]() ![]() One record executive recalls him saying: "My daughter's going to be so rich she's going to buy me a boat.") (Jamie Spears had not been a consistent presence in his daughter's life at that point, according to the documentary. Streisand says that Spears specifically did not want her father to be in charge of her conservatorship. ![]() "The one reason I did the interview was to remind people why they fell in love with her in the first place," Culotta says in the documentary.Īnother pivotal interview came from Adam Streisand, the attorney Spears tried to hire to represent her in the initial conservatorship proceedings in 2008. "It was a real ethical quandary trying to figure out how to do this and not participate in what everyone has done in the past, which is make all these assumptions about (Spears)," says Stark.Ī breakthrough came when Felicia Culotta, who performed an unusual hybrid role as the singer's friend, assistant and travel companion in the pre-conservatorship era, agreed to talk about Spears on the record for the first time in many years, providing emotional insight. The producers of "Framing Britney Spears" reached out to the pop star, her family, their lawyers and other members of her inner circle but were turned down (or met with silence) at nearly every turn. "You hear a lot of speculation out there that gets repeated and repeated as fact: 'Britney has X' or 'she's not allowed to Y.' And when you really dig into, 'How do you know what's on the record?' there's a lot of smoke," Day says. Then there's the unreliable nature of celebrity journalism and standards that can vary wildly from outlet to outlet. "If you are not necessarily in total control of your day-to-day life, or your finances, how do you prove that you can be in control of your finances and your day-to-day life?"ĭay, who helped report segments on Alex Jones and Ivanka Trump as a senior news producer at "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver," says that Spears' conservatorship is the hardest story she's had to cover, thanks to complicated family dynamics, sensitive legal and medical issues and the additional layers of and secrecy that come with Spears' fame and wealth.īritney Spears performs in concert in Buffalo, New York on June 26, 2002. There's a Catch-22 for people who attempt to terminate a conservatorship, Day explains. What makes Spears' conservatorship unusual – other than her extraordinary fame – is that these legal arrangements are typically designed for older people, often with dementia, who are incapable of making informed decisions or physically taking care of themselves. ![]() New York Times senior story editor Liz Day, who works on the paper's branded FX docuseries "The Weekly," says she was drawn to making a film about Spears because, she wondered: "How could the same person be able to perform at a very high level in Las Vegas as a superstar doing sold-out shows, making millions of dollars, but at the same time we're being told that she is so vulnerable and at-risk that she needs this very intense layer of protection?" Now it's the subject of a feature-length documentary from a team of journalists at The New York Times, which premiered Friday on FX and FX on Hulu in the United States.ĭirected and produced by Samantha Stark, "Framing Britney Spears" charts Spears' rise from plucky "Star Search" contestant to queen bee of "TRL," as well as the high-profile unraveling that turned her personal troubles into a national punchline and culminated in the controversial conservatorship.Īpplying the rigor of a "Frontline" episode to a narrative that has been shaped by thinly sourced gossip and anonymous hearsay, "Framing Britney Spears" is also a pointed work of cultural criticism that might make some viewers feel guilt about idly gawking at pictures of Spears on Perez Hilton circa 2007.īy retelling her story from the vantage point of 2021 – at what we hope is a time of greater sensitivity to mental health issues and a heightened post-#MeToo understanding of the misogyny that pervades much of celebrity culture – the documentary encourages viewers to reconsider their ideas about Spears, her chaotic tabloid persona and her fervently devoted fans. ![]()
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