4 Talent Extra
First Cut documentary Saving Britney Spears explores an obsession with the obsessed. Martin Vovk grills film-maker Bruce Fletcher to find out why he felt compelled to make a film about the Britney Spears breakdown industry.
Timbaland and Justin Timberlake think they can save her. So does a bejeweled former pimp in Snoop Dogg's entourage. A wailing young man on YouTube would like you to leave her alone. A rag-tag army of bedroom fanatics and dedicated paparazzi want you to know what she's doing right now.
Bruce Fletcher, a Manchester-based producer and director, wants to find out why. In Saving Britney Spears, the first show of Channel 4's 2008 First Cut documentaries, he takes a trip to the States to meet some of the colourful characters who populate the bizarre yet fascinating industry that has sprung up around Britney Spears' breakdown.
First Cut is a yearly strand of primetime documentaries on Channel 4, offering the chance for new directing talent to break through to a mainstream TV audience. For Bruce, a producer at award-winning documentary specialists Raw TV, this was the perfect opportunity to try his hand at directing, and explore a subject that fascinated him.
"As a producer, you tend to be facilitating a director's vision. This was a great opportunity to go on a journey: to have your own idea commissioned, and to work on a more authored, structured piece in your own voice."
While freely admitting a love for all things pop, Bruce stresses that it was a fascination with the surrounding culture which led him to focus on Britney. "I've always been interested in celebrity culture, and also why people appear to be so interested in it."
"For me, it started with Diana. People were crying in the streets, and seemed absolutely convinced that they knew her personally. I wanted to know what made people jump from simply being interested in celebrities to feeling personally involved with them."
Bruce admits that you can see this trend everywhere now, from Amy Winehouse to Lindsay Lohan, but sees the focus on Britney as a recent prime example:
"There was a point last year where you could barely pick up the London freesheets without seeing Britney being wheeled into one hospital or the next. For me it's the most vivid recent example of our obsession with celeb culture, and the more I looked into it, the more I noticed the number of people who seemed to feed off her breakdown."
It's these people who really interested Bruce: "I wanted to know why people felt they could save her, and why they were moved to do so. It turned out that everybody I met had an agenda, and usually it involved making money."
Bruce describes Saving Britney Spears as a journey, a series of encounters with characters who each have something different to tell us about Britney and the industry around her. Along the way, he meets Snoop Dogg associate Bishop Don "Magic" Juan, a retired pimp who has instigated his own Help Bishop Save Britney campaign. Bishop freely admits that his main reason for doing so is self-publicity. He's looking to get his own TV show.
And then there's Kristi, webmistress of the "Poor Britney" site. Describing herself as Britney's "virtual mother", she catalogues the star's every move for her loyal army of readers. "She describes herself as a 'Britney fan', but really she's a fan of Britney's breakdown," opines Bruce.
Finally, there's Sheeraz Hasan, who claims to have been inspired to set up his 'Britney response team' while on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He co-ordinates a gang of video paparazzi who intercept Britney at every conceivable opportunity.
"The obsession with celebrity culture is a familiar story these days," Bruce concludes, "but I was still surprised by how extreme it can be, and how brazen some of these people are about what they do. While Britney may be crazy, everyone else in the film is crazier! She's almost the sanest person in the film."
Some early reviews have accused Bruce of hypocrisy: isn't he merely contributing to the obsessive Britney industry? "There's a big difference between making a programme about Britney's breakdown, and one about society's obsession with a tragic celebrity."
"I don't think that people love celebrities anymore. They hate them, and they revel in their mistakes. This seems to make them feel better about their own lives. It's a major characteristic of modern society, and you should be allowed to make films about things like that."
He's also not concerned about accusations that he isn't sufficiently critical of his subjects: "People don't need to be told what to think, do they? I never intended to make a polemic. If I've just spoken to someone who's making money out of Britney's misery, do I really need to stand there and say that's a bad thing?"
At one point Bruce is taken to watch Britney's house, with Hasan's paparazzi. This swiftly develops into a car chase down Sunset Boulevard. "I admit I found that quite exciting. That doesn't mean it's something I'd want to do for a living. But it helped me understand why, other than for the money, people do this kind of thing."
Bruce admits that making the documentary was a lot of fun, and believes that there's a lot more to investigate in the strange world of celeb-obsession. "I want to make more films about celebrities, but not biographies. I like documentaries where you meet characters who are quite extreme, ludicrous even, but tell us something about what we all experience from day to day, about society as a whole."
"The world is littered with cautionary tales as to why it's not that great being a celebrity - yet people still do everything they can to become one. I'm interested in why that is."
We take you into the newsroom, bring you masterclasses with the professionals and tools to edit your own stories.
