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      Americans Have Discovered the Garden, and Celebrities Want In

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      Many of us turned to gardening for solace during the pandemic. Now Martha Stewart and Drew Barrymore want to guide us to green thumbs.Last spring, as the world descended into a collective panic, Drew Barrymore planted her first lawn. “I did not think I could do this,” said Ms. Barrymore, 46, who until last year did not include gardening in her exhaustive list of achievements.And yet, the actress, writer, producer, businesswoman, mother and recent television host managed to make grass grow. “It was all barren. I got the water and the rake and the bag of seed and I waited weeks and watched it grow,” she said, speaking by phone as one of her two daughters vied for her attention in the background.In early-stage pandemic fashion, she — like many other locked-down homeowners — also got chickens and planted a victory garden, growing tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, strawberries and squash. “It was a miracle. I never knew I could do these things, I didn’t think I was capable of it,” said Ms. Barrymore, who lives on the East Coast. “I felt really empowered.”Now, she is sharing her enthusiasm for grass as the face of Instead, a new lawn-care subscription service that fertilizes grass using ingredients like molasses, wheat flour, feather meal, blood meal and alfalfa. Over the course of the growing season, subscribers who pay $132 for a small lawn or $264 for a large one will receive three packages that promise to deliver a “happy lawn” that will be “overjoyed with this special recipe.”Ms. Barrymore is the latest celebrity to seize on a moment when millions of Americans have turned to their gardens as a source of solace, and to spin it into a business opportunity. Martha Stewart was the first to read the room. She weathered the pandemic last summer by filming “Martha Knows Best” for HGTV, a reality series about life on her sprawling Bedford, N.Y., estate, followed quickly with a second series in the fall. The show is now filming its third season, to air this summer.Last October, Aly Raisman, the Olympic gymnast who frequently posts Instagram selfies with her overgrown zucchini and miniature lime trees, partnered with the indoor gardening-kit company AeroGarden to share growing tips. And in January, UrbanStems, a flower and plant delivery service, released the love fern, a potted Blue Bell fern designed with Kate Hudson’s King St. Vodka brand.Even noncommercial ventures seem to play better in the garden these days. During their March interview with Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle took their guest on a tour not of their Montecito living room, but of their chicken coop, projecting a message that in this time of social distancing, the most intimate setting is the backyard.Americans don’t have a national gardener in the way that the British have Monty Don, who hosts “Gardeners’ World,” which is a national institution in Britain. But with this newfound appetite for homegrown tomatoes and luscious lawns, the time might be ripe for one. As the country emerges from a long winter and (hopefully) the pandemic, all those raised beds and carefully tended lawns planted last spring and summer are still out there, waiting to be tilled and seeded for another season. Someone needs to explain the difference between a shovel and a spade.One candidate for the role would be, of course, Ms. Stewart, 79, who has been schooling Americans on their pruning methods for decades. She published her first book about gardening in 1990 and sells a line of garden tools and décor. In “Martha Knows Best,” she offers housebound viewers advice on how to achieve the perfect gardening soil, plant trees and build stone pathways, among other things.“People have started this hobby of gardening that’s addictive,” said Jane Latman, the president of HGTV. “We get letters and comments on our social feed constantly. Where is the gardening? You’re HGTV. Put the ‘G’ back in HGTV.”The first two seasons of “Martha Knows Best” were filmed with a skeleton crew on Ms. Stewart’s 153-acre estate, where she was locked down with a few members of her household staff. The mogul of domesticity spent much of each episode haranguing her cheery gardener, Ryan McCallister, as he dutifully planted 18,000 daffodil bulbs and wrapped her enormous boxwoods in burlap for the winter. (A crew of silent workers stitched the burlap shut with sewing needles.) In typical Martha Stewart fashion, she also demonstrated how to carve pumpkins and make wreaths, and bantered with celebrities, including Ms. Barrymore, over video.Filming began on April 9 for the third season, which will offer viewers more of Ms. Stewart’s property and take them indoors, as pandemic restrictions loosen. “We’re going to see more chickens,” Ms. Latman said. “The audience was very interested in the chickens.”As HGTV begins to look beyond the pandemic, it still has an eye toward the outside. “The idea of home has changed over the last year and a half, and there is a nesting that people have done and will continue to do,” Ms. Latman said.“Inside Out,” a show about an interior designer and landscape designer squaring off to win the larger share of a homeowner’s budget, premieres April 26 on Discovery+, the streaming service for Discovery, HGTV’s parent company. And “Clipped,” a topiary competition series premiering May 12, has cast Ms. Stewart as the lead judge deciding who has created the best sculpted shrubbery.If Ms. Stewart is a natural fit to channel our newfound enthusiasm for the garden, Ms. Barrymore is a less likely one. “Had they asked me two years ago, I think I probably would have been like, ‘You don’t want me, I’m not the real deal,’” she said of her partnership with Instead.But by the time the company did come around, Ms. Barrymore, who also has beauty and home-furnishings lines, was hosting a new talk show and had acquired an appreciation for dirt. Now, her Instagram feed is an eclectic mix of trying on lipstick for her beauty brand, selfies in the television studio, and videos of her hugging her chickens.In Instead’s version of landscaping, grass has an opinion and “lawning” is a verb like nesting, Zooming, adulting or Instagramming. Ms. Barrymore is the co-chief creative officer of the company, which is funded by the venture capital arm of Scotts, the lawn-care behemoth. She defines “lawning” as the act of “setting up a space for you and your family, and it’s a place that doesn’t want to be a museum that you stare at but a place that you interact with and live.”In a 30-second commercial for the lawn-care product, Ms. Barrymore, wearing a denim shirt and patchwork skirt, spreads out on an impeccable lawn and pets the grass, professing her love for it. “Happy lawn, meet happy lawn,” she says with a giggle.For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      The Swag Must Go On: Hollywood’s Pandemic Oscar Campaign

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonOscar Nomination PredictionsOscars Dos and Don’tsOscars DiversityDirectors Guild NominationsBAFTA NominationsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Swag Must Go On: Hollywood’s Pandemic Oscar Campaign“There is a why-are-we-even-doing-this feeling,” one industry insider said of jockeying for nominations, to be announced on Monday.Billboards like this one in Los Angeles are recommending films for Oscars as usual, but Hollywood is feeling its way through other promotions.Credit…Tag Christof for The New York TimesBrooks Barnes and March 14, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETLOS ANGELES — As a potential Oscar nominee for film editing, William Goldenberg should be feeling dizzy right about now. So many tastemaker cocktail parties to attend. So many panel discussions to participate in.So much flesh to press.Instead, his tuxedo has been gathering dust. Mr. Goldenberg, who stitched together the Tom Hanks western “News of the World,” has participated in get-out-the-vote screenings on Zoom, and that’s about it. During afternoon walks with his dog, a handful of neighbors have called out from windows and driveways to say they liked the film. Mr. Goldenberg, an Oscar winner in 2013 for “Argo,” described those impromptu encounters as “really fun.”Such is life on Hollywood’s virtual awards scene, where the pandemic has vaporized the froth (Champagne toasts! Standing ovations! Red-carpet reunions!) and created an atmosphere more akin to a dirge. There is a dearth of buzz because people aren’t congregating. Screenings and voter-focused Q. and A. sessions have moved online, adding to existential worries about the future of cinema in the streaming age.And some film insiders are privately asking an uncomfortable question: How do you tastefully campaign for trophies when more than 1,000 Americans a day are still dying from the coronavirus?Oscar nominations will be announced on Monday, but almost none of the movies in the running have even played in theaters, with entire multiplex chains struggling to stay afloat. “In terms of campaigning, there is a why-are-we-even-doing-this feeling,” said Matthew Belloni, a former editor of The Hollywood Reporter and co-host of “The Business,” an entertainment industry podcast.Ever since Harvey Weinstein turned Oscar electioneering into a blood sport in the 1990s, the three-month period leading up to the Academy Awards has been a surreal time in the movie capital, with film distributors only ever seeming to push harder — and spend more — in pursuit of golden statuettes. In 2019, for instance, Netflix popped eyeballs by laying out an estimated $30 million to evangelize for “Roma,” a film that cost only $15 million to make.But it’s not as easy to influence voters and create awards momentum during a pandemic. Roughly 9,100 film professionals worldwide are eligible to vote for Oscars. All are members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has nine pages of regulations that campaigners must follow. Film companies, for instance, “may not send a member more than one email and one hard-copy mailing” per week. Telephone lobbying is forbidden.The 93rd Academy Awards will take place on April 25, pushed back by two months because of the pandemic.Calling off the campaigns is not an option for Hollywood, where jockeying for awards has become an industry unto itself. Stars and their agents (and publicists) also pay keen attention to campaign parity: Hey, Netflix, if you are going to back up the Brink’s trucks to barnstorm for “Mank,” you’d better do it for us, too.“There are so many egos to serve,” said Sasha Stone, who runs AwardsDaily, an entertainment honors site.Contenders, wary of tone-deaf missteps, have been feeling their way.Sacha Baron Cohen, for one, has been openly mocking the process, even as he has participated in Zoom events to support “The Trial of the Chicago 7” (Netflix) and “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” (Amazon). Asked by phone how the virtual campaign trail was going, he quipped, “I imagine it’s much better than being on an actual one.”At least no one has pushed him to break into song, he said, recounting how, in 2013, he was asked to belt out a number from “Les Miserables” at a campaign stop. (He declined.)At times, however, Mr. Cohen has been willing to play along. In a skit on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” this month, he pretended to be moonlighting as a black-market vaccine procurer for desperate celebrities. “It seems like you should be focused on your Oscar campaign,” Mr. Kimmel said at one point. Mr. Cohen responded dryly, “This is my Oscar campaign.”There is business logic to the seasonal insanity. The spotlight generates interest from the news media, potentially increasing viewership. For streaming services like Amazon, Hulu, Apple TV+ and Netflix, awards bring legitimacy and a greater ability to compete for top filmmakers.“The business benefit is that we will win deals that we wouldn’t have otherwise,” Reed Hastings, Netflix’s chief executive, told analysts on a conference call last year.Because in-person events have been scuttled this time around, less money has been flowing into the Oscar race.“In a good year, the awards season represents 40 percent of our annual business,” said Toni Kilicoglu, the chief executive of Red Carpet Systems. “And it’s gone. Just gone.” Last year, Red Carpet Systems handled more than 125 awards-season events, including Golden Globes parties and the SAG Awards.Caterers, chauffeurs, florists and D.J.s have also suffered major losses. All after a year when more than 36,000 motion picture and sound-recording jobs were lost in Los Angeles County, according to a county report that was released last month.At the same time, studios and streaming services are still spending heavily on “for your consideration” spreads in trade publications. For $80,000 to $90,000, for instance, campaigners can cover Variety’s cover with voter-focused ads. Hulu recently promoted “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” that way. (“For your consideration in all categories including BEST PICTURE.”) Netflix and Amazon have given films like “Da 5 Bloods” and “One Night in Miami” similar treatment.“It has been a huge, really strong season for us,” said Sharon Waxman, the founder and chief executive of The Wrap, a Hollywood news site. The Wrap hosted 40 virtual awards-oriented screenings in January, underwritten by film companies.“We have another whole round on the way,” Ms. Waxman said.The price for events can be steep. A virtual panel discussion, hosted by Vanity Fair or The Hollywood Reporter, costs around $30,000, the same as last year, when receptions accompanied the events. Studios normally pay $15,000 to $25,000 for a table of eight at the Critics Choice Awards, an additional opportunity to solidify a film’s place in the awards conversation. This year, each guest was charged $5,000 for a “virtual seat,” which some saw as an exorbitant price for a square on a computer screen. (Joey Berlin, chief operating officer of the Critics Choice Association, said it was needed to produce a three-hour TV special and come out even.)With fewer people out on the roads, the billboards don’t appear to be hitting the eyes of as many Oscar voters this year.Credit…Tag Christof for The New York TimesAnd don’t forget the for-your-consideration billboards. One eight-block stretch of Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles has nine of them, with Netflix pushing “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and Warner Bros. extolling “Judas and the Black Messiah.”Those blocks are typically brimming with voters; Paramount Pictures is there, as is Raleigh Studios, where Netflix rents production space. With most people in Los Angeles still holed up at home, however, the thoroughfare was eerily quiet last Monday at 5:30 p.m. Actual crickets were chirping at Paramount’s closed Bronson Gate, which bore a sign reading, “Per government direction, access to the studio is now restricted.”Comical at best, absurd at worst?“The public must be so confused,” Ms. Stone said.None of the studios or streaming services angling for awards would comment for this article. Campaigning, while commonplace, remains a taboo subject. No film company wants to look as if it is trying to manipulate voters.It is easy to understand where they are coming from, though.“Like a political campaign, you have to crest at the right moment,” said Paul Hardart, director of the entertainment, media and technology program at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “You need the maximum exposure at that time. And that’s a hard thing to do. How do you become top of mind at the right time?”So the swag must go on.As part of its promotional effort for “Nomadland,” about an impoverished van dweller, Searchlight Pictures sent a bound copy of the screenplay to awards voters. The Hollywood press corps received “Nomadland” wine glasses, a “Nomadland” license plate, “Nomadland” keychains, a “Nomadland” T-shirt and a 5-by-2-foot “Nomadland” windshield sunshade.To celebrate the film’s Feb. 18 virtual premiere, Searchlight teamed with local small businesses to have a “curated concessions crate” delivered to the homes of invitees. It included artisanal beef jerky, wild berry jam, oranges, pears, dried apricots, dill pickle slices, banana bread, salami (“humanely raised”) and a canister of chocolates.Still, it is hard for publicists to know if such buzz-building efforts are working. They don’t know what academy members are talking about with one another because academy members aren’t talking to one another.“People are relying more on what the critics are saying than what their friends are saying, because people aren’t congregating,” Mr. Goldenberg, the “News of the World” editor, said.On the bright side, the pandemic has made it easier for studios and streaming services to attract voters to awards-oriented screenings, which are followed by Q. and A. sessions focused on various specialties: art design, editing, song composing.In years past, when attendance obstacles included Los Angeles traffic, filling the 468-seat Writers Guild Theater for such an event involved sending out more than 5,000 invitations. Similar events — held virtually — have recently had a higher turnout rate: 1,000 invitations might yield 200 attendees, most of whom even stick around for the post-screening discussion, organizers said.Campaigners have been generating interest with celebrity moderators. Oprah Winfrey interviewed Viola Davis (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) at one. Former President Barack Obama participated in a chat to support the A24/Apple documentary “Boys State.”Netflix paired Amanda Seyfried (“Mank”) with Cher. It may not sound like an intuitive coupling, but even if you weren’t terribly interested in “Mank,” wouldn’t you tune in just to get a peek into Cher’s living room?AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      In Australia, Hollywood Stars Have Found an Escape From the Virus. Who’s Jealous?

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn Australia, Hollywood Stars Have Found an Escape From the Virus. Who’s Jealous?Dozens of international film productions have been lured to the country, where cases of the coronavirus are few. In turn, actors have found almost paradise.Chris Hemsworth is filming “Thor: Love and Thunder” in Australia.Credit…Getty Images for The Critics Choice AssociationMarch 10, 2021Updated 4:52 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — In the photo posted to Instagram, the actors Chris Hemsworth, Idris Elba and Matt Damon, all wearing 1980s-style sweats, embrace. They are maskless. Touching. Happy, even. The caption reads: “A little 80s themed party never did any harm!”Their fans, indignant, peppered the post with comments. What of the pandemic? Social distancing? Masks? We are still, after all, suffering through a pandemic that has all but crippled the travel industry and blocked most people from casually taking off for vacation in paradise.But the Hollywood brigade was in Australia, a country that has effectively stamped out the coronavirus, allowing officials to ease restrictions for most gatherings, including parties (with dancing and finger food). As a result of the near-absence of the virus, plus generous subsidies from the Australian government, the country’s film industry has been humming along at an enviable pace for months compared to other locales.Australia has managed to lure several Hollywood directors and actors to continue film production. In effect, many celebrities, including Natalie Portman, Christian Bale and Melissa McCarthy, have found freedom from the pandemic there.As one person wrote on Mr. Hemsworth’s Instagram post: “Before you comment, remember that not everyone lives in America.”Though the quickened pace of vaccinations in the United States has raised hope of returning to some semblance of normalcy by the summer, the country still leads the world in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths. Movie theaters reopened only last week in New York City. Some fans are cautiously creeping back, while others are still wary of contracting the virus.But thousands of miles away, many stars who appear on the big screens can be seen frolicking, or filming, on location in Australia. (Mr. Hemsworth is himself a permanent fixture — he moved back to Australia in 2017 after several years of living in Los Angeles.) In the United States, where hundreds are still dying every day, some fans have looked on with envy.“These Hollywood stars have been transported to another world where the problems of this world aren’t,” said Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University in New York. He added that the temporary exodus from the United States revealed a further crumbling of the myth that Hollywood was the endgame for celebrities.Village Roadshow Studios in Gold Coast, Australia.Credit…Bradley Kanaris/Getty ImagesAustralia has become the “hip place” where “fabulous people want to go,” Professor Thompson said. “When you’re trying to be a star, you’ve got to go out to the West Coast to make your bones.” When you become “a really big star,” you buy property somewhere exotic, like Australia, he added.“It definitely feels like a time machine,” Ms. Portman, calling in from Sydney, told the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel in December. “It’s so different, all the animals are different, all the trees are different, I mean even the birds, like, there’s like multicolored parrots flying around like pigeons,” she added. “It’s wild.”A spokeswoman said the government had helped 22 international productions inject hundreds of millions into the local economy. Paul Fletcher, the federal minister for communications, said, “There’s no doubt it’s a very significant spike on previous levels of activity.”But even as celebrities preen and pose on social media, some Australians grumble that the country’s strategy for stamping out the virus has left tens of thousands of citizens stranded overseas. Several tennis players and 2021 Australian Open staff were allowed into the country for the tournament. And now, they say, Hollywood’s rich and famous are turning up during the pandemic, angering critics who see a clear bending of the rules for those with money and power.“Everyone knows there’s a separate set of rules, it seems, for everyone that’s a celebrity or has money,” said Daniel Tusia, an Australian who was stuck overseas with his family for several months last year. “There are still plenty of people who haven’t been able to get home, who don’t fall into that category, who are still stranded,” he added.In an emailed statement, the Australian Border Force said that travel exemptions for film and television productions were “considered where there is evidence of the economic benefit the production will bring to Australia and support from the relevant state authority.”A year ago, Tom Hanks, Hollywood’s everyman, made all-too-real the threat of the pandemic when he and his wife, Rita Wilson, tested positive for the coronavirus in Queensland, Australia, while he was filming an unnamed Elvis biopic. Their illness made personal a threat whose seriousness was only beginning to become crystallized at the time.The actors Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles last year. They tested positive for the coronavirus in Queensland, Australia, about a month later.Credit…Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut by May, Australia appeared to be on track to quashing the first wave of the virus, and the soap opera “Neighbors” became one of the world’s first scripted TV series to resume production. The federal government has committed more than $400 million to international productions, which, together with existing subsidies, provides film and television producers with a rebate of up to 30 percent to shoot in the country.More than 20 international productions, including “Thor: Love and Thunder,” a Marvel film starring Mr. Hemsworth, Mr. Damon, Ms. Portman, Taika Waititi, Tessa Thompson and Mr. Bale; “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” a fantasy romance starring Mr. Elba and Tilda Swinton; and “Joe Exotic,” a spinoff of the podcast made following the popular Netflix series “Tiger King,” starring the “Saturday Night Live” actress Kate McKinnon as the big-cat enthusiast Carole Baskin, are all either in production or set to be filmed in the coming year.Ron Howard is directing “Thirteen Lives,” a dramatization of the 2018 Thai rescue of a soccer team from a cave, in Queensland (the coast of Australia makes a good stand-in for the tropics). And later this year, Julia Roberts and George Clooney are set to arrive in the same state to shoot “Ticket to Paradise,” a romantic comedy.Though a number of American stars have landed in the country for temporary work, some like Ms. McCarthy, originally in Australia to work on “Nine Perfect Strangers,” have decided to stay on to shoot other projects, said those in the industry. “Oh, the birds!” she gushed in a YouTube video. “I love that I’ve seen a spider the size of my head.”Others, like Zac Efron, appear to have settled here permanently.Zac Efron has been spotted all over Australia.Credit…Lucy Nicholson/ReutersHis Instagram is flush with Australiana: Here he is in a hammock, in the red-earth desert, appearing to participate in an Indigenous ceremony or wearing the Australian cowboy hat, an Akubra. Last year, Mr. Efron even got what an Adelaide hairdresser described as a “mullet,” a much-maligned hairstyle popular in Australia.“Home sweet home,” he captioned one image of himself in front of a camper worth more than $100,000.Chances are the stars will keep showing up. They’ve been spotted camping under the stars, heading out to dinner sans masks, and partying (yes, like it’s 1989). Mr. Damon said in January that Australia was definitely a “lucky country.”But locals in Byron Bay — the seaside town that in recent years has been transformed from hippie to glittering — have complained that the influx of stars in the past year has irreparably changed the town.“The actors and the famous people are the tip of the iceberg,” said James McMillan, a local artist and the director of the Byron Bay Surf Festival. He added that the large cohort of production crew member from Melbourne and Sydney was pricing locals out of real estate.“It’s definitely changed more than I’ve ever seen it change in the past 12 months,” Mr. McMillan, who has lived in Byron Bay for two decades, added. “People have got stars in their eyes.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Dos and Don’ts of Staging a Pandemic-Era Awards Show

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonGolden Globes: What HappenedBest and Worst MomentsWinners ListStream the WinnersRed Carpet ReviewAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe ProjectionistThe Dos and Don’ts of Staging a Pandemic-Era Awards ShowThe Oscars have nearly two months to get right what has gone oh-so-wrong at other ceremonies.Joaquin Phoenix was onstage Sunday night at the Globes while the best-actress nominees and their supporters loomed behind him. (Top, from left, Viola Davis, Andra Day and Vanessa Kirby; bottom, Frances McDormand, left, and Carey Mulligan.)Credit… NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty ImagesMarch 3, 2021, 2:12 p.m. ETAre awards shows merely the perk for a fully functioning society, or is there a way to make them work even while the world around us in still in dire straits? These are the questions that many in Hollywood are asking after Sunday’s disastrous Golden Globes ceremony brought in 6.9 million viewers, a free-fall plunge from last year’s tally of 18.3 million.Certainly, people have more pressing matters on their minds than whether “Nomadland” can beat “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” but even casual movie fans surely cringed (or changed the channel) when technical difficulties nearly torpedoed the speech given by Golden Globe winner Daniel Kaluuya at the top of the show. We’re all tired of buggy Zoom calls by now, even when those thumbnails are filled with Hollywood’s best and brightest.There are still nearly two more months before the Oscar telecast on April 25, which will be produced by the often innovative Steven Soderbergh alongside Stacey Sher and Jesse Collins. It won’t be easy for them to mount a glitzy gala during a still-raging pandemic, but here are the lessons that can be learned from the awards shows that were unlucky enough to go first.DO a sound check.In too many of the ceremonies I’ve watched this year, from the Gotham Awards to the Golden Globes, the first big winner of the night either had no idea when to speak or was still on mute when they finally began to. Clearly, some more robust preshow prep is necessary: If you’ve already got the stars on standby, keep drilling them offscreen until they know their cue to come in. (And send them better cameras and microphones, when possible.) An acceptance speech ought to begin with emotion, not technical difficulties.DON’T do improv comedy.The Golden Globes booked two sets of consummate vampers — the “Saturday Night Live” vets Maya Rudolph and Kenan Thompson, and the “Barb and Star” leads Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo — but each duo’s improvised patter only made a ramshackle show feel even more chaotic. Improv comedy works better as a palate cleanser during a tightly scripted ceremony, and it feels perverse to let comedians churn through show time in pursuit of a punchline when some of the biggest winners then have their speeches quickly curtailed by wrap-it-up music.DO some short, pretaped bits.Live award ceremonies still feel hemmed in by awkward social distancing, but plenty of movies and television shows are back in full production all over the world. The Oscars could take advantage of their long lead time and ask some of Hollywood’s wittiest to shoot pretaped bits, running no more than thirty seconds, to help expand the breadth of the show in safe and creative ways. Call up Taika Waititi and have him improvise something funny with Chris Hemsworth! Tell Judd Apatow that yes, it has to be 30 seconds — not 60! And any shorts that are cut for time can easily be released online the next day to extend Oscar’s golden afterglow.Awards Season More

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      From Britney Spears to Janet Jackson, the Era of the Celebrity Reappraisal

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      Credit…Illustration by The New York Times; Texture Fabrik (torn paper)Skip to contentSkip to site indexSpeaking of Britney … What About All Those Other Women?Monica Lewinsky. Janet Jackson. Lindsay Lohan. Whitney Houston. We are living in an era of reappraisals.Credit…Illustration by The New York Times; Texture Fabrik (torn paper)Supported byContinue reading the main storyMs. Bennett is an editor at large covering gender and culture. She was previously gender editor.Feb. 27, 2021Updated 10:07 a.m. ETIn 2007, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton were apparently fueling enough of a debate among parents about children and “values” for Newsweek to publish a cover story titled “The Girls Gone Wild Effect.”The article described the ubiquitous images and stories about these women — their partying, their rehab stints, what they were or weren’t wearing — and how they could be affecting young fans.I was a junior reporter at Newsweek at the time, just a couple years out of college, around the same age as those so-called train wrecks. I wasn’t quite sure what bothered me so much about the article, but I knew I didn’t like it.Perhaps it was that the editors of the magazine at that time rarely seemed to put women on the cover, so the fact that it was these women said something. The article claimed, according to a poll, that 77 percent of Americans believed these women had “too much influence on young girls” — but weren’t these just young women? And then there was the male lens of it all, from the entertainment executives who molded them to the paparazzi who photographed them to the editors who put them on magazine covers.More than a decade later, we are once again talking about those women — this time through a modern lens. After years of fans fighting to #FreeBritney from the conservatorship over which her father presides — and now with a popular new documentary on the subject — the rise and fall (and rise again?) of Britney Spears is being viewed with fresh eyes.At the same time, a litany of other female celebrities of the ’90s and aughts are being — or perhaps ought to be — re-examined: Ms. Lohan, now out of the spotlight and living in Dubai, where for the first time in her life, she has said, she feels safe; Ms. Hilton, who in a 2020 documentary detailed emotional and physical abuse she suffered as a teenager; Janet Jackson, who was blacklisted after the 2004 Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction” that left her breast exposed, while the man who exposed it, Justin Timberlake, went on to further fame (and was even invited back to perform at the halftime show in 2018). Brandy, the singer and “Moesha” star, has described faking her marriage for fear that being an unwed mother would threaten her career. Anna Nicole Smith, the troubled actress and model, was labeled “white trash” while she was alive and “obtrusively voluptuous” in her obituary when she was dead. And then there’s Whitney Houston, whose marital problems and battle with drug addiction were broadcast to the world in an early-2000s Bravo series.“I lived through Britney on television, and when she shaved her head, I remember thinking at the time, ‘Why is everybody acting like she’s OK? Like, how is this funny to people? How is this presented as entertainment?’” said Danyel Smith, the former editor in chief of Vibe magazine and the host of the podcast “Black Girl Songbook.”“I felt the same about Whitney,” she said. “It was astonishing to watch the amount of glee being taken in watching her fall apart.”Such reappraisals have become common over the past several years. In the midst of #MeToo and a reckoning over racial injustice, people have begun to re-examine the art, music, monuments and characters on whom cultural significance has been placed. But this current wave revolves not around individuals so much as the machine that produced them: the journalists, the photographers, and the fans — who were reading, watching, buying.“To me, the question is, what do we do when a whole culture essentially becomes the subjugator?” Monica Lewinsky said in a recent interview. “How do we unpack that, how do we move on?”‘It Was a Different Time’In his book, “The Naughty Nineties,” David Friend, an editor at Vanity Fair, described how the market for humiliation thrived in the early ’90s, a trend that can be traced, in part, to the rise of tabloid talk shows such as “The Jerry Springer Show.”Gossip magazines ruled during this time, which meant that the paparazzi did, too. They photographed under skirts, chased cars down winding roads, competing, often dozens at a time, for images that could fetch millions. But the race for the most salacious shot was never an equal-opportunity game. It was not young men who appeared in photos with their bra straps showing and their makeup smeared, or had their breasts enlarged in postproduction without their knowledge, as was the case for Ms. Spears on a 2000 cover of British GQ, according to the photographer, who recently posted about it on Instagram. While white women were scrutinized on the covers of magazines, Black artists were told, as Beyoncé was, that they’d never get covers at all — “because Black people did not sell.”“Magazines in that era were driven by damsel-in-distress narratives,” said Ramin Setoodeh, the executive editor at Variety and the author of “Ladies Who Punch.” “It was almost like a sport to watch a woman self-destruct.” This was the time before stars could talk to their fans directly, of course. There was no clapping back on Twitter, no hosting an Instagram Live to tell one’s side of the story.In a 2013 interview with David Letterman that has recently resurfaced, Ms. Lohan was grilled to the point of tears about a looming trip to rehab, for laughs. (“She’s probably deeply troubled and therefore great in bed,” Donald Trump told Howard Stern in 2004, when the actress was 18.) When Ms. Hilton’s sex tape was leaked without her consent, nobody was using the phrase “revenge porn” or talking openly about emotional pain as trauma. Terms like “accountability,” “consent,” “fat-shaming,” “mental health” — these weren’t part of the pop lexicon, said Susan Douglas, a professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan and a co-author of “Celebrity: A History of Fame.”For the celebrity press, at least, such framing would have served no useful purpose. Disaster and personal tragedy sold.As Harvey Levin, the founder of TMZ, put it in 2006: “Britney is gold. She is crack to our readers. Her life is a complete train wreck, and I thank God for her every day.”“It was a different time,” Rosie O’Donnell, who interviewed Ms. Spears on her talk show in 1999, said in a phone interview. “You’re a level-headed girl,” she told her back then, “and I hope you stay that way.”‘We’re All Collateral Damage’In recent years, there have been Hollywood reappraisals of Anita Hill, a law professor who now leads the Hollywood Commission on sexual harassment, decades after her own high-profile case was dismissed; Tonya Harding, the former Olympic figure skater whose rivalry with Nancy Kerrigan, and its violent climax, were cast against a story of childhood abuse; and Lorena Bobbitt, whose physical harm of her husband has been reframed in the context of years of domestic abuse.Some women have retold their stories themselves. Jessica Simpson published a memoir in 2020 about her time in the spotlight, including her battle with alcoholism. Christina Aguilera described the feeling of being pitted against Ms. Spears — “Britney as the good girl and me as the bad” — in a 2018 story in Cosmopolitan.But Ms. Lewinsky was perhaps the first of this era of women to reclaim her story.After being excoriated in the press for her affair with President Clinton as a 21-year-old intern, she went on to earn a master’s in social psychology. She carefully re-emerged in the public eye in 2014, with an essay and TED Talk about public shame. Now she’s producing a documentary on the subject, and how it permeates society.“We tend to forget the collective experience,” Ms. Lewinsky said by phone. “We direct this kind of vitriol and misogyny toward one woman, but it actually reverberates to all women. We’re all collateral damage, whether we’re the object or not.”These days, that view is more widely held. Abuse and discrimination are now generally seen as systemic issues, and those who endure it are lent more credibility and sympathy. Contemporary artists speak candidly about mental health; their seeking help tends to be applauded rather than ridiculed. And social media has enabled stars to take back some control (while also opening them up to further scrutiny in other ways).“The legacy media star has dimmed,” said Allison Yarrow, the author of “90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality. Lizzo, for instance, posts photos on Instagram that align with the body positivity her fans admire. Billie Eilish speaks frequently and frankly about mental health. FKA Twigs, when asked about her allegations of abuse against her ex, Shia LaBeouf, and why she didn’t leave, can choose not to answer: “The question should really be to the abuser, ‘Why are you holding someone hostage with abuse?’”Now, entertainment journalists who worked through the tabloid era are looking back on their coverage through a critical lens; some are expressing regret and even issuing apologies.Steven Daly, who wrote the infamous 1999 Rolling Stone cover story on Britney Spears, said that in hindsight, having a 17-year-old girl show him, a man in his 30s, around her childhood bedroom was slightly creepy.But he is more troubled by the photos that appeared alongside his piece: Britney in a bra and hot pants holding a Teletubby; Britney in a pair of white cotton underwear surrounded by her bedroom dolls; photos the pop star — rather than the photographer or editors — was often asked to defend.“These were soft-porn pictures of an underage girl,” said Mr. Daly, now 60. “If you did that nowadays, you’d be put through a wood chipper.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Sorry, Britney’: Media Is Criticized for Past Coverage, and Some Own Up

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Britney Spears’s Legal BattleControl of Spears’s Estate‘We’re Sorry, Britney’Justin Timberlake ApologizesWatch ‘Framing Britney Spears’ in the U.S.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Sorry, Britney’: Media Is Criticized for Past Coverage, and Some Own UpConversations about the relentless focus on the pop star’s mental health, mothering and sexuality have begun anew following The New York Times documentary “Framing Britney Spears.”Media outlets and fans are re-examining how Britney Spears was questioned and written about during the years leading up to her personal crises.Credit…Martin Bureau/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeb. 12, 2021Updated 1:50 p.m. ET“Help Me,” the cover of Us Weekly blared in all caps, below a photo of Britney Spears with her hair partly buzzed off. People Magazine promised to take readers “Inside Britney’s Breakdown,” teasing details of “wild partying, sobbing in public, shaving her head.” OK! Weekly tempted potential buyers with a firsthand account of an “emotional cry for help.”In 2007, the celebrity magazines stacked up in dentists’ waiting rooms or on the racks by supermarket checkout lines had a favorite cover story: the trials and tribulations of a 25-year-old Britney Spears. That breathless, wall-to-wall coverage of her travails by glossy magazines, supermarket tabloids, mainstream newspapers and television shows alike is now being re-examined in the wake of a new documentary about Spears and her troubles by The New York Times.Fourteen years after Spears’s most publicized crises, some see the hypercritical fixation on her mental health, mothering and sexuality as a broad public failing.“We’re sorry, Britney,” read a post on Glamour’s Instagram this week. “We are all to blame for what happened to Britney Spears.”Spears was a frequent cover star on celebrity weeklies in the mid-2000s.The tabloids had been obsessed with Spears since her days as a teenage bubble-gum pop sensation, but the coverage reached a new level of intensity during her mid-20s. There seemed to be a vicious cycle at play: The relentless paparazzi that followed Spears nearly everywhere left her exasperated and helped fuel public displays of frustration, which magazines then covered aggressively, interviewing a host of tangential characters, including the owner of the hair salon where she shaved her head and a psychologist who had never treated her.“Her story hit at a time when print magazines were hunting for the story of the week,” said Jen Peros, a former Us Weekly editor, “and when you found a celebrity — I hate to say it — spiraling or acting abnormally, that was the story. And we knew it would sell magazines.”A new episode of The New York Times Presents, on FX and Hulu, coming Friday, Feb. 5, at 10 p.m.CreditCredit…Ting-Li Wang/The New York TimesSome are now asking for direct apologies from people who made jokes at Spears’s expense or interviewed her in ways now viewed as insensitive, sexist or simply unfair. On social media, there have been calls for apologies from prominent media figures, including Diane Sawyer, who, in a 2003 interview grilled Spears on what she might have done to upset her ex, Justin Timberlake; Matt Lauer, who pointed to questions about whether she was a “bad mom”; and the comedian Sarah Silverman, who made off-color jokes about Spears at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards.These demands are encapsulated in another phrase spreading on social media: “Apologize to Britney.”Silverman, who had joked on MTV that Spears’s children were “the most adorable mistakes,” did just that on an episode of her podcast that was released on Thursday, saying that, at the time, she had not understood that big-time celebrities could have their feelings hurt.“Britney, I am so sorry. I feel terribly if I hurt you,” Silverman said. “I could say I was just doing my job but that feels very Nuremberg Trial-y, and I am responsible for what comes out of my mouth.”And on Friday Timberlake issued an apology to Spears on Instagram, writing that he was “deeply sorry for the times in my life where my actions contributed to the problem, where I spoke out of turn, or did not speak up for what was right.” (He also apologized to Janet Jackson, with whom he appeared in 2004 at the Super Bowl halftime show.) The new documentary, “Framing Britney Spears,” which premiered on Hulu and FX last Friday, traces the origins of Spears’s conservatorship, the legal arrangement that has mandated that other individuals — primarily her father — have had control over her personal life and finances for the past 13 years, following her 2008 hospitalization after a three-hour standoff involving her two toddler sons and her ex-husband Kevin Federline.It wasn’t just the paparazzi and the tabloids that reported — sometimes breathlessly — on Spears’s marriages, children, substance abuse issues and mental health challenges: So did The New York Times, as well as other newspapers, television news outlets and late-night comedy programs. Even the game show “Family Feud” found a way to work Spears in, asking contestants to list things that she had lost in the past year (“her hair,” “her husband”).In an interview, Samantha Barry, the editor in chief of Glamour, said of society’s treatment of Spears, “Hopefully we’re in a place where we won’t do that again, where we won’t lift up these celebrities — in particular women — and then proceed to rip them down.”Spears onstage at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2016. In 2007, the comedian Sarah Silverman joked about the singer’s children at the awards show; this week, she apologized in a podcast.Credit…Charles Sykes/Invision, via Associated PressPeros, who started as a reporter for Us Weekly in 2006 and ultimately became editor in chief, believes that with a decade and a half of hindsight, the media would treat Spears differently now. Weekly magazines are “much more sensitive and handle stories like this more delicately,” she said, pointing to coverage of celebrities like Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato, who have spoken more openly about mental health and substance abuse. Part of the evolution stems from the fact that these subjects are less stigmatized, but it’s also the result of journalists and editors understanding that aggressive media coverage would inevitably receive backlash now, Peros said.Us Weekly was one of the magazines that poured resources into relentlessly covering Spears. In a March 2007 cover story that read like a play-by-play of a natural disaster and its aftermath, the magazine interviewed a diner at a sushi restaurant that Spears’s mother visited, a clubgoer at a karaoke party Spears dropped in on, and cited an anonymous source in Antigua, where Spears briefly checked into a rehab clinic.“That was a time when she was making so much money for these magazines that we had the money to send a reporter to Antigua,” Peros said.Back then, it was Peros’s job in New York to search for nuggets of insight into Spears’s life by interviewing dancers or lighting assistants on her tour, searching through the Yellow Pages for their contact information and typically granting them anonymity to share things that they probably shouldn’t. If the reporters had the same awareness about mental health that they have today, they might not have dug so aggressively, she said.The main difference between then and now is the rise of social media, which has diluted the power of weekly magazines as the primary way to learn about celebrities’ personal lives. In some ways, social media can give celebrities more control over what people see: For Spears, her Instagram account is a repository for improvisational dancing, photos of her and her boyfriend, silly skits and random curiosities — all blasted out to an audience of 27.7 million followers.There may be fewer professional photographers following celebrities like Spears around now, but at the same time, almost everyone is armed with a smartphone and has the potential to become an amateur paparazzi. Instead of sending a reporter to go to Antigua to find out what Spears was up to, Us Weekly would now be scouring social media for photos of her there walking around town or eating at restaurants.Dax Holt, who was a producer at TMZ for over a decade and now co-hosts a podcast about Hollywood, said that he doesn’t necessarily blame the media for Spears’s breakdown but rather an American public that had an incessant curiosity for all things Britney. Still, Holt, who used to sift through paparazzi photos of Spears in his time at TMZ, said it made him sad to watch the documentary and see all that Spears had to endure.“I can’t even imagine what it would be like being a focal point of the world’s attention for so many years,” he said. “One little misstep and the whole world is laughing at you.”So far, the public has heard little from Spears herself about the documentary and the reactions to it. On Tuesday, she seemed to indirectly address the film in social media posts when she wrote, “I’ll always love being on stage …. but I am taking the time to learn and be a normal person.”This time, more people seem to be accepting that she is one.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      'Framing Britney Spears' Filmmakers Talk About Their Process

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Britney Spears’s Legal BattleControl of Spears’s EstateThe ‘Free Britney’ MovementWatch ‘Framing Britney Spears’ in the U.S.Making the DocumentaryAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTimes InsiderBehind the Making of ‘Framing Britney Spears’The director and a senior editor of the Times documentary answered viewer questions about the media response, the star’s mother and searching for clues on Instagram.A new documentary from The New York Times examines the so-called Free Britney movement made up of fans of the pop star Britney Spears.CreditCredit…G. Paul Burnett/The New York TimesFeb. 11, 2021Updated 2:22 p.m. ETTimes Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.The premiere last week of the film “Framing Britney Spears,” part of the TV documentary series “The New York Times Presents,” looked closely at Ms. Spears’s legal battle with her father, Jamie Spears, over control of her finances. For more than a decade, that control has been held largely by Mr. Spears in a conservatorship, a complex legal arrangement typically used for the sick or elderly.Since the film’s release on FX and Hulu, celebrities and fans have expressed their support for Ms. Spears on social media. The latest court hearing in the fight was scheduled for Thursday in Los Angeles. On Wednesday, Samantha Stark, the director, and Liz Day, a senior editor on the film, answered questions from readers in an “Ask Me Anything” session on the website Reddit. The following are edited excerpts.Were there any legal hurdles you faced in making the film?LIZ DAY We did not receive any direct legal threats while making the documentary. Reporting any investigative story requires extreme attention to factual accuracy and fairness, and this project was no different, though it was made even more difficult by an ongoing court case, attorney-client privilege, medical privacy, celebrity nondisclosure agreements, distrust of the press and other factors.What is the involvement of Lynne Spears, Britney’s mother, in all of this?SAMANTHA STARK So what we know about Lynne Spears is that she is not legally a part of Britney’s conservatorship team. We know she recently petitioned to be included to have access to more information and to be able to have her lawyer speak during the hearings, and that she filed as an “interested party” to do that.It’s unclear what involvement Lynne had related to the conservatorship up until recently. In a Nov. 10 hearing, Lynne said, through her lawyer (and I’m paraphrasing) that she thanked Jamie for the work he had been doing but that she wanted Britney to wake up to see brighter days. It’s very hard to understand what role Jamie, Lynne or a number of other people have played throughout the conservatorship because so many of the court records are sealed.What’s your view on the media response to the documentary? It feels as if many of the outlets that disparaged Britney years ago are now doing thinkpieces about how the media destroyed her.STARK There’s one thing I noticed in the past week doing interviews with media outlets that I never even thought of before the film came out. When Britney was being shamed for her sexuality as a teenager and stalked as a young adult, the gatekeepers to all these media outlets — the ones doing the shaming — were in their 30s, 40s, 50s. We as teenagers watched that happen. Now that my/our generation are a lot of the gatekeepers, we’re saying “no more.”How should those media outlets respond after playing a part in all the derision that Britney endured?STARK I think they should respond by not ever doing anything like it ever again. I think they should take a note from Britney’s book and be kindhearted, open and nonjudgmental.Did you contact any of Britney’s ex-husbands or boyfriends, like Jason Alexander, Kevin Federline, Jason Trawick or Charlie Ebersol, or some of her photographers/videographers, like David LaChappelle and Nigel Dick?DAY Yes, at the end of the doc we listed the members of Ms. Spears’s family who we requested on-camera interviews with but who did not respond or declined. But we reached out to a lot more people than just that list, including the ex-husbands/boyfriends mentioned. We spoke with Nigel Dick and reached out to David LaChappelle too. There were many people we spoke with on background who did not appear on camera. There were also a few people whose on-camera interviews we did not include because of time.Britney Spears hasn’t been able to fully control her career for 13 years under a court-sanctioned conservatorship. A New York Times documentary, now streaming on FX and Hulu, examines the pop star’s court battle with her father for control of her estate.CreditCredit…Ting-Li Wang/The New York TimesWhat are your thoughts on the obsessive Britney fans who question and dissect her social media posts?STARK There’s such a tight circle around Ms. Spears, seemingly enabled by the conservatorship, that it’s really hard to ask her how she is or what she thinks. We know that she hasn’t done interviews in a long time and that when she did for many years she was likely under very careful watch. So I honestly think it makes sense for people to look to her Instagram to try and parse how she might be doing. It’s the only place we’ve been able to see or hear from her for quite some time.Did you look at the financial records? Forbes has estimated her wealth at $60 million. Shouldn’t it be higher?DAY Excellent question. Britney’s true net worth is a mystery, and there’s speculation that there may be a lot more money beyond $60 million outside of her estate, in trusts or elsewhere as royalties, intellectual property and more. There are lots of companies set up as private LLCs, of which records are scant. One thing I would add is that often when you hear big Hollywood paychecks, you have to consider everyone who is taking a cut — managers, lawyers and government taxes, for example.Did you expect this film would result in a big resurgence of the #FreeBritney movement?STARK When making a film, I never know what parts of the piece will hit people in the emotional gut. I really had no idea this would happen.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Britney Spears Conservatorship Case Heads Back to Court

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBritney Spears Conservatorship Case Heads Back to CourtAfter a new documentary about Spears by The New York Times was shown, calls to #FreeBritney were joined by a new message: “We are sorry, Britney.”Behind the scenes during the shoot for the “Lucky” music video in 2000. A moment captured by Britney’s assistant and friend Felicia Culotta.Credit…Courtesy of Felicia CulottaFeb. 9, 2021Updated 7:01 p.m. ETThe legal battle over who should control Britney Spears’s finances and personal life is scheduled to return to the courtroom later this week amid a renewed discussion of how she was treated during her meteoric rise as a teenage pop star and during her subsequent mental health struggles.The issue resurfaced in recent days after “Framing Britney Spears,” a documentary by The New York Times, premiered Friday on FX and Hulu. The film centers on the conflict over Spears’s conservatorship, a legal arrangement that has allowed other people — primarily her father — to manage her career, her personal life and her finances since 2008.In tracing back the origins of the current legal battle, the documentary tells a story of a gifted performer who for decades has been surrounded by people seeking to capitalize off her, and who was ultimately driven to desperation by an insidious celebrity culture and paparazzi who would not leave her alone.The film also explores the #FreeBritney movement, a campaign by fans that seeks to portray the conservatorship as a money-hungry means to exert control over Spears.Since the new documentary’s debut, these calls have multiplied, with several celebrities joining in and amplifying a movement that was once confined to a niche group of activists and superfans. In posts on Instagram and Twitter on Tuesday, Spears appeared to comment indirectly on the documentary by sharing a performance of hers from a few years ago and writing, “I’ll always love being on stage …. but I am taking the time to learn and be a normal person ….. I love simply enjoying the basics of every day life!!!!”“Remember, no matter what we think we know about a person’s life,” she wrote, “it is nothing compared to the actual person living behind the lens.”With a hearing scheduled on Thursday in Los Angeles, here is a breakdown of the conservatorship controversy.Dressed in a pink silk dress, Britney poses with her chaperone and friend, Felicia Culotta, in 2000.Credit…Courtesy of Felicia CulottaWhat is a conservatorship?Sometimes known as a guardianship, a conservatorship is a complex legal arrangement typically reserved for the old, ill or infirm. A representative is designated to manage the person’s affairs and estate if that person is deemed to be unable to take care of themselves or vulnerable to outside influence or manipulation.Spears has lived under a conservatorship since 2008, after a string of public meltdowns (which, the documentary notes, were aggressively captured by paparazzi who followed Spears nearly everywhere she went). For more than a decade, Spears’s father, James P. Spears, known as Jamie, has overseen much of his daughter’s financial and personal life as one of the conservators. The appointed conservators have control over everything from Spears’s mental health care to where and when she can travel; the setup means that Spears’s conservators are required to submit detailed accounts of her purchases to the court — even minor charges like $5 purchases at Sonic Drive-In or Target.Conservatorships are always portrayed as being for a person’s protection. Representatives for Jamie Spears have said that his stewardship over her career likely saved her from financial ruin. He said in court filings that his “sole motivation has been his unconditional love for his daughter and a fierce desire to protect her from those trying to take advantage of her.”Jamie Spears stepped back from his role as his daughter’s personal conservator in 2019, citing health problems; a professional conservator took his place temporarily. The current court battle revolves around control over Spears’s estate.A new documentary from The New York Times examines the so-called Free Britney movement made up of fans of the pop star Britney Spears.CreditCredit…G. Paul Burnett/The New York TimesWhere does the issue stand in court?Last summer, the contours of the case changed drastically when Spears’s court-appointed lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, said in a court filing for the first time that his client “strongly opposed” her father as conservator. In requesting that Spears’s temporary personal conservator, Jodi Montgomery, a professional in the field, be made permanent, Ingham left open the possibility that Spears might one day seek to terminate the conservatorship fully.“Without in any way waiving her right to seek termination of this conservatorship in the future,” Ingham wrote, “Britney would like Ms. Montgomery’s appointment as conservator of her person to be made permanent.”In November, a judge declined to immediately remove Jamie Spears as head of his daughter’s estate; at the same time, the judge added a corporate fiduciary, Bessemer Trust, as co-conservator, as the singer requested.In December, the judge extended Montgomery’s temporary role as personal conservator until September of this year.The hearing on Thursday in Los Angeles will likely include a discussion of the roles that Jamie Spears and Bessemer Trust will play in managing the estate. A lawyer for Jamie Spears did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Britney poses with a rose on her head during a photo shoot in 2000. Rose imagery recurs throughout Britney’s career — today roses are woven throughout her Instagram feed.Credit…Courtesy of Felicia CulottaWhat does Britney Spears want?What has become clear in recent months through her lawyer, according to court filings, is that Britney Spears no longer wants her father to serve as her conservator.At a court hearing in November, the singer’s lawyer said that “she is afraid of her father,” whom she has not spoken to in a long time, and that she will not perform again if her father maintains control over her career, The Associated Press reported.For years, Spears had largely ignored the calls from fans to #FreeBritney, but more recently, she signaled some approval when her lawyer wrote in a court filing that his client “welcomes and appreciates the informed support of her many fans.”(Her father has referred to #FreeBritney activists as “conspiracy theorists.”)What is less clear is whether Britney Spears intends to try to terminate the conservatorship in the near future. Her initial aversion to the arrangement was clear in 2008, when, in an interview with MTV, Spears compared her circumstances to a jail sentence with no end.In her social media posts on Tuesday, Spears wrote, “Each person has their story and their take on other people’s stories.”Her current boyfriend, Sam Asghari, came out earlier Tuesday with a blunt criticism of Jamie Spears, writing in an Instagram story that he has “zero respect for someone trying to control our relationship and constantly throwing obstacles in our way.”Who else has spoken up?The #FreeBritney movement has gotten attention from celebrities before, such as when Miley Cyrus shouted out the phrase during a concert in 2019. But the film has amplified the support — and sparked a reckoning from journalists and others around how they may have played into the hypercritical Britney obsession of the aughts.In the days after the documentary dropped, celebrities like Sarah Jessica Parker, Bette Midler and Andy Cohen tweeted out the hashtag. Calling the documentary a “gut punch,” the actress Valerie Bertinelli tweeted a list of men who she believed to have harmed Spears throughout her career. The singer Hayley Williams wrote that “no artist today” would have to endure what Spears did.In the days after the documentary’s debut, another message, which was popularized by celebrities including the singer Courtney Love, began trending: “We Are Sorry, Britney.” It was a sorrowful admission that the intrusions into Spears’s private life, the fixation on her sexuality and the relentless focus on her mistakes rested on the shoulders of many.Joe Coscarelli contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More