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Britney's Sorrow
For the third day in a row, you could have heard a pin drop in the morning screening meeting as we watched Britney Spears talk about her life. The silence was mostly because of what we saw there on the monitors, but I also think if you polled the people who were sitting there, they might admit the silence was so profound because we were all just sort of stunned as we tried to make up our minds once again whether we feel sorry for her or are just amazed by the whole situation. Most of the field producers here have had an opportunity to interview Britney at one time or another, and to see first hand how she's grown up and into this life is kind of amazing.
As for the interview you're going to see tonight, personally speaking - and let me say here that I wouldn't normally ever second guess his interviewing skills - I think that when Matt Lauer remarks to Britney that he thinks she became a person the press wanted to "take shots at," as if it was a conscious decision by a group of people making a group decision, it's kind of a cop out. With all due respect to Matt and Britney, I think the "shots" started coming when Britney began doing things like kissing Madonna and getting married in Las Vegas - an incident, which by the way, she finally talks about tonight. There's a whole wierd chicken-and-egg debate you could have over the idea of courting attention and then getting more attention than you expected, but I'm not about to go all academic here.
By the way, huge kudos to "Access" Producer Michael Lewittes for patiently and diligently setting this interview up over the past few months. And since you've seen it here, and you're going to see more of it on "Dateline," I'd say an entire broadcast network owes my man a fruit basket or something.
- Mathew Baxt
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