He Was in the Pack Swarming Britney Spears. Now He's Ready to Tell All.

New York Times

5 days ago

WAITING FOR BRITNEY SPEARS: A True Story, Allegedly, by Jeff Weiss
In 2023, the pop princess Britney Spears published her autobiography, 'The Woman in Me.' In its pages, Spears had choice words for the paparazzi who pursued her at the heights and depths of her fame. She described them as enemy combatants, the ghosts in a Pac-Man game, sharks who sensed blood in the water. They were, she wrote, 'an army of zombies' who treated her with 'disregard' and 'disgust.'
She hated them. She feared them. Jeff Weiss, by his own account, was one of them.
In the 2000s, Weiss worked as an occasional reporter for a couple of tabloids. (He was also cited for trespassing on Brad Pitt's property, ostensibly at the bidding of People magazine.) He details these exploits — with grandiosity and rue — in 'Waiting for Britney Spears: A True Story, Allegedly.' It is not a novel, not yet a memoir. A roman à clef? Probably. Autofiction? Sure. It is also, in its most engaging moments, a bedazzled biography of Spears herself, as glimpsed across the dance floor, or through a long lens.
Weiss, if you believe him, first met Spears when he sneaked into the ' … Baby One More Time' video shoot, which was held at his Venice, Calif., high school. The first glimpse of a pigtailed Spears ensorcelled him. A few years later, sprung from college and lightly adrift, Weiss found himself flung into her orbit again. Zhuzhing his résumé and shushing his qualms, Weiss persuaded a tabloid to hire him as a Hollywood party and celebrity reporter. (Context clues suggest that the tabloid was Star; in the book, Weiss calls it Nova.)
This is a book that wears its antecedents on its sleeve, or perhaps low on the brow, like a Von Dutch hat. There's new journalism here and gonzo journalism, as well as more literary stabs at the mournfulness of F. Scott Fitzgerald and the contempt of Nathanael West. Parts of the book read like a retread of 'Miss Lonelyhearts,' doused in apple martinis. Other sections suggest link-rotted LiveJournal entries. In broad strokes, it is a story of a young man's disillusionment, a West Coast 'Sweet Smell of Success,' if success smelled like Victoria's Secret body mist.
These strokes are indifferently compelling. Weiss falters in building stakes or sympathy for the self he describes. A 22-year-old college grad distracted from working on his novel? Oh no! And there is a cloying quality to his repeated insistence that he is too pure, too talented to do the work of a tabloid reporter. Many of us who make a life in journalism have done as bad or worse, without ever expensing our drinks.
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