Leave Britney Alone! Kid Signs TV Deal

Sept. 20, 2007 — -- Chris Crocker, the Internet sensation whose tear-filled video blog beseeching the public to "leave Britney alone" received more than 8 million hits on YouTube, has signed a deal to star in a reality show.

"It's going to pretty much be the 'Chris Crocker experience,'" Rasha Drachkovitch, co-founder of 44 Blue Productions told Variety magazine. "We consider him a rebel character that people will find interesting. He's going to be a TV star."

Variety reported that the Crocker show will be a "docusoap" centered on the gay 19-year-old, who lives in a small Tennessee town with his grandmother.

Amid all the trash talk that filled the blogosphere last week in the aftermath of Britney Spears' lackluster MTV VMA appearance, the Internet also played host to a series of fan-produced apologias, none more popular than the one posted by Crocker.

These Zapruder-like frame-by-frame video analyses by Spears' supporters seek to explain her sloppy stylings and costume choices, along with near hysterical pleas to end the criticism.

The plea produced by Crocker, which is a pseudonym, was so overdramatic in its call for a moratorium on trashing Britney that one could not help but to first laugh at his histrionics, then wonder if this was legitimately heartfelt or just an act, then rewatch it several times, and then ultimately e-mail the link to friends.

The video "Leave Britney Alone!" has had more than 8 million hitson YouTube, and has become -- perhaps as Crocker intended -- something new for the Internet to talk about rather than Britney's performance at Sunday's VMAs.

"Her song is called 'Gimme More' for a reason," Crocker cries in the video, addressing the camera through tear-smudged eyeliner and from underneath a bed sheet, "because all you people want is more, more, more, more, more!"

"Leave her alone," he wails, "you're lucky she even performed for you bastards."

Crocker is a complicated character. He wouldn't disclose his real name to ABC News, but said he was 19, lived in a small town in Tennessee and wanted to be an actor. Though the video is perfectly amateurish, many of the photos on his MySpace page look professionally shot and he admitted the posted clip was his second take.

He described many of the 64 other videos on his page as performance pieces, but insisted that his latest polemic was the real deal, an emotional request to, well, leave Britney alone.

"There's been a lot of speculation that because I do a lot of acting in my videos, that this wasn't actually a real moment," Crocker said.

Crocker has been posting videos on YouTube for six months and has acquired quite a fan base.