The death of Brad Renfro last week threw newspapers into a bit of a tizzy; few, if any, had a prepared obituary on file for the actor, who was only twenty-five years old and was regarded as, in the words of reporter John Rogers, "a relatively minor celebrity." News outlets have traditionally kept obituaries ready and on file, just in case, but one company rep who spoke to Rogers, Adam Bernstein of The Washington Post, said that he "couldn't recall any on a person under thirty." There have always been cases of celebrities dying young, of course. But now there seem to be more people who are very young and very famous — or, at least, who seemed reasonable famous recently enough that their deaths still count as news. In some cases, there's also the question of just how well-prepared one should be in the case of an event that, to put it crassly, not everyone would regard as shocking if it were to happen. (Last summer, Kim Masters of Slate ran a quote from an anonymous staffer at the gossip-heavy E! cable channel saying, "People feel like [Lindsay Lohan] is going to die — and we're not helping.") Lou Ferrara of the Associated Press singles out the death of Anna Nicole Smith as a "wake-up call" to the industry, a judgement that sort of makes you wonder, perhaps with a shudder, how overblown the coverage of that singular event might have been if the media had been fully prepared for it.
The AP has now performed a bit of a wake-up call itself by acknowledging that it has gone ahead and prepared an obituary for Britney Spears — you know, just in case a piece of a malfunctioning satellite should stray into the Earth's orbit and land on her head while she's handing out alms to the poor. Being considered both famous and doomed enough that the AP needs to have your obituary on tap when, like Spears, you've barely just turned twenty-six may be the ultimate back-handed compliment of all time, but there are reasons why many news services may be reluctant to follow suit. Life is unpredictable — if you don't believe me, cut Iggy Pop in half and count his rings — and some spoilsports, such as Robert Downey, Jr., have been known to pretty much get themselves together after a prolonged spell out on the ledge. (For the record, we at the Screengrab love the shit out of both Mr. Downey and Mr. Pop and wish them nothing but the best. Nor do we harbor any but the tenderest of concerns for Ms. Lohan or Ms. Spears.) For Adam Bernstein, it's a time and manpower issue: "It takes a significant chunk of your time to do it," he says of obituary writing and maintenance, "and there are people who are incredibly more accomplished and in their 100s."