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The frontier of Britney Spears territory is marked with No Stopping signs that line Mulholland Drive for half a mile. Just past them, a brand new AMG Mercedes is nosed into a roadside run-off, a black shark of a car with twin exhaust pipes and a camera mounted on the windshield like the gun sight of a P51 fighter plane.

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In the passenger seat is Felix Filho, one of the top celebrity photographers in Los Angeles. At 35, he's the field commander for X17, a photo agency that specializes in covering the pop singer. On any given day, the company may have up to 70 photographers on the assignment.

"It's a big story," Filho says. "We can't miss anything."

Far below, at the foot of the dry hills, the city of Los Angeles glints in the sun. Up here, it's a different world. The air is perfumed with sage, and Ferraris and Lamborghinis glide through the famous Mulholland curves. Sopranos star James Gandolfini drives past, then singing star Lionel Richie and O.C. actress Mischa Barton. None of the photographers bothers to raise a camera. All they care about is Britney.

Up on this twisting cliff-top road where James Dean used to wring out his Porsche, several dozen paparazzi have been camped for months, covering Spears's every movement. They arrive each morning and string their cars tightly along the roadside, giving the area the look of an invasion site.

Right now, they're killing time. It's just over a week since she was quietly released from hospital where she had been undergoing a psychiatric evaluation and they were waiting for Spears to do … anything. A few are eating pizza from the trunk of a black Ford Focus. Others lounge in their vehicles, cleaning their cameras. Eduardo Sanchez, a muscled 26-year-old, shows his tattoo, which reads "Intensamente." ("Intensity," he explains.) Sanchez has been here from the start. "I see Britney more than I see my wife," he says.

Almost single-handedly, Spears has pushed celebrity journalism into overdrive. We all remember the frenzy of the O.J. trial and the paparazzi's relentless and ultimately tragic harassment of Diana, Princess of Wales, in the mid-1990s. But those scenes look tame compared with the circus under way around Spears. It is her antics that have made Los Angeles the centre of the paparazzi universe, home of the 200-photographer scrum, the 50-car chase and the "digital hose down" — paparazzi slang for a motor-driven, multiframe street shot taken against the subject's will. The annulled Vegas wedding, the custody battle, the kids without car seats, the pantyless limousine exits and what may be history's most overexamined psychiatric meltdown have provided what one photo agency owner calls "the ultimate reality show."

The free-for-all surrounding the tattered 26-year-old pop princess has grown so disturbing that some L.A. politicians have proposed a "Britney bill" — new legislation to restrict the paparazzi.

Two decades ago, there were about 20 paparazzi in Los Angeles. Today, there are between 400 and 500, and the number is rising by the month. Many of the newcomers are Brazilians, recruited from the ranks of L.A.'s hotel and parking-lot workers — trades that provide first-hand intelligence about the stars. Other paparazzi newcomers are arriving from across America, drawn by the prospect of a photographic Eldorado that could set them up for life. "You get the right picture, and it's going to be a million," says Andrew Deetz, an Albuquerque, N.M., transplant who has earned a reputation as one of the most aggressive paparazzi in Los Angeles.

Deetz, 24, has the antsy, wired-for-speed demeanour of a thrash-metal guitarist, and he looks like he hasn't slept for a week. He says he has been diagnosed with severe attention-deficit disorder — a condition he considers a plus in his chosen profession: "I need the action," he says.

He has just returned to the Britney chase — on his lawyer's advice, he took a six-month hiatus after he and another photographer were allegedly attacked by one of Spears's bodyguards. For Deetz, a high-school dropout and ex-skateboarder, leaving the round-the-clock Britney stakeout was like going off drugs cold turkey: "Britney is the greatest story because anything can happen. She'll be walking down the street and — boom She shaves her head Then — bam She strips off and jumps in the ocean."

But the past few days have been a dry spell — Spears has been holed up, like a zoo creature that refuses to come out of its shelter, in her home in a gated community up the road. The photographers have the resigned air of infantry grunts waiting for the Tet offensive.

Max Garcia, a 27-year-old paparazzo with wire-framed sunglasses and a cigarette dangling from his lip, has just taken delivery of a new car — a Nissan G37S, polished black, with 330 horsepower. He hopes it's enough. Spears's stable includes a 600-horsepower Mercedes. "You need something quick to keep up with Britney," he says. "You've got to be on your game."

And then a cellphone call changes the pattern of the day: A contact tells Filho that Spears is headed to the Millennium Dance Complex in North Hollywood. Filho keeps this information to himself — he is said to have the best Britney contacts in the paparazzi business, including members of her household staff, who send text messages to his cellphone about her whereabouts.

THE CHASE

Filho and his partner quietly slide into the black Mercedes and make some calls, positioning the rest of the X17 troops for the impending action. Experience has taught them Spears is unpredictable. And the biggest paydays — such as when Spears ran into a hair salon and shaved her head last year (those photos earned half a million dollars for X17) — usually pop up unexpectedly.

When Filho's Mercedes rolls out, the rest of the paparazzi realize something's afoot and bolt for their cars. Then they realize X17 has cars heading in both directions, creating a moment of panic — some pull desperate U-turns across Mulholland, creating traffic chaos.

Spears's vehicle — a black Cadillac Escalade driven by one of her bodyguards — appears, heading down the mountain along Coldwater Canyon Drive. Dozens of paparazzi speed to the scene, alerted by cell and text messages. Trying to catch up, some of them hit over 180 kilometres an hour, running every red light and blasting through traffic with their fists on the horn.

Twenty minutes later, the paparazzi army has assembled outside the plain-looking building on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood where Spears takes dance classes. She is inside. No one has a picture yet. The curtains of the dance studio have been drawn, and the front door is flanked by a team of security guards in yellow nylon jackets. The only photographic vantage point is the back door, which is behind a brick wall, on the far side of a parking lot that belongs to a gym. A chain has been drawn across the lot entrance, and two hard-eyed security guards from the gym are standing watch.

One of them is Chyna, whose muscle-bound shoulders are covered with martial-arts tattoos. His partner is Rass, who looks like a biped Doberman. It will cost $25 (U.S.) a person to enter the lot, they announce, and $25 more for a vehicle. About 40 photographers pay up, back their vehicles against a wall, stand on them, and start shooting.

Craig Williams, a videographer for Hollywood.TV, sits on top of his grey GMC Yukon, looking over the wall into the small paved space behind the dance studio. Spears's Escalade is just a couple of metres away, with a carpeted step next to its opened side door. A canopy has been set up to shade the area, and a group of young male dancers sit beneath it in lounge chairs, swaying to the beat of the music pumping out the studio's back door.

"They want to be the next Kevin Federline," Williams says. "They're just waiting to be CHOSE"

In the 1990s, Williams was a beat maker at the Death Row Records rap label. He has the cool, assured air of a man who's been around the block a few times. Now, at 47, he has emerged as a top paparazzo, known for his fearlessness behind the wheel and his unerring ability to be in the right place at the right time. Williams is sometimes accompanied by his 15-year-old son, who recently started shooting for an L.A. photo agency — in his first week on the job, his son made $2,000 when he managed to get a few frames of Spears.

Williams scopes the scene. The value of whatever pictures he gets today will be reduced by the sheer number of photographers on hand — many will get the exact images that he does. There are dozens of photographers arrayed along the wall. Several more have taken up position on the balconies of a nearby apartment building, where tenants have charged up to $100 for access. It gets worse — a helicopter has arrived, circling overhead with two photographers hanging out the door like waist gunners.

Suddenly, Spears emerges from the back door, a small figure in a blue shirt and torn black fishnet stockings. Dozens of cameras fire at once, like an artillery fusillade. Spears darts behind a pillar and lights a cigarette. Each time she leans out, the cameras fire again.

A few minutes later, Spears grinds out the cigarette and walks back into the building, each step accompanied by a white blaze of strobe lights. Then it's back to waiting. The photographers shoot the breeze about the day's events — a paparazzo's wife has just dumped him. Another totalled a brand new Nissan in today's chase.

"Sucks," someone says. A photographer tries to improve his vantage point by pulling away a section of chain-link fence on top of the wall. A security guard spots him and runs over: "You keep that shit up, I'm going to snatch your ass off there" he yells.

A few minutes later, the security guards return, and announce there are too many photographers on the wall — they want to evict all but a handful, who will be required to pay a $250 surcharge to command "premium positions."

"You gonna just keep taxing us" shouts Williams. "We paid, and you took the money"

The guards retreat. The photographers wonder if paying for access to the top of the wall was worth it. They have some images, but nothing special. The sun sets. The photographers wait. Finally, Spears re-emerges for another cigarette — and another flashbulb bombardment from the photographers. Spears suddenly turns, as if she has noticed them for the first time: "Oh my God" she yells. "Oh my God"

"She's nuts" one of the videographers says. "I got some good footage"

Then Spears is gone again. One photographer curses quietly — his batteries died at the pivotal moment, leaving him without a single saleable frame. But Tony Vera, a videographer who moonlights as a fire-eater on Venice Beach, has scored a few seconds of Britney footage. Last year, Vera made the news when Spears's vehicle ran over his foot. "It was worth it," he said. "I got the shot."

'WE NEED THEM, AND THEY NEED US'

The modern-day relationship between celebrities and paparazzi is a symbiotic one: When a C-list starlet (who just happens to be in a new movie) is photographed necking poolside at the Chateau Marmont, it is rarely by chance. It is a choreographed event, set up by the starlet's agent to create buzz.

"We need them, and they need us," says Frank Griffin, co-owner of Bauer-Griffin, an L.A. photo agency. "Without us, no one would care about them."

Spears provides the ultimate example of this interdependent relationship, says Griffin: "With Britney, there's nothing candid. She provokes it, and she's part of it. She's a narcissistic, screwed-up kid.… She can't live without them [the paparazzi], and they can't live without her."

From the earliest days of her career, Spears courted photographers. When Baby One More Time hit the top of the charts in 1999, she was prom queen of the world. She lived in front of the camera: When she and backup dancer Kevin Federline married, they turned their homemade videos into a TV reality show called Britney & Kevin — Chaotic.

By the time things started to go south for her, with her marital breakup and custody battles, Spears was already locked into a dysfunctional relationship with the paparazzi — it was the media equivalent of a trailer-park romance, filled with cheesy drama.

Spears now even dates a paparazzo — Adnan Ghalib, a suave Afghan who bought a Mercedes with the money he made shooting her. (Many wonder what kind of pictures Ghalib might have of Spears, and whether they will ever see the light of day.)

As one X17 shooter puts it: "Britney loves us. You really thinks she wants us to go away?"

Many of the photographers who follow her treat Spears like a sister who just happens to be a cash cow. When she dropped a $35,000 diamond earring on Sunset Boulevard last year, X17 photographer Sandro Rodriguez found it and gave it back to her. A paparazzo once changed a flat tire for her. Another programmed her car's GPS.

In Griffin's view, Spears has blazed a new and disturbing trail in her relationship with the press: "This is a unique case. And not a healthy one." Most stars follow a predictable cycle of fame, he says: "When they start out, they're begging to get their picture taken. Then they get famous and they want you to go away. When George Clooney was starting out, he'd do cartwheels naked down Sunset Strip to get attention."

Savvy stars learn how to manage the paparazzi. Some (such as Sean Penn) move out of town. Others make selective appearances to create buzz for pet projects or to buff their images — such as Tom Cruise, who counteracted persistent gay rumours by marrying Katie Holmes and appearing in a series of strategic photo ops painting him as a husband, father and Hollywood stud. (Yet now Cruise is back underground. "Scientology's got him on lockdown Nothing happens," Deetz says. "He's a zero.")

Griffin points to Jennifer Lopez as a prime example of how to escape the paparazzi. "When she was with P. Diddy, we shot her all the time. She was cannon fodder. Then she married Marc Anthony and disappeared."

Britney could do the same thing, Griffin says: "The whole thing is sick. It's twisted up in who she is."

Unhealthy or not, the Spears saga has been golden for the gossip industry. Spears has topped the annual overall Yahoo online search rankings in six of the past seven years (and was No. 2 on the list of top online searches in Canada, second only to hockey, according to Yahoo). It's speculated that such Britney fascination largely fuelled substantial circulation gains at magazines such as US Weekly and British import OK (10 per cent and 23 per cent respectively) in the second half of 2007, compared with sharply slipping numbers at some "serious" magazines such as Time last year.

X17 recently launched its own Web portal and says hits have jumped by 50 per cent in the past few weeks alone. "We're tapped into something that the public really wants," says X17 co-owner Brandy Navarre. "It's making a lot of old-school media think hard about what they do."

The business model in some instances is very seductive. Gossip blogger Perez Hilton (whose real name is Mario Lavandeira) reportedly gets more than 2.6 million visitors a month to his website, and runs his empire for almost nothing — until recently, he operated from an Internet hot spot in a Sunset Boulevard coffee shop. Many of the photos he uses are e-mailed to him by industry contacts at no cost (a practice that has sparked a lawsuit from X17, which accuses him of stealing their copyrighted images).

"This business is a runaway train," says Brad Elterman, owner of Buzzphoto, an L.A. agency. "It's huge, and it's only going to get bigger."

Not surprisingly, the ascendance of celebrity journalism strikes some as a sign of Western civilization's decay: "There is a terrible vacuum in our culture, and this speaks to it," says Tim Blackmore, an author and professor of media studies at the University of Western Ontario. "You have to ask yourself what's going on when these are the narratives that we pay attention to."

Varda Burstyn, an award-winning Canadian cultural critic and policy consultant, thinks the rise of Spears and the media industry that profits from her speaks to a serious slide in community values: "What are Britney's accomplishments?" she asks. "Smoking and driving the baby without a car seat?"

EVERYONE (and no one) IS A PRO

It's another perfect day up on the mountain near Britney's house. Frank, a photographer with chrome sunglasses and a triangle of swept-back hair that gives him the look of Elvis Presley trapped in a wind tunnel, gives thanks to the gods of commerce for putting Spears upon the Earth.

Frank has a wife, two kids and a mortgage, and his pictures of Spears pay the bulk of the bills. But things are changing. "There's too many people up here," Frank says. "Anyone can buy a digital camera."

It doesn't take long to illustrate his point. A busload of Japanese tourists rolls past and the windows are filled with lenses. The tourists wave at Frank. He smiles and mutters, "Fuck you."

A Red Bull promotional vehicle pulls up — a Mini Cooper with a giant can of Red Bull mounted on the back like a cannon. It's driven by a pair of beautiful girls — one of them is packing a high-def Handycam she has just used to shoot some footage of the scene outside Spears's gated community.

They hand Frank a cold drink. He's appreciative, but what if the Red Bull girls got a picture that he didn't? "Everyone's a paparazzi now," Frank mourns.

Parked next to Frank is a 25-year-old paparazzo who lives at home with his parents — two months ago, he was working in a warehouse, stacking cushions and garden furniture for $7.75 an hour. Now he's making about 50 per cent more — better, but no jackpot.

It's early afternoon. Spears is still holed up, and Deetz's hyperactive cellphones (he has two) have fallen silent. He decides to cruise Beverly Hills, gambling that a marketable celebrity will be out and about. Steering through the rolling streets, he points out the homes of the stars — the Olsen twins compound ("both nuts," he says), the home of X-rated publisher Larry Flynt, then Keanu Reeves's house, a stainless-steel and granite monolith that looks like a giant Bang & Olufsen stereo amplifier.

His iPhone rings. Gavin Rossdale (Gwen Stefani's husband) has been spotted in the area. Deetz doesn't see much of a picture in Rossdale, but Stefani is another matter — she's pregnant, making her image more valuable than usual.

"A picture needs a story," he says. "Without a story, it's worth nothing. It's just a picture."

Deetz has no ethical qualms about the paparazzi business. "People buy the magazines because they want to see the pictures," he says. "If they don't want us to shoot celebrities, stop buying the magazines." He also doesn't sweat the minor details like spelling — his business card reads "Celeberty Tips Wanted."

He's asked about Nick Stern, a paparazzo who recently quit the business to protest the aggressive tactics used to pursue Spears. Deetz considers his answer for less than a second: "The guy's just a pussy, that's all. Fuck him if he can't handle it."

'AN UGLY, UGLY BUSINESS'

Paparazzo and agency owner Frank Griffin is having a late lunch and wondering what the paparazzi world is coming to. "It's all smash and grab now," he says. "An ugly, ugly business."

At 58, he is a well-established veteran — Bauer-Griffin has about four-dozen photographers in its stable. He's seen dramatic changes since he came to L.A. nearly 20 years ago, and blames Spears for the worst of them.

"To me, the story isn't what Britney's doing," he says. "It's how she's worked 150 guys into a frenzy and made them believe that they're photographers."

To illustrate his point, he takes a guest on a tour of Beverly Hills in his burgundy Range Rover. He shakes his head at the paparazzi legions clustered near Spears's house. "It's ridiculous," he says. "They're not even photographers. They're a bunch of guys who would have been changing people's oil for $8 an hour if this hadn't come along."

As paparazzi go, Griffin is virtual royalty, a trained photographer with a pedigree that includes covering the fall of the Berlin Wall and several decades as a rock 'n' roll documentarian. On his office wall is a photograph of him walking with the members of Led Zeppelin.

Griffin's arrival on the L.A. paparazzi scene was part of a personal resurrection following a divorce and bankruptcy in the 1980s. He came to California in 1989 "busted flat," spent the last of his savings on a Harley and moved in with friends who lived in San Diego.

Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford lived near the people he was staying with. When they got married, his friends suggested a tabloid might be interested in a picture. Griffin got the pictures, and sold them for a surprising amount of money.

In 1994, Griffin followed O.J. Simpson on the famous white Bronco chase down Interstate 405, slicing through traffic on his Harley. Griffin soon found himself in constant demand — the O.J. case was the start of an era for North American paparazzi.

Griffin worked around the clock, and lived the good life. "It was fantastic," he says. "The next best thing to crime."

But he doesn't like the way things are going at the moment. He despises X17, his rival agency, and refers to their photographers as "Britnerati."

"In the old days, no one even got out of their car," he says. "It was all very discreet. Now, it's a gang-bang. That's what these guys have made it." The 24/7 approach to covering Spears has resulted in a sharp drop in the average age of a paparazzo — Griffin estimates that most are now between 18 and 28: "A bunch of knuckle-scraping mouth-breathers," says Griffin. "They're making $1,500 a month if they're lucky."

Compared with typical media headquarters, Griffin's office is as a shock. Set above a store on Melrose Avenue, the space is the size of a two-bedroom apartment, and the business appears to operate on nothing but a few telephones and desktop computers. But appearances are deceiving — last year, Bauer-Griffin grossed more than $8-million. On its computer hard drives are hundreds of thousands of pictures — everything from red-carpet shots to the infamous pictures of Spears flashing her private parts (hardly exclusive these days). The company has scored a few lucrative exclusives — in November of last year, for example, a Bauer-Griffin shooter captured images of Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon together on a street in Rome. The pictures confirmed the rumours that the stars were now a couple, and were sold to People magazine, earning Bauer-Griffin about $250,000.

Bauer-Griffin was also there when Spears shaved her head last year — a moment that the paparazzi consider the equivalent of the JFK assassination in terms of its news value. If the images had been exclusive, Griffin believes they would have been worth well over $1-million. Unfortunately, X17 photographers were also there. Even so, Griffin's company made a healthy profit.

As the sun sets over Melrose Avenue, Griffin and partner Randy Bauer are still at the office. The phones are ringing. A caller tells Griffin that Eva Mendez is heading to a rehab centre in Salt Lake City. Someone else buzzes Bauer: The Kardashian sisters are going to the Pure nightclub.

Agency owners like Griffin pay a lot of money to a vast network of people who help them keep track of the stars — among those whose palms are greased are valet parkers, manicurists, house cleaners, personal assistants and limousine drivers.

Others supply information for free. "Most of the sources are driven by jealousy or hatred," Griffin says. "People come here to be stars, but only 1 per cent of them make it. So the other 99 per cent are parking the cars and serving the food. They want to get back at the ones who made it, and they also want to be part of the game — calling in a tip means that you're in it."

'SHOOT FIRST, FIND OUT WHO THEY ARE LATER'

Down on Robertson Avenue, a pack of paparazzi have staked out the Ivy, a restaurant that is one of the most sure-fire celebrity locations in L.A.

Some stars come on the pretext that they're buying a pair of shoes, or that they're having lunch. But as everyone knows, going to Robertson Boulevard entails an unspoken contract with the paparazzi — if you have any degree of fame whatsoever, you are going to be photographed.

Among the half-dozen shooters today is Kevin Rush, a 48-year-old British photographer who works for a London agency. He stands beneath a tree near the Ivy, with a black Canon SLR slung around his neck.

"Shoot first, find out who they are later," he says. "You can't make money if you don't take a picture." This philosophy has been borne out by experience — last year, he photographed a woman at a heliport in St. Tropez because he noticed that she had bodyguards. The woman turned out to be the mother of former tennis star Boris Becker's love child, and Rush made some money.

Rush sees his role as that of a conscience, pricking the balloon of celebrity with pictures that show the truth, whatever that may be. Against the PR image of perfection, he offers photographic evidence of inebriation, weight gain, crushing stupidity and bad driving: "If you're going to do something wrong, don't do it in front of me," he says. "I'm going to snap it. And I'm going to sell the picture."

There's a sudden commotion across the street — a pack of photographers is jostling in front of a clothing store, pushing each other out of the way like jackals fighting for space at a carcass. Rush sprints to the scene, dodging a stream of Porsches and Toyotas that have slowed to watch. He jams his way into the pack and fires a few frames.

In front of the lenses is a woman with a blond bobbed haircut and makeup so thick that it looks like an undertaker might have applied it. Rush doesn't recognize her. Neither does anyone else. "Who are you?" one of the photographers asks.

"Rena Riffel," she says. "I'm an actress."

"What were you in?" someone asks.

"I was in Showgirls," Riffel says as she poses. "I played Penny."

"Who was Penny?" someone asks.

The paparazzi pack disintegrates, abandoning Riffel, who has failed to register on their celebrity scale. "She's not worth a picture," says one cameraman. "Unless she gets hit by a truck."

'MAKE ROOM FOR PARIS'

It's Sunday. But there is no rest for paparazzi — they have returned to the Millennium Dance Complex after being tipped that Spears is scheduled for another dance class. Rass and Chyna, the gym security guards, have set up shop at the parking-lot entrance again, but the price of admission has now risen from $25 to $150 — an increase of 600 per cent since their last visit.

Chyna controls the only spot where they can get a picture of Spears: "It's worth money," he says.

The paparazzi grumble, but they realize that they are at the mercy of the latest micro-economy to spring up around Spears. About 25 of them pay up, head over to the wall and climb on top of their vehicles.

Half an hour later, word comes that Spears is en route to the dance studio. The photographers brace for action. The minutes pass, but there's still no sign of Spears. A cellphone rings. The call is from a spotter who's tailing Spears — her vehicle has pulled a U-turn, just five blocks away, and she is now headed somewhere else.

The paparazzi groan, but there's still hope. "She'll come back," one of them says.

She doesn't. Instead, she is spotted at a Starbucks — "It's in the Valley," groans one of the paparazzi.

But not everyone has lost. The security guards, who share the parking-lot toll with the gym's owners, are feeling good. This morning, Chyna had only $2 in his pocket and was wondering whether he'd be able to pay his rent. Now he's got $700.

"Thank you," he says. "Thank you, Britney."

Andrew Deetz, meanwhile, has taken a day off from the Spears chase. He's down on Melrose Place, staking out a salon where Paris Hilton is getting a manicure.

"I'm sick of Britney," he says. "Paris isn't as big a picture, but it's a lot easier."

There are about a dozen photographers on hand — a fraction of the crowd Spears draws. Deetz is accompanied by Ryan Somers, a childhood friend who quit a car sales job in Albuquerque to join the L.A. paparazzi. It's not going as well as he hoped. As a car salesman, he made up to $70,000 a year. Now, he's lucky to make half that.

"There's a lot of guys on the street," he says. "And they're all going after the same thing."

Somers and Deetz wait for more than an hour, sprinting between the salon's front and rear entrances to make sure they don't miss the picture. Hilton finally emerges, a surprisingly small, bored-looking figure. She has a shopping bag slung on her wrist and she's talking to someone on her cellphone. Her bodyguard has delivered her powder-blue Bentley. To get to it, she has to go through the small crowd of photographers, strobes flashing.

"Make room for Paris" one of the photographers yells. "Let her through"

Most of the photographers pull back, but a few keep pushing toward the car, trying for a better picture. "Come on" someone yells. "Take it easy here — this isn't Britney"