Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 18, 1993< TAG: 9303170059
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LYNN ELBER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
FIGHT FOR FACT-BASED DRAMAS RAGES
Ambulance-chasing, if not drama, may be raised to new heights by television's increasingly frenzied scramble to turn headlines into movie fodder.Networks are lunging for quickie films spun from New York's World Trade Center bombing and the deadly standoff in Waco, Texas, and other human tragedies and triumphs.
READ about it in the press. SEE it on TV news. MARVEL at the tabloid gossip. And then, perhaps in mere months, GO BEHIND THE HEADLINES with an "inspired by" TV movie - or two, or three (if Amy Fisher is involved).
Producers jockey to buy rights. Facts are sliced and diced into a script, which may have a tenuous link to reality. Production is hurried so a network can emerge first with the melodrama promising the REAL STORY.
Even as Branch Davidian sect leader David Koresh kept Army tanks at bay in Waco, NBC announced a dramatization to air as part of its "In the Line of Duty" movie series about slain officers. Four lawmen died in the siege.
An NBC film on the Feb. 26 Trade Center bombing also was announced and could be broadcast as early as May - one of four important "sweeps" periods used by local stations to set ad rates.
Gary Coker, Koresh's former attorney in Waco, said he's received eight or nine offers for as much as $100,000 for rights.
"TV movies, miniseries and [theatrical] movies. This is pretty amazing since the guy might be dead," Coker told the Daily News of Los Angeles.
The NBC "Line of Duty" segment, at this point, is based solely on public records, said Ken Kaufman of Patchett Kaufman Entertainment, the project's producer. No rights have been purchased.
About 20 people, including firefighters and teachers, have sold their stories to Wilshire Court Productions, which is doing the trade center film for NBC.
Four skiers rescued last month after three days in the Colorado wilderness have signed with a talent agency to turn their ordeal into a movie, while a fifth skier in the party with a conflicting story to tell is being pursued by a rival agency.
"Siege at County Hospital" about the Feb. 8 shooting of three Los Angeles doctors in the nation's busiest emergency room is already in production for NBC.
Speed is imperative, Kaufman said.
"It's a funny world out there. Undoubtedly, in the present climate, other people would jump in if our project were delayed," he said.
Haste will not undermine quality, he insisted. Others say there's little time to focus on perspective or effectively sift through the often-conflicting viewpoints that sources may offer.
The quest for reality-based films is unlikely to abate as long as ratings remain dependable.
In one three-day period in February, CBS' "Family of Strangers" and "Judgment Day: The John List Story," and NBC's "Miracle on Interstate 880" garnered a total audience of more than 45 million households.
"I was told point-blank by executives at all three networks that it's close to impossible to sell fiction," said producer Michael O'Hara, whose projects include 1991's "Switched at Birth."
"They feel fact-based dramas have more juice, more built-in promotability," he said.
In an era where networks battle cable TV and video for attention and audiences, that is key - and helps explain the escalating competition.
"I've never seen it move this quickly," said CBS' John Matoian, in charge of movies and miniseries.
"That's exactly why we stayed away" from the Waco and New York stories, he said. "Once we discovered the rush in which people were going to tell the stories and before the endings were known, we weren't interested."
"I bet deals were done in the ambulance," speculated Kevin Mulligan, a TV industry consultant who recently was at the center of a movie rights' battle.
Mulligan helped conduct hospital room negotiations for James and Jennifer Stolpa, his stepson and daughter-in-law, who along with their infant son were stranded in a Nevada blizzard for eight days.
Within hours of the couple's rescue on Jan. 6, a half-dozen producers had tried to contact them at an emergency facility in remote Cedarville, Nev., Mulligan recalled.
The next day, when the Stolpas were moved to a Reno hospital, "Hollywood producers were starting to converge on us," said Mulligan, who brought in Michael Glanz of New York-based Athletes and Artists Inc. to help negotiate.
Bouquets arrived from hopeful companies. There were baby clothes and gifts, including tiny T-shirts emblazoned with the names of production firms. Some producers tried murmuring unkind remarks about the competition.
"Now you have this feeding frenzy," observed O'Hara. "In the old days, you could go in and get rights to a story based on your track record, your approach to the story. You would go in and try to win over a family.
"That's all gone out the window. All it comes down to is the size of your checkbook," he said.