Menendez Murders Spark Stampede for TV Rights

If ever a murder case seemed destined for the Hollywood treatment, the slayings of Carolco Pictures executive Jose Menendez and his wife, Kitty, was it.

Shotgunned to death in their Beverly Hills mansion late last summer, the Menendezes had traveled among the elite of the film and music industry, and the mystery in Hollywood’s own back yard spawned a wealth of rumors. Within a few months, very quietly, movie and book deals were being floated.

Then, on March 8, Beverly Hills police delivered a stunning twist: The Menendezes’ two sons were accused in the murders. Efforts to transform the crime into a made-for-TV movie exploded. Today, as 22-year-old Lyle Menendez and his 19-year-old brother Erik sit in jail, waiting to enter a plea, the rush to secure story rights from people involved in the true-life drama is setting new standards for Hollywood hustle.

There is some fear that the extraordinary frenzy will complicate court proceedings. In some quarters, the fierce competition seems to have occasioned soul-searching over what some people see as crass exploitation. But that view, it appears, is the exception.

Consider actress-turned-producer Karen Lamm. A self-described confidante and aerobics buddy of Kitty Menendez, Lamm had been trying to package a TV movie on the murders since mid-December. It was then, she said, that questions asked of her by Beverly Hills investigators made her suspicious about the sons’ possible role. Her spadework enabled New World Television and CBS last week to break first from the pack and announce the first development deal.

“It’s piranhas coming at each other, and they’re all ready to bite,” Lamm said. “The point in announcing it as quickly as we did is that we were on this months ago, and this is a done deal, and it’s important to let people know that.”

Consider, too, aspiring screenwriter Craig Cignarelli. He and Erik co-wrote “Friends,” a script in which a young man and his friend plot to murder his parents. Calls for the 19-year-old Cignarelli, considered a likely witness, are now being fielded by an entertainment lawyer. Contrary to rumor, “Friends” is not for sale, the lawyer said. Nor, he added, are Cignarelli’s story rights--”at this time.”

And consider Carolco Pictures itself. On the Friday that news of the allegations broke, a producer affiliated with Carolco was on the telephone to Beverly Hills police, Cignarelli, newspaper reporters and others, seeking to sign up people with access to the inside story to cooperate on a docudrama.

But Carolco executives quickly squelched that venture, saying it happened without their assent. And a week later Carolco--best known for making the “Rambo” films--went further, saying it would try to prevent anyone from making a film about the Menendez case.

“We do not think it is appropriate for anyone to make a docudrama about this terrible tragedy, especially when the facts of the case are still not known,” Tom Levine, Carolco’s vice president of corporate development, said in a statement released Monday. “We . . . will do everything in our power to stop such a film from being made.”

If Carolco’s statement sounds like un-Hollywood introspection, one independent producer offered a different interpretation. “Sounds like sour grapes to me,” said Steven White, who is not pursuing the Menendez project. “Really, it’s fine for them to set standards for themselves, not for them to say what other people should do.”

Relatives of the Menendez family, who have rallied around Lyle and Erik, proclaiming their innocence, have expressed disgust that the deal-making has begun so long before a court resolution.

But speed is of the essence in Hollywood. And--if the frenzy seems cynical and exploitative--it also reflects how the American public looks more and more to reality for its entertainment. Dramatic re-enactments of crimes are the staple of “tabloid TV” and “magazine” shows, ranging from “America’s Most Wanted” to “A Current Affair” to “Saturday Night with Connie Chung.”

Beyond the fact it is a true story, glamour, money and intrigue explain why the Menendez case has become such an attractive commodity.

“I can’t tell you if these boys are guilty or innocent, but the very fact that they are accused calls up more than morbid curiosity,” White said. “It speaks to every parent. Matricide and patricide go back to Greek drama.”

“Good” crime stories command big viewer ratings.

“The fact is that audience research has shown that movies which are tied to real events tend to do better, as a class, than fictional movies,” said entertainment lawyer Don Zachary.

In general, the network pays the producer a license fee ranging from $1 million to $4 million for a movie or a four-hour miniseries. On a movie with a budget of $2 million, industry sources say, a network might earn an average of $2.6 million in advertising dollars, the same amount on a rerun, and even more if the first showing was a hit. Thus, a $2-million movie could gross more than $5.2 million.

Similarly, the book industry has long been enthralled with the true crime genre. Today, such books as Joe McGinnis’ “Blind Faith” and Joseph Wambaugh’s “The Blooding” rank alongside the latest diet plans on the nation’s best-seller lists. Five book proposals are known to be in circulation about the Stuart murder case in Boston.

At least two book proposals concerning the Menendez case are being shopped among New York publishing houses. (Times reporters Ronald L. Soble and John Johnson are among the prospective authors. Publishers declined to identify any other would-be authors.)

The Menendez case is “a natural,” said David Rosenthal, an editor at Random House. “It’s all these wonderful themes that go back a long way in time--(patricide and matricide), greed, deceit, money.”

The race to be first in a true-crime project often begins with story rights--an element that serves both dramatic and legal purposes. The constitutional protections afforded the press often don’t apply to dramatic depictions on film and TV, especially if the subject is not a public figure. A handful of releases signed by people involved in the true story reduces the risk of litigation, Zachary said.

For writers and directors, story rights play a different role. While the verifiable public record--newspaper accounts, police and court transcripts--establish a framework, intimate details help give the movie dramatic power.

“The rights that you buy dramatize those private moments that may not emerge from court transcripts,” said Helen Verno, a New World Television executive.

It makes for an unusual bazaar. Say a network provides a $2.5-million bankroll for a two-hour TV movie project. Five percent--or $125,000 in this case--typically will be budgeted for “writing and rights.” Then, as one producer said, “It gets real tricky.”

A first-rate screenwriter may command $75,000, leaving $50,000 to be spent on story rights from any number of people. A crucial figure in the true story--a police detective who solves a whodunit, for example--will likely be offered more money than, say, the friends of a murder victim. If certain friends should balk, the producer may simply go to the other acquaintances--and write the reluctant friends out of the script.

Beverly Hills detectives already have been contacted by Lamm and several others, said Lt. Robert Curtis. But such involvement is against department policy in an open case, Curtis said.

“We think it’s unethical to get involved,” Curtis said. “It could jeopardize the case.”

Police cooperation is by no means essential to crime dramas. Another notorious Beverly Hills homicide that became a controversial TV miniseries drama concerned Joe Hunt and the so-called Billionaire Boys Club. “That was done without our cooperation at all,” Curtis said. The police lieutenant thought that docudrama “was pretty good.”

NBC aired the “Billionaire Boys Club” miniseries in November, 1987, after Hunt had been convicted of murdering Ron Levin, who involved the “boys” in a bogus commodities scheme. NBC was criticized broadly because the jury was still out in the case of Hunt’s bodyguard, Jim Pittman, who had been charged as an accessory to Levin’s murder. Moreover, Hunt and his cohorts had not yet gone to trial in a second murder case.

People who approach news events from the entertainment perspective are weary of the way Hollywood’s lust for “good” crime yarns is criticized--often by the press.

“The thing I resent in the media is the fact that the media, both electronic and print, exposes everything about these people, then turns around and criticizes the TV docudrama makers for following behind them,” said producer White, a former movie and miniseries executive at NBC and ABC now involved in a docudrama based on injuries linked to the Dalkon Shield birth-control devices.

“This is all about the increasing intrusion and exposure of people’s private lives,” he said. “That’s why the docudrama form has gone from a sort of gentle, well-researched, rights-oriented form to this rush to get something on the air. . . . Now we’re only 10 paces behind the TV news van. We used to be ambulance-chasing.”

Nonetheless, the wheeling and dealing in the Menendez case might complicate the court proceedings in unanticipated ways, especially because the rights race is taking place so early in the process.

Lamm first envisioned her project in mid-December when she was being interviewed by Beverly Hills police investigators about Kitty Menendez. Their questions seemed to implicate the sons, she said.

“I asked as many questions as I answered,” she said.

Although declining to offer specifics, Lamm said her close, yearlong friendship with Kitty, as well as with other family associates, gave her information about the case which has not been revealed in police reports or news articles. She added that she has obtained the rights to the stories of some people close to the Menendez family, but declined to reveal their names.

Attorney Gerald Chaleff, who is representing Lyle Menendez, said any witness with a direct or potential financial stake in the case may be biased in favor of a guilty verdict, which he said “certainly makes a better story.”

If Lamm were to be called as a prosecution witness, Chaleff said, “I’d certainly cross-examine her. I’d want to know who she’s been talking to about movie rights.”

Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, said such concerns are irrelevant in how the Menendez case will be prosecuted.

Lamm, who has tentatively titled her project, “The Beverly Hills Murders,” seems unconcerned that she might be criticized for attempting to profit from her friend’s death.

“Some of us are survivors,” she said. “I hate to take a tragedy that I was close to and have it benefit me, but this is an incredible story . . . and why shouldn’t it be done by someone who is close to the situation?”

Lamm herself is currently one of the subjects of a TV movie being made for ABC, tentatively titled “Heroes and Villains,” about the Beach Boys. Actress Linda Dona portrays Lamm in the film, scheduled to air in May.

An actress who did TV commercials and had small parts in movies, Lamm, 37, was twice married to the late Dennis Wilson, drummer for the Beach Boys. Previously, she had been married to singer-songwriter Robert Lamm of the musical group Chicago.

Lamm said she first met Kitty at a party at the Menendez home. They became close immediately, she said, working out together at Sports Club L.A. in West Los Angeles. Lamm said she approached her agent, Mike Greenfield, about doing a movie based on the Menendez murders in mid-December and met with New World on Jan. 8. The studio assigned the project to Zev Braun, a veteran producer whose credits include the CBS Vietnam series “Tour of Duty.”

“At first, I was a little bit dubious,” Braun said. “But she (Lamm) started to tell me the story, and I was intrigued . . . and everything she told me came out in the indictment.”

Pat Faulstich, a CBS vice president who handles TV movies and miniseries, confirmed the “development deal,” but added that the network would not commit to broadcasting the movie until it sees a finished script, and a production timetable has not been established.

Among others in the Menendez race, Lamm has beaten to the punch Fox TV, Burt & Bert Productions (owned by Burt Reynolds and Bert Convy), Blue Andre Productions and Stonehenge Productions.

As producers fell over each other, the Hollywood Reporter announced that ABC had agreed to finance the Stonehenge project, with producer Dick Berg teaming up with free-lance journalist Bob Rand. But that, it turned out, was a deal that never was.

ABC said it considered Berg’s proposal and passed. Rand, who has written about the case for People magazine, said he had dinner with Berg, but they had not reached an agreement.

“I think it’s all a little premature,” Rand said. “I’m in the middle of a developing story and it’s not over. I don’t think it’s a simple case of greedy kids killing their parents.”

Entertainment lawyer Rick Unger said about a dozen producers, and several journalists, have tried to reach Craig Cignarelli. The script Cignarelli co-wrote with Erik Menendez was described in The Times as a screenplay about youths attempting to commit five perfect murders, including those of one of the boys’ parents.

Unger, in fielding calls to Cignarelli, described himself as a friend of the youth’s family; Cignarelli’s father is an executive at MGM-UA.

“At the beginning, people were under the impression I was selling the script, which was never the case,” Unger said. Mostly, he said, “the interest is in buying Craig’s story, whatever that story might be. Craig is unable to consider selling his story at this time, because he is going to be a witness of some sort in this proceeding.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that Cignarelli won’t someday sell his story.

“That’s a long time down the road,” the lawyer said, “and highly speculative.”