A hot tale and a good agent can buy fame and fortune. But at what cost?

by Erica Goode, Katia Hetter

        ______________________________________

        In the late afternoon of Feb. 28, 1994, a 16-year-old boy in faded bluejeans and a white T-shirt walked across the border from Mexico, presenting himself to the immigration agents at the San Ysidro checkpoint, just outside San Diego. Asked his nationality, the boy replied, "U.S.A. citizen." He carried no luggage, could provide no identification or address. What he did have, however, was in some ways more convincing proof of his American citizenship than any document or possession: He had a story to tell. 

        The first time the boy told his story was over the telephone, to his grandmother in Tennessee. The second time was to a San Diego police officer. But over the next weeks, the story would also be borrowed, for varying lengths of time and varying purposes, by many others: journalists, television anchors, movie executives, book agents, publicists and other middlemen. It would be retold in different voices, with different inflections, massaged for distribution in a variety of markets. A supermarket tabloid would headline the story: "Teen Battles to Free Sister From Mexico Nightmare." A book agent would call it "El Norte Meets The Great Adventure"; a Hollywood entrepreneur, "Oliver Twist Meets Home Alone." For the moment, though, the story still belonged to him alone. 

        Life's a commodity. "Human kind/Cannot bear much reality," the poet T.S. Eliot once wrote. That was before 95 million Americans watched a white Ford Bronco bearing O.J. Simpson lead police in a bizarre parade down the Los Angeles freeways, before a tawdry Long Island love triangle became the subject of three TV movies, before Tonya and Nancy and John and Lorena and Lyle and Erik, before a daily procession of television dramas, tabloid shows, talk shows and newsmagazines chronicled the scandals and woes of everyday life. 

        Indeed, the public's appetite for real life, translated into an ever expanding series of electronic echoes, seems insatiable: In 1984, the prime-time lineup featured only two newsmagazines and an early precursor to the "reality" show, "Ripley's Believe It or Not." Ten years later, viewers can select from nine newsmagazines, four full hours of reality programs and countless made-for-TV movies based on "true" stories, in addition to network and cable news coverage of sensational events and hours of chatter about everything dysfunctional. When one genre wears thin -- industry sources say enthusiasm for cop and rescue programs, for example, may be on the wane -- another emerges to take its place: CBS News this season debuted "Before Your Eyes," a series of three two-hour cinema verite documovies, which producer Jonathan Klein calls "a provocative innovation in reality programming." 

        In this deluge, celebrity scandal is often the centerpiece. But there are hours of airtime to fill and plenty of room for the average Joe who engages in kinky sex, steals his son's girlfriend, severs his wife's head or leaves his infant unattended in the bathtub. The end result is a scenario even Andy Warhol could not have envisioned, life itself traded as a commodity, Americans queuing up for their 15 minutes of fame while the phones ring, the bidding wars rage, the agents circle. Even a moderately compelling tale of woe can be parlayed into a trip to New York or Hollywood and a few nights at a fancy hotel. A truly juicy story can net thousands in movie rights and book contracts. 

        Yet in the rush to fill the void with eccentricity or pathos, what is really being bought and sold? For the storyteller, says University of Wisconsin Prof. Patricia Mellencamp, author of High Anxiety: Catastrophe, Scandal, Age, & Comedy, the bargain "is always a double edge. When I see some mother on `Rescue 911' telling a heartfelt story about her child almost dying, I always want to ask, `But do you understand you're being exploited?'" 

        The chase begins. When Alex Beard failed the routine catechism at the border checkpoint, the immigration inspector summoned the San Diego police. At first, the boy lied to the two officers who responded to the call about a "runaway." But eventually, Alex told the officers how 10 years earlier, he and his younger sister had been left in the care of a baby sitter in Tijuana. They waited, he said, but their mother, an American woman with a long history of arrests for prostitution and drugs, never returned. Soon the Mexican authorities stepped in, sending the two young children to a series of orphanages and foster homes. His sister, Adriana, he said, still lived in an orphanage near the small Baja town of San Vincente. 

        Years passed. Alex swam and rode horseback with other children. He learned to play the piano. As a teenager, he had difficulties at the orphanage and moved on to a series of schools and institutions, his sister staying behind. But deep down, he knew that this was not his country or his language. "I remembered my family and I knew English, so I knew I had to be American," he would later tell a reporter. "But [orphanage officials] told me I was born in Mexico [and that] I was Mexican." In 1992, Alex learned from documents that his family lived in Indiana. And a few years later, working at a business office in Baja, he began to call directory assistance in Indianapolis and its suburbs. "Do you have a number for anyone named Beard?" he would ask. 

        One day, he dialed a number and a man answered. "Yes, this is Walter Beard," he said. Alex spoke to his grandfather briefly, then waited for a return call from his grandmother, now living in Tennessee. The phone rang. "Thank God, thank God," she said. "Where are you?" The next day he crossed the border. Now he just wanted to go home, he told the police. 

        "Baloney," responded Officer Bruce Pendleton. "What's the real story?" Alex handed him a torn piece of paper with a Tennessee phone number on it. Soon after, the police officer and his partner bought the boy a "combo" at Rally's, handed him $12 for pocket money and put him on a Greyhound bus for Nashville. Pendleton made two more calls -- one to the police department's media relations officer, the other to an Indiana television station. "It was just such a good story," he later recalled. "I never heard a story like that before." 

        A few days later, someone else in the San Diego Police Department also picked up the phone, passing the story on to Tom Colbert, president of Industry R&D, a Hollywood firm specializing in feeding "true life" stories to media outlets. Colbert sensed the tale's potential, pegging it as a strong candidate for that week's Tip Sheet, faxed to 17 news organizations, producers, entertainment companies, magazines and book agents who pay IRD a monthly subscriber's fee. In Alex's story, Colbert recognized many of the elements that make stories attractive to his clients: It was a family drama, with strong, "focused" characters whose actions could encapsulate a "lesson" about old-fashioned American values, in this case, "family devotion," or perhaps "fighting for the truth." As described by the source, the boy was blond and blue-eyed -- characteristics, Colbert says, that networks and sponsors find especially attractive. (In reality, Alex has dark hair and eyes.) 

        Colbert confirmed the basics of the border saga with other San Diego law enforcement sources. On March 18, the IRD Tip Sheet contained 29 stories, each summarized briefly and capped by a headline designed to grab the attention of harried editors and producers. "Chains of Love?" told of a mother who chained down her teenage daughter to keep her out of trouble; "Give the Dogs a Bone" was about two dogs who rescued a Basque shepherd. Yet it was the lead item that stood out: 

        "LOST AND FOUND: A blond-haired, blue-eyed American boy -- abandoned at 9 years old in a Mexican orphanage -- fought well- meaning foster parents, cops, consulates, even border guards to get back to his Midwestern family. Now, after seven years of searching, he's worked his way north and located his grandmother. But the two aren't through with border politics: They're trying to bring home his sister, also trapped behind Mexican diplomatic red tape." 

        That's entertainment. The line between "news" and "entertainment" has never been as firm as purists might wish -- a dramatic story, compellingly told, has always drawn headlines and boosted sales, for the smallest local newspapers to the mightiest global news operations. Yet reality television obviates the distinction altogether, news becoming merely the raw material from which entertainment is crafted, events moving from the real world to the talk-show circuit, the tabloid shows and newsmagazines and finally to their enshrinement as a movie of the week. 

        For television executives, nonfiction programs make economic sense: A talk show or newsmagazine segment costs less to produce and air than a high-speed chase or spectacular explosion in a dramatic series. For the public, the fascination is more perplexing. Do such shows pander simply to base instincts or feelings of "at least I'm not that badly off"? Or do they simply cater to self-absorption? 

        Literary agent Bill Birnes, known in Hollywood as the "White Tornado" for his rapid-fire style of pitching story ideas, argues that TV movies "based on" true stories are attractive in part because they "pre-digest" the jumbled images of the evening news, providing a coherent narrative for random and fragmented events. "What happens on the news takes a lot of mental work to put together," Birnes says. Movies also smooth out the rough edges: "TV is supposed to make you happy. It's a smile-face medium. The last thing you want to do is get riled up." Birnes's vision of the future is a "500-channel universe" where anyone may be the camera's target, "at any moment the center of a full-blown feeding frenzy -- and then it will be gone." 

        Yet the appeal of "real life" on television may go further, feeding a hunger for folklore and morality play. Marshall McLuhan, the 1960s media commentator, noted television's capacity to imbue ordinary citizens with "a charismatic or mystic character." Transformed by the cameras, O.J. Simpson takes on the proportions of Greek tragedy, the Menendez brothers become figures out of legend. "Metaphor has left art and gone into current events," director Mike Nichols recently told Vanity Fair. "Where is there a hero who can fall from greater heights than Michael Jackson? Where is there more naked rivalry than between Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan?" 

        Piqued interest. The response to IRD's Lost and Found item was swift. Clients phoned for an extended write-up of Alex Beard's story, a list of sources and phone numbers. Globe Communications, publisher of three supermarket tabloids, expressed interest, as did book agent Birnes, ABC's "PrimeTime Live" and two movie producers - - Dan Paulson, an independent producer housed at Viacom, and Kim Rubin at Scripps Howard Productions. 

        On Tuesday, March 28, Colbert met with Paulson and Birnes in the producer's office on the 32nd floor of Universal City Plaza. The three men talked for a while about another IRD tip they were chasing, "Green Ice" -- the story of an "attractive blond undercover agent" for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration who posed as a drug dealer to link the Mafia with Colombian drug lords and expose a money-laundering scheme. "Lost and Found" also sounded promising, and Paulson was planning to shop the idea around the networks. "Whoever controls the kid's rights is it," said Birnes. "I can do the book without [the grandmother's] rights. It could be New American Libraries, could be Penguin. It's a very easy book to do, a very uplifting story of a boy finding his way home." 

        Colbert suggested Frank Klimko, a San Diego Union-Tribune police reporter who had broken the story about Alex, as a possible author. Pulling out a computerized directory and "teledialer," he located Klimko's number and held the device up to the telephone receiver. Then he waited while the tones registered and Klimko's phone began to ring. 

        Two thousand miles away, in the tiny town of Celina in northeastern Tennessee, the phone was ringing constantly in Lois Keene's living room. "Lois, how does it feel to have your grandson back?" "Lois, do you know what happened to Alex's mother?" The reporters and producers were polite, solicitous. Total strangers, they drew Keene out, listened sympathetically as she explained how she'd searched for her daughter, Bernita, and her grandchildren to no avail, commiserated when she complained of her poor health -- two heart attacks and osteoporosis that had left her partially disabled and financially strapped. Her daughter, she said, had been in trouble even as a teenager and now had disappeared altogether. As for Alex's homecoming, it was "just a miracle. I'd just about given up that I would ever see him again." 

        Six years before, when the prayers she offered at church each week for her daughter's return went unanswered, Keene had mailed off a letter and photos to "Unsolved Mysteries," a show Bernita always watched. A few weeks later, the pictures were returned, Keene said, with a note explaining that the story was lacking in "human interest." Now, it seemed, everybody was interested. A photographer from the Globe knocked on Keene's door and offered her $50 to take her picture -- she declined. An associate producer from "PrimeTime Live" arrived from New York with a two-man television crew. After a while, Keene found the constant interruptions aggravating. But she also began to imagine a reunion with her granddaughter, a college education for her grandson, maybe even a different kind of life somewhere. 

        At 7:30 a.m. on March 27, Bob Zimmerman, a San Diego publicist and former rock-music promoter, sat at his kitchen table drinking coffee. For the third time, he read through the Sunday Union- Tribune story written by Klimko, "Mexico Orphan Is Reunited with Grandma in U.S." "I realized I had to do something," Zimmerman recalled later. "Anything that has kids in it gets my attention. A story like this tugs at your heart." 

        The next morning, the publicist called the reporter and announced his intention to bring Lois Keene to San Diego to be reunited with her granddaughter. Two days later, Zimmerman's "rescue" operation was in full flower. World Emergency Relief, a Carlsbad Christian activist organization where Zimmerman volunteers, agreed to lend its name to the effort to retrieve Adriana from the Baja orphanage. Southwest Airlines agreed to fly Lois Keene and grandson Alex to San Diego at no charge. The San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina agreed to put them up during their stay in California. And Presidential Limousine of San Diego donated a limo for the trip to Mexico. 

        The publicist also had a chance to use his promotional skills in a more personal way. He offered to act as Keene's representative, fielding calls and negotiating with producers. On Thursday, March 31, a press release on World Emergency Relief letterhead was faxed to news organizations around the country. Headlined "Reunification of an American Family," the release summarized the story of Keene and her grandchildren and gave dates and times for Keene's arrival. "Anyone wishing to help the family," the release concluded, "may send a cash donation to: World Emergency Relief." 

        Reality lite. Real life may stoke the machinery of prime time, but television also creates its own reality, pieced together in editing suites, massaged and adjusted by producers and writers, magnified and altered by hot lights and microphones. In television movies, the altering of facts and characters' actions is readily acknowledged. In newsmagazine segments and talk shows, the adjustments to "real life" are more subtle. "Guests" are coached and rehearsed to create the maximum dramatic impact; hairdressers and makeup artists ply their magic; complicated stories are shaped into simpler morality tales. Some very real stories are ignored because they are too depressing or because the "actors" are not telegenic enough. Some issues are neglected when advertisers deem them too controversial. 

        And even when television "events" are not consciously manipulated, "reality" may unfold differently in front of the cameras. In a debate last year on the merits of reality programs like "Cops," members of the Police Executive Research Forum argued that the presence of television crews encourages police officers to behave more aggressively. "They don't doctor the tapes," said Newport News, Va., Police Chief Jay Carey, "but they only depict a portion of policing -- the portion that satiates the public's appetite for violence." 

        Viewers who rely on such information may end up with a distorted view of the world as  more dangerous, more perverse and more out of control than it really is. Schooled by tabloids and reality shows, they may see a brutal ax murder as inevitable in even the quietest suburb. Sarah Burton, an IRD researcher who spends her days trolling among "true life" crime stories, said she had nightmares for weeks after starting her job. "I just kept hearing about so much violence," she said. "Serial killers, rapes, children being sodomized." 

        Talk shows, too, with their endless supply of guests eager to confess, may purvey misleading messages. Two Pennsylvania State University researchers, sociologist Vicki Abt and assistant English professor Mel Seesholtz, argue that the steady diet of extreme and pathological behaviors on such shows may erode society's moral boundaries, erasing differences between right and wrong. Yet other media observers counter that frank discussions of difficult topics serve to educate the public about important problems and encourage tolerance of different lifestyles. Indeed, the "public service" argument is often invoked by television producers, who sometimes persuade people to "go public" by telling them that to do so will help others in similar circumstances. IRD's Colbert, for example, believes that "sometimes God asks people to be teachers," and he communicates this to some of the people whose stories fill his tip sheet. "I tell them that sometimes they're called," he says. 

        "Happy ever after." On April 5, Zimmerman was waiting at the gate when Lois Keene and Alex Beard deplaned from Southwest Airlines Flight 279 in San Diego. So were a group of reporters, who came expecting to cover what one would later term a "happy ever after" story. Outside the terminal, where Keene stopped to give an impromptu press conference, the media gathered around her. "Lois, what's the first thing you're going to say to your granddaughter?" "Lois, did you ever think this day would come?" Keene answered the questions patiently; Alex stood to one side, his expression blank. 

        Later, in the quiet of a Marriott hotel room, a reporter asked Keene and her grandson how, among all these strangers, they knew whom to trust. "I don't know who to talk to and who not to," Keene said, "so I tell them all to talk to Bob Zimmerman." Alex just shrugged: "Well at least we don't have much to lose." A few minutes later, as the reporter left the room, Keene turned to the publicist. "When people ask me what it feels like to have a TV movie made, I don't know what to say," she told him. "We'll talk about that later," Zimmerman replied, "and we'll come up with a pat answer." 

        The next morning, eight cars led by a white limousine crossed into Mexico, the caravan making its way south along the steep cliffs of the Baja coast. Included in the procession were three local television crews, "PrimeTime Live" associate producer Molly Fowler and two cameramen, a second ABC News network duo assigned by mistake and several print reporters and photographers. On the streets of Ensenada, pedestrians stared curiously, wondering what American dignitary might be hidden behind the smoky glass. 

        A few miles past the town of San Vincente, the motorcade pulled into the parking lot of the orphanage where Adriana lived. Rancho Santa Marta, as it turned out, was neither poverty stricken nor obviously neglectful of its wards. Run by a deeply religious American couple, it was a peaceful, bucolic place, surrounded by fields and orchards, with a drive leading to a stable where horses snorted. In the distance, children played together in the shade. 

        While Alex stayed inside the car, Keene, flanked by reporters and cameramen, crossed the parking lot, walking slowly into the main building, where a lunch buffet was laid out for the visitors. Keene was nervous, close to tears. She sat at a table, Zimmerman behind her, waiting for her granddaughter to appear. A reporter moved a tape recorder closer. Long microphone booms hovered near her head. "Lois, what did you first say to Alex when you finally saw him?" "Lois, as you're waiting for this moment you've been expecting, tell us about all the things you've been thinking about." 

        Then quietly, from the far side of the room, a pretty young girl emerged, wearing black jeans and a bright pink top. She spoke no English. She stared at the cameras, clinging to the orphanage director's skirt as she crossed the floor. Keene moved to embrace her. Zimmerman put his arm around a reporter and beamed, wiping a tear from his cheek. Then, as the woman with the broad white arms enveloped her, as the crowd of strangers surrounded her, as the cameras whirred and the reporters prepared to shout questions, the girl began to cry, at first quietly, then louder, her sobs rising, floating through the room, out into the garden beyond. 

        A TV movie has a clear beginning and ending, characters who quickly reveal themselves as heroes or villains and a narrative that can be easily followed. Life, on the other hand, is a messy business. And in the parking lot of Rancho Santa Marta, the "story" of Keene, Alex and Adriana began to dissolve into a more complicated reality.

        For one thing, the Mexican authorities, represented at the orphanage by two attorneys, told a slightly different version of the story than Keene and Alex did. In their version, the child protective agency had twice contacted Lois Keene in the mid-1980s but was led to believe that her poor health prevented her from caring for Alex and Adriana. The attorneys produced a letter from an Indiana social worker and other documents bolstering their case. They were happy to let Adriana go, they said, provided that Keene proved to be a suitable guardian. 

        Another difficulty was Zimmerman, whose role, over the past 24 hours, had become increasingly unclear. Asked by a television reporter whether Keene could pass a socioeconomic screening required by the Mexican authorities, Zimmerman replied that the movie deals would take care of that. He also confirmed that, in negotiating with one movie producer, he had discussed a "finder's fee" of several thousand dollars for himself. And, explaining why Keene needed someone acting in her behalf, he called her a "country bumpkin" -- a remark that did little to endear him to his clients. 

        Keene herself seemed to challenge the "everybody's grandma" image that Zimmerman, Colbert and others had put forward earlier. Standing a short distance away from the attorneys, she broke into tears, accusing the orphanage of trying to hold on to her granddaughter, denying the claims of the Mexican authorities and suggesting that someone investigate the church financing for the children's home. "What do you do now?" asked Mark Matthews, a reporter for the San Diego ABC affiliate, KGTV. "Get all the help I can from the media, I guess," Keene replied. 

        Yet the most compelling obstacle to any simple interpretation of the facts was Adriana herself: Happy in her quiet life and knowing no other, she did not want to go "home." 

        A complicated ending. The complications that emerged in the parking lot of Rancho Santa Marta were difficult to ignore. Discussing what they had learned, some reporters and cameramen expressed suspicion about Zimmerman's motives. Others seemed uncertain whose version of the story to believe. Still others wondered about their own behavior, the crush of cameras inside the orphanage holding up an unflattering mirror. 

        On the 11 o'clock news that evening, each station approached the story of Alex, Keene and Adriana slightly differently, selecting some events, omitting others. Most mentioned the dispute between Lois Keene and the Mexican authorities. Most featured a shot of Keene crying. But some stations mentioned Zimmerman, while others ignored his presence altogether (KGTV subsequently ran a longer piece on the publicist's involvement). And none probed too deeply into the story's history or the complicated relationships among its characters. 

        A few days later, the Associated Press sent the story out over the wires to be picked up by newspapers and television stations across the country. The AP's piece coped with the nuances and inconsistencies by focusing on Alex's efforts to find his family in the United States, only briefly mentioning the trip to Baja and avoiding any reference to Zimmerman. The wire service declined to answer any questions from U.S. News about its coverage. 

        For "PrimeTime Live," a newsmagazine straddling the worlds of news and entertainment, the complexities created problems that the show's producers deemed insurmountable. Mark Lukasiewicz, PrimeTime senior producer, told U.S. News that while at first the story had seemed "a compelling human drama," he now doubted it would reach the air. Lukasiewicz cited Zimmerman's presence as one "complication" making the story unsuitable; in fact, the publicist and associate producer Fowler parted on bad terms, accusing each other of various improprieties. 

        The people most directly involved in the events at Rancho Santa Marta also came away with questions and regrets. The morning after the visit to the orphanage, Keene and Alex boarded a plane for Tennessee. They left without telling Bob Zimmerman, who was forced to cancel a meeting with a movie producer in Hollywood. Later, Keene said she wondered if things might have gone differently had she pursued Adriana's release through more traditional channels. She hired an entertainment attorney, Roz Lichter, and referred all subsequent calls to Lichter's Manhattan office. Zimmerman, too, felt bewildered and out of sorts. "I was so disappointed with the way things went," he said. "The lady needed help, and I felt sorry for her." The publicist said he had meant the term "country bumpkin" affectionately. He now believes that Adriana should stay at the orphanage. 

        In the end, only Hollywood remained unfazed by the twists and turns of events, by the clashes of goals and personalities, by the replacing of "happy ever after" with something more complex. No movie producers accompanied the caravan to Baja. Instead, they followed "Lost and Found" through news accounts and updates provided by IRD's Tom Colbert, who tracked its progress for a few weeks before other "true life" sagas edged it off his radar screen. If a movie is made by an IRD client on the basis of the tip, Colbert's company will receive a finder's fee. 

        For the producers, conflicting viewpoints posed little problem: If they bought rights from Alex or Keene, they would tell the story through their eyes, including other versions only insofar as they added to the drama or limited the producers' legal problems. Moreover, in buying the rights, they would be able to invoke dramatic license, perhaps merging characters, shifting locations or altering small facts, while sticking to the basic outlines of the real story. 

        There were other factors, however, that did influence the producers' interest. Dan Paulson decided not to pursue Keene's and Alex's rights after proposing the idea to several networks with no success: "They just didn't see it as a two-hour movie." Bill Birnes gave up when publishers seemed indifferent, in the process nixing Frank Klimko's immediate prospects for a book contract based on the story. Still, Birnes suggested, the idea might be revived by someone sometime "as a big, moving story in which the entire system of adoption and the Mexican orphanage system is explored." Kim Rubin, of Scripps Howard Productions, dropped the chase when her company "shifted focus," abandoning true-life stories in favor of book adaptations. 

        In early July, New World Television of Los Angeles optioned the rights to turn the lives of Alex and Keene into a prime-time drama. The sums involved were not large, but if New World can sell the story to a network, more money will come later, and Lichter, the attorney who negotiated the agreement, is pleased. Melissa Goddard, an independent producer affiliated with New World, said she and her business partner, Peter Morgan, came across the "Lost and Found" item on the IRD Tip Sheet. She envisions the movie, she said, as "one family's miracle. It's an incredible, true, inspiring story -- a triumph of the human spirit." 

        Alex, asked about the movie deal, said he hopes the money will pay for his education -- he wants to be a lawyer. But Hollywood seems very far away now. A few weeks after returning from California, he went to live with cousins near Indianapolis. He got a job as a supermarket bagger, took up ice skating and is planning to enter high school in the fall. Sometimes he plays the piano in his cousins' two-story home, surrounded by woods and countryside. And only occasionally do his thoughts turn to his past life, or to the brief moment he spent as the focus of the camera's eye. The whole experience, he says, "was like a dream."