For Sale: Gripping Life Stories

An attorney helps docudrama subjects make TV deals

Seven years after he vanished while walking home from school in Merced, Calif., Steven Stayner, 14, suddenly reappeared. He told police that he had been held in a remote cabin by Kenneth Parnell for what amounted to half his lifetime.* The youngster was joyously reunited with his family, but as soon as his return was reported, a second trauma began. Within days, more than two dozen people called or turned up at the Stayner home, checks in hand, to buy rights to his unique story. Bewildered, the family turned to their attorney. He was unfamiliar with the new problems they faced, but he was able to recommend just the sort of protector they wanted. No fast-talking, hard-driving angle bender, their choice instead was a lawyer who started practicing only five years ago and who acknowledges, "I'm middleaged, somewhat overweight and a Jewish mother."

Renee Wayne Golden, 51, may seem an odd selection. A former jazz bass player and housewife, she decided to become a lawyer after four years as a legal secretary. In this age of specialization, she has quickly fashioned her own little niche: representing people whose tales provide the raw material for TV and movie docudramas. Such stranger-than-fiction stories are in hot Hollywood demand at the moment, and Golden has become the little guy's negotiatrix nonpareil. So far she has represented ten clients and has turned away many more. This week CBS will air one of her projects, The Ordeal of Bill Carney, a two-hour movie about a quadriplegic who made legal history in 1979 when the California Supreme Court ruled that his handicap did not disqualify him from having custody of two young sons. Carney became Golden's first "real life rights" client. The attorney who won the custody case had served with Golden on the board of the Western Law Center for the Handicapped and knew that she practiced entertainment law. So when producers began approaching Carney, Golden was called in. Like many in the same situation, Carney had no idea what his story was worth. "I would have sold it for $10," he admits. Others imagine there are millions to be made. In fact, the going rate for story rights is roughly $30,000, about 2% of a television movie's budget. Her clients, Golden boasts, have never received less than $50,000, plus a share of the profits.

But getting top dollar is only one Golden goal. She also puts a priority on assuring that her clients will be satisfied with the way they are portrayed. One key is finding a reputable producer. Golden persuaded Client Sonia Johnson, who was expelled from the Mormon Church in 1979 because of her outspoken support of the Equal Rights Amendment, to pick Norman Lear, an ardent ERA backer. Says Golden: "It wouldn't have mattered if he had offered only one half the money that anyone else did."

Golden seeks other protections as well. No studio will agree to let a subject have final say over the script, but in the Stayners' case, for example, she got them the power to approve the selection of the writer. She also negotiated a ban on the use of any material not furnished by the family unless its truth is otherwise established. The publicly known events in a story are generally public property. So a producer who pays for "real-life" rights is taking out insurance against being sued and is buying the chance to portray the private lives of the people involved. He is also usually trying to buy exclusivity. So the Stayners have agreed not to grant interviews until the time comes to promote the film. Explains Golden: "We don't want to dilute what the producers have bought for good money."

Richard Shaffran, the attorney for the production company that bought Carney's story, says of Golden: "She has a good sense of reality and wants both sides to be happy in the end." For her services, Golden generally charges 10% of her client's take, plus expenses. Even after a contract has been negotiated, she continues to check up. During the making of the Carney movie, she read each version of the script and was on the set almost every day. "It's like a custom-made garment," she says. "It's their life story and the only one they have."

*Parnell is now on trial and claims that the statute of limitations has expired on the charge of kidnaping Steven in 1972. Parnell also argues that because the boy had many chances to leave him during the later years, there was no ongoing kidnap.

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