Dubious Distinction Hollywood Isn’t Exactly Falling All Over Itself To Put Mark Fuhrman Story On The Big Screen

It has all the makings of a gritty TV police drama.

Police officers with an attitude doing battle with bad guys and women cops, in uniform and out. Sizzling subplots touching on hot issues - discrimination, race, sexism and sex.

But Hollywood isn’t snapping up the Mark Fuhrman tapes or the screenplay based on them that Laura Hart McKinny hopes will jump-start her career as a Hollywood screenwriter.

Industry sources said that McKinny’s “Men Against Women” screenplay, however well crafted, may now be little more than fodder for an O.J. Simpson exploitation flick.

“Right now, it’s lumped in with buzzwords like (Joey) Buttafuoco and (John Wayne) Bobbitt - hot buttons of dubious distinction,” said director Alan Spencer, creator of television’s “Sledge Hammer!”

Oliver Stone’s production company, which received an unsolicited copy of the “Men Against Women” screenplay, passed on it.

Even the man behind a TV rendering of the Menendez brothers murder case said he wouldn’t touch McKinny’s screenplay or the tapes.

“If the industry turns on to this, (it) would be sinking to a lower level than I’m afraid we already have sunk to,” said producer Zev Braun of CBS’s “Menendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills.”

But television director John Flynn, who held an option on the screenplay until 1994, said that while McKinny’s work needs rewriting, it’s topical, sexy, culturally significant, and deserves to find its way into the hands of a talented director.

According to Flynn, the work explores attitudes of male officers who believed that the admission of large numbers of female recruits into the police force compromised their safety as well as that of the public.

“It is such an extraordinary slice of what is happening between men and women in our generation and our culture,” Flynn said. “I hope, eventually, the story gets told.”

McKinny wouldn’t say whether she has had any nibbles on the screenplay, referring all questions to her agent, Jim Preminger, who is not taking calls from media.

Reports that the tapes and transcripts are being shopped around may not have helped the marketability of the screenplay.

In sworn testimony outside the presence of the jury, McKinny insisted on the witness stand last week that the tapes were not for sale.

That claim didn’t settle well with Michael Viner of Dove Audio/Dove Books, which published Faye Resnick’s “Nicole Brown Simpson: The Private Diary of a Life Interrupted.” Viner reports that McKinny attorney Matthew H. Schwartz attempted to peddle the tapes to him and was turned down.

“If it were Albert Einstein and Albert Schweitzer, then the conversations might have some literary value. But not Fuhrman and McKinny,” Viner sniffed last week.

Television’s “Extra” reports a similar sales pitch from McKinny’s attorneys.

“We said, ‘We’ll see you later, pal. We’re not a tabloid show and we’re not in the business of buying tapes,”’ said senior producer David Friend.

McKinny co-counsel Ron Regwan said last week that he and Schwartz were not trying to sell the tapes but rather figuring out how much they were worth.

Even if McKinny, a North Carolina college professor, can’t find any takers right now, that could change once the Simpson case is over, said Carl Gottlieb, vice president of the Writers Guild of America.

“I’m not sure the studios want to be seen in the business of doing exploitation material,” Gottlieb said.

“But if she can just let this die down, wait six months or a year, it’s possible the material could be considered strictly on its own merits,” Gottlieb said.

“The agent’s selling hook could be, ‘Remember the old O.J. Simpson thing with the tapes? Well, it’s a screenplay now and I think you ought to read it.”’