Without releases (which is why rights are bought) you may not use real names and stories involving real people unless you are protected legally as stated previously. The network wants stories that they can sell as true. Releases must be obtained by the participants in interviews through some kind of release form or a rights deal which protects those involved. The form is less important than the legal validity of the release. There were three Amy Fisher stories of which two were broadcast at the same time. One had Amy Fisher's rights, one had Joey and Mary Jo Buttafuoco's rights, one went on public record. The public record version got the largest audience, but the victory was marginal. I'm sure each was a legal nightmare, particularly with competing rights situations. Each of the films was scrutinized to protect the network's ability to broadcast them. (I know a married couple whose greatest test to their marriage was that she was the network executive in charge of one production and he was the production company executive responsible for the competing project.)

I produced a film about Carolyn Warmus ("The Fatal Attraction Murderer"), based on an unpublished manuscript and public record, simultaneous to another network's version of the same story made with the rights of one of the principals. It's hard enough to make a film without looking over your shoulder, as one must in these situations. A lot is riding on the production company's guarantee that they will deliver a film of a quality that satisfies the network's concerns, while scrutinizing the other product in order to beat it. It's not my favorite way to make a film, but it comes with the meal when you are doing fact-based headline making stories. I had a great time because I like making movies, but there was a lot of tension. We were scrutinized ruthlessly while we were making it, and using public record required a lot of creative solutions in making inferences and avoiding making statements. All tricks of the trade and part and parcel of the proposition of making MOWs. No writer goes on a research trip without a cassette recorder and release forms. On the writer's return I have the tapes transcribed and vaulted as soon as possible.
Back to the questions

Suppose a network was interested in a true-story MOW about, say, a female athlete who overcomes huge obstacles to achieve her goal of making it to the Olympics. Would the network wait until the outcome of the Olympics to buy the story, or buy it early on so that the MOW could be broadcast at the time of Olympics?

It's a tough hypothetical since sports stories, per se, do not program well at this time; while there are memorable "Brian's Song"s, conventional wisdom suggests sports (and disease films) are no longer marketable. For now.

Speaking of conventional wisdom in a less hypothetical discussion, FBC had great success (unsurpassed on that network) with a quickie OJ Simpson movie which was aired prior to the start of the trial and which dealt with very little except what was well-known and obviously documented. Similarly, NBC completed production on a movie about David Koresh before the destruction of the Branch Davidian Compound at Waco, ending the film instead with the initial FBI incident that inspired the standoff. Since tensions were rapidly building at Waco and public awareness was high, the film was a big success. Timing is everything and the best moment to air a film is when there is the most attention.

I'll never forget in my early days at NBC, there was a script which had been passed on at every network many times. The executive in charge of the MOW department decided that, with the right casting, the film could be promotable ("stars in cars," he used to say) and that the issue at the center could make headlines if well timed. The film was scheduled in order to capitalize on minor media about an "awareness week" generated by the issue. Well, this movie, which was by no means the first on the subject, generated a 52 share (not beaten since then) because the event was real, but the symbiosis between the event and the movie made both bigger than either would have been on its own. The star, making a "serious" acting debut, drew covers of magazines because of the alteration of her pristine image in very gritty setups. That's the story of "The Burning Bed", in case you hadn't guessed, and it is still seen as a programming phenomenon. But timing is everything and hitting the moment of ripeness is everything. Networks traditionally seek that moment.
Back to the questions

Which of your films are you proudest of, and why?

The alternate is easier. I've only disowned 3 of my children completely because they represented some aspect of irresponsible use of Television. I won't go into great detail, but I felt that the auspices by which they were done were wrong-minded. Mind you, despite brutal criticism, I have some degree of pride in everything I've done, which would include a film I worked on at NBC called "Swimsuit", cited as end-of-the-world-and-this-is-proof-we're-all-going-to-hell-in-a-handcart jiggle programming at its worst; but hey, we exploited guys in Speedos too, we had a reasonable sense of awareness about the exploitation and spoke to it in the script (in my opinion not as having-and-simultaneous-eating-of- the-cake lip service,) and the woman who wrote the film (a feature in turnaround, by the way) is the executive producer of one of the few comedies one network is bringing back next year. She came from a local improv theatre troupe out here and brought a different perspective to the material. This was, by the way, an existing script that was submitted to me which we redeveloped for our needs.

Also on the list of "Why aren't I ashamed?" films, I liked a Roxanne Pulitzer bio-programmer I did because we aimed higher than we had to, guided by a concept of Cinderella at the Ball after the 12th chime of midnight. This was literally our concept in approaching the material. It was what it was, but we knew that and tried to do more.

My certifiable (as opposed to stringently defended through too much protesting) achievements are more diverse and represent different things. Like I say, I've worked with a lot of writers who were produced for the first time through that collaboration. There's nothing like it. I've had the great good pleasure of working on projects that allowed me to watch some bona fide icons, including Jessica Tandy, Katherine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor, in films we all put our hearts and souls into. Watching people work who have made a difference in the medium of film is thrilling. I've been lucky to work in the last TV films (I think) of Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt and Juliet Lewis. Of the three, the reading Lewis gave at the network of the film she did with Pitt, "Too Young To Die", which, in rough-cut, literally generated their feature careers, was one of the great acting thrills of my life; she was magnificent and soul-crunching and it was great magic.

The Jim and Tammy piece was pretty amazing, particularly since I started with the real people; they gave us a lot of insight into their lives and, at some level, additional information to use in a film that I thought looked honestly at the volatile combination of religion, money and the medium, as well as two people whose refusal to take responsibility for their actions doomed them. This was no small feat; I'd worked a few years prior on an incredible LBJ biography (with Randy Quaid and Patti LuPone) that was pretty wonderful, and I convinced the writer (the late Ken Trevey) to meet the Bakkers with me. Ken had an amazing ability to write real people out of public figures and it took quite a bit of convincing to get him to agree to even meet Jim and Tammy. (A rather shameless stunt I pulled by threatening to humiliate the modest Trevey in a public restaurant finally got me an agreement that he would at least meet the Bakkers.) What we started with was one thing; during the course of the development Jim was convicted of mail fraud and sentenced to jail, and we had to reapproach our entire film, which allowed us to sharpen the theme since we were now dealing with real crimes for which there were real penalties. Bernadette Peters agreeing to do Tammy was a major coup (I had been worried no one would do the film; this was a monument to Trevey's script), and watching her work in a singing part was a great thrill for me. Kevin Spacey, known primarily for the "Wiseguys" series at the time, was so brilliant that his subsequent success hardly surprised any of us on the film. But it was the perfect creative experience - everyone involved in the piece brought more to the whole than anyone had imagined. Karen Arthur who later directed the hugely successful Jacksons mini-series really kept the energy alive in the piece. The film was somewhat lambasted by the press because it got out we had used the real people as our sources; I stand by the film as a truly great piece of television that made its point without ever seeming heavy-handed.

I had two wonderful experiences with less substantive films, one of which, "My Boyfriend's Back", was just fun for all of us. It was a thin concept beautifully executed, primarily by writer Lindsay Harrison, in which an all-girl group reunites 25 years after their one hit, and the acrimony that broke them up threatens to do so again. Sandy Duncan, Jill Eikenberry and Judith Light (The Fabulous Bouffants) were involved from the outset of the development, and doing a mini-musical, complete with a real reunion concert at the end, was a thrill for each of us. I also had a great time taking a Citizen Kane approach to the biography of Thelma Todd, which was great fun to make because one rarely gets an opportunity to do something slightly non-linear with structure.

Lastly (and I've left out a bunch,) "Saved By The Light" was a genuine thrill this year. When I first looked at it, I wasn't sure how a movie could be made of a book whose function was primarily spiritual. When I found the real-life person, Dannion Brinkley (one must be a detective as a producer; finding people who can't normally be located is an art), I told him that my attention had been caught by a paragraph in the book in which he described his separation from his wife as a result of his near-death experience, and the life-change that resulted from it. I told Dannion that I was interested in the secular story behind that paragraph, how gaining an entire new perspective on life can cost us the one thing that we know is good and true. That was how we developed the film, and the (first-time television) writer, John Mandel, who had a wonderful sense of the mysterious but an obvious ability to write the subtlety of this character, really made it sing. In addition, getting to work with Eric Roberts, and watching a real Actor work so hard in a film in which he was on screen every single frame, was exciting. Our director, Lewis Teague, kept a very difficult shoot together with a calm and control that was awe-inspiring.

That's the most distilled and accurate experience I've had, where the idea led to the script which led to a movie which was a great success, in my opinion, at every level. That's really the joy of the job: creating something at the heart of the piece that you can ride all the way through the process. I felt at the end of the film it was pretty clear that, if this guy's story was an indication, people can change; no one said it was easy, but they can change. Since it was in the story, we also got to send a lighting bolt through him and send him to heaven, but my pleasure was in being able to see that the issue which first attracted me to the piece still existed in it. In a business that is done by very large committees, it's important to cling to one piece that measures the experience for you personally.

In addition to everything else, you get to hang with really great people working the picture. This job can be like summer camp at its best. SBTL was pure Kumbaya. At its worst, it's a life sentence on the Gulag Archipelago. I've only had a couple of those, but they are killers.