Is McKinny Following Right Script? : Movies: Colleagues debate whether writer should have come forward sooner to divulge Fuhrman’s racial views.

After much sturm und drang, aspiring screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny’s taped interviews with Mark Fuhrman have had their day in court. The jury shall debate about how much the former police officer may have damaged the prosecution’s case against O.J. Simpson, but some in the movie industry are debating McKinny’s role and responsibility in what became a very messy chapter in an already convoluted trial.

Some suggest that if McKinny, who interviewed Fuhrman over a 10-year period starting in 1985, had reported what she knew about racist rogue cops long ago, an untold number of innocent people could have possibly avoided harassment from them. Others argue she should have stepped forward as soon as it became obvious how large Fuhrman’s role was going to be in the trial. And others believe Fuhrman’s chatter on the tapes is a matter of a guy trying to impress a woman with tough talk and is therefore unreliable; hence, her only duty was to create a screenplay.

That, of course, is the route that McKinny chose to take, though she has been unsuccessful in her efforts to sell her script, “Men Against Women,” about a female cop who falls in love with a racist cop. McKinny resisted introducing the tapes during the Simpson trial, arguing that she was protected by the First Amendment and that the publicity would devalue her screenplay.

The tapes came to light when Simpson defense team private detective Patrick McKenna reportedly received an anonymous tip and a phone number regarding them.

“Clearly what [McKinny] discovered had a greater societal significance than any script she could write,” says screenwriter Joe Eszterhas (“Jade,” “Basic Instinct”). “She had a civic responsibility, in terms of the common good, to reveal what she had. That responsibility outweighs any responsibility she had in terms of her work as a writer. Our responsibility as human beings should outweigh our muses. It’s a moral crucible, and she flunked the test.”

Eszterhas sympathizes with the fact that McKinny was in what he called a “nightmare situation,” but adds, “If you and I are working on a piece, and in the course of that piece, we uncover something heinous, in a sense, what has happened is while researching a piece of fiction, we have become investigative reporters. Writers do not have a priestly function, we don’t have to keep confessions confidential.”

“I would hope a moral responsibility would always supersede an artistic responsibility,” says Ron Shelton, who has written two nonfiction films in which race is an issue (“Blaze,” “Cobb”).

Still, he adds, “I believe . . . that a lot of [the tape] is braggadocio. It’s inherent macho cop talk, posing, but now in a criminal case, that posing suddenly looks evidentiary. If I had notes like that, I’d let him brag, but I’d think cops aren’t all like that. But when he comes up as a major figure in a criminal case, it’s a whole new ball game.

“It seems like it would’ve been common sense to take it to authorities immediately,” Shelton continues. “The honorable thing would have been to give it to both sides at the very beginning of the trial. To bring it in at such a late date skews the whole trial.”

Independent producer and former TriStar Pictures Chairman Mike Medavoy defends McKinny’s efforts to resist bringing her tapes into the legal fray.

“I don’t know the psychology of the meeting between two people--if he was showing off or embellishing. Lots of things can be said in varying degrees.

“She was writing a script. There’s a difference between a journalist reporting on a story and a screenwriter reporting a story. Her job is to write a fictional drama based on what he and others said.”

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Some screenwriters have found themselves in similar situations. When Abby Mann (“Judgment at Nuremberg,” “The Marcus-Nelson Murders”) was working on the TV film “The Atlanta Child Murders,” he came across a policeman (played in the film by Morgan Freeman) who leaked evidence that he thought argued for the innocence of Wayne Williams, who was convicted of the crime. He used the information in the film, but refused to name the officer because he was still a rank-and-file member of the force.

Later, while the notorious McMartin preschool molestation trial was going on, Mann, who was researching a film on the case that recently aired on HBO, came into possession of a tape that suggested that one of the accusers was mentally unbalanced.

“People said, ‘This is great for the film,’ ” Mann says. “I said, ‘Bully for the film, but what about these people?’ I sent the tapes to the attorney general and the defense and alerted the media as to what was happening.”

Of McKinny responding to the subpoena, Mann says, “I’m glad she did it, even though the evidence seems collateral. . . . Another thing to consider is that the guy is working with her, and she’s turning someone in. If he ever said, ‘I don’t want this coming out,’ then it’s another matter.”

Stephanie Liss, who has written “David,” “Second Serve” and other telefilms based on true stories, says that she would never compromise a source, but there are ways around that to achieve a similar effect.

“I would never turn over tapes. They’re confidential and privileged,” she says. “But if someone’s life is at stake, I would find a way to impart the information without breaching or violating the confidentiality.”

For example, a decade ago, Liss was in Lebanon with the PLO researching a TV movie for CBS that was eventually abandoned, when she came upon information of a terrorist attack on the Israeli army. “I gave the information without revealing my sources. So they knew the time and location, and were able to avert it, but they didn’t have names of those who were behind it.”

McKinny “should have come forward with the information a long time ago,” Liss asserts. “She should have placed them in a situation where [Fuhrman] would have been forced to come forward.”

Her failure to do so, Liss says, “put all of us in a bad situation as writers. We’re not viewed seriously, and I take my job very seriously.”