January 13, 2000
Palisadian-Post
Pacific Palisades, California
Burt Kearns To Dish Tabloid Dirt
at Village Books Signing
BY FRED TOPEL
Palisadian-Post Contributor
Author Burt Kearns sat at a table in Mort's, observing local actors Hilary Swank ("Boys Don't Cry,") and Chad Lowe (TV's "Life Goes On") ordering a late-night snack.
All Kearns could say was, "God, I hope they don't know who I am." If they did, they would know that 10 years ago Kearns broke the story on Chad's brother Rob Lowe's famous sex scandal. "If they even saw the title of chapter 4 . . . " he worried.
We cannot print the title of chapter 4, but Kearns' new book "Tabloid Baby," which he will be signing at Village Books on January 21, features detailed accounts of scandals involving Lowe, the Kennedys and everything else he covered during his decade in tabloid television.
Producing for "A Current Affair" and later "Hard Copy," Kearns did anything, sometimes resorting to illegal measures to get the story. When the Rob Lowe scandal broke, Kearns and his "Current Affair" crew stole the video of Lowe and an underage girl in compromising positions.
"To get that tape, we had to steal it from a local television station to whom the tape had been handed by the local DA," Kearns explained. "We paid the price, we were sued for it, but had we not stolen that tape, America would never have seen that story."
Kearns never claimed that such stories were vital information to American viewers. In fact, he never even claimed it was news and still doesn't. To him, the torrid tales served a much different purpose: humor.
"It was a joke. I wasn't doing news when I was doing 'A Current Affair.' It was our take on the news. It was funny and we had a sense of humor about it. That's why the shows caught on in America with the viewing public. We weren't out to educate, we weren't out to push a point of view, and we were never out to tell people how to think. We were out to entertain."
Kearns and his crew used techniques of parody to tell some of their stories. An indicative piece was one about Steven Spielberg's divorce from Amy Irving.
"Steven Spielberg is sued for divorce for $90 million and the other party in the divorce is one of the stars of the Indiana Jones movie," Kearns recalled. "If you turn on 'Entertainment Tonight' you're going to get the fluffy Hollywood boilerplate party line. Where does the viewer go to get the real story?
"Let’s cut through all the crap and tell what’s going on here. She’s suing him for $90 million. Let’s say they’ve been married five years. Divide five years into however many months, how many days is that? If the two of them had sex every night for those entire five years, how much does that come out to per night?"
This financial analysis put the legal proceedings into an unconventional perspective, focusing on the dollar value of intimacy. In addition, Kearns and his "Current Affair" crew used footage and music from "Jaws" for satirical effect.
"When you’re sitting around an office in the morning, you think: Steven Spielberg. Jaws. A woman comes in and takes a bite out of this marriage. Da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da."
"When tabloid television lost its sense of humor, that’s what killed it," Kearns said. "Soon, the networks started covering the same stories and once you hear Dan Rather talk about stained dresses and cigars, there’s no reason to watch the tabloid shows anymore."
The 43-year-old Kearns has been out of the tabloid business for five years. He still produces television, including specials for cable channels Animal Planet and HBO, but his main inspiration is his family. He and his wife, Alison, live with their 3-year-old son, Sam, in Sunset Mesa and consider the Palisades their town center.
"For me, an exciting night is to go to Ralph’s with Sam and go shopping. That’s what my life is like now," he said with a laugh. "It’s great. I go to the hardware store a lot with Sam because he’s into mailboxes, so we go and look at mailboxes. Our life is totally built around Sam, and it’s been like that since he was born.
"He’s given me a new purpose in life, [a chance] to have an entirely different identity. I walk into a preschool and I’m not Burt Kearns, journalist/producer, I’m Sam’s dad. It’s a much better way to live."
As a member of the local community, Kearns looks forward to sharing his work in person.
"I’m very proud to be able to do a local signing. Village Books is a very comfortable little bookstore. The books they sell there are books that are of interest to the people who run the store and the community, just as the stories I used to tell were stories of interest to me. It’s a small bookstore, but it’s also a very influential bookstore because of the people who shop there."
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