Reporter’s journey from story to screen

By Jeff German

Friday, Nov. 7, 2008 | 2 a.m.

They had me at the opening credits.

Seeing the words, “based on the book ‘Murder in Sin City by Jeff German,’ ” flashed in large print on the screen for a few seconds made this cable network movie a success in my mind.

So what if it took Hollywood seven years to produce a film about my book on Ted Binion’s mysterious death.

So what if my own Beverly Hills agent’s lack of interest almost killed the project.

So what if Nevada film officials couldn’t outbid their counterparts in New Mexico for the rights to shoot “Sex & Lies in Sin City” in, well, Sin City.

So what if lawyers for Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish bullied the producers into changing the script during filming to go easier on the ex-lovers who were first found guilty of killing Binion, then acquitted at a retrial.

And so what if the movie took some creative license for the sake of Lifetime’s loyal cable viewers and strayed from the course of the book at times.

The making of the movie means that the story of Binion’s death — and the lingering questions about what really happened to him — live on.

Keeping the movie alive was no mean feat, either.

Executive Producer Frank Konigsberg was one of the first to actively pursue the rights to my book shortly after it was published in August 2001.

But it took a few more years — and some wheeling and dealing worthy of the HBO series, “Entourage” — before Konigsberg was in a position to buy rights to the book.

During this lengthy process, I learned that many of stereotypes about the movie business are true.

— It really is cutthroat.

— Agents won’t call you back unless they smell money.

— Back-stabbing is the norm.

I also learned that life is much simpler as a reporter — and life as a reporter can get pretty complicated.

The movie’s Las Vegas Sun reporter, “Jay Green,” sure is a handsome devil though, and a snazzy dresser to boot.

When you sell the rights to a book, the story becomes the property of the production company. You hope the filmmakers stay true to the book, but there’s not much more you can do except hope. You’ve sold them your baby.

One of the trade-offs is you might get to talk to a beautiful starlet. I chatted with Mena Suvari, who played Murphy, as she was preparing for her role, and she sounded like she was doing her homework enthusiastically.

During filming, I’m told, Konigsberg and director Peter Medak did their best to follow the Binion story line, despite threatening letters from Murphy’s and Tabish’s lawyers arguing that their clients were acquitted of murder the second time around.

Overall, I thought the stars of the movie did a great job.

In real life, Binion was as wild as Matthew Modine played him, maybe wilder. Behnen probably isn’t happy with the way she was portrayed. She isn’t as brash in real life, but at least she had an Oscar-winner playing her.

My primary reservations are confined to the rewritten script that was too kind to Murphy. I found out about the script changes after they were made. But even if they had told me sooner, I could have done nothing.

The biggest changes were made to the ending, where the filmmakers offered several theories, some of which were not in the book, about how Binion died. The different theories certainly were entertaining.

Thankfully, though, none of the changes prevented the real Murphy from shining through, just as none of them were capable of burying the saga of what really took place.