Wayne Darwen

Wayne Darwen is a journalist and television producer best known as an innovator in the tabloid television genre.^[1]

His exploits were immortalized in the 1999 book Tabloid Baby,^[2] written by his colleague Burt Kearns.

Started career as a 17-year-old reporter for a newspaper in Sydney, Australia. Traveled the world as a reporter for the likes of the Sydney Daily Mirror, Star magazine and the New York Post, before moving to American television as a producer on influential tabloid newsmagazine shows like A Current Affair, Hard Copy, Geraldo Rivera’s Now It Can be Told,^[3] Strange Universe and Inside Edition.^[4]

Gained international attention for his 1993 series of televised interviews with Son of Sam killer David Berkowitz,^[5] in which Berkowitz claimed the murders were the work of a Satanic cult.^[6]

Appeared as reporter in 2012 documentary film, Dark Mirror of Magick: The Vassago Millennium Prophecy.^[7]

Natural Born Killers

Wayne Darwen, appearing on the Buzzsaw program, TheLip.TV.

Inspired the character of newsman Wayne Gale, portrayed by Robert Downey Jr. in Oliver Stone’s film, Natural Born Killers.^[8][9]

High There

In 2014, wrote, directed, produced and took on the guise of Dave High^[10] in the documentary film High There.^[11] High There is a nonfiction comedy about the efforts of Darwen and Henry Goren to film the pilot for a marijuana travelogue series on the island of Hawaii. They wind up in various misadventures, while uncovering a Drug Enforcement Administration campaign to control the marijuana trade and to persecute marijuana activist Roger Christie.^[12]

It is the first leg of a filmic journey that picks up where Darwen's late colleague and inspiration Hunter S. Thompson left off.

High There premiered 25 August 2014 at the Action on Film International Film Festival in Monrovia, California. Darwen was on location in Adelaide at the time, so he appeared at the premiere as a life-size cardboard cut-out.^[13]

External links

• Wayne Darwen at the Internet Movie Database
• NY Post article on Darwen's career and film
• Darwen interview on TheLipTV's Buzzsaw program
• NY Observer article points out Darwen's tabloid television relevance
• Tabloid Tale
• Wayne Darwen's Merle's 'Merica project with Merle Haggard
• Philly.com: Producer Wayne Darwen has four hours of Son of Sam outtakes
• Wayne Darwen in acknowledgments of Maury Terry's book, The Ultimate Evil
• Darwen acknowledged in Christopher Anderson's book, Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger

References