Imagine Los Angeles in the nineties, where every waiter has a written script in his pocket in case a Hollywood hottie enters the restaurant.
Imagine then, in that hilly town, between glamour, personalities and failed destinies, a completely unusual Swiss journalists which cruises through the facets of the City of Angels.
It's a time when mobile phones are exotic, the Internet is in its infancy, telephoning across the ocean is a breeze. Paper ones newspaper are bought en masse, interviews with famous people are collected, truckers cut out erotic pictures from magazines and stick them around the cabin.
Our journalist, Tom Kumer - then thirty-something - swims and floats around Los Angeles, and earns his fees by writing for newspapers in German. For the magazine Time, Zurich Magazine and others, but above all for the legendary Munich magazine Child of Zeitung – which follows once a week with the newspaper.
All the stars
Kumer delivers what no one else can - interviews with Hollywood's biggest stars. Brad Pitt (photo below), Sharon Stone, Pamela Anderson... and others who normally rarely talk except when they really have to, when it's written in the contract. And then they receive journalists as if on tape, fifteen minutes for an "interview", they smile a few times, repeat phrases.
But when they talked with Kumer, they opened their souls. Secrets and feelings leaked onto paper, people screamed under the facade of Hollywood millionaires. No one could expose that, no one except - Tom Coomer.
His epic interviews had many good points and only one small flaw - they were made up.
More precisely, they were woven from earlier interviews of famous people, in which they were inserted and made up. Coomer has never seen, say, Brad Pitt or Sharon Stone.
Unthinkable today, where the Internet knows and remembers everything, but then it was still possible. And it went on for years without anyone finding out. If colleagues had doubts - they kept quiet because it was too good.
And then there's the magazine. Focus In 2000, he revealed that scandal and the shit hit the fan. The editors of the Zeitung magazine were fired, journalism in the German-speaking world was shaken.
SZ magazineFictional interviews with Hollywood stars
Why didn't he write for the theater?
Exactly a quarter of a century has passed since then. On this occasion, the weekly Spiegel recently published excerpts from a new book on German pop culture journalism in the eighties and nineties ("Production of the Present: Oral History of Pop Journalism", author Erika Thomala).
For the purposes of that book, Kumer himself spoke about the case, as well as numerous colleagues, including editors who were criticized for his fabrications. The following are selected statements.
Tom Kummer, a journalist who invented: "When I moved to LA, I didn't want to write about Hollywood at first. I was interested in gangs, gangsta-rap, Hells Angels, and various lifestyle deformations of Hollywood society. I didn't touch the subject of Hollywood stars for a year. But then the newsrooms sent inquiries, and the Magazine Zidouche wanted to hire me as a permanent associate.
I quickly noticed that I find it exciting when I write dialogue. After my first fictional interview, with Pamela Anderson, there were enthusiastic reactions. Then I thought - well, I can really write dialogues. I did not ask myself the moral question. I thought more like I was writing lyrics for the stage. Namely, I really wanted to write for the theater. Unfortunately, it didn't pay as well as journalism."
Gabriela Herpel, a colleague at the time: "Once we wanted Jim Carrey at all costs. Tom kept me informed about how things were going. He told me: 'I just talked to his agent, it seems like something is going to happen.' In the end, he claimed that he didn't get an interview. That's why he didn't even talk to other stars, so why would he claim that this or that one didn't come to his mind."
Moritz von Uzlar, colleague from Zidouche: "You shouldn't underestimate the contempt that stars feel for journalists. Tom once told me in Los Angeles: 'We journalists are vermin, boring bugs. They work on a film for three months and then one day they have to give interviews, that's what it says in the contract. Do you think they do it voluntarily? Many do it with 20 percent concentration, they just don't give a fuck. When one interview ends, another sad journalist immediately enters the hotel room. The star smiles. Completely indifferently.'"
When Pamela swings
Helge Timerberg, colleague from Tempa: "Tom Coomer was already caught plagiarizing in Tempo. I didn't blame him because I thought he was an incredibly good author. We also wrote together. But he misunderstood the business. We were engaged in journalism that was written like fiction. And he wrote fiction wrapped in journalism. He was not troubled by his conscience because he believed that there is more truth in the text when he invented it."
Tom Kummer, a journalist who made things up: "I had to read everything (about a person) in order to discover the weak spots in their portrait, for example published in Spiegel. I could then jump into those gaps and invent something. In the interviews, I always had sentences that all the fans had already heard, so that the readers would have a sense of familiarity. So I created a ground of reality where I could take the reader by the hand and lead him elsewhere."
When I was describing Pamela and her boyfriend in the house, and her sitting in the swing above the piano, of course I knew that such a swing existed. But the private life, which no one knew - I painted all that. (…) I did not consider myself a Hochstapler. It was important to me to have exceptional lyrics. And I also wanted to impress the team (in the newsroom) in Munich, I thought they were cool."
Moritz von Uzlar, colleague from Zidouche: "It's bad that I edited all those Tom Kumer interviews in the newsroom. I often went to the newsroom in the evening to immediately receive the interviews that he sent by fax from Los Angeles in the evening or at night. Because I was his fan, I couldn't wait. In me, his fan who was not even 30 years old at the time, he found the right editor for his texts. (...)
I found out about Tom's forgeries when we received a letter from a reader regarding his interview with Ivana Trump. Tom Kumer put some Andy Warhol quotes in Ivana Trump's mouth and that reader underlined the sentences and sent them to us. That's when I wondered for the first time whether the editors-in-chief are consciously burying their heads in the sand because they want to protect an interesting author. Today I know for sure that it was not like that."
"Guys, that would be it"
The editors finally discovered the fabrications when they tried to get photos from the interview from a Hollywood agent. Then they heard that - there was no interview.
They asked Coomera to send audio recordings of the conversation, which, of course, he did not have. They terminated cooperation with him, but did not announce it anywhere or apologize to the readers.
They were just returning from an editorial trip in Antalya, when the weekly Focus published the full story.
Christian Kemerling, one of the editors-in-chief who was then fired: "When I sat down on the plane, I opened it Focus. There it was written 'Magazin Zidojce Zeitung invents interviews with famous people'. I couldn't believe my eyes. When Ulf (second editor-in-chief) arrived with the rest of the crew, I told them, 'Guys, that would be it.'"
Tom Kummer, a journalist who invented: "When a press conference lasts twenty minutes or half an hour, when there are eight journalists there, and then I send a text of fifteen pages... well, someone in the editorial office had to come up with an idea and ask me: 'Tom, how is it possible that you send us a text that requires two or three days of talking with someone?'
I'm not making excuses, but I thought they were accepting of my way of working. And that maybe it will be indicated in the title or supertitle so that the reading public can see it."
Ulf Poshart, the second editor-in-chief who was fired at the time, is now a powerful newspaper publisher Velt i Politico: "Tom Coomer could easily write those stories - the best fictional interviews. But that's how he had to label it. But to falsify reality because it's convenient for him - that's pathetic and miserable."
For me, that case was a turning point. That's when the game phase ended for me. I realized that this should not have happened. I don't regret anything more than publishing those fake interviews."
What happened next?
Tom Coomer remained a peculiar phenomenon on the media scene. He was charging to tell this story. Movies were made about her. He knew and knows how to write, he published a couple of books. That's probably why various reputable newspapers in Germany and Switzerland gave him a second, third and fourth chance.
Each time he was caught in a new plagiarism – he made texts like a collage, stealing passages from other people's texts.
He never admitted that he was a Hochstapler. He even coined the term borderline journalism, in order to justify himself. "Frontier" journalism, that is. Unlike classic journalistic liars and propagandists, at least he didn't hurt anyone directly.
PS: German journalism, years later, will be shaken by the equally crazy case of Klaus Relocius, who fabricated reports for Spiegel and won huge journalistic awards. If that interests you, We wrote extensively here..
Big holiday discount on "Vreme" - subscriptions 25 percent cheaper until mid-January. Give it away subscription to yourself or to someone else, read what matters.
