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Tom McCarthy’s New Film Aims To Bring Journalism Back Into The 'Spotlight'

Morgan Evans |
November 20, 2015 | 2:29 p.m. PST

Staff Reporter

Mark Ruffalo laughs about being an actor playing a journist on the red carpet (Morgan Evans/Annenberg Media).
Mark Ruffalo laughs about being an actor playing a journist on the red carpet (Morgan Evans/Annenberg Media).

Mark Ruffalo and Michael Rezendes stand in a calm corner of the red carpet as the paparazzi madness begins to slow down. The two are captured mid-embrace as they laugh and exchange words away from the red carpet huddle. On this night, the award-winning Hollywood actor and the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist prepare to share the spotlight.

Actors and journalists came together at the Director’s Guild of America for the red carpet premiere of the highly anticipated motion picture “Spotlight.” The film honors the gritty work of investigative journalism and celebrates the art of reporting and storytelling.

“We didn’t even think this movie would get made,” said Ben Bradlee, Jr., former projects editor of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight unit. “We did our series of stories in 2002 and then comes along this movie. It was totally out of the blue.”

The film’s production team dedicated eight years to getting the film off the ground. “When we heard the story we felt like we just had to tell it,” said the film’s producer Michael Sugar. “I’m excited because I believe this a chance to tell students that journalism is a real career.”

The film, directed by Academy Award-nominee Tom McCarthy, pays tribute to the members of the 2002 Boston Globe investigative team that broke a series of stories covering the sexual abuse allegations that took place in several Massachusetts Catholic Churches. In 2003, the team won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, considered one of the highest honors for the journalism awards.

"Spotlight" stars a host of big names. Ben Bradlee, Jr. is played by John Slattery, Walter “Robby” Ribonson is played by Michael Keaton, Sacha Pfeiffer is played by Rachel McAdams, and Michael Rezendes is played by Mark Ruffalo. The cast also includes Liev Schreiber who plays the former Boston Globe editor Marty Baron, Brian d’Arcy James who plays reporter Matt Caroll, and Stanley Tucci and Billy Crudup as the lawyers involved in the case.

“We sort of got the cast we wanted from the beginning,” said Sugar. “We went to Mark Ruffalo first, and when Mark came on -- I mean, who doesn’t want to work with Mark Ruffalo?”

McCarthy and screenwriter Josh Singer worked hard to secure the rights to the journalist’s stories. Robby Ribonson said he truly admired the work and complimented McCarthy and Singer on their own investigative practices when it came to making the film.

“Tom and Josh seemed as though they did almost as much reporting as we did,” said Robinson. They spent so much time and it dawned on us that they really wanted to do a film that tracked extremely closely to how we did our work.”

Singer said they were able to create a strong script for the film because they started out with strong recourses –- the real-life journalists -- who spent a significant amount of time on set.

“By spending more and more time with the journalists, we got deeper and deeper into the story and were able to construct the narrative,” said Singer.

Pfeiffer, the sole female journalist on the Spotlight team, talked about how she and the other journalists were able to collaborate with actors and producers on set.

“They showed us drafts of the scripts, they invited us to set as much as possible,” said Pfeiffer. “They often changed the script based on suggestions we gave them and that made us feel really good about the process. They had a lot of integrity.”

Bradlee laughed while reminiscing about his first time on the “Spotlight” set. “We’re all rookies at this. The actors contacted each of us to learn about how we got the story and learn about us personally. We were all really impressed.”

The “Spotlight” film depicts the yearlong investigation of secrets and lies held within one of the world’s most established institutions, but it also illustrates the struggles journalists deal with daily.

“They did a really great job about capturing what reporting is really like,” said Pfeiffer. “They didn’t glamorize it, they showed it can be tedious, but showed that you can accomplish great things when given then time and resources and we feel proud that they captured that realistically.”

Though the film’s producer is not a journalist, Sugar learned a lot about the industry from producing the film. He admitted that he is worried about the state of journalism in the current tech-consumed culture.

“In this world of what’s-happening-right-now, everything has to go on the Internet 30 seconds later. We’ve lost the importance of true investigation and importance of the newspaper business, which is suffering for it.”

Bradlee agreed with Sugar’s statements about the slow demise of newspapers and the need for true journalism in this modern world.  

“Newspapers are getting killed in the internet era. We have all these people growing up in a era where they think that news can be free, but what kind of business can survive with people giving away their product?”

Singer said that he hopes the movie will help bring journalism back into the spotlight once again.

“Journalism has had a tough time in the last 15 years. And I think we can all use a reminder of what good local journalism does and why it’s so important.”

A recent Variety article called “Spotlight” the film that “will make journalism look good again.” And while the film honors journalism as a whole, the appreciation and understanding for investigative journalism is one of the main concepts journalists like Bradlee want the audience to take away from the film.

“I think one of the messages of the movie underscores the importance of investigative journalism in a democracy and we hope that everyone takes note of that,” said Bradlee.

The slogan for the film is “break the story, break the silence,” a phrase that tackles the two of the movies the movies themes. The first being the pressure the journalists felt to break the story while making sure to get the story right, and the second was the added pressure of exposing the sins of a devoutly worshiped institution that turned a blind eye to crucial matter that was happening behind their own closed doors.

“The movie is more relevant now more than ever,” said Sugar. “Certainly with the new Pope, the theme has been a topic of conversation. So, we felt like it was really a good time to tell this story.”

The Boston Globe reported that the Catholic Church sent out talking points to their dioceses to prepare for the release of “Spotlight.” Singer explains that the point of the film is not to re-scrutinize the Catholic Church for their wrongdoing.

“You look at Penn State, you look at Bill Cosby, and you see this kind of story happening again and again. A good institution does something bad and people look the other way,” Singer said.  “And people cover for that. So, the question is why do the they cover and why do they look the other way?”

Singer explained that he and his colleagues were less interested in the church as a “bad actor,” and more interested in asking the question of why so many people around the church helped the abuse go on for so long.

The film also looks at the other side of the issues -– how the victims were impacted. Singer wanted to create a story for people to understand the trials and tribulations of many church victims: How the victims were feeling, what their experience was, how they managed to cope -– these are the stories that needed to be told.

“It’s an honest film,” said Robinson. “It’s brilliant in that Singer manages to tell, through the eyes of the reporters, the story of the victims –- the survivors and how their lives were ruined in a way that audiences won’t avert their eyes.”

This is one fact-based film that surprisingly received a thumbs-up from both Hollywood and the real-life Pulitzer Prize winning journalists the film is based on.

“I’ve seen the movie about seven times and I am still not sick of it,” said Robinson. “I love the film because they got it right.”

Reach Staff Reporter Morgan Evans here.



 

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