Blazing ‘spotlight’ : Tom Mccarthy’s Drama Focuses on ‘boston Globe’ Inquiry into Catholic Church Coverup

By Daniel Eagan
Film Journal
October 29, 2015

http://www.filmjournal.com/features/blazing-%E2%80%98spotlight%E2%80%99-tom-mccarthy%E2%80%99s-drama-focuses-%E2%80%98boston-globe%E2%80%99-inquiry-catholic-church


Rumors of widespread sexual abuse within the Catholic Church were largely just that—rumors—until a 2002 series of Boston Globe articles detailed how the Church hid pedophilia among more than 70 local priests. Spotlight, an Open Road Films release, reveals how the newspaper expose came about. Already an awards contender, the drama opens in theatres on Nov. 6.

The screenplay, co-written by director Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, focuses on Spotlight, a four-member Globe team which took on long-term investigative projects for the paper. In the script, which is structured like a mystery, Marty Baron (played by Liev Schreiber), the Globe's new editor and an outsider to Boston politics, pushes the team to dig into abuse accusations about John Geoghan, a priest.

Speaking by phone from his office, McCarthy emphasizes how important a part research played in preparing and writing the script. Much like the Spotlight team, McCarthy and Singer had to be meticulously accurate. Get anything wrong, from accents to addresses or clothes, and viewers could dismiss the entire story.

"I guess our main concern was trying to remain true to the spirit of those journalists and the reporting they did," McCarthy says. "That was our guiding principle. What would the reporters do? What would Marty Baron do? Understanding of course that our job's a little different, we're telling a narrative feature and we have to do it in two hours or so."

McCarthy and Singer interviewed Spotlight editor Walter "Robby" Robinson (played by Michael Keaton), reporters Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) and Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), and researcher Matt Carroll (Brian d'Arcy James). But as Singer says, reaching beyond that core group led to unexpected details.

"You're always looking for context," McCarthy explains. "We interviewed editors past and present, people who are still working at the Globe, some who weren't involved with the Spotlight investigation. Some of those said to us, 'Hey, prior to Spotlight we didn't go deep enough on some of this. Why didn't we dig deeper?'

"That pushed our research, and maybe thematically our work beyond what was initially presented to us as a story about reporters going after the Catholic Church. Those interviews got us asking, 'Why didn't they [dig deeper]? Why didn't the cops say anything? Why didn't the school board say anything? Why didn't the lawyers say anything?'"

In the movie, Marty Baron tells his reporters that he isn't interested in finding a villain as much as exposing a pattern of deceit. "We arrived at a similar approach in our process," McCarthy says. "I remember the day we did, right here in my office. In movies like these, the tendency is to portray the Church in the worst possible light. But it's a grey area. There's a moment when Matt is interviewing the mother of a victim, and she says yes, of course, the Church pushed back against her, but so did the other parishioners, her friends."

Showing how personal beliefs and loyalties influence the Globe writers lets McCarthy emphasize the suspense elements in the script. The newspaper series is kept under wraps for months, leading some to wonder if the series is being deliberately buried. Legal ploys keep vital records out of reach. Boston's elite power brokers approach Robinson to question Baron's motives, pointing out that he is the paper's first Jewish editor. In turn, each Spotlight member will face painful personal choices.

As director, McCarthy draws upon a long tradition of journalism movies stretching back to silent days, when montages would show the latest edition running through presses. With its long corridors and antiseptic lighting, the Globe newsroom evokes the Washington Post shown in Alan J. Pakula's direction of All the President's Men.

"We had to build that newsroom," McCarthy reveals. "Our production designer Steve Carter worked very hard to find a place where we could shoot as realistically as possible, with natural light. He eventually found a massive old Sears department store near Toronto, with windows around the perimeter just like the newsroom."

Despite the sensitive nature of the story, McCarthy says that almost everyone cooperated with the production—with two notable exceptions. "There's a scene at Fenway, it was supposed to be a game between the Red Sox and the Yankees," he recalls. "And the Yankees organization didn't feel that the subject matter was appropriate. They refused to let us film, and actually recommended the Red Sox not to let us either. As a lifelong Yankees fan, that hurt. And it didn't sit very well with the Sox, who felt strongly that this was a story that should be told. They were very supportive."

A meeting between Baron and Cardinal Bernard Law (played by Len Cariou), one marked by subtle threats and jockeying, posed another problem. "They met in Law's office at his home," McCarthy says. "But the land and the building are now owned by Boston College, which didn't want to be associated with that dark period. And I went to Boston College. So my team and my school both let me down."

McCarthy assembled an exceptional cast for Spotlight, in part because the performers responded so strongly to the story. Ruffalo read the script overnight and was the first actor to sign onto the project. He spent weeks observing Mike Rezendes. Most of the leads spent time with their characters as well, with the exception of Stanley Tucci, who plays attorney Mitchell Garabedian. Instead, Tucci studied hours of television footage of the lawyer.

Actors can sometimes fall into a trap of simply imitating the people they are playing. In Spotlight, each lead feels fully defined and believable. "That’s an actor's work," McCarthy notes. "The script is certainly the road map toward that end and hopefully that provides a lot of answers concerning character. Research is also crucial. But ultimately, actors have to dig and capture the essence of these people as best as they can. That’s instinct and craft. The great actors have both."

Once the locations and cast were set, McCarthy says that shooting went very smoothly. "I really credit our cinematographer, Masanobu Takayanagi," McCarthy says. "How he shot this movie, he's just brilliant. He gets the story so well, and we had enough prep time so we could find what we felt was the tone of the movie. Plus, he lit the newsroom and the Spotlight office so we could move quickly once we were in them." (Takayanagi also shot the Boston-based gangster film Black Mass.)

This is the fifth time McCarthy has worked with editor Tom McArdle. "Early on I was hearing from him," McCarthy reveals. "He was very reassuring: 'It's all cutting very easily, just keep doing what you're doing.' Of course he's down in New York cutting, outside the fog of war."

Spotlightstarts with one incident and expands to encompass a worldwide scandal that is still unfolding. One of the challenges McCarthy faced was transporting viewers back to a more innocent time when the reporters involved had no sense of the scope of what they were covering. All the while avoiding the story's potential landmines.

Although he is not practicing, McCarthy was raised a Catholic, and says that most of his family is still "very connected" to the Church. He praises Pope Francis, cites good works by the Church, and insists that Spotlight is not "pillorying" Catholics.

"But the Church is a big institution, institutions are manmade, and institutions fail. The Catholic Church on this particular issue failed. Full stop. There's no denying that, no rationalizing. There's a reason why the Pope has just apologized yesterday—again—for the shame he feels at how the institution failed."

Which may be why one scene about a half-hour into the movie has resonated so strongly with viewers. It's the first time the Spotlight team meets with one of the victims of sexual abuse, Phil Saviano (played by Neal Huff). The founder of SNAP (Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests), Saviano describes just what "abuse" means, in details both shocking and painful. It is a devastating moment made all the more powerful by McCarthy's understated staging.

"Once we were in that space, Robby's office, it was just being true to the reporters and their work," McCarthy says. "We'd call or e-mail them, 'Where would you guys stand, would you cram into an office?' That makes the blocking pretty easy; of course, you put Phil off by himself, Robby at his desk, Sacha and Matt here, Mike there, still standing.

"Then it was just finding the tempo, watching a couple of rehearsals. Finding our rhythm based on one, the material, and two, the performances. With so many of these scenes we had actors who could just carry the material. Once we unleashed them, they were good to go."

But the director emphasizes that the emotions of the scene were more important than technical issues. "Meeting the survivors, hearing their stories, these people who have had the courage to come forward and realize the effect they can have, even if by divulging something so painful and personal, viewers really connect to that emotionally," McCarthy says. "We felt like we needed to give Phil his say."

McCarthy may downplay his contributions, but the scene is a textbook example of setting, characters and dialogue combining to create an emotional truth. "I think when we shot that scene, we could all feel it," the director admits. "We could feel it in Neal's performance. The other reporters were just starting to feel like an ensemble. Everyone was so dialed in, how we shot and then ultimately edited the scene was actually quite easy."

An actor himself, McCarthy elicits sharp, focused performances from his cast, in particular Keaton's worried, driven Robby Robinson. Working with former "West Wing" writer Josh Singer, he came up with a screenplay that went beyond surface details to question how society responds to scandals.

But it is McCarthy's skills as a director that make Spotlight so engrossing. By trusting the performers, and by telling the story without exaggerating its details, he has turned out one of this year's more powerful movies.