UNITED STATES
Entertainment Weekly
BY JEFF LABRECQUE
Posted November 23 2015
Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy weren’t necessarily digging for a scoop while researching the 2002 Boston Globe exposé of the Catholic Church sex-abuse scandal for the screenplay that would become Spotlight. After all, they were already standing on the shoulders of giants – the Globe’s Spotlight team of investigative journalists had won the Pulitzer Prize for their series of articles that revealed how the Boston archdiocese, led by Cardinal Bernard Law, had shielded predator priests for more than three decades, shuffling them to different parishes when they molested children and shelling out millions to victims in confidential settlements.
Not only had the Globe published an official book documenting the Spotlight team’s findings, Betrayal, but all their articles, including the more than 600 stories published in 2002 — leading to Law’s resignation — were available online. Plus, the screenwriters had access to many of the Globe’s key people, including those depicted in the film: Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton), Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James), Ben Bradlee Jr. (John Slattery), and Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber).
But one of the film’s most important twists — one that even eluded the Globe — fell into the filmmakers’ laps by accident. [The following contains SPOILERS.] In Spotlight, which the pair co-wrote and McCarthy directed, the dramatic weight of the film is epitomized by a line from the crusading attorney played by Stanley Tucci: “If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one.” The film asks the difficult question: Was everyone, including the media, too deferential to the Church while crimes were happening in their backyards?
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