Latest / Question Everything / When Hollywood Tells The Truth - with the directors of Spotlight, The Staircase, Reality, and The Investigation

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When Hollywood Tells The Truth - with the directors of Spotlight, The Staircase, Reality, and The Investigation · Question Everything

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We happen to have a release day on Christmas. And
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: I thought, you know what a lot of people might
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: be doing today around this time? Rewatching a movie that
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: you've seen, I don't know, a dozen times, two dozen times.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I know that's probably what I'll end up doing with
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: my family for many years. It was Lord of the Rings.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it will be this year. I've
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: been revisiting Home Alone with my five-year-old, which has been awesome, frankly.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: And so I thought, you know what? It's a good
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: day to revisit one of my favorite Question Everything episodes
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: we've done because it's about movies. And really, a question
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I obsess over, how do you tell a story that lasts?
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: How do you make a story that cuts through all
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: the noise we're bombarded with every day and has a
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: real impact on people's lives? To get into this, we
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: have four Hollywood directors who we brought together on a
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: chilly night last year around this time at the Bibber &
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Bell Wine Shop in New York. And if you're wondering
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: why I was chumming around with Hollywood directors on a
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: show about journalism, decent question. It's because these filmmakers specifically,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: they all did something unusual. They used reporting to make
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: their movies and TV shows. And not just in like
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: a based on a true story kind of way, but
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: in a way that really strikes me as a kind
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: of investigative journalism. They interview people, dig up documents, police files, transcripts,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: archival footage. They chase down details the way I do
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: as a reporter. And then they turn it into drama.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: for the big or small screen. In some cases, these
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: directors have been more thorough than journalists who are working
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: under tight deadlines. One of them uncovered a genuine scoop
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: while making his film. Another built his show partly as
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: a rebuttal to bad reporting by journalists that had distorted
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: the truth. And it's just interesting, all these directors have
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: had to straddle this very fine line. How do you
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: tell a true story as a work of fiction and
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: still stay faithful to the underlying facts? And how far
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: should you go as a director making fiction to stay
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: true to those facts? I had such a blast in
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: this conversation. We have Tom McCarthy, who directed the Academy
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Award-winning Spotlight, Antonio Campos, who did the HBO adaptation of
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: the documentary The Staircase, Tina Satter, who directed Sidney Sweeney
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: in the excellent movie Reality about Reality Winner, who we've
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: also had on our show before, And Danish filmmaker Tobias Lindholm,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: whose series The Investigation on HBO just wrecked me. This
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: is Question Everything from Placement Theory and KCRW. I'm Brian Reed.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Merry Christmas. Stick around.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: It's early December. The wine shop just made its last
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: sale for the night and closed up. I'm getting the
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: small bar ready with our executive producer Robin Simeon. And
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: our guests start wandering in from the cold. Tobias Lindholm,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: who created the HBO show The Investigation.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: He's the one with the Danish accent. Tina Satter, a
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: longtime theater.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Director in New York. I've seen her plays over the years.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Who recently directed her first feature film. Also Tom McCarthy,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: who won an Oscar for his movie Spotlight.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: And lastly, Antonio Campos.
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: We're going to play edited excerpts from our conversation, and
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: you'll hear from Antonio first.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Antonio made the fictionalized HBO series The Staircase, which is
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: about the French documentary series The Staircase.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: The HBO show is spectacular.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Really compelling, not only because he gets incredible actors like
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Colin Firth and Tony Collette and Juliette Binoche to play
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: the real people involved in the case, but because Antonio
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: uses the HBO show to go beyond just reenacting what's
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: in the documentary. He actually dramatizes the behind-the-scenes story of
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: the making of the documentary. Cheers.
• 4:12
  Speaker 5: Cheers, everybody.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you all for being here.
• 4:15
  Speaker 6: It's such a pleasure.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate it on this cold night.
• 4:18
  Speaker 5: Cheers.
• 4:19
  Speaker 6: Fine.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Cheers. So I gathered you all here today because this
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: is a show about journalism. And I love all your guys' work.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: And you all, in one way or another, draw on
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: journalism for your work. And so I was hoping we
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: could talk about it. To start, I'm just curious. When
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: you see a piece of reporting, a story, or something
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: true in the world, how do you know, oh, that's
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: something that could be dramatized? Or that I feel drawn
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: to dramatize? I don't know, Antonio, the staircase... was like
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: a canonical documentary and you saw it and thought, I
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: could do that again and add something? Like, how did
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: you come to that?
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: Well, one, I've always been fascinated by true crime and
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: I love reading true crime, but there's not, majority of time,
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: I don't think this needs to be anything but a
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: great article or a great documentary or docu-series. But there's
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: certain times when these things spark and you're like, oh,
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: there's something here that inspires, that could benefit from dramatization.
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: that creative liberties could get you further, potentially closer to
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: the truth than what a documentary could. That's how at
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: least I felt.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Will you just say like a quick summary of what
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: The Staircase is?
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so The Staircase is a documentary, an eight-part docu-series
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: made in 2004 about a murder trial in Durham, North Carolina,
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: where a rich novelist, a well-known novelist in the community,
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: figure in the community, was accused of killing his wife
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: Michael Peterson is the name of the writer. He claimed
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: that he found her dead at the bottom of the
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: stairs and the police claim that he killed her, that
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: he beat her to death. And so then what happened
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: was a documentary film crew from France came and they
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: documented the entire case and followed him and had total access.
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: This is 2008. I had just made my first feature
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: and this producer sent me.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: This documentary, The Staircase.
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: And the producer, when I got to his office, said, well, look,
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: there's three things you should know. He said, one, the
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: producer of the documentary and the director don't agree about
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: what happened, whether or not Michael Peterson was guilty. The
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: second thing you should know is that there's a lot
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: more that happened that isn't in the documentary. And the
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: third thing you should know is that the editor of
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: the documentary fell in love with Michael Peterson. And eventually
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: left her family for Michael Peterson and then dedicated her life.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: To getting him out.
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: I was like, okay, well, this is just layers and
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: layers and layers. All of that sort of made it
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: more interesting.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: And when you were told that the editor of the
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: documentary fell in love with Michael Peterson, the convicted murderer, ultimately, right?
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: What did you ask next? Like, what was your next question?
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: Well, I think my question was like, can I meet her? So,
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: Sophie was one of the editors on the documentary, and
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: she started a communication with Michael.
• 7:17
  Speaker 5: She only knew him by cutting?
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: She only knew him by the footage. She had never
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: met him until she went to visit him in prison.
• 7:25
  Speaker 6: Did she fall in love with him already in... Well,
• 7:28
  Speaker 6: this is a point of contention.
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: Whether or not she had feelings for him during the
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: editing is sort of up for debate. What we do
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: know is that she eventually wrote to him and started
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: communicating with him, and.
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: Eventually she went from France to go visit him and
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: at that point he was in prison.
• 7:45
  Speaker 7: Did you talk to her?
• 7:46
  Speaker 6: Yes. Yeah.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: And does she say that the relationships started after she
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: was actually working on the project?
• 7:54
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: I was very adamant about meeting the filmmakers and then
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: once I met them I was like, I need to
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: meet Sophie, the editor, and then once that happened I
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: was like, okay, this is it.
• 8:02
  Speaker 6: And why do.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: You need to meet them? If you're fictionalizing something, I
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: wouldn't take it for granted that you have to, I guess.
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: Well, the Truth is always stranger than fiction. I mean, look,
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: the reality is this series took me 12 years to make.
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: From that 2008 to when I was actually making this
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: was 12 years. And in that time, all this stuff
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: had happened. So I didn't know where the journey was
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: going to take me. And I started the process and
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: I said, you know what's going to happen? I'm going
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: to figure this out. I'm going to use computers and
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: CGI and I'm going to recreate this thing and build
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: a set. And I At some point, like four or
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: five years in, I was like, this doesn't matter. Like,
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: I can't figure this out. I was like, because I did,
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: at some point I realized, oh, I'm not going to
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: figure it out. And it's okay. And it's okay to
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: sort of live in this space of not figuring it out.
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: But the processes, the trying to figure it out, and
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: why is everybody trying to figure it out? Why is
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: it that Michael Peterson is such a great, perfect suspect?
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: And it was like, that was a more interesting space
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: to play in and sort of like, The possibilities were
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: more interesting to me than the final answer.
• 9:12
  Speaker 6: But you did something, and let me ask you about that,
• 9:13
  Speaker 6: because you did something different. Often what you, with a
• 9:17
  Speaker 6: sensational story, you want to go in and investigate and
• 9:20
  Speaker 6: find that missing link. It's not like you were trying
• 9:24
  Speaker 6: to do that. It was more like you were trying
• 9:25
  Speaker 6: to show me that all these different ways could be possible.
• 9:28
  Speaker 6: It's almost like you took a step back and made
• 9:30
  Speaker 6: a documentary about a documentary that was being made.
• 9:33
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 9:33
  Speaker 6: And, you know, I was in love with Michael Peterson.
• 9:35
  Speaker 6: I was drawn to this character.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: She started writing letters?
• 9:38
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: So how did the real-life Sophie feel about her portrayal,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: can you say?
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's complicated. She had a complicated reaction to it, yeah.
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: She was mad, yeah.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Is it important? Like, did you feel like, I want
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: them to like it? Because as a reporter, like, I
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: sometimes want someone to like it, but that's not always
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: in line with what I'm doing, you know?
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: I think so.
• 10:05
  Speaker 6: I think I did.
• 10:06
  Speaker 5: I think I did.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: I do.
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: But this is sort of the trickiest part because you're
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: dealing with real people and dramatizing it, you have to
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: kind of get to this sort of the essence of it.
• 10:27
  Speaker 8: In the case of the movie I did, Reality, with
• 10:31
  Speaker 8: Reality Winner herself who's being portrayed, I wasn't able to
• 10:36
  Speaker 8: communicate with her for a long time because she was
• 10:38
  Speaker 8: in prison.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: This is Tina Satter. Tina made a play that she
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: then turned into a movie last year, starring Sidney Sweeney,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: about Reality Winner. Reality Winner, if you've not heard of her,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: is the name of a real person. Reality was a
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: translator for the National Security Agency. After the 2016 presidential election,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: when Reality was 25 years old, she got worried that
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Americans were maybe being misled about the extent of Russian
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: interference that had happened in the previous presidential election. Reality
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: printed out a classified government report which proved there were
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Russian cyber attacks on American voting software. And then she
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: mailed it anonymously to the news site The Intercept. They
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: reported on it. And then Reality Winner was caught by
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: the FBI. She was interrogated at her home in Texas
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: by two agents, charged under the Espionage Act, and sentenced
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: to more than five years in prison. It was the
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: longest sentence ever given to a source for sharing classified
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: information with a news outlet. The FBI got wind of
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: it and was able to identify her?
• 11:41
  Speaker 8: Yes, because anything printed at the NSA has a very
• 11:44
  Speaker 8: specific code at the top. She sent actual, you know,
• 11:49
  Speaker 8: hard copy papers into the mail to them. For their
• 11:53
  Speaker 8: fact checking, they called up a former FBI guy and
• 11:57
  Speaker 8: was like, does this look real? And that guy was like,
• 12:02
  Speaker 8: it looks real and also I'm going to share it
• 12:04
  Speaker 8: with actual FBI people. And then in June of 2017,
• 12:09
  Speaker 8: she was visited by the FBI at her home and
• 12:12
  Speaker 8: they recorded this interrogation. And so my movie is like
• 12:16
  Speaker 8: verbatim that. using that dialogue to this hour and a
• 12:20
  Speaker 8: half in her afternoon.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: How did you happen to randomly read an FBI interrogation
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: of Reality Winner?
• 12:26
  Speaker 8: So Reality Winner does the thing she does in the
• 12:29
  Speaker 8: movie in June 2017. I barely paid attention to that
• 12:34
  Speaker 8: news story, as I.
• 12:35
  Speaker 9: Think many people did not either.
• 12:37
  Speaker 8: And then six months later, New York Magazine had a
• 12:42
  Speaker 8: story in it called America's.
• 12:44
  Speaker 9: Biggest Terrorist Has a Pikachu Bedspread. And I was like, huh.
• 12:49
  Speaker 9: And I was like, you had me a Pikachu. It's
• 12:52
  Speaker 9: so funny.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Rob and I were talking about this. Rob was like,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: I want to know if the Pikachu bed spread is real.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Literally yesterday.
• 12:59
  Speaker 9: I was like, I really just want to know.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: I think it's on my list of questions right now.
• 13:04
  Speaker 8: I had seen the little, she was barely covered, right?
• 13:08
  Speaker 8: And that's a whole other interesting story about news. But
• 13:10
  Speaker 8: there are photos of her with this. I'm reading it
• 13:12
  Speaker 8: online in New York Magazine. And I was like, wait,
• 13:16
  Speaker 8: this young woman, like, the details of her life that
• 13:19
  Speaker 8: are in there, like a veteran.
• 13:21
  Speaker 9: She speaks three languages.
• 13:22
  Speaker 8: Yes, but then she does yoga, but then she's like
• 13:25
  Speaker 8: this young, very young woman. I was like obsessively reading this,
• 13:29
  Speaker 8: just like, wow, this is super fascinating. But somewhere in there,
• 13:33
  Speaker 8: there was like a hyperlink that was like, read about
• 13:36
  Speaker 8: the day reality was visited.
• 13:37
  Speaker 9: At her home by the FBI. I click that link
• 13:41
  Speaker 9: and that took you to Politico who had.
• 13:43
  Speaker 8: This like somehow crookedly copied I mean, it has a
• 13:48
  Speaker 8: stamp on the top of it, reality winner verbatim transcription.
• 13:52
  Speaker 9: Every page of this thing, I was like this, I
• 13:56
  Speaker 9: couldn't believe it.
• 13:57
  Speaker 8: And I could feel like this simmering tension in it.
• 14:01
  Speaker 9: Like from the, hey, hello. Because you read it knowing.
• 14:05
  Speaker 8: That this young woman's in prison. So to me, I'm like,
• 14:09
  Speaker 8: when do they get her? Because like, she's clearly obfuscating.
• 14:12
  Speaker 8: And I totally had an instinct that the language stood
• 14:16
  Speaker 8: as a play. And for months, that was what I
• 14:19
  Speaker 8: had printed out as the script when I was doing
• 14:21
  Speaker 8: it as a play.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: How long is the raw transcript? How long is it
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: versus how long?
• 14:26
  Speaker 9: 81 pages.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 14:27
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: What does that translate to, like lengthwise?
• 14:30
  Speaker 9: For a play, it's like 70 minutes. I had not
• 14:33
  Speaker 9: cut anything when I did it on stage.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Not a word?
• 14:37
  Speaker 8: Not a word, not a redaction, not a cough. we
• 14:41
  Speaker 8: treated it was like Shakespeare. Like it's all on the page.
• 14:45
  Speaker 9: Do you know what I mean?
• 14:45
  Speaker 8: Like what does it tell us like half sentence by
• 14:49
  Speaker 8: half sentence? I had written the things before so it
• 14:53
  Speaker 8: was like you wanted to change it if it sounded horrible.
• 14:55
  Speaker 9: You know what I mean?
• 14:56
  Speaker 8: But it was this amazing constraint. Like we kind of
• 14:58
  Speaker 8: have to figure out what it means.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: I have that experience all the time when I'm reading
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: like transcripts or like 911 calls that I'll get like
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: released through a FOIA or something. I'm always struck by
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: just how much subtext there is to play with in
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: those when you're making even documentary work. I don't know,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: it's one of the beautiful things about raw material.
• 15:20
  Speaker 5: It's like a mystery.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: There's like a mystery in what's being said underneath it.
• 15:25
  Speaker 7: It's what is exciting about seeing it dramatized, I think,
• 15:28
  Speaker 7: is to see it come to life.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: Whenever I read transcripts, Like almost as a writer, I'm
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: almost envious of how good the tone of the language is.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Because people never talk as well as we write them, you.
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: Know what I mean?
• 15:40
  Speaker 9: I know, it's so good.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: And so even if we're not Aaron Sorkin in giving
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: them verbal superpowers, we're all making it a little better, right?
• 15:47
  Speaker 7: So it's like when I read a transcript, I'm like, oh,
• 15:50
  Speaker 7: this is so, so great.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: So were you always just like, this is going to
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: be verbatim? Was there ever a moment where you thought,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: I'm going to use parts of this, I'm going to
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: use it as inspiration? I'm going to edit it in
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: some way.
• 16:00
  Speaker 8: Really early on, it felt like the integrity of this project,
• 16:05
  Speaker 8: because it's weird and dry, was that it had to
• 16:08
  Speaker 8: be this is what happened in that room that day.
• 16:11
  Speaker 9: The surreality of it was already baked. It was there.
• 16:15
  Speaker 8: For anyone who's seen it, there's a scene on the lawn.
• 16:18
  Speaker 8: I don't know, third into it. If you're reality, you
• 16:20
  Speaker 8: probably think, what is happening now? But they just start
• 16:22
  Speaker 8: chit-chatting to her about working out and CrossFit. It's almost
• 16:27
  Speaker 8: like you're just at a barbecue chatting with your friend's
• 16:30
  Speaker 8: weird dad. And so if you kept the transcript screenplay,
• 16:35
  Speaker 8: that's like seven pages of screenplay.
• 16:37
  Speaker 9: You have to keep some of that banality.
• 16:40
  Speaker 8: It has to drift, because I never wanted to change
• 16:43
  Speaker 8: within a line.
• 16:44
  Speaker 9: Do you know what I mean?
• 16:44
  Speaker 8: Because that would feel like I was then directing... the story.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: What did you learn? So you did the play without
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: talking to reality, but then you started talking to her
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: and making the movie?
• 16:55
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 16:55
  Speaker 8: But when we went to make the movie, Sydney Sweeney,
• 16:58
  Speaker 8: who plays reality, wanted to speak to reality. And so
• 17:02
  Speaker 8: Sid and her had these private conversations throughout and like
• 17:05
  Speaker 8: Sydney would tell, told me some of it, but I
• 17:07
  Speaker 8: didn't even want to press her.
• 17:08
  Speaker 9: I don't know.
• 17:08
  Speaker 8: I wanted it also to be her private work, but
• 17:11
  Speaker 8: then you would speak on the phone.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: What were your questions and what did you learn and
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: how did it change?
• 17:17
  Speaker 9: They were all, they were detailed.
• 17:19
  Speaker 8: I only wanted to ask her detailed questions, not like,
• 17:22
  Speaker 8: what did it feel like for you? Why? Because I
• 17:27
  Speaker 8: didn't want it to be too informed to push a
• 17:29
  Speaker 8: certain agenda that she or her family felt. I actually
• 17:35
  Speaker 8: thought showing it most straightforwardly was the strongest way, frankly,
• 17:39
  Speaker 8: for reality. And what I felt was complicated about what
• 17:44
  Speaker 8: happened to her to be presented was.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: And they knew the premise. They knew you were doing
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: it verbatim from the transcript.
• 17:49
  Speaker 8: Because the family came to the very first night we
• 17:51
  Speaker 8: ever did the play. You know, I learned after how
• 17:54
  Speaker 8: understandably nervous they were.
• 17:57
  Speaker 9: But then when they saw it.
• 17:58
  Speaker 8: They were actually like, okay, there is this power in
• 18:02
  Speaker 8: showing our daughter and her words, not pushing an agenda
• 18:06
  Speaker 8: too much.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Totally.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Totally.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: How's everybody doing on drinks?
• 18:10
  Speaker 6: Do you need a little more?
• 18:11
  Speaker 9: I might.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Bias, did you use transcripts and what materials did you
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: use to make the investigation? Like, did you have the
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: whole case file?
• 18:28
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I had access to it. In that case, for me,
• 18:31
  Speaker 6: it was like, what details, how many details can I
• 18:34
  Speaker 6: leave out? So it's like, that story was overtold in
• 18:39
  Speaker 6: Scandinavian press. This murder case, it was so well covered.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: You were going into well-trodden territory, basically.
• 18:45
  Speaker 6: So I was like, what can I leave out?
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Give the gist for anybody who hasn't seen it.
• 18:48
  Speaker 6: So a Swedish... female journalist named Kinval was brought, lived
• 18:55
  Speaker 6: in Copenhagen and was, as a journalist, going to do
• 18:57
  Speaker 6: an interview with this self-declaimed scientist who had built his
• 19:01
  Speaker 6: own submarine, like a hobby project, and she was going
• 19:04
  Speaker 6: to sail out with him. And he ended up killing
• 19:07
  Speaker 6: her on that trip out. And it became probably the
• 19:11
  Speaker 6: most covered murder in Denmark history. It was everywhere. And
• 19:17
  Speaker 6: it was the classical true crime angle from all journalists
• 19:21
  Speaker 6: covering it. Everybody got obsessed with this genius who had
• 19:23
  Speaker 6: built a submarine and now he was also a sexual predator.
• 19:27
  Speaker 6: We were all, I guess, absorbed with this story for
• 19:31
  Speaker 6: a couple of days. And then when it just continued
• 19:33
  Speaker 6: and it just kept growing, like every day, breaking news,
• 19:36
  Speaker 6: it was all over. I decided to not really look
• 19:39
  Speaker 6: at it because I felt polluted. I felt like how
• 19:42
  Speaker 6: dirty it was to sit there and be entertained by
• 19:44
  Speaker 6: these details and the speculation of a case that had
• 19:47
  Speaker 6: just happened and a young woman had lost her life
• 19:51
  Speaker 6: and so later I got to meet the chief investigator
• 19:55
  Speaker 6: and then he told me some very specific details not
• 20:00
  Speaker 6: about the crime but about the solving of the crime
• 20:02
  Speaker 6: about the investigation and I realized what were they? stuff
• 20:07
  Speaker 6: like they used special trained dogs to sniff bodies that
• 20:13
  Speaker 6: were on the bottom of the ocean then the scent
• 20:15
  Speaker 6: would travel through water up through the surface that gas
• 20:19
  Speaker 6: would be caught by a dog's nose it would bark
• 20:21
  Speaker 6: and then they would dive down and find the evidence
• 20:24
  Speaker 6: the dog is in a boat in the like in
• 20:26
  Speaker 6: a small small rowing boat with a small engine and
• 20:30
  Speaker 6: and it's just in front and it's just waiting And
• 20:32
  Speaker 6: they just sail around in circles.
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: We're all kind of giggling at this image right now.
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: You know that.
• 20:36
  Speaker 6: It was the opening of episode four because it's such
• 20:38
  Speaker 6: a beautiful episode.
• 20:39
  Speaker 5: It's incredible.
• 20:40
  Speaker 6: And so when he started to tell me about these scientific,
• 20:43
  Speaker 6: almost like Sherlock Holmes-ish crazy things, I was... overwhelmed with, like,
• 20:50
  Speaker 6: why haven't we told this story?
• 20:51
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 20:51
  Speaker 6: Who cares about a sexual predator?
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: So none of that had been told publicly?
• 20:56
  Speaker 6: Nothing. They had all just been obsessed with, oh, how
• 20:59
  Speaker 6: many has he killed? Has he done it before?
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: What's the procedure?
• 21:02
  Speaker 6: And I was like.
• 21:03
  Speaker 9: How about about the woman? Was the reporting about the woman,
• 21:07
  Speaker 9: or was it all mostly just about him?
• 21:09
  Speaker 6: She was, to begin with, only portrayed as the victim
• 21:14
  Speaker 6: of this crime. So it was like the female victim.
• 21:16
  Speaker 9: Not like a three-dimensional, this is who she was.
• 21:18
  Speaker 6: And what she's about.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 21:20
  Speaker 6: And then speculation started. Was she pervertedly sexually active? They
• 21:25
  Speaker 6: were trying to make sense of it. And of course
• 21:28
  Speaker 6: she wasn't. And of course she was just there to
• 21:30
  Speaker 6: do a very interesting piece that she was going to
• 21:32
  Speaker 6: do for an American magazine. And she was going to
• 21:34
  Speaker 6: move to China the next day with her boyfriend and
• 21:37
  Speaker 6: live as a journalist in China. And so two people
• 21:41
  Speaker 6: sail out. Only one come back. He has no real
• 21:44
  Speaker 6: explanation to what happened to his guest. So they had
• 21:47
  Speaker 6: a suspect of a crime and they arrested him, but
• 21:49
  Speaker 6: they didn't have a crime yet. So it's like the
• 21:51
  Speaker 6: opposite of a normal police case. It was here comes
• 21:54
  Speaker 6: in a guy who clearly has done something, but nobody
• 21:56
  Speaker 6: knows what it is.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: It's like a how done it, basically. It's like how
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: done it.
• 22:01
  Speaker 6: Or what done it. So it opened up all these
• 22:04
  Speaker 6: other questions.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: That is how Sherlock Holmes is, if you read it.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: It isn't that you're going with Sherlock Holmes through his
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: investigation to discover it. It's like there's a murder. He
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: goes away and figures it out. He comes back and
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: tells Watson how he figured it out, basically. Like, yours
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: is kind of like that.
• 22:19
  Speaker 6: I agree. I was fascinated with that structure of, like,
• 22:22
  Speaker 6: a Sherlock Holmes story. And so these details became the
• 22:24
  Speaker 6: structure of, like, I just tried to then stay loyal
• 22:27
  Speaker 6: to the police work. So I talked to the police officer.
• 22:31
  Speaker 6: And I went home and I was like, I promised
• 22:34
  Speaker 6: myself not to touch this story because I hated the
• 22:36
  Speaker 6: way it had been covered. Mm-hmm.
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 22:39
  Speaker 6: And then I called him and I said, if I'm
• 22:40
  Speaker 6: ever going to do this, you need to introduce me
• 22:42
  Speaker 6: to her parents.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: What was that meeting like?
• 22:45
  Speaker 6: I was terrified.
• 22:47
  Speaker 9: What were you terrified about?
• 22:49
  Speaker 6: It was like I knew that there was potentially something
• 22:52
  Speaker 6: wrong with me coming to their garden and asking them
• 22:54
  Speaker 6: for permission to do something that I would make money
• 22:57
  Speaker 6: from and make an entertainment piece of true crime about
• 23:03
  Speaker 6: their life's catastrophe. And they were extremely open and kind
• 23:11
  Speaker 6: and very honest about their feelings. But they had one
• 23:16
  Speaker 6: simple mission, which was that their daughter Kim should be
• 23:19
  Speaker 6: remembered as a journalist and not as a victim of
• 23:22
  Speaker 6: a sexual crime. And that made total sense.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: To me as a father. They told you that on
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: your first conversation?
• 23:30
  Speaker 6: They told me that. That was what they had been
• 23:32
  Speaker 6: fighting with the Danish press about, like trying to change
• 23:35
  Speaker 6: the narrative. But driving home from that first meeting, I
• 23:38
  Speaker 6: wasn't sure that I could do it because there was
• 23:40
  Speaker 6: something in it where I felt like a parasite and
• 23:43
  Speaker 6: I had to find a way out of that to
• 23:45
  Speaker 6: do it.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: You and I have talked about this once before and
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: I got the sense that it really took a toll.
• 23:48
  Speaker 6: It took a toll.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Like the obligation, the responsibility took.
• 23:51
  Speaker 6: A toll on you. When it was over, I, for
• 23:54
  Speaker 6: a while, thought I probably shouldn't have done it. Like
• 23:57
  Speaker 6: my hair was gray. I took it very serious as
• 24:01
  Speaker 6: I should, but probably too serious.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: But it's funny too.
• 24:04
  Speaker 5: What do you mean by that?
• 24:06
  Speaker 6: I mean, I am a storyteller and I should live
• 24:08
  Speaker 6: up to that responsibility. And I didn't kill their daughter.
• 24:13
  Speaker 6: I didn't take part in this. And I was too
• 24:16
  Speaker 6: afraid of.
• 24:20
  Speaker 5: Getting it wrong?
• 24:20
  Speaker 6: Getting it wrong and doing what I didn't like the
• 24:23
  Speaker 6: press was doing in the breaking news sensationalism. I became
• 24:27
  Speaker 6: very obsessed with details in this. So I would hire
• 24:32
  Speaker 6: the exact police officers and dogs to be in the movie.
• 24:37
  Speaker 6: So the dogs that we see, they're all real. The
• 24:41
  Speaker 6: boat that picks up the submarine from the bottom of
• 24:44
  Speaker 6: the ocean is the exact boat with the exact crew
• 24:46
  Speaker 6: that picked up the real one. All the divers that
• 24:50
  Speaker 6: was doing it was the guys that was doing it
• 24:52
  Speaker 6: that day. And it is the exact location.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: What was your feeling of why that had to be
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: that way? Like the verisimilitude, why such a commitment to that?
• 25:01
  Speaker 6: I think it became my, to begin with, it became
• 25:03
  Speaker 6: my excuse that it was all right to do this.
• 25:05
  Speaker 6: Like almost religiously to just be like, all this press
• 25:09
  Speaker 6: that I didn't like got it wrong because they got
• 25:11
  Speaker 6: obsessed with all this. Now I'm going to do it
• 25:13
  Speaker 6: like where I don't add stuff. I just show it
• 25:15
  Speaker 6: exactly as it was. I'm not, and it felt like
• 25:20
  Speaker 6: necessary to explain myself, to myself why I was doing this.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, was that like about your own experience? I guess,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: anxiety about doing the project or did it serve the
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: project in some way?
• 25:30
  Speaker 6: I think it served the project. I think that had
• 25:32
  Speaker 6: I not been that specific, I would probably have been
• 25:34
  Speaker 6: told to do some CGI submarine, some easy place where
• 25:38
  Speaker 6: it wouldn't have taken us days. But I insisted and
• 25:41
  Speaker 6: therefore I spent like a tenth of the budget to
• 25:43
  Speaker 6: build a submarine that we could raise from the ocean
• 25:45
  Speaker 6: that had the right weight. And it connects very well
• 25:47
  Speaker 6: with the transcript. I mean, this was the transcript I had.
• 25:49
  Speaker 6: I had actually access to the right boat, the right people,
• 25:52
  Speaker 6: the right way. I could actually do this.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Like, how would that affect me as a viewer and
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: in what you're trying to relay to the viewer?
• 25:58
  Speaker 6: Well, I think that the specificity of it creates the
• 26:02
  Speaker 6: journey there. Like, you transport somebody into a situation where
• 26:05
  Speaker 6: there is a certain point of view and a specific
• 26:07
  Speaker 6: point of view that allows you to be present in
• 26:09
  Speaker 6: the scene.
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: Well, I think that's the thing there is that there's
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: a care. If a filmmaker cares and they care about
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: every frame and they care about every detail, you don't
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: know it, but somehow you just feel it on some
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: subconscious level.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: I mean, ultimately, filmmaking, TV shows, we're just trying to
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: capture moments and create moment by moment. Moments that feel real,
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: that touch you, that grab you, that surprise you. All
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: of that requires an attention to detail. And that's what
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: makes things feel real. And I think that's what allows
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: you to get closer to the characters that are representing
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: the real people.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: It sounds like all you guys, like you're imposing reality
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: on yourselves. You're imposing fact on yourselves and rules. that
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: kind of follow from facts and that helps you with
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: your process. It's interesting because I've always felt like, I
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: don't know, when I've thought about could I write fiction
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: or could I write something that's not real, you know,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: that the tyranny of the blank page just like overwhelms
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: me and I so love the work I do in
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: terms of being able to mine reality for that, for story.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: But it sounds like you're doing the same thing. Like
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: you guys need that too. You're not just starting with
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: a blank page. You're giving yourself rules and saying I
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: have to adhere to certain things. I have to, you know.
• 27:28
  Speaker 5: I think so.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: But I work with certain writers who I think are
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: very uniquely comfortable in the space of reality, meaning they
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: like stories called from real life, right?
• 27:37
  Speaker 5: They want that.
• 27:38
  Speaker 7: They want to go into the facts and find it,
• 27:40
  Speaker 7: find it, find it because.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: It's there somewhere. And then other writers who they're allergic
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: to that. They just want to get lost in it.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: And that's another part of cinema, which is beautiful and wonderful.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: And like I know because I've worked with a lot
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: of different writers of different sort of intentions that like
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: some people love it and some I'll be like, I
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: could never ask him to go write this.
• 28:01
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 28:01
  Speaker 7: Because he'll just he'll lose his mind, you know, like
• 28:05
  Speaker 7: he wants.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: The constraints are too much.
• 28:06
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 28:07
  Speaker 5: Or it's too wide open. Right.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: I was going to ask, what is the role of
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: your imaginations in this work? How do you think about
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: your imagination?
• 28:13
  Speaker 6: I realized very early on in my life that I
• 28:15
  Speaker 6: was not a fan of my own imagination. As a child,
• 28:19
  Speaker 6: I didn't like playing with dolls. So Danish. I was like,
• 28:25
  Speaker 6: I'm not amused by it. Who gives, like, yeah, I
• 28:27
  Speaker 6: can think of this, I can think of that, but
• 28:28
  Speaker 6: it's not real. I remember sitting there with, very specifically,
• 28:31
  Speaker 6: probably eight years, seven years old, eight years old, with Lego,
• 28:34
  Speaker 6: which is a Danish toy company, and.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: What is it?
• 28:38
  Speaker 6: Lego? Lego. Lego.
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: L-E-G-O.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 28:42
  Speaker 6: Maybe you've heard of it. And these small figures, back then,
• 28:48
  Speaker 6: it was not, you know, you weren't building a friend's set.
• 28:54
  Speaker 6: It was like just these boring characters. And playing with them,
• 28:59
  Speaker 6: I really fast realized that they weren't talking to each other.
• 29:02
  Speaker 6: It was me making it up. And I realized that
• 29:04
  Speaker 6: they didn't have any emotions. It was not like, oh,
• 29:07
  Speaker 6: now he's really angry at this. It was like, yeah.
• 29:11
  Speaker 6: I can just leave this behind. And so I realized
• 29:13
  Speaker 6: it was much better to read stories and play chess
• 29:16
  Speaker 6: and follow some rules.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Is there a liberty that any of you have taken
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: that you regret? Like a fictional liberty?
• 29:24
  Speaker 6: I think, actually, for me, it's more the opposite. I
• 29:27
  Speaker 6: did a film called A Hijacking. And it's about a
• 29:31
  Speaker 6: Danish ship being captured by Somali pirates. And I decided
• 29:36
  Speaker 6: that I could only make a hijacking if we rented
• 29:40
  Speaker 6: a boat and sailed into the ocean where the pirates were.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: That's the only way you could make it.
• 29:45
  Speaker 6: That's the only way I could find the truth in
• 29:47
  Speaker 6: this story, you know. And I had a pregnant wife
• 29:51
  Speaker 6: and a two-year-old at home. And there we are sailing
• 29:54
  Speaker 6: out into the Indian Ocean. And we didn't have money
• 29:57
  Speaker 6: for insurance. So instead we had hired soldiers from the
• 30:02
  Speaker 6: Kenyan army to protect us.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: They were cheaper.
• 30:04
  Speaker 6: Little did we know that they have never sailed. So
• 30:06
  Speaker 6: they were all seasick. So they were like all around
• 30:08
  Speaker 6: the boat puking. And we were shooting this scene and
• 30:12
  Speaker 6: suddenly the producer yells like everything comes to a stop.
• 30:15
  Speaker 6: And I'm down below like looking at the monitor. And
• 30:18
  Speaker 6: then I just hear this like this boat approaching. And
• 30:22
  Speaker 6: I suddenly see a guy that I didn't really know
• 30:24
  Speaker 6: what his job was, but he goes like... And he
• 30:27
  Speaker 6: pulls out this huge gun on the side of the boat.
• 30:30
  Speaker 6: Like clearly he has the intent to protect us if
• 30:33
  Speaker 6: anybody tries to board the ship that we're shooting on.
• 30:36
  Speaker 6: And in that moment, I was like, maybe an ocean
• 30:41
  Speaker 6: that looked like an Indian Ocean could have been all right.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: See, my brain goes to the acting pirates on the
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: ship who suddenly realize none of their guns are real.
• 30:53
  Speaker 6: You're right.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: And that they're being confronted by real pirates, and now
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: they're very bummed.
• 31:00
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: I feel like I've gotten a story from everybody about
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: what drama can bring or fiction can bring to a
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: real story. When did you know Spotlight was a story?
• 31:09
  Speaker 5: When I know it was a story?
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or when it was a movie. When did you
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: know Spotlight was a movie?
• 31:13
  Speaker 5: Can I switch to Scotch if we're going to do this?
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: After a quick break, Tom McCarthy on the troubling secret
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: he discovered while making Spotlight. Also, I'm going to share
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: an outtake from this conversation in our newsletter. At one point,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: we all ended up comparing notes about the state of
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: our industries, about Hollywood and documentary and audio and journalism,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: and how it's all affecting what work you end up
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: seeing and hearing. You can sign up for our newsletter
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: at kcrw.com slash questioneverything. Welcome back to the show. We're
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: hanging out after hours at a wine shop in New
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: York with four movie directors, including Tom McCarthy, who I
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: think of as kind of a bard of journalists. He
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: really has dramatized us a lot. He not only co-wrote
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: and directed the most acclaimed movie about journalism of the
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: last decade, Spotlight, which won the Oscar for Best Picture
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: in 2016. He also made a show about Roger Ailes
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: and Fox News called The Loudest Voice, along with a
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: recent ABC procedural about a newspaper in Anchorage called Alaska Daily.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: It starred Hilary Swank, and it's really an ode to
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: local news. Tom also actually played a journalist. He's an actor, too,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: in the fifth season of The Wire. He played a
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: dodgy Baltimore Sun reporter who was making up stories in
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: the paper. You'll hear him talk a bit about that
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: and about the former Baltimore Sun reporter who created The Wire,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: David Simon. Tom, for people who haven't seen Spotlight, what's
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: the gist?
• 32:46
  Speaker 5: Did this hour date?
• 32:47
  Speaker 7: I wonder if you should do it.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, you want me to do it?
• 32:51
  Speaker 5: Oh, yeah, I love that.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Spotlight is a wonderful movie. It's about the Boston Globe's
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: investigative unit, the Spotlight unit, that investigated what they discovered
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: was systemic, a cover-up of systemic abuse within the Catholic
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Church in the diocese in Boston. And it's the story
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: of that investigation and just systematically piecing together that this
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: wasn't just one instance of abuse, this wasn't just one priest,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: this was.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like the whole church and institutions connected to it,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: helping to keep this under wraps.
• 33:26
  Speaker 6: Robin?
• 33:28
  Speaker 5: I think it's solid.
• 33:29
  Speaker 6: It's the movie I saw. Good save.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Okay. Well done.
• 33:32
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: Like we knew it was an interesting story when Josh Singer,
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: my co-writer, and I started on at the time. I
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: say that, but actually when it was first brought to me,
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: I couldn't see it. I said no to the story
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: the first time, which is maybe, I don't know if
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: you do that.
• 33:44
  Speaker 5: As a journalist.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: I'm sure you guys have done it a million times.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: But like someone approached when the producers brought me it,
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: I looked at it and I thought, I know it,
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: I remember it, but I couldn't see.
• 33:53
  Speaker 5: The story in it. And I just walked away from it.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: You grew up Catholic?
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: Grew up Catholic, I raised Catholic, went to Boston College,
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: an undergraduate, and I felt comfortable in the Irish Catholic
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: culture of Boston. I was an altar boy growing up. Like,
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: I know those people. But I just couldn't see the story,
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: and I let it go. And a year later, I
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: was sitting trying to think what I was going to
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: do next. I'm like, I wonder if that story's taught there.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: And they'd gone to another very good writer. He couldn't
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: crack it.
• 34:18
  Speaker 5: And I just re-engaged with it. And so I knew it.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: Was something and Josh and I started poking at it,
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: but we were researching it for a good six months.
• 34:27
  Speaker 9: What were the challenges you were coming up against?
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: I just couldn't wrap my head around how to say
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: anything new with it. Like the investigation was so thorough
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: and the storytelling was so complete, right?
• 34:37
  Speaker 5: On some level, it's like, what are we going to do?
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: It wasn't interesting to me just to reenact it, to
• 34:42
  Speaker 5: dramatize it.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: Like I was like, what do we bring that's new
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: and fresh to this and how do we do it?
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: And We didn't have the answer when we started researching,
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: but we got so into the research for about six months,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: just going back to Boston and mostly spending time with
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: the reporters and some survivors who were incredibly generous.
• 34:58
  Speaker 5: With their stories. But really, really with the reporters.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: Trying to understand how that investigation went. And that, it
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: just felt like it was our in. We knew we
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: had to engage with the survivors and their story because
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: it was so key to the story. But we thought
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: the investigation... At that point, and especially where journalism was
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: pitched at the moment, and little did we know how
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: dire it was going to get, but we thought, this
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: is a story worth telling. And I think, you know,
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: I'd spend some time on the wire playing a journalist
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: with questionable Ethics, and David Simon had really drilled into
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: me just like how bad it was.
• 35:36
  Speaker 5: And you see it on that show, which is 20
• 35:38
  Speaker 5: years ago.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: How bad what was?
• 35:41
  Speaker 5: Where the profession was going.
• 35:42
  Speaker 6: I see.
• 35:42
  Speaker 5: The profession of journalism. How under fire it was, you know.
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: David was a journalist, right?
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: And ultimately, I was, you know, he plopped me in
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: a newsroom and it was just like hammering us with every,
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: like they wouldn't let us do anything wrong.
• 35:54
  Speaker 5: And inevitably, he.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Populated it with fellow journalists from The Sun or The Post.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: You'd always be talking to an extra and you're like.
• 36:00
  Speaker 6: This extra is incredibly intelligent.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: And he knows a lot about foreign policy, specifically in
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: the Middle East. He would have these moments of like,
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: I think that was, I really learned a lot from Nate.
• 36:13
  Speaker 5: I came out of that feeling like it was a
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: mini masterclass.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: And so by the time we got into Spotlight, we
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: did all this reporting, investigating all this. And then it
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: was like, I would say it was quite a while
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: before we really nailed like, you know, I'm always asking like,
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: what's it about?
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: Like that to me is important.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: It's not important to every filmmaker, but to me it is.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: Cause I'm always like, why am I going to spend
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: two years of my life on this? Like, I need
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: to know what I'm talking about on some level or,
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: or what's going to drive us. And ultimately, um, I
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: remember it was like about seven, eight months into the,
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: into the research and writing.
• 36:46
  Speaker 5: We were in my office in New York and, uh.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: I was reading, doing research on psychologists dealing with, uh,
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: the trauma of sexual abuse. And this woman said, at
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: some point, you know, if it takes a village to
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one.
• 37:05
  Speaker 5: And I was like, oh, my God. It was one
• 37:07
  Speaker 5: of those moments, like, that's the movie. And I read
• 37:10
  Speaker 5: it to Josh, and Josh.
• 37:11
  Speaker 7: Is like, oh, man, that's kind of, it's institutional.
• 37:15
  Speaker 5: It's everybody.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: Like, it just, that level of That level of criminality
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: can't exist in.
• 37:25
  Speaker 7: A city without that level of complicity.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: And suddenly complicity became the word on the board. And
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: then we started looking at that.
• 37:33
  Speaker 7: And what struck me is that in talking to the
• 37:37
  Speaker 7: reporters about the work.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: They do and how they approach it and the narratives
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: that they ultimately weave, that our work wasn't that different.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: Our approach to the work, our research, our attention to details,
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: our character study, the more they would talk, Josh and
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: I would go have a drink afterwards and be like, fuck,
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: it could be us talking about our work.
• 37:55
  Speaker 5: It's the same work.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: There's just a different, it's just a different platform, right?
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: And that really stuck with us. What they're trying to
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: get to the bottom is the facts, the truth. And
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: I think ultimately as storytellers, we're doing that, but we're
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: really just trying to get.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: To the essence.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: I think you used that word earlier on, Tony, who's right,
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: like the essence of the story, like.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: What's that truth, Did you tell me this once, did
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: you actually uncover something in your research that wasn't known about?
• 38:22
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 38:22
  Speaker 5: Can you tell me more?
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's sort of in the movie, but it was
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: that idea of, we were interviewing the lawyer that Billy
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: Crudda plays, and he was sort of saying at one point,
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: I went to the Globe with this story years before,
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: and this guy was a little bit of a talker,
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: he was smooth, he was good.
• 38:40
  Speaker 5: And he's a lawyer.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: And we're like, uh-huh, uh-huh, and he's like, no, I
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: did check their clips, check the clips.
• 38:46
  Speaker 5: I went to them, and they buried the story.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: And we were like, okay. And we left, and Josh
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: was like, I'm going to the Globe. I was like, okay,
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: I have to go do some work, you call me.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: And he went right to the clips, and he found it.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: And it was a story that Robbie had written, played
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: by Michael Keaton, and it was buried.
• 39:04
  Speaker 5: They buried the story. And so Josh called me, he
• 39:07
  Speaker 5: was like, you gotta see this, I gotta come to you.
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: And he showed me, I'm like, oh man.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: And now, at this point, as we've talked about a
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: little bit, you become friends with these people. You come
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: very close to them. You want to do right by them,
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: and let's be honest, you want them to like you,
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: because I think that's human nature.
• 39:25
  Speaker 5: And suddenly we're like, this isn't good. This doesn't read well.
• 39:29
  Speaker 7: It's definitely a big part of the movie.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: And it speaks exactly to complicity. So we went to Robbie,
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: who was a good friend at the time, and said, look,
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: this is what we just found in your clips, and
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: what do you think? And that is sort of the
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: moment that is portrayed in the movie, late in the movie,
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: where Robbie brings that up, and he's like, It's that
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: thing that every reporter fears, which is we missed it.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: We reported on it, but we didn't hit it. You're
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: stumbling around in the dark, right? And it's easy to miss.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: And it's incredibly painful when the stakes are that big.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: So he remembered it?
• 40:02
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, he had actually written about it, but it
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: was sort of deeply buried in the paper.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: And it was one story. They hadn't made it a
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: big investigation.
• 40:10
  Speaker 5: They hadn't chased.
• 40:11
  Speaker 6: And they should have.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: It wasn't nefarious. There was no intention behind it. I
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: think it was just... You know, it's like in sports,
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: sometimes you don't make the play and it's painful.
• 40:22
  Speaker 7: And especially if you care and those guys all care, right?
• 40:24
  Speaker 5: They're great journalists.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: But it spoke to, I think, the culture at the
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: Globe at the time. Maybe that's the advantage we get
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: as screenwriters, right? You know, as journalists, you're on a deadline.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: You've got to deliver the story and you better get
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: it right.
• 40:48
  Speaker 9: All of this just makes me.
• 40:50
  Speaker 8: Think what movies that are fiction projects do that are
• 40:56
  Speaker 8: beyond what mainstream media, especially recently, can do.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: Say more.
• 41:00
  Speaker 6: What do you mean?
• 41:01
  Speaker 8: Every one of us did it with a, like, eye that, like,
• 41:04
  Speaker 8: it does go under the headline the way most mainstream
• 41:09
  Speaker 8: media just.
• 41:09
  Speaker 9: Can't hold for these days.
• 41:12
  Speaker 8: Do you know, like, I grew up in New England,
• 41:14
  Speaker 8: and The Boston Globe was our paper. I'm from New Hampshire, but, like,
• 41:17
  Speaker 8: And of course, I grew up in an age of
• 41:19
  Speaker 8: knowing of all the stuff with the Roman Catholic Church.
• 41:23
  Speaker 8: And until I saw Spotlight, Spotlight was like, I fully
• 41:27
  Speaker 8: got it.
• 41:28
  Speaker 9: I could feel it in my molecules. You know what
• 41:31
  Speaker 9: I mean? All the stuff that I love.
• 41:32
  Speaker 8: And have been really meaningful and given me a lot
• 41:34
  Speaker 8: of my education was print media, nonfiction print media. But
• 41:39
  Speaker 8: that movie made me understand and then feel a kind
• 41:43
  Speaker 8: of rage that was actually really upsetting to finally fully
• 41:48
  Speaker 8: feel emotionally, you know, and then talk about.
• 41:51
  Speaker 9: Everyone I knew. And that movie did that.
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: It seems like there's a chance with narratives to actually
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: transport people to a place in time. And therefore, all
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: these examples, I think, are reasons to do that, right?
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: Because you can take an audience like, okay, you know
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: the story. Now I'm going to put you in it.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: Now you're going to breathe it.
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: Now you're going to touch it. And you're going to
• 42:12
  Speaker 5: feel it.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: And the director, writer, director is making choices about when
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: they're going to leave.
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: You at the doorstep.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: And you're not going to hear the conversation about maybe
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: the police chief talking to the parents. But you don't
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: really need to, right? You know what that, we've seen
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: that conversation. But catching it in like the half light.
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: In this sort of remote, you know, kind of rural.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: Place with the trash cans still out. It's so identifiable
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: and so foreign, so you're transported there. That's the reason
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: to do it. As storytellers, we're always just looking for
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: a way in to kind of explore humanity.
• 42:47
  Speaker 7: Right, I think.
• 42:48
  Speaker 5: I think if you care. You know, I think if
• 42:51
  Speaker 5: you care.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Thank you, guys. This was wonderful. Thank you so much.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: This was a real blast.
• 43:01
  Speaker 9: Thank you.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: By the way, we shot this conversation with a bunch
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: of fancy cameras and a film crew, actually. So you
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: can go check it out on YouTube, KCRW's YouTube channel.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: Just search for KCRW there. It was a little nerve
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: wracking doing this in front of four directors. But anyway,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: it came out really nice. Also, we're going to list
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: in the show notes some clarifications and corrections that our
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: fact checker, Maggie Duffy, pointed out from our conversation. We
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: were drinking. Not everybody was totally precise about every little detail.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: And so we're going to put those in the show notes.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Thanks again to Biber and Bell in Brooklyn, the wine
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: shop where we recorded this episode. It was produced by
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: Brendan Baker and Emily Malterre. Brendan also did the sound
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: design and mixing. The episode was edited by Jonathan Goldstein,
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: Robin Simeon, and me. It was booked by Alyssa Shipp.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Our show is made by producers Zach St. Louis and
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Sophie Kazis. Jen Kinney and Neil Drumming are contributing editors.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Our managing editor is Kevin Sullivan. Associate producers are Kevin
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: Shepard and Emma Grillo. Fact-checking by Maggie Duffy. Matt McGinley
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: composed our music. The video of this episode that I
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: mentioned was edited by Kevin Sprague. Sound engineering by Gabe Kroga.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Film production by Ambrose Ang and Luke Hansen at Stone & Spade.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: Our partners at KCRW include Arnie Seipel, Gina Delvac, Tejela Jamera,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: and Jennifer Farrow. Have a great holiday, and please tell
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: your friends and family about the show over the break.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Catch up on old episodes, rate and review us, all
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: that good stuff. We'll see you soon.