Latest / Question Everything / When Hollywood Tells The Truth: with Tom McCarthy, Antonio Campos, Tina Satter, and Tobias Lindholm.

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When Hollywood Tells The Truth: with Tom McCarthy, Antonio Campos, Tina Satter, and Tobias Lindholm. · Question Everything

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