#Spotlife the film movie#

Brilliance is not possible without drudgery. The second truth emerging from Robinson’s talk: “It’s really all about the reporting”. Like making a list of every lawyer who ever worked on a sex abuse case, ploughing through 1,500 docket numbers or conducting scores of interviews including many difficult conversations that never even make it to the story. Understandably so – “Most of what we do is pretty boring”. Credit: ReutersĪ great deal is not in the film.

#Spotlife the film movie#

Two and a half minutes of drama in the film represents, as Robinson puts it, “three and a half weeks of hell”.īoston Globe journalists, upon whom the movie is based, Ben Bradlee Jr, Mike Rezendes, Sacha Pfeiffer and Walter “Robby” Robinson attended a special screening of Spotlight in Los Angeles. But it still only touches upon the drudgery and painstaking work behind the front-page reports. Spotlight was also “extraordinarily faithful” to reality, despite some dramatisation. That’s the equivalent of $129.5 million today, going by the average rate of inflation. Compare it to the budget of the multiple Oscar-nominated (but not winner) The Insider, 1999, based on the true story of a journalist and a whistleblower from the tobacco industry: $90 million. The production budget for Spotlight, $20 million, was frugal by Hollywood standards. Michael Keaton (Robinson in the film) and Rachel McAdams (Sacha Pfeiffer) came on board even before the money had been arranged. Rocklin and Faust had got a screenplay written and got some of the casting done, starting with Mark Ruffalo (nominated best supporting actor for his role as Michael Rezendes) whose enthusiasm helped attract other big-name actors. They didn’t expect much to come of it.Īlso read: Spotlight is About Journalism as it Should be, But Isn’t Anymore The Globe journalists, initially somewhat bemused and wary, gave the young filmmakers rights to their story and agreed to work with them. The enthusiastic producers flew to Boston. A couple of years later, while discussing the possibility of a film based on one of his novels with Hollywood producers Nicole Rocklin and Blye Faust, Mizner pitched the idea of a film based on his CJR report. The author was young novelist and freelance writer David Mizner. The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) published a 22-page case study in 2009 about the journalism involved in this series. The following year, Robinson hammered out a 2,000-word piece “within a few hours” for Harvard’s Nieman Report (March 2003) outlining what lay behind his team’s string of over 900 reports by then. In June 2002, the Boston Globe published a book, Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church, based on the reports published until then.

That is the first truth I take away from the wide-ranging talk by Robinson, now the Globe’s editor at large. The Globe won a Pulitzer in 2003 for public service for its coverage of the issue.īut behind the glamour and awards lies another story, about the importance of documentation, synthesising information, consistency and follow up. The Oscar winning feature film Spotlight (best picture, best screenplay, 2015) is based on the story of how Robinson’s reporting team in 2002 exposed the Catholic Church’s cover-up of child sex abuse by its priests. Credit: Beena Sarwarīoston: Hearing Walter Robinson talk about the process behind the most well-known investigation by the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team that he led, I’m struck by some universal truths that emerge from his reflections.

Walter Robinson speaking Emerson College, Boston on October 4, 2017.