Special Spotlight Screened for BU Audience

The team behind Spotlight, including Boston Globe journalists and their acting counterparts: screenwriter Josh Singer (from left), Walter V. Robinson, Ben Bradlee, Jr., Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, director Tom McCarthy, Liev Schreiber, Sacha Pfeiffer (MET’94, SED’12), Marty Baron, Mike Rezendes (CAS’78), Brian d’Arcy James, and Matt Carroll. Photo by Jay L. Clendenin/Contour by Getty Images

Last week, the real-life reporters portrayed by A-list talent in the new film Spotlight celebrated how well the film stuck to the facts about the Boston Globe Spotlight team’s investigation of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston’s decadeslong cover-up of pedophile priests. The film opens today nationwide.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning reporters—Sacha Pfeiffer (MET’94, SED’12), Mike Rezendes (CAS’78), Matt Carroll, Walter V. Robinson, and Ben Bradlee, Jr.—fielded questions after the film was screened to an audience of College of Communication students and faculty at the AMC Loews Boston Common. The event was part of COM’s Cinematheque series, which brings accomplished filmmakers to campus to screen and discuss their work.

“What you saw in two hours was five months of our work,” said Pfeiffer, who recently returned to the Globe after a stint at WBUR, BU’s National Public Radio station. “Obviously you have to take a little bit of dramatic license, you need to speed things up, take three different scenes and put them into one. There are times where there’s a talk on the golf course, when in reality it probably happened on the telephone, but a two-hour movie of telephone calls isn’t going to be very interesting. I think we were all very impressed with how closely they stayed to what authentically happened.”

In 2002, the Spotlight team published an explosive story claiming that the archdiocese knew that priest John J. Geoghan had been sexually abusing children for decades. Yet instead of turning him in to face prosecution, the paper reported, the Church several times moved Geoghan to different parishes and assured parents that he wouldn’t be allowed to repeat his crimes. The Globe’s reporting showed that many in the Boston community—including other priests, parents, teachers, and law enforcement—knew of the abuse, but their devotion to their religion deterred them from exposing the crimes.

Spotlight reporters and editors would eventually publish dozens of stories, revealing that in Boston alone, 250 priests had been accused of child abuse, and that Cardinal Bernard Law and even the Pope were aware of the allegations. The reporters found that similar allegations of abuse were plaguing archdioceses all over the world. For its work, the Globe won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2003.

The film, directed by Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent, The Visitor), is considered an early Oscar front-runner after screenings at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals. It stars Mark Ruffalo as Rezendes, Michael Keaton as Robinson, Rachel McAdams as Pfeiffer, Liev Schreiber as Globe editor Marty Baron (now at the helm of the Washington Post), John Slattery as Bradlee, and Brian d’Arcy James as Carroll. Actor Billy Crudup plays Eric MacLeish (LAW’78), a lawyer who represented abuse victims, and investigative reporter Stephen Kurkjian (CAS’66), who also worked on the project, is played by actor Gene Amoroso. Kristen Lombardi (COM’95), a writer for the now-defunct Boston Phoenix who first published a feature-length story about the abuse and wrote more than a dozen articles on the topic beginning in 2001, does not make an appearance; she is thanked in the film’s credits.

As the credits rolled, the Spotlight members answered questions at the front of the theater. Asked why it took so long to make the film, Robinson said the producers first approached them in 2007, but it was several years before they secured financing. As with many films, different studios and different financiers were attached to the project at different times.

Another question was how hearing the stories of abuse from the victims affected the reporters. Robinson said it was a painful experience. “It was pretty emotionally wrenching for us from the get-go because much of the information came directly from survivors,” said the 34-year Globe veteran, now an editor at large. “In the weeks that followed the first story being published, we received calls from over 300 victims in just the Boston archdiocese….But it energized us to work even harder to get to the end of the story.”

One of many things that the film does not sugarcoat is the failure of Globe reporters, who had done several short pieces on allegations of abuse, to notice the pattern sooner than they did.

“If we had done our story several years earlier, it would have been the preinternet era, and the only people who would have read it would be in the radius of the Boston area,” Pfeiffer said. “But because it was in the early age of the web, people from all over read the story and tip calls flooded in from everywhere.”

The film was screened, paradoxically, just days after the Globe announced a layoff of 24 reporters and 17 buyouts, the latest in a string of staff cuts at the paper. “I think the producers wanted to make a movie about investigative reporting at a time when many newspapers are cutting back on investigative reporting, to emphasize how important it is,” said Rezendes, who has worked for the Globe since 1989.

Chris Daly, a COM professor of journalism, was the last audience member to address the reporters, and he spoke for all in the room. “Journalism has had a not-so-great run for the last few years, and here comes this film to lift us all back up, based on the incredible work that you all did,” he said. “So on behalf of all of the journalists here, I want to say thank you.”

The crowd broke into applause.