48 Fun Facts About Spotlight Movie

Who directed Spotlight?

Tom McCarthy once played a notoriously unscrupulous reporter, Scott Templeton in The Wire, and a few staff greeted him with shouts of 'Templeton!' when he walked into the real Globe newsroom.

Who plays reporter Michael Rezendes in Spotlight?

Mark Ruffalo shadowed the real Rezendes at his newsroom desk and, the reporter recalls, grabbed the mouse to scrub through video from the investigation he was working on.

Who plays Walter 'Robby' Robinson, head of the Spotlight team?

Michael Keaton spent weeks watching old tapes of Robinson, then studied him across a dinner table; Robinson says the actor caught every mannerism and even dropped his voice to match.

Who plays reporter Sacha Pfeiffer in Spotlight?

Rachel McAdams peppered the real Pfeiffer with texts during the shoot: heels or tennis shoes at the office, what colour bag she carried, even which size of sticky note she wrote on.

Who plays incoming Globe editor Marty Baron in Spotlight?

Liev Schreiber's Baron is the outsider who sets it all off: new to Boston and the Globe's first Jewish editor, he reads one column and asks why the paper hasn't dug deeper.

In Spotlight, who plays the combative attorney who steers Rezendes toward the Church's sealed documents?

Stanley Tucci plays the prickly lawyer for one priest's many victims, who brushes reporters off until Rezendes, against orders, lets slip that he works for Spotlight.

Who plays editor Ben Bradlee Jr. in Spotlight?

John Slattery spent about three hours with the real Bradlee before filming, lunch included; Bradlee said it impressed him that the cast took the time to know the people they were playing.

Which priest's 1976 arrest opens Spotlight?

John Geoghan walks free that night: a senior cleric reassures the victims' mother, a prosecutor tells the police to keep the arrest from the press, and no charges follow.

The father of Spotlight editor Ben Bradlee Jr. is a main character in which earlier journalism film?

All the President's Men shows Ben Bradlee backing two young reporters against the White House; a generation later his son oversaw the Globe team that took on the Church.

In Spotlight, the survivor who visits the newsroom to brief the team speaks for which victims' group?

SNAP is the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. The man who founded its New England chapter first went public in 1992 because he believed he was dying of AIDS and had little left to lose.

Which records do Spotlight's reporters comb to find more suspect priests?

Church directories listed some priests as on 'sick leave' or 'unassigned', and the team realised those labels marked men who had been removed after abuse complaints.

Which actor is the uncredited voice of the psychotherapist Sipe on the phone in Spotlight?

Richard Jenkins is heard but never seen: his Sipe, an ex-priest who spent decades studying abusive clergy, tells the reporters by phone that their shocking tally sounds low.

How many priests end up on the Spotlight team's list in Boston?

87 names, three short of what a therapist's rule of thumb had predicted for Boston: a figure one Globe editor had scoffed at, saying that if there were that many, people would know.

In Spotlight, what does reporter Matt Carroll discover a block from his home?

A treatment centre for abusive priests replaced a stranger truth: the real Carroll found that one of the accused priests lived around the corner, and the filmmakers thought nobody would believe it.

Which event forces the Spotlight team to put its investigation on hold?

The September 11 attacks pulled the whole newsroom onto one story: the first hijacked plane had left from Boston, and Rezendes was sent to Florida to chase the hijackers' flight schools.

In Spotlight, which character warns that 'if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one'?

Mitchell Garabedian says it to Rezendes after calling himself an outsider, an Armenian in a city run by insiders; the survivors' lawyer means that everyone who looked away shares the blame.

What does Robby Robinson confess before Spotlight's story runs?

He once buried a list of 20 priests: the scene is invented, but the writers found the overlooked 1993 story it rests on themselves, and the real Robinson, Metro editor at the time, owned up to it.

Who plays attorney Eric MacLeish in Spotlight?

Billy Crudup plays him as a slick operator who settled abuse claims in private for years, which is why Robby accuses him of 'turning child abuse into a cottage industry'.

What happens the morning after Spotlight's story runs?

The team is flooded with calls from victims: the story had printed a hotline number, and the real reporters heard from more than 300 survivors around Boston within a month or two.

Where does Spotlight's epilogue say Cardinal Law ended up after resigning?

A basilica in Rome: far from being punished, Law was made archpriest of St. Mary Major, one of the city's great churches, and the audience at the film's premiere burst out laughing at the news.

Which Pulitzer Prize did the Globe win for the Spotlight series on abuse in the Church?

Public Service is the only Pulitzer that comes as a gold medal, and the 2003 citation praised coverage that 'pierced secrecy' and 'produced changes in the Roman Catholic Church'.

Who plays reporter Matt Carroll in Spotlight?

Brian d'Arcy James, cast late and tied to a Broadway show, met the real Carroll over supper in New York and had him say 'horror' again and again to catch his thick Boston accent.

Which star of The Infiltrator turned down a role in Spotlight because the two shoots clashed?

Bryan Cranston told Larry King it is the part he most regrets turning down: he was already committed to the other film, and the one he missed went on to win Best Picture.

Spotlight appeared in 2013 on which annual survey of Hollywood's best unproduced scripts?

The Black List ranks the unmade scripts that film insiders liked most each December; Spotlight made the 2013 survey, yet major studios passed and its funding fell through three times.

Spotlight's newsroom is a replica that was put up inside an abandoned property of which retailer?

Sears had left the place empty and due for demolition, so the crew gutted it and rebuilt the Globe newsroom so exactly that the real reporters fell silent when they first walked in.

Spotlight is set in Boston, but in which city was most of it filmed?

Toronto hosted the bulk of the shoot: only about four shooting days were spent in Boston, and even the Boston police station of the opening scene is a former Toronto police building.

Which composer of a blockbuster fantasy saga wrote Spotlight's spare, piano-led score?

Howard Shore, who won Oscars for The Lord of the Rings, went small here: he wrote for a ten-piece chamber group led by a piano, an instrument he said has a certain truthfulness.

The real Michael Rezendes sits a few rows behind the actors in a Spotlight scene shot at which Boston venue?

Fenway Park lent the scene a real crowd: it was filmed in the stands during a Red Sox game against the Rays, with several of the Globe's own journalists invited to sit among the extras.

Which former priest's doorstep confession in Spotlight is shown earlier than it really happened?

Ronald Paquin really did admit to abusing boys, but about a month after the film ends and far less bluntly; Pfeiffer says the confession came gradually and was pulled back in time for drama.

At which film festival did Spotlight have its world premiere?

Venice showed it out of competition, and its director told the press there that he expected no reaction from the Church but would love Pope Francis and his cardinals to see the film.

Besides Best Picture, Spotlight won which Oscar?

Original Screenplay was the first Oscar handed out that night and Best Picture the last; in between, Spotlight lost all four of its other nominations.

Spotlight was the first Best Picture winner since which 1950s spectacle to win only one other Oscar?

The Greatest Show on Earth, Cecil B. DeMille's circus epic, took only Best Picture and a story award in 1953, yet it beat High Noon, the year's joint leader in nominations, to the top prize.

Who hosted the 2016 Oscars where Spotlight won?

Chris Rock, hosting for the second time, called the Oscars 'the White People's Choice Awards' from the stage: for the second year running, all twenty acting nominees were white.

Which film won the most Oscars, six, on the night Spotlight took Best Picture?

Mad Max: Fury Road swept the craft awards, from editing and costumes to sound, yet its director George Miller lost both prizes he was personally up for, Best Director and Best Picture.

Which film led the nominations, with twelve, in the year Spotlight won Best Picture?

The Revenant arrived as the favourite and won three Oscars, among them Leonardo DiCaprio's first after four losing acting nominations, but the top prize slipped away to Spotlight.

Which distributor released Spotlight in the US?

Open Road Films, set up four years earlier by the rival cinema chains AMC and Regal, took on a film that plenty of major studios had passed over, and won Best Picture with it.

The day after Spotlight's Best Picture win, which newspaper praised its 'courage to denounce cases which must be condemned'?

L'Osservatore Romano is the Vatican's own daily: its editorial judged the film far from anti-Catholic, and Vatican Radio added that clerics in Rome were urging one another to see it.

In Spotlight, which school across the street from the Globe turns out to have employed an abusive priest?

BC High, Boston College High School, is Robby Robinson's own old school: the priest coached hockey there in his day, and Robby, who ran track, tells its spokesman that the two of them just got lucky.

In Spotlight, a friend of Robby's sums up new editor Marty Baron as an unmarried Jewish man who hates what?

Baseball: in Red Sox country the jibe brands Baron an outsider three times over, and the film's argument is that it took an outsider to chase a story the city's insiders had let lie.

Who co-wrote Spotlight's script with its director?

Josh Singer and his co-writer reported the script like a news story, spending weeks with the real journalists and asking each about the same moments to triangulate what had happened.

Which Screen Actors Guild Award did Spotlight win?

Outstanding Performance by a Cast is the guild's nearest thing to a best-film prize, and it suited a film with no single star: Spotlight's one individual nominee lost her category the same night.

Spotlight's director came to it straight from his worst-reviewed film: which Adam Sandler fantasy was it?

The Cobbler, about a shoe repairer who can turn into his customers by wearing their shoes, was savaged in 2014; Variety wrote that its director then followed his worst film with his best.

What distinction does the Globe's Spotlight team hold among US newspapers?

Oldest continuously operating investigative unit: the Globe modelled it on the Insight team of London's Sunday Times, and it was exposing fraud before Watergate made such reporting fashionable.

In Spotlight, Marty Baron arrives at the Globe from the top job at which newspaper?

The Miami Herald had made Baron its top editor only the year before; in the film his new colleagues, hearing that he has never been to Boston, joke that they should buy him a map.

Whose box of evidence widens the Spotlight team's search to thirteen priests?

Phil Saviano arrives with a box of clippings and documents and walks the reporters through how the Church hid abusers; the real Robinson later called the session 'a much-needed tutorial'.

Which Blue Bloods actor plays Cardinal Law in Spotlight?

Len Cariou, the grandfather Henry Reagan in Blue Bloods, has only a few scenes as the cardinal; in one he welcomes the Globe's new editor with a gift, a copy of the Catholic catechism.

What does Spotlight list on screen just before its credits?

Scandal-hit places fill the final screens, American towns first and then cities around the world, bearing out a survivor's early warning to the team that this was never just Boston.

In Spotlight, a reporter notes that the story will run on which Christian feast day, and a colleague answers 'Seems appropriate'?

The Epiphany fell on the Sunday the first story ran, January 6, 2002, and the joke is in the word's other meaning: a moment of suddenly understanding something important.