Michael Keaton leads the cast in "Spotlight," about the Boston archdiocese cover-up of sexual abuse cases; NBC and "Saturday Night Live" have resisted calls to remove Donald Trump as host of the show; Performance artist and composer Laurie Anderson examines love and loss in the documentary, "Heart of a Dog."
Laurie Anderson explains her experimental documentary 'Heart of a Dog'
The film "Heart of a Dog" is an experimental documentary by performance artist, musician and composer Laurie Anderson. The film is less a coherent narrative than a series of stories about death, motherhood, love and creativity.
Click the play button to hear Laurie Anderson reflect on the creation of "Heart of a Dog" scored with original music and excerpts from the film.
Anderson told The Frame:
The construction of stories in this film is what it's about. It's a film about stories. How they're made. What they are. And in the middle of it is a book — "The Tibetan Book of the Dead."
When asked how the movie came to be, Anderson said simply:
I was asked by ARTE — a French/German TV outfit — to make a personal essay film. They said, You know, like your philosophy of life. And I said, Oh, I don't have one.
It was suggested that she begin with stories about LolaBelle, her rat terrier who had died. From there she went on to tell stories about her mother's death, people in her life growing up and experiences from her childhood. But she's quick to say that "Heart of a Dog" isn't a self-portrait.
It's not a portrait of me at all. I am a character in it. I am a kid skating. I am a person in a cartoon. I am the eye of the narration in the film. But it doesn't weirdly refer necessarily to me.
Anderson says that originally the film was only supposed to be 20 minutes, but now, "It's four times as long and two years late and, as it turns out, it is my philosophy of life."
Should NBC pull Donald Trump from Saturday Night Live?
The announcement that Donald Trump would be hosting NBC's "Saturday Night Live" wasn't exactly met with universal fanfare. Leading artists, scientists and intellectuals from the Latino community — including Junot Díaz, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Diego Luna — signed an open letter protesting Trump's appearance on SNL.
Additionally, a coalition of advocacy groups delivered a petition to NBC with reportedly more than half-a-million people demanding that Trump be removed from the program.
Brian Lowry is a TV critic for Variety.com, and when he joined us on The Frame, he talked about SNL's rationale for having Trump host, whether the show might lose advertisers or be forced to deal with hecklers as a result, and why it might be too late to pull Trump from "Saturday Night Live."
Interview Highlights:
NBC and SNL have angered a big part of the Latino community, including some very prominent artists, as well as others who are upset that they've booked Donald Trump as host. Why would the network and Lorne Michaels do this? Is it a ratings grab, or did they underestimate the power of Donald Trump?
I think it's a ratings grab, and more than anything it's an attention grab. And I would venture that this likely came from Lorne Michaels, without a lot of consultation with NBC. NBC very conspicuously sought to sever ties with Donald Trump over the summer over some of his more potentially inflammatory remarks, and I think this is really just a case of SNL doing what SNL does — attempting to be provocative and sticking its thumb in the eye of the establishment.
Do you think they're a little bit out of touch with the real sensitivities here?
Well, I don't think it's so much the sensitivities. I really think that this is such a multifaceted issue, but they were absolutely out of touch with the Pandora's Box they were opening. SNL has always featured politicians on the show; it's been a great place for conservative politicians to show that they can have a sense of humor about themselves.
But there's a difference between having someone drop in for a cameo versus having them host in the middle of what is not only one of the most crowded primary fields we've ever seen, but also one of the most unorthodox races we've ever seen.
We're a day away from the broadcast, and I think it's safe to say that NBC is probably not going to pull Trump from "Saturday Night Live." Trump himself has predicted that the show will get some of its best ratings ever, but do you think that's true?
I think it will get big numbers and I think there will be a lot of curiosity about it. Everything associated with Trump in this campaign cycle has done well. His interviews have done well and the debates have done well.
He's a showman, and he's brought an element of unpredictability to this process, so I think the ratings will be quite good. I think the question is [whether] the ratings be worth the amount of Sturm und Drang that's been associated with this. That's something I really question.
What do you think? Take our pol
Michael Keaton: 'Spotlight' script 'ballsy' in going after church
Click the play button to hear the full interview with Michael Keaton, director Tom McCarthy and screenwriter Josh Singer.
"Spotlight" centers on the true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation within that city's Catholic archdiocese.
Following a screening at the Telluride Film Festival, The Frame's John Horn spoke with the people behind the film about keeping true to the real story, to which Michael Keaton and director Tom McCarthy have personal connections.
Interview Highlights:
Keaton: "When I watched how well it was handled with this material and how ballsy it was to go brutally against — you know, I was raised very Catholic — to go after [the church]. I've read the script, I said the words, I was there, I knew what happened. But seeing it tonight, I thought, Holy s**t, you're naming names! There's an enormous responsibility with that, you're naming names. You're saying that guy, that person exists — not a character. That's tricky stuff. Things like this can go really wrong. This one goes really right in my opinion."
McCarthy: "I'm Irish-American, raised in a very Catholic family, went to Boston College, was educated by the Jesuits. I'm more of a lapsed Catholic, but I still think I identify my spirituality through the Catholic Church, and a large portion of my family is still very committed to the church. Look, when I sat down and really considered this project, there was a part of me that felt maybe I was the right person because I still have a strong emotional and spiritual connection to it, but also empathy for it. The victims and survivors, of course, are the people that were most damaged by this, but also other people who relied on Catholicism, who really felt like they had the rug pulled out [from under] them. A lot of wonderful Catholics who really lean on the Catholic Church and suddenly the institution betrays you in such a way that you're thrown into a crisis of doubt. That's a terrible thing to do to your parishioners [and] constituency. It's a harsh reality for a lot of people."
Some of the characters in the film -- the editors and reporters -- are members of the church and they have relatives who are members of the church who discourage them from pursuing this story. Did you have relatives or friends outside of the church who questioned why you were making this movie?
McCarthy: The first person I sat down with when I really seriously considered taking this project on was my father who was a very devout Catholic and a wonderful, wonderful man. He's since passed away. I genuinely wanted him to know I was going to do this because, one, his input was important to me, and two, I knew the minute that it was announced in the press they would be hearing from it. Sure enough, the next day it was announced we were getting calls from Boston to Providence, Rhode Island -- all the places they lived...
Calling you or your father?
McCarthy: Calling my parents to say, "Why is he doing this? What is this gonna be?" They actually thanked me later, like, "Thank god you gave us a heads up." That's common. Look, there's a lot of Catholics there that think there's no value to reliving it. I think others -- you know, we were just in Italy with the movie. Now, you can imagine the premiere at the Venice Film Festival was probably 90 percent Catholic. By and large, the response we got was, Thank you for finally telling the story. We need to hear it and we need to hear it again and again and again until it sinks in and we get a real sense of the importance and the value of this.
Michael, what about you?
Keaton: Well, my mom was a devout, devout Catholic -- raised that way -- an old school tough Catholic, and I was, too. My mom had passed away but my mom went to mass every morning, literally every morning, and I was an alter boy and did all that stuff. So listening to Tom speak, I thought, Wow, of course that would happen. Yeah, that probably would have happen had my mom been alive. I didn't even think of that.
So my brothers, I was just with them. They were all visiting me at my house and there was no issue with them. Now they're not real think-hats, but they are glad it's being done because they feel really strongly. Especially my one brother who is outraged, probably who maybe closer to the church than the others.
Outraged that you were in the movie?
Keaton: No, no, no...
Outraged by the scandal.
Keaton: They're outraged by all of it. So they're very glad I'm doing it and they're pretty old school dudes. They get scared. People get mostly afraid, I think, when there's change. You know, there's a lot of horrible things going on in the world and I think it just wears people down. The older you get, the less strength you have to say, "I won't put up with this," or "I'm gonna fight this," or "I'm gonna investigate this," or "I'm gonna be curious about it." But in this, no, I think they like what's being said and done cause they know it's the right thing to do.
'Spotlight:' The story behind the story of Boston's Catholic church sex scandal
When the Boston Globe reported in 2002 on sex abuse lawsuits that were pending against five local priests, it wasn't the first time the Catholic Church had come under such charges. But the coverage gathered steam and eventually became a national, then international, story.
Victims from around the world came forward with cases that sometimes reached back decades. They revealed not only the extent of abuse, but also the institutionalized efforts to sweep charges under the rug.
In Boston, each of the five charged priests were given prison sentences. Meanwhile, the Boston Globe reporters won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their coverage.
Now their story is being told. "Spotlight," written by Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, explores what it was like for the Globe's journalists to conduct one of the last great investigative reports before the age of Internet journalism.
Writer Josh Singer met with The Frame's John Horn to talk about the movie and the light it sheds on the state of journalism.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
The hook for us was this story about this Jewish editor, who had never lived in Boston – Marty Baron. On his first day he reads a story about this priest, John Geoghan, and this lawyer, Mitch Garabedian, who’s representing a number of victims who Geoghan molested. Garabedian’s saying, Cardinal [Bernard Francis] Law ought to know about this. And Cardinal Law’s saying, I didn’t know about this. And Marty Baron on his first day is saying, Why aren’t we going after documents that are under seal, and why aren’t we suing for those? Moreover, why don’t we put long form investigative journalists onto this story? Going after the church was unheard of.
Going after the church in Boston — and I don’t mean this lightly — is a little like going after the mob. This is not something that is done.
What’s not widely known is that it wasn’t just the church. It was a lot of people looking the other way. And to me, what makes this a universal story is this theme of deference. Why do we look the other way? And you see this not only with the Catholic Church scandal, but you see it with Penn State, with the BBC and Jimmy Savile, you see it with Bill Cosby.
You probably had to spend a fair amount of time talking to the reporters. Movies tend to get newsrooms so wrong. So in talking to the reporters, what were the clichés that were very important to them that the film avoided?
This all started in L.A. Mike Rezendes happened to be in L.A.
He’s one of the Boston Globe reporters.
Yes, he’s played by Mark Ruffalo. Mike was in L.A. Five days in a row I took him out to lunch, and I’d get him talking. I assembled like a 60-page document — those were my notes from him talking and those were sort of the basics for us. And then we started going up to Boston, [director] Tom [McCarthy] and I. Tom was very interested in the research. Originally, I was supposed to write the script. It became apparent pretty quickly that this would be better if we did [the research] together.
What was so exciting for me was that Tom from the very beginning really wanted to get it right. Verisimilitude was his watchword. I was ready to start outlining after like 2-3 trips to Boston. But Tom was like, No, let’s keep going.
So you became an investigative reporter in your own way.
One thing that’s interesting is the reporters didn’t tell us everything. Now, I’m very close with — I think — all of them, and they’re all such heroes. But they were a little cagey about details. So we had to push to get those details from other folks. We uncovered a couple of things that we didn’t hear from the reporters. We had to go out and talk to the lawyers and really get an idea of it.
What’s fascinating again is it reinforced this notion that nobody’s guilty and nobody’s innocent. There’s a lawyer in the [movie] trailer who comes off as a bad guy. He’s not a bad guy — he was trying to do the right thing too. And it’s literally about trying to get his side of the story. Everyone’s a little gray.
This movie also has a lot to say about the state of journalism. There was a shot of the Boston Globe from the outside of the building, and there’s a billboard for America Online. It’s the advent of computer-assisted reporting. This is a story that was reported when you had to go through phonebooks, make your own spreadsheets. It was pre-Internet reporting. This was one of the last great investigations done that way.
The last 10-to-15 years have not been kind to traditional media. What I would love to do is create a conversation and a drive to tell people, Buy your local paper! Buy the L.A. Times! You want those reporters on the ground, doing that investigation.
Local news is so important. And that’s something I think people don’t appreciate: people think of the clergy sex abuse scandal as an international story. Sure, but at the heart of it, the very first story was a local investigation. These were local journalists in Boston. Just like Watergate — they were metro reporters looking into a break-in, and it turned into a national story. That’s how we get these bigger stories.