In ‘spotlight,’ the Artless Look of the Boston Journalist

By Ravi Somaiya
New York Times
November 6, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/07/business/media/the-artless-look-of-the-boston-journalist.html?_r=0

“Spotlight,” a movie about The Boston Globe’s reporting on the sexual abuse of children in the Roman Catholic Church that opens in theaters on Friday, has caught the attention of critics.

But its costumes, based on the clothing of the real journalists involved, have caused comment for another reason: They have uncannily captured a particular style (or lack of style), that still distinguishes reporters and editors today.

When the movie’s high-wattage stars, including Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo, were pictured on set last year, their unglamorous outfits made tabloid headlines.

The film’s costume designer, Wendy Chuck, a veteran of subtle clothing choices in movies like “Sideways” and “Twilight,” spoke Friday by phone on what makes newsroom-chic, and the challenges of making movie stars look like journalists. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. How would you describe the style of journalists?

A. It’s an unthought-about uniform. It mirrors school uniforms really. It’s something you don’t think about when you dress. You don’t really care; you’ve got other things to think about that are not clothes.

It says you’re comfortable, but nobody is going to comment on how you look or how you appear. You’re not going to offend anybody. Nobody is going to be able to read much into you.

Was it hard to capture that?

No, not once you take a hard look at it. The hardest thing is making bad clothes work on really famous people, who look gorgeous in everything they wear — especially Rachel McAdams.

How do you do it?

You do it really with fit and color.

These guys, to me, didn’t care about clothes. That was not their M.O. at all. I thought it was a bit that they were stuck in a time capsule.

So we really tried to capture the ’90s, even though the movie was set in the early 2000s. And when I think of the ’90s I think of ill-fitting, baggy clothes

The idea was to be authentic. You throw out what you know, and your expectations, and you take a hard look at your fitting photos, and you fight with the actors in the fitting rooms.

You also have to fit the right marks. You can have an oversized shirt, but you have to make it fit at the collar, because our eyes are so used to seeing certain things on screen. You have to tread the line of authenticity.

Is it based on the actual wardrobes of the journalists?

Yes, absolutely. Tom McCarthy, the movie’s director, immediately hooked me up with the emails and numbers of all the journalists.

Mike Rezendes, one of the reporters, would send me photos of the leather jacket he still has today, and the Doc Martens. I’d ask where they got things, and hear “my wife shops for me.” I’d ask what they wore after they played golf, whether they showered at the club. And I had those great photos of them to work from.

There’s something so generous about the spirit of these people. My drive was to pay homage to journalism and who these people were, and what they did. I felt I had a responsibility to all these people living and dead.

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Did you make the clothes, or buy them?

I made some of them. I made some of Rachel’s, because I couldn’t really find what I wanted. Some of the guys were thrifted, and there were a lot of trips to Brooks Brothers.

I’ve never been to Boston before, but I love getting things right. I see myself as a journalist sometimes. Clothes are such a brief and quick language, and to get that right really makes me feel good, because that’s the telling of the story.

I learned the Boston uniform: a blue button-down shirt and khaki pants, and brown shoes.

Were you surprised by the minor controversy over the clothes?

Yes, it did stir some controversy when we first started shooting in The Boston Globe itself.

People started seeing Rachel in her baggy clothes, and we got some positive and a couple of negative comments.

I started to modify just a little bit, I started to make them a little less baggy so they didn’t look humorous. All hail to Twitter!

How much resistance did you face?

It was a running joke with the actors.

There was a lot of resistance, I won’t name names, but they know who they are. A lot of “No, no, I can’t do that.”

They thought the clothes were too baggy, that they didn’t feel right. And that is after I modified the shirts. They are probably not as far gone as some guys were wearing in the mid-90s.

Are there particular challenges in dressing people to look ordinary?

Yes, because you don’t often find the clothes out there. Everything now is very fashion-driven and seasonally driven.

There are so many factors to figuring out what works – people don’t realize that every decision is considered, every tiny thing.

Is it harder than a more distinct period piece?

Yes, it is! A friend who works mostly on period pieces says that she definitely has it easier.

Why did you decide to make the clothing authentic, rather than glamorize it?

It was always important to me and Tom to underscore the story itself and be authentic. When I read that script, it was not about the clothes. I thought if I can just get out of of the way and be invisible, I’ve done my job.