Keaton, 'Spotlight' editor discuss church scandal and newspapers

By Barbara Vancheri
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
February 24, 2016

http://www.post-gazette.com/ae/movies/2016/02/24/Michael-Keaton-and-Spotlight-editor-discuss-church-scandal-and-newspapers/stories/201602240125

Michael Keaton, who played Boston Globe editor Walter "Robby" Robinson, right, in the movie "Spotlight," appear during a private screening of the film at the SouthSide Works Cinema Tuesday night.

From left, Walter "Robby" Robinson with Bishop David Zubik and Michael Keaton.

Pittsburgh native Michael Keaton greets Walter "Robby" Robinson at the "Spotlight" private screening Tuesday night.

Michael Keaton said he had the “greatest day” — thanks to the Teenie Harris photography collection in Pittsburgh — and 200-plus people could boast the same, thanks to the actor known as Beetlejuice, Batman, Birdman, Mr. Mom and one of the stars of “Spotlight.”

The Pittsburgh native and Walter “Robby” Robinson, the real-life Boston Globe editor he portrays on screen, were part of a private event Tuesday night at the SouthSide Works Cinema. Outside was a small red carpet and inside, flutes of champagne, phones in camera mode, and sobering conversations about challenges both in the Catholic Church and the newspaper business.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette organized the reception, the screening of “Spotlight” and a conversation with the men afterward, moderated by executive editor David Shribman.

“Spotlight” is the story of how the Boston Globe exposed predatory priests and the Catholic Church’s cover-up of the molestation. Clergy were shuffled from one parish to the next or placed on “sick leave” while their superiors lost sight of their targets, often young boys from poor or broken homes.

The Globe’s investigation won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for public service. The movie goes into Sunday’s Academy Awards with six nominations, including for best picture, director and original screenplay.

Among the guests Tuesday was Bishop David Zubik, who huddled with the actor and Mr. Robinson in the crowded upstairs lobby, as a keyboardist and horn player flooded the air with “Time After Time.”

“It’s a relatively gutsy thing to show up here among everyone, and people are going to be looking and wondering and probably asking him, and I think that’s very courageous — just the act of showing up,” Mr. Keaton said. 

The bishop, who had not seen the film before Tuesday, told the Post-Gazette, “I know, obviously, the storyline of the movie, and I think it’s just a very important issue that certainly has been addressed in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, but it’s an important issue that has to be addressed on lots of levels.

“Part of the difficulty all the way around, for law enforcement and for the mental health industry and for the church and for teachers is to be able to talk about the horror of what happens, I think because that’s the way it has to be addressed.”

Mr. Keaton, an altar boy at St. Malachy Church in Kennedy who much later arranged for his late mother (a devout Catholic) to meet Pope John Paul II, said growing up in Pittsburgh didn’t necessarily affect how he approached his role in “Spotlight.”

“I used to, years ago, say places like Pittsburgh — and Pittsburgh, in particular — have a very sensitive and keen B.S. meter. And so, that equates in a sense that we’re talking about the truth here,” the actor said. “I knew when Walter Robinson, the reporter I play, showed up tonight, he’d fit right in with my family, and he does.”

Because the movie is about “telling the truth and facing the truth and not holding back, maybe I related to it in that sense, being from Pittsburgh, and having that kind of sensibility, but frankly,  I may be stretching it there,” he said, sitting in an empty theater doubling as a makeshift interview space. 

“Given that it was Tom McCarthy, a director I really like, the script and the other actors that were hovering around it and probably going to come together — they came to me and Mark Ruffalo first — I would have been inclined to do it if this movie would have been about bowling.”

But it wasn’t. “The fact that it was really about something and about something important and about a cause, and very few movies are made like that anymore, I was that much more interested.”

As the actor reminded the world at the 2015 Golden Globes, his real name is Michael John Douglas, and he grew up the youngest of seven children of the late George A. and Leona Douglas in the Forest Grove section of Robinson. Mr. Keaton, stylishly attired in a suit, vest and shirt in shades of blue, arrived at the theater courtesy of his sister, Pam, and they were joined by siblings Paul, George, Joyce and Diane (another brother, Robert, lives out of town). 

On this visit home, Mr. Keaton ate at Casbah, and as the father of a musician, he praised the playlist there as much as the food. He also looked at some of the photographs of Charles “Teenie”  Harris at the Carnegie Museum of Art.

“It was fantastic, it was fantastic. Not only his work, but the stories behind his work. I really recommend people going out whenever you get a chance, this is a real Pittsburgh artist and personality.”

Several images in particular — shocking, moving, poignant or fun — stay with him.

“This is what emotional intelligence is about right here. ... What he turned out is unbelievably great.”