UNITED STATES
Vanrity Fair
BY JULIE MILLER
With all of the champagne and red-carpet ephemera spilling and swirling through Oscar season, it’s easy to forget the importance of film. But on Wednesday night, Vanity Fair reminded Hollywood of the medium’s potential with an intimate dinner honoring Spotlight, the powerful drama from Tom McCarthy that chronicles the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize–winning investigation of the Catholic Church’s sex-abuse cover-up. The real-life reporters who attended the event, co-hosted by Barneys New York at the Chateau Marmont, cut through the Hollywood pomp to speak about meaningful matters highlighted in the best-picture candidate.
“It says such wonderful things about the importance of investigative journalism, which we very much believe in and which is in serious decline,” said Michael Rezendes, the reporter who is portrayed in the drama by Mark Ruffalo. “And also what it says about clergy sex abuse, an issue that we feel very strongly about, is so important.”
Rezendes joined cast members including Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, and Brian d’Arcy James at the event, and will be attending the Oscars come Sunday. But even at splashy, celebrity-attended affairs, Rezendes said that he always has the investigation and “the survivors in mind. But the attention the film is getting is all very validating. It’s wonderful.”
Because of Spotlight’s significant subject matter, Rezendes believes that the drama deserves the big best-picture prize come Sunday. “This is a movie about something that really, really matters. But it’s not a pill either. I think it’s incredibly entertaining and suspenseful and authentic.”
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