PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call
Christina Tatu
Of The Morning Call
Marty Baron, executive editor of the Washington Post and a graduate of Lehigh University, will return to his alma-mater Thursday for a free screening and discussion of “Spotlight,” the Oscar Best Picture contender dramatizing the Boston Globe’s investigation into child sexual abuse by the Catholic priests.
As the Globe’s editor, Baron, 61, oversaw the paper’s 2002 investigation exposing the depth of child sexual abuse an and massive cover-up in the Boston Archdiocese.
The investigation earned a Pulitzer Prize, and the digging by the paper’s investigative Spotlight team – for which the movie is named – sparked similar investigations and shocking revelations in archdioceses all over the country.
Baron, whose career included stints at The Miami Herald, New York Times and Los Angeles Times, recently answered questions about the investigation, movie and his time at Lehigh. …
Q. What did you think about the movie’s portrayal of events?
A. I was very pleased with how the movie portrayed things. It was the overall outline of how the investigation unfolded…I think it’s important to recognize it is a movie and not a documentary, so there is some dramatic license.
Q. How much time did producers spend researching for the movie and how much were you involved in that research?
A. (Director Tom McCarthy and writer Josh Singer) interviewed all the journalists who are the central characters. They interviewed us for ‘hours on end,’ they looked at e-mails people had saved and every legal document that was available – and that’s lots and lots of them.
Liev Schreiber (the actor who portrays Baron) came to my office at The Washington Post and we talked for a bit less than two hours. I was able to review the screenplay a couple times and provide my commentary on it, and my colleagues in Boston were also able to review the movie.
Q. What did you think when you learned they wanted to make a movie about the Spotlight team?
A. I never went into this business with the expectation I would be portrayed in a movie, and frankly, I never expected this movie to be made…Even when I read the screenplay, I wasn’t sure it would get made. It was a very difficult movie to finance.
One, it deals with a very sensitive subject and a controversial subject. It doesn’t have any special effects or car chases, and there are no cartoons, none of the stuff that generally draws people to movies today…
Finally, it was at a time when the world got a new pope…The church finally acquired a new pope who was popular with the public, and I thought for sure that would kill off the movie…
Q. What did you think when you first saw the movie?
A. I first saw it at the Toronto International Film Festival (in September 2015). I had not seen it on the big screen until that point. It was a very emotional moment. There were 2,000 people in a gigantic theater (Princess of Wales Theatre). To see and hear the reaction of the audience affected me a lot.
It finally dawned on me that the whole world would know this story…
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