UNITED STATES
American Film Institute
February 19, 2016
Before Michael Rezendes won a Pulitzer Prize for journalism, he was a Screenwriting alumnus of the AFI Conservatory (Class of 1999). Played by Mark Ruffalo in the Oscar®-nominated SPOTLIGHT, he’s one of a group of Boston Globe reporters who, in 2002, exposed a shattering clergy sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Known collectively as the Spotlight team, they won a Pulitzer Prize for their work. Now, nearly 15 years later, the story has gained international attention once again with the film directed by Tom McCarthy and written by Josh Singer.
AFI spoke with Rezendes about his AFI Conservatory experience, and the making of SPOTLIGHT.
You graduated from AFI Conservatory in 1999, not long before the Spotlight story that inspired the film broke in 2002. How did you transition out of screenwriting and into journalism?
I was on a leave of absence from The Boston Globe while I was at AFI. There was a job waiting for me at the Globe if I wanted it, which was terrific. After receiving an award for the best script written by an AFI Fellow, for $10,000, I was quite enthusiastic about pursuing screenwriting. I went back to the Globe to regroup financially before returning to Los Angeles, when Ben Bradlee, Jr. and Walter Robinson asked me if I wanted to work for the Spotlight team. I thought to myself, if you put me and Ben Bradlee, Jr., and Walter Robinson in the same bottle, something big is going to happen. It was one of the few times in my life when I had a premonition. Sure enough, a year later I was writing that story.
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