"Spotlight"

I wonder if it's too late to head for Hollywood and try out for some of those Designated Dick roles?

Could be a new career path!!

 

Devine's character in "Rudy" is what I thought of, as well. I understand artistic license, but it does seem shitty to turn real people into assholes.

 

Another example is Philip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Art Howe in "Moneyball." Hoffman played Howe as a guy who was pretty belligerent to his GM with an attitude that I just couldn't imagine one would get with the real Howe. I mentioned this in the newsroom once, and the A&E editor, not much of a sports fan, started laughing, telling me "It's a movie, not a biography." I told him I realized that producers and directors take creative license all the time, but that it's kinda shitty to portray a real-life person, who's still probably looks to have a job in the game, as pretty much opposite of the way he really is.

One other is "Cinderella Man," with Craig Bierko playing Max Baer, who in the movie brags about the boxer he killed in an earlier fight and suggests he's going to do the same to Russell Crowe's Jim Braddock. In real life, Baer was remorseful about the death and even helped out the late fighter's family financially.

 

Bierko played Max Baer, not Tunney, but I got your point.

And Art Howe was kinda a lean rangy guy, not a chunky tub of guts like Hoffman.

As I understand it, Devine almost sued. He had been really pretty well regarded in retirement by the ND fanbase -- he did win a NC -- and pretty much out of the blue he's turned into Snidely Whiplash. He had to spend most of the last decade of his life (he died in 2002) telling people he really didnt't try to run Rudy off the team.

 

Having covered the Massachusetts courts and legal profession for the better part of two decades, I've dealt with all the lawyers who were depicted in "A Civil Action" and in eveyr case, the film versions bore zero resemblance to their real-life personas, though only one of them was portrayed in an unfairly negative light -- he comes across as a total dick when in real life, he was a really good guy. Still, that's more about how the actor portrayed him from a personality standpoint -- at least they didn't attribute negative deeds to him.

My dad -- who was a clinical psychologist in Michigan that did a lot of expert work in criminal cases back in the '70s and '80s -- was a character in a true crime bestseller, "The Burning Bed," about a case he was involved in where a battered Michigan housewife burned her abusive asshole of a husband to death in his sleep (my father was the key mental-health expert for her temporary insanity defense). The book -- which described him in kind of an entertaining way -- was turned into a made-for-TV movie starring Farrah Fawcett as the wife. I was dying to see how he'd be portrayed on screen but they ended up using a composite character in that role instead of having someone play him per se. That was a huge disappointment, but maybe considering the license that directors take, it was a good thing.

 

It's particularly bad for Howe with Moneyball when they changed Depodesta's name in the movie.

 

That's right, Baer. I don't know how I got that mixed up. It's been corrected.

 

That is interesting. Second hand I have heard about some of those attorneys. One of them was portrayed as a dick and committed some negative deeds. The other wasn't portrayed as a dick and committed some negative deeds.

 

I've seen "Rudy" eleventy million times it seems and I remember NOTHING about Devine being portrayed as trying to hound Rudy off the team.

I remember nothing about Devine even acknowledging Rudy's existence. Do I keep falling asleep during this scene, or what?

And since when "in reality" did Rudy dress for five games? Where do you come up with this nonsense?

 

Finally saw Spotlight this afternoon. I was lucky to be invited to a special screening for journalists, ex-journos, j-profs and others associated with the craft in my area. It was a lot of fun watching it with others who are or had been in the industry. There were a couple of scenes where a good bit of the audience cracked up at what were essentially inside jokes. I don't think it would have been as fun with a regular audience.

Anyway, I think it's a fantastic movie. Really made me want to get back in the trenches, except, I'm not sure there are any trenches to get into anymore, which is the whole reason I left. I miss the rush of breaking a big story and knowing that you're going to force change for the good. I don't miss the anxiety of breaking a big story, which I also thought they did a good job conveying. Everything seemed right, compared to the newsrooms I worked in. Usually when you see a newspaper reporter portrayed on the big screen, it's kinda ridiculous how much they get wrong. None of that here.

I've met Marty Barron - it's been a while, and I don't claim to know him well - but I thought Schreiber did an excellent job nailing his mannerisms/persona.

 

Why the tension about the court filing while Ruffalo was in Fla.?
Why not just send someone else down the get the case file?

 

Like many movie lovers, I went to the cinema last night to see a movie, dressed exactly like my favorite characters...in my case, in a blue button down and khakis. In place of a light sabre, I had a pen.

I'm glad I saw Spotlight and can give it a thumb's up.

But it's highly overrated; it's not the best movie of the year, and it's worthy of no awards. While the acting is as strong as you would expect from this stellar cast (which is why I applaud it), and the set dec and the costumes do wonders to capture a newsroom feel...the script lets it down. I found very little tension, very little character development, and pretty much zero plot twists or sudden changes. Even the small handful of gotcha moments were let-downs ("oh, look, these dusty books in the basement are all we need!") and they kept alluding to things that would never later happen (we gotta be ready for the protestors! They'll be here with pitchforks again!). There were at least a dozen minor continuity issues that bugged me (the notebook page has one line then five lines now back to one line of scribble, etc.) and a couple of holes (like Mike's trip to Florida...he must have stayed in the hotel room for 6 weeks), but mostly it was the lack of tension that disappointed me -- I thought it needed a Sunday-come-to-Jesus moment with Cardinal Law.