Trivia / Spotlight

• All-Star Cast: Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Brian d'Arcy James, John Slattery, Liev Schreiber, Billy Crudup, Len Cariou and Stanley Tucci. This is a stellar cast.
• Career Resurrection: Solidified Michael Keaton's emergence back into the limelight, showing that his work in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) wasn't just a one-time thing.
• Completely Different Title:
  • Latin America: On the Front Page
  • Serbia: Under the Magnifying Glass
  • Slovenia: In Focus
  • Taiwan: Shocking Focus
• Dueling Works: With Black Mass, another film about a dark period of Boston's recent history. It also came out just after another film about intrepid journalists investigating a major scandal, Truth, though unlike Spotlight that movie tanked at the box office and was quickly forgotten.
• The Foreign Subtitle:
  • Brazil: Spotlight: Secrets Revealed
  • Greece: Spotlight: All in the Light
  • Hungary: Spotlight: Details of an Investigation
  • Japan: Spotlight Century Scoop
• Method Acting: How Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo prepared for their roles. The real Walter Robinson said, "If Michael Keaton robbed a bank, the police would have me in handcuffs." Ruffalo had the real Mike Rezendes say his lines on every break, and asked him if he could watch him yell at someone. (The real Rezendes said no.) Rachel McAdams also admitted to basically "stalking" Sacha Pfeiffer, through face-to-face meetings, phone conversations and listening to radio and TV broadcasts. Pfeiffer notes that she allowed the production borrow to her actual 1995 Honda Civic, which McAdams drives in the film.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Veteran character actor Len Cariou plays the Stepford Smiler / Faux Affably Evil Cardinal Bernard Law. For those familiar with Blue Bloods, it might be unsettling to see him playing a cardinal covering up a very disturbing scandal instead of the Cool Old Guy patriarch in the series.
  • Might be even more unsettling if you remember that he originated the title role in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
• Reality Subtext: Jimmy LeBlanc, who plays Patrick McSorley, was himself an actual survivor of the clerical abuse scandal, so when director Tom McCarthy first brought him in for rehearsals with Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton and Stanley Tucci, he was concerned that 'revisiting' Jimmy's abusive past might be too emotionally traumatic for him. However, as McCarthy later accompanied Jimmy out after the session, he asked him if he was freaked out by his first "acting" experience with the other actors. "Of course I'm freaked out," Jimmy said, "that was the Hulk and Batman and that guy from The Devil Wears Prada".
• What Could Have Been:
  • Matt Damon was considered for the role of Michael Rezendes.
  • Margot Robbie turned down the role of Sacha Pfeiffer due to exhaustion. Amy Adams and Michelle Williams were both considered for the role.

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