September 5 director Tim Fehlbaum is opening up about why the now-Oscar contender was the next story he wanted to tell.
“It was the conversation that we — the producers, the writer and I — had with Geoffrey Mason, the real Geoffrey Mason, the character played by John Magaro,” Fehlbaum told The Hollywood Reporter at a special screening on the Paramount lot.
The film, which counts Sean Penn as one of its producers, chronicles the ABC Sports team at the 1972 Munich Olympics as they pivoted from sports reporting to live coverage of the Israeli athletes taken hostage in the Olympic Village. Peter Sarsgaard stars as legendary ABC executive Roone Arledge, while Magaro plays Mason, a young producer for the network’s Olympic coverage.
“Listening to his stories and what he experienced during this 22-hour marathon of broadcasting on this crisis situation back then in Munich,” the director continued. “That was the moment when we thought that would actually be worth a movie.”
Magaro said he was initially drawn to the project due to Sarsgaard’s and Penn’s involvement, but found himself captivated by the script. “It really reminded me of a lot of films that I love,” he said, namedropping All The President’s Men, Good Night, and Good Luck, Spotlight and Shattered Glass, which Sarsgaard also starred in.
The actor said All The President’s Men in particular most inspired him when preparing to take on the task of playing a journalist in September 5. “What [Alan J.] Pakula did with that, I think that is the bar. That’s the gold standard of journalism movies,” Magaro said. “This was my chance to sort of step into that world.”
Leonie Benesch, who plays the team’s local translator, Marianne, said she opted to not delve into anything related to the world of journalism until after the shoot was done, an intentional choice for the sake of her character. “Tim [Fehlbaum] and I decided it would be helpful to not read with everyone, to not actually know my way around a studio like that, because she’s thrown a little bit into a world that is not hers,” she said.
For Ben Chaplin, who plays the ABC Sports team’s head of operations, he feels why the film is important now lies in the ideas of what responsibility the media has in reporting and covering something and how the public then receives that. “As soon as you point a camera at it or you put something on a phone to read, a piece of news, a piece of information — it has an angle, doesn’t it?” he said. “There’s no such thing as neutral, and I think it’s up to us because I don’t think you can put the genie back in the bottle.”
“We as a species, I think need to be a little bit more aware every time we read something, every time, we need to be more discerning” the actor added.
September 5 arrives in select theaters on Nov. 29 before going nationwide on Dec. 13.
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