‘Spotlight’ Director Tom McCarthy on Heroes, Healing and ‘The Cobbler’

Listen,” sighs director and co-writer Tom McCarthy as his train of thought derails while trying to answer a question. “I just finished this movie in September and I haven’t really had time to process it objectively. I just know it probably won’t be for a few more months.” In this case, it’s an understandable reaction. His new film Spotlight, a painstakingly detailed procedural about how the Boston Globe exposed the most pervasive and insidious cover-up in the history of the Catholic Church, is a powerful reminder that the truth can be hard to wrap your head around.

Unfolding like a cross between Zodiac and All the President’s Men, Spotlight rewinds to the summer of 2001, when the Globe‘s new editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) assigned the paper’s investigative “Spotlight” unit to look into an old story regarding a local priest who’d been accused of molesting kids and was reassigned to another parish. The team, led by veteran journalist Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton), eventually uncovered decades of sexual abuse perpetrated by priests who preyed upon children and were protected by the Church — a story that everyone in Boston knew but nobody wanted to believe.

Most movies, especially ones with A-list stars like Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams, tend to play to the cheap seats in the name of awards-season glory. But by focusing instead on the hard-nosed journalism that broke the story, McCarthy has crafted a bracingly powerful film about the institutions that hold sway in our society, the need for a free press to hold them accountable, and the pervasive sense of guilt that can get in the way. The director rang up Rolling Stone to talk about heroes, healing, and how it feels to direct a box office mega-bomb and a presumptive Best Picture nominee in the span of a single year.