Anyone remember Cardinal Bernard Law, the grandfatherly monster who covered up the systemic rape of children while capo of the archdiocese of Boston? He's 84 and retired now but reputedly lives rent-free in a Roman palace. "He should be in jail," says Mark Ruffalo.
The actor, who got an Oscar nomination last year for Foxcatcher, just might score another for his full-body inhabitation—clipped speech, oddly clipped bangs, and controlled ferocity—of the reporter Michael Rezendes in Spotlight, the story of _The Boston Globe'_s exposé of the Catholic Church's clergy sex-abuse scandal back in 2002. The film, which opened in limited release on Friday, co-stars Michael Keaton as the editor in charge of the Globe's "Spotlight" investigative team and Rachel McAdams as a fellow reporter. It's a gripping, deliberate, old-fashioned kind of movie, unflashy and unembroidered. Like the newspaper stories it's based on, Spotlight gets out of the way and lets the horrific truth unfold.
After a recent GQ photo shoot, Ruffalo and Rezendes sat in the back of a quiet tavern in the Flatiron district of Manhattan—exactly the kind of worn-wood, Guinness-y joint where journalists gather after deadline—to talk about Spotlight, growing up Catholic, and their hopes for how Pope Francis might react to the film.
GQ: Talk to me about how you guys got to know each other, and the questions that Mark asked you, Mike, in order to portray you.
RUFFALO: I remember calling you, and you called me back, and I was walking down 5th Avenue, and there's a little church on like 5th and 10th, and I sat there and had this conversation sitting in their little courtyard. I asked about his past, and his relationship to the Catholic Church. I was really interested in that. That was a couple of months before I met you, actually. And then I came to Boston and [laughs] basically infiltrated your life.
REZENDES: Mark came into my home and very first thing he did was he sat down at a coffee table, and he opened up a notebook, and he had his pen out, and he had his iPhone out, and eventually he was taking photographs of my coffee table and my bookcase, and he was asking me a lot of questions and my first reaction was, "This is really incredibly intrusive."
RUFFALO: [laughs] "Who the hell is this? The nerve of this guy asking me all these questions, taking all these notes."
REZENDES: It was outrageous, really. And then I thought to myself, "Well, gee, how many times have I done this to people? This is my comeuppance. This is justice. I deserve this." And then I kind of relaxed into it.
RUFFALO: There's a level of trust that you have to have with somebody. A part of him knew that I took it seriously, that I had the utmost respect for who you are and what you did, and my inquiry was only to service the story. Because I could also get it deeply wrong, too. I could really have like misinterpreted everything, you know? Who knows that I didn't. [laughs]
REZENDES: Doesn't he sound like a reporter? But yes, we did establish some trust early on. I mean, you were at my house that first day for like ten hours or something.
RUFFALO: And then we went out to dinner, and we walked around the neighborhood and talked.
REZENDES: And we didn't just talk about journalism. Mark looked at my bookcase, and we discovered we liked the same writers.
RUFFALO: We had the same library! Dylan Thomas.
REZENDES: And Raymond Carver.
RUFFALO: We just talked about a lot of things.
Were either one of you guys altar boys?
RUFFALO: No, I wasn't.
REZENDES: No, I got saved because it conflicted with Little League practice, and my old man let me go to Little League practice.
RUFFALO: And I was too ADHD. I was too disorganized to be an altar boy.
But being raised in that tradition, Mark, had to have helped you play that role and relate emotionally to the best scene in the movie, the climax when you give voice to the rage, the frustration that everybody feels.
RUFFALO: What he and I took away from being Catholic—we really liked the social justice teachings of Christ, about justice and helping the poor and doing the right thing. That was an interesting aspect: to go to war with the Church to fight for the very thing that the Church was meant to give to people.
REZENDES: Very well put.
The timing of this film, with Pope Francis, who has been getting just these straight A's from the media—it would be amazing if he would say something about it.
RUFFALO: It'd be nice to see this Pope do something other than just a gesture, yeah. When we were in Venice [for a Spotlight event], I said, "We invite the Pope and the Vatican to see this movie to begin to heal some of these wounds that they inflicted not just on these victims, but also on people's faith, on all the people who lost their faith because of it as well." The victims, they [the priests] ruined these people's lives. What could the Church do now? I mean, what could they do to make this right?
REZENDES: Pope Francis has taken a couple of steps. He's set up a commission to study the issue, and he's set up a tribunal that's supposed to hold bishops accountable for covering up future sex abuse. What he has to do is make sure these gestures are more than window dressing. They have to actually do things, as opposed to just talking.
Mike, you're still doing more or less the same job at the same paper, right?
REZENDES: As a matter of fact, exactly the same job at exactly the same paper.
And how big is the Spotlight Team now?
REZENDES: We have six people. [Ed. note: At the time of the film, there were four.] Very healthy.
Yeah, that's pretty healthy for an investigative unit in this day and age.
REZENDES: I think so. I gotta really give credit to The Globe for maintaining its commitment to investigative reporting. But one thing I wish all newspapers understood is that investigative reporting, in today's jargon, you know, we used to call it "scoops," but really, it's original content. So I think people ought to realize that if you're doing investigative reporting, you're putting something on your newspaper or on your website that no one can get anywhere else, and theoretically at least, that should make people subscribe. One of the reasons that the Globe has maintained its commitment is because they do reader surveys, and the readers love it. Investigative reporting has market value. So I think a lot of editors are being very shortsighted when they cut their investigative people.
If you could take one aspect of each other's personalities, what would you take?
REZENDES: I would love to have Mark's generosity. His generosity of spirit. Some stranger in a car in traffic recognized Mark and wanted to take a selfie, you know, and he did it! I took him around the newsroom, and it took us an hour to get around the room, and he was so great about it.
RUFFALO: You have that too. I'd like to have your sort of—this is exactly why I would like to have this—your specificity and your clear and concise way of putting things. I don't have that. I sort of meander and wander a little bit.
REZENDES: You find the truth in your meandering.
RUFFALO: Occasionally I'll land on it, but then I'll float somewhere else. But you're very concise and specific, and that adds a real sense of credibility to what you have to say. It comes from a lifetime of discernment. It was one of the first things I noticed. I saw it in a video of him. I was like "This guy has a real discernment. He really knows where he stands, and then he stands in that place."
REZENDES: Well, all right. I had no idea.
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