Interview: Josh Singer on pushing deep with Spotlight's Screenplay and his time on The West Wing
Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 7:23PM
Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer at the Gothams. It would not be the last award for their SPOTLIGHT screenplayAs we head toward Oscar night in an unusually complicated Oscar race, Spotlight is one of the films that's still in the thick of it. And with good reason. This finely tuned gripping account of the Boston Globe's long investigation into sex-abuse coverups was, by any measure, one of the most acclaimed films of the year.
The director Tom McCarthy is a flexible talent -- he acts, writes, and directs -- so it was something of a surprise that he shared writing duties on Spotlight with Josh Singer (The West Wing, The Fifth Estate). But that's somehow perfect since the film places such beautiful emphasis on community and teamwork. And when I began to speak with Singer about his involvement this communal spirit was also obvious. He immediately began deferring praise to the actors, and Tom's gift with them, and was so pleased that they'd been honored already this awards season.
Here's our interview, edited for length and clarity...
NATHANIEL R: Spotlight is unusual in that the lead character is really the investigation itself
JOSH SINGER: It’s really an ensemble piece. Tom wanted this to be about the Spotlight team. It made me nervous early on, not having one or two protagonists. We have six!
NATHANIEL: Tom McCarthy doesn’t usually collaborate on his screenplays. So tell me what happened there.
SPOTLIGHT winning a very deserved "ensemble" prize last month at SAG
JOSH SINGER: Tom came on as director at first. It started with him just hiring me to write this thing back in August 2012. I spent about a week with Michael Rezendes (Played by Mark Ruffalo in the movie), who happened to be in LA. I took him out to lunch every day that week. At the end of the week I sat down with Richard Sipe, who’s the voice on the box played by Richard Jenkins in the film, and an expert in clergy sex abuse. Awesome sit downs. At the end of that first week I had 54 pages of notes. Mike gave me the 'this is how it happened' and Sipes the history and theory, which is right on the money, that this is a systemic problem; it's not a few bad apples and it really cuts to the core of how the church’s secrecy is a requirement.
When did Tom jump in?
I came East to talk to all the rest of the reporters in Boston. So I said, Tom, 'do you want to come up?' So we sat with most of the primary reporters in the film. Not only was he intrigued, we had a good time just hanging out and doing these interviews. Because of Tom's emphasis on authenticity and vision for the film, he pushed us to go back and back and back more than I necessarily would have gone on my own. I started writing an outline, and I showed him early on, to a point where we were breaking the story together. At some point he said 'This would probably go quicker if we just write it together.'
I was thrilled. I had gotten to know Tom and like him very much as a human, I already was a huge fan of his films. It felt very natural, and it also felt like, this is the best move to getting this film made. Because we collaborated so intimately from the beginning, I wound up staying around during prep and production. Because I knew the details so well, I was able to help out a lot on the set.
In many ways Spotlight is a procedural. Sometimes that genre, from my perspective, doesn't leave much room for the actors because it's so much exposition. Was that a tricky balancing act in the writing? Take Michael Keaton. You could write a lot of dialogue of Robby coming into self-awareness and realizing their complicity in not acting sooner. But he’s such a strong actor that he can convey that in just a look.
There's a luxury you have in writing movies, especially when you’re writing with a director who’s so good with actors. You know the small moments you’re gonna get to convey those things so you can write with that in mind. Whereas in television, there’s much more of an obligation to the audience, especially on network television, to be very very clear. Also in television, you’re working with good directors, but they change. And you just don’t have the time. You’re shooting eight page days. In features, you’re shooting two to four page days.
And again, I was writing with a director who’s fantastic at casting, who’s fantastic at getting great performances. So there’s a luxury in that as a writer. You’re allowed to be more subtle.
The movie flows very well and it's very engaging, but it seems that, by necessity, you would have had to leave tons of stuff out. Was that very hard? The team keeps discovering more as they go and I'm sure you did, too.
Yes. But because we decided to play this as the investigation only up to the two big stories that broke in January of 2002, and that helped us as to what to leave out. As it says at the end of the film, they wrote 600 articles. They wrote for another year and a half after our film ends! Moreover because Sept 11 took up five to six weeks of reporters’ time, we’re only taking, you know, five months minus six weeks. Some fact based dramas are trying to condense years, which is much more challenging. There was obviously a ton of investigation, but a lot of it really went on after.
And outside of Boston too.
We don’t get into all the other cities and around the world. So in that way, we’re culling.
So much to grapple with and then writing as a team.
It’s a little bit of wrestling, Keep up!
You worked on The West Wing, and another Oscar contender this year is Steve Jobs written by Aaron Sorkin. Did you work much with him?
I unfortunately never had the pleasure. I worked on the last three years of The West Wing, when Aaron left the show and John Wells took over. John was a fantastic boss. That was my first job out of grad school, and coming out of law school, I didn’t know anything about writing! But getting to work with very famous writers -- the staff was ridiculous -- I got to learn from all of them.
The West Wing
NATHANIEL: But how would you go from knowing nothing about writing to getting that job?
JOSH SINGER: I was literally in law school, trying to figure out what to do, and was very depressed by Gore v Bush. I knew a little bit about children’s media, because I had worked with Children’s Television Workshop and had done an internship with Disney Channel, so I was thinking about writing for children's television. And then I started watching The West Wing.
I can imagine how that would be inspiring. A rough time for many of us.
I said, 'Well maybe I do want to be involved in adult film and television and try to have conversations about issues in this really interesting way, a dialogue with millions of people on a weekly basis!' I wrote a spec for The West Wing and that’s what got me the job. When I was at Telluride, Spotlight and Steve Jobs were making some noise, and I thought to myself "Well, Aaron sort of has two films here." [Laughs] Because if it were not for Aaron, I wouldn’t be in the business!
Maybe Tom makes Spotlight anyway, but, you know, it’s probably a slightly different film. I really owe a great deal to the people from The West Wing.
Since you were there throughout the production of Spotlight was there anything that was a revelation for you about watching actors film your words?
I think the biggest thing I learned on Spotlight -- I had heard a lot about rewriting onset of a movie but I never understood why you would do that. I had written a couple movies. On The Fifth Estate, Bill Condon very much wanted to get that script locked before going to set. I was not on set very much and they didn’t change it a lot. Here, Tom and I changed it a ton. And it was really surprising to me. If you had told me before we started production that you are going to be rewriting almost every scene, almost every day, I would have vomited.
[Laughter]
I would have lost it. 'Well how are we gonna do that? This script is so intricate!' But Tom was always relentless about pushing deeper. I think it’s one of his greatest assets -- pushing and pushing and pushing on scenes to really get to know them. But beyond that, I could see, just like on a television show, you shoot the pilot, and you sort of know what you have but you don’t really know what you have. Over the course of it, the show evolves. You see what your actors are doing and you see what you have, so you start to write differently. Five days into the shoot, you start to see how the actors are working together, how these themes are playing out, and you realize, 'Ohhh!'
That must be exciting to watch and writers don't always get to do that.
JOSH SINGER: It’s a little bit like, you have a coloring book and pages start to get colored in. 'Oh, this is what the book looks like!' And you start to change the black and white outline of the other pages.
There’s the old adage that there are three movies; there’s the movie you write, the movie you shoot, and the movie you cut. And the movie you shoot is different than the movie you write, and when you start to understand what that entity is, you start to wanna write toward that. Almost every scene is not the original we attacked.
NATHANIEL: How did the actors respond to that?
JOSH SINGER: They weren't always so thrilled [Laughs]. I was giving them pages at the last minute. I said at one point to Rachel, 'You don’t give us any incentive not to do the rewriting, because you’re so good turning it around!' I don’t know if she really loved that joke much, but it’s true.
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Reader Comments (9)
Liev Schreiber has a big man body. Nice.
So Bush v. Gore is what ultimately gave us the script for Spotlight?? Let's chalk that one up to the legacy of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, may he rest in peace.
That's a fun interview. I like it when writers are not too precious about their work and are willing to embrace the collaborative aspects of movie-making. It is curious that his learning was on the set of an Aaron Sorkin show, because I have seen interviews with Jane Fonda and Jeff Daniels about the Newsroom and how demanding Sorkin was that his scripts be kept intact (word for word), and one of the two (or maybe Allison Janney in one of those videochats at Gold Derby) mentioned an occasion in which a three page monologue had to be reshot on Sorkin's demand because a preposition had been changed.
Woody is another one who's reportedly very anal with people adding to the script, and his insularity is probably why he is so hit-or-miss.
I'm thinking Screenplay will be Spotlight's only Oscar. Bizarelly enough, Best Picture is its second best chance (I would love a BP winner with only two Oscars, so 1930s). Then, in order of likelihood: Editing, McAdams, Ruffalo and Director.
Carmen, I could totally see Spotlight winning Director IF they're going to give it Best Picture. Oscar pundits nowadays have got it in their minds that Best Director always goes to a dominant auteur for these huge productions and that the Academy would rather split Picture/Director if necessary, but they're forgetting the "anonymous" Best Picture-coasters for smaller films, i.e. Robert Benton, James L Brooks, Barry Levinson, Ron Howard, Tom
Hooper.
Csrmen -- i would also love a 2 oscar winning best picture. Or even a 1 oscar winning. I have enjoyed seeing sweeps become less normal because it's so stingy and if you choose the wrong film almost every decisions looks terrible later on instead of hit and miss choices all over the place.
The Jack -- this is probably true. But i think when there's an option to give a director a screenplay prize instead they sometimes take that.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think McCarthy is winning Best Director, I was more responding to Carmen's suggestion that 'Spotlight' is more likely to win Supporting Actor or Actress than Director.
But that's off topic. Sorry Nat!
Nice interview. I always enjoy reading the screenwriter interviews you do. And it's nice to read about a screenwriting nominee duo who get along after the years of Reitman and O. Russell squabbling with their credited co-writers!
Great interview! I'm also really surprised they could change so much on the fly, considering how important and detailed all the information is. And I totally understand why the actors might not be thrilled with that. But obviously it all somehow worked.
The Jack - you must consider is that BP and every other category have different tabulations. Back in the day people would chalk down their faves and whomever had most votes (which could be as low as 20% + 1) would win. That, along with the popular notion that the best director was simply the person who delivered the best movie, is what made the joint awarding of BP and BD so common.
With the preferential ballot for Best Picture, a movie can have most votes for Picture and Director (say The Revenant at 33%), thus insuring a Best Director win, and not snagging Best Picture because it fell short of the of the preferential ballot threshold of 50% + 1. In that case, a less divisive and well positioned second option (say Spotlight at 27%) might benefit from having more number 2 and 3 slots and actually surpassing the original top vote getter and becoming the BP winner.
I highly doubt Spotlight will top Director and Picture at first count. I fully expect Iñarrítu and The Revenant to do so. In other words, they might award Spotlight Best Picture without deciding to award it Best Picture, just by the distinct way the category is tabulated.
So, as a Spotlight win would more reflect its non-divisive nature and its capacity to please across the board, we can't really operate under the sweep assumption ("loved that movie!!!!" *proceeds to mark it off in all categories). We must break down the other awards races individually according to their respective contexts.
Screenplay: frontrunner, likely winner, has WGA as precursor and it is a great way to honor McCarthy (a showbiz trooper who's been around for years as actor/writer/director and worked w/ everybody). Plus, the writing is excellent and it would make a deserving winner.
Editing: another strong point of the movie, so an artistic/merit case can be made for it here (I am sure some voters must go for merit). Also, the movie showed strength by being nominated in this category after being snubbed at the ACE Eddies. Its main competitor is The Big Short, under the most = best logic, and The Revenant, if it goes full sweep.
Supporting Actress: this category seems to be Vikander x Winslet, leaning Vikander. McAdams for sure is a dark horse, but she has a few things going for her: first, she's the only nominee from a BP contender (#tearsforCarol) and she's the only contender from a movie that overperformed on nominations morning (hers, Ruffalo's and Editing noms were all shaky prospects). Her chances are not great, as she goes up against two leads and a superstar (who snagged Globe and Bafta, no less), but she's not completely outside the realm of possibility, as Alicia Vikander seems like a weak frontrunner (relative unknown, few in the Academy have worked with her or know her personally, her movie has zero buzz and seems to inspire very little passion except on the people who really hate it) and Kate Winslet won the last time she was nominated.
Director: I would not be surprised if Tom McCarthy finished third or fourth, actually, behind Miller and McKay, whose movies are showier pieces of direction. I still expect Alejandro to take it easily, and Room's directing nom was a Ben Zeitlin "you showed promise, welcome to the club, young man" type of situation.
Supporting Actor: Stallone has this in the bag, with Rylance and Hardy next in line. Not even sure if Ruffalo would be ahead of Bale, who has a large enough fanbase in the Academy to make sure he keeps getting nominated in tough competitive years like this or Beat Actor 2013 (#TomHanksCaptainPhillips #neverforget).
So I grant you McCarthy has a better shot to win Director than Ruffalo can carry the Supporting Actor race, but I still would argue Editing and McAdams have a better chance than him.
I do love the movie, though. Even if it only gets Screenplay and Picture, I would be truly delighted.
I would disagree on the supporting races - McAdams is the fifth nominee and fifth in voting. In my opinion her chances are the least of any Spotlight nomination. Ruffalo on the other hand is my pick for a surprise win. I think the race is between Ruffalo and Stallone. The racial controversy may have solidified it for Stallone - If they can't vote for an AA actor they can at least give it to an actor in a film with an AA lead and AA director but on the other hand, Stallone's filmography is not exactly filled with prestige films and performances. I don't think Stallone is anywhere near a lock. Ruffalo has been nominated several times, is well liked by the Academy, has yet to win and is a chance to award a film that is well liked but may otherwise leave empty handed on Oscar night.