MC/OC 'Spotlight'?

analysis
#1

Hi guys,

Yesterday evening, we ( as in the two us) saw “Spotlight”. It’s topics, the corruption within the Catholic church and the importance of good long-form journalism really hit home, yet we both were sort of well, not as involved as we expected to be… It might be because we didn’t get the MC/OC angle clear. We both had a different take. Anyone care to help us clarify?

My OC in our through line discussion voted for Marc Ruffalo as MC:

In her opinion “Spotlight” explores faith as the ex-priest turned psychiatrist, when he’s asked how Catholics reconcile the abuse scandal with their faith, replies, “My faith is in the eternal. I try to separate the two.”

Marc Ruffalo changes from a dogged investigator to a screaming maniac and ultimately confesses to Sacha that even though he stopped going to church years ago, he always assumed that one day he would go back. “I had that in my back pocket,” he says, glancing at her with a flash of anguish.

I focused on the the way power operates in it’s absence of personal accountability. The story shows that when institutions convinced of their own greatness work together, the truth is buried and the innocent suffer. Breaking that pattern of collaboration is not easy. Challenging deeply entrenched, widely respected authority is very scary.

Then my choice for MC is Walter “Robby” Robinson. . He’s part of Boston’s mostly Roman Catholic establishment and has to come to terms with his own fallibility. He rubs shoulders with an unctuous church P.R. guy and plays golf with a well-connected lawyer who handled some of the archdiocese’s unsavory business. While pursuing a big, potentially career-making scoop, he is atoning for previous lapses and trying to overcome the bureaucratic inertia that is as integral to the functioning of a newspaper as the zealous pursuit of the truth. “What took you so long?” is a question he hears more than once. His shame for overlooking is what’s holding him back to uncover the story. He has to admit he did wrong…

Then the OC is the editor, newly arrived at The Boston Globe from The Miami Herald. He politely dissents from the cardinal’s vision of civic harmony, arguing that the paper should stand alone. And forgives them all for not speaking out earlier.

Does anyone care to elaborate on the MC\OC through lines? I’m also also interested in the story Outcome nuances. So the story is published, Cardinal Law apologized, but fled US justice and is richly rewarded with Vatican citizenship & diplomatic immunity…

#2

Spotlight is being covered in the Users Group in November, so you’ll get definitive answers then hopefully.

The MC really could be either Keaton or Ruffalo. I would go Keaton. Your explanation makes perfect sense to me. And, also, an illustration: Keaton wants to wait to release the story and get more information, Ruffalo (as a potential OC) doesn’t understand why the wait. He thinks everyone needs to know immediately.

I would argue that there are multiple OCs (Robby has several moments where people try to convince him to complete the story), but Ruffalo is one of the strongest contenders as an OC, in my opinion.

The Outcome is definitely success, I feel. The story is released. The cardinal stuff all happens after we cut to black, if I remember correctly. So it’s after the end of this story.

#3

I think of Spotlight as an ensemble story, where the MC is the Spotlight team as a whole. We get to know most of the story through their points of view. In a sense they’re constantly doing hand-offs between them. I don’t think there’s a particular emphasis on one single character and his personal issue.

We do get to know some details:

  • As @ThebigVerboonski said, Michael Resends “had that in my back pocket”.
  • Sacha Pfeiffer struggles telling her devout mother about the article.

These articles could probably be useful:

http://dramatica.com/questions/ensemble-stories-such-as-crash
http://dramatica.com/questions/does-dramatica-account-for-stories-with-multiple-main-characters

I think in Spotlight we have

“the same “paradigm” but shown through the eyes of two or more players”…

“You can have a Main Character point of view that seems to float from one character to another—the bodies change but their take on the world around them is the same.”

What do you guys think?

#4

I had the same problem. I did not feel a very deep connection to this movie, at least not to the characters. Even the moment where Robby realizes he is the one who dropped the ball is downplayed. If I hadn’t know it was coming, I would have missed it. If I’m not mistaken, you have to read the by-line on the page to know the significance of the scene.

Still, I think he is the MC. He is the one fighting to do it the right way. I think the IC might be the lawyer who won’t tell him anything, but then relents – his old friend, Jimmy Sullivan in the movie, played by Jamey Sheridan. They both had foreknowledge, one wants to let it out, one doesn’t. (We are the same, you and I…) Doesn’t he eventually change and go through the list of names, circling the ones he remembers?

#5

Hi Thks for the reply.By the way, my name is Arie:-). I am not going to wait till November. Why kill a perfect opportuntiy to err :smile:

Your take, well, It might be that there are multiplie OC’s but that’s hard to prove or disprove…So how about exploring the “what if”: What if there’s one storyform. What storyform would make sense? In discussing that,we might see what I am missing. .

I see, and again I might be wrong, all these different ways of not wanting to upset the existing order. Not wanting to put the church on trial, friends in a negative light, everyone has reasons to not want to find out the cause of and expose the abuse . Mike toys with the idea of returning to church, Sacha accompanies her ‘Nana’ to church. Walter is part of the establishment whose narrative is, “The church does so much good around heer”. Everyone has his reasons to ignore the abuse. If that’s the story than who’s the whistle blower? The man who puts the Spotlight team on the story and pushes them to expose a system, not blame individuals? Or Walter his laywer friend who asks him “what took you so long”. Walter has to accept that he failed as a reporter to get the story out before he can get it out. After reviewing, I second Mike in this. It’s Robbies shame, that makes him stall the story. Do you guys agree? It’s change, succes, MC Walter, OC Sullivan. The story is about this one institution under fire: the newspapers who have become part of establishment. The story is about the story.

If we agree on that we can go back to the story and see if the story development reflects this structure. Then we will find out if it was my bias’ which made me not involved or if the story structure could be improved.

On what I found an interesting side note: We discussed the story with a guy who said how about if we discover Robby was abused? Then it would make perfect sense he waited to tell the story. He never wants anybody to find out. But wait, there’s Marc Ruffalo but he wanted the world to know but was afraid and sees an opportunity. Or was not abused but seeing the consequences starts to become unstoppable, sort like Erin Brokovich…Then we would have a really well defined MC and OC.

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