Spotlight · written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy · 2015

Marty edits the draft as Donna Morrisey's stonewalling quote comes in, and Robby reveals Sacha found an old buried 1993 clip proving the Globe itself had the twenty-priest tip from MacLeish and let it go without a follow-up.

Scene 132 of 143 · ≈ 4 min on screen · Act three

Ben
Marty
Robby
Mike
Matt
Sacha

Act two

Begins 2:06 into a 2:19 film

The story so farBefore scene 132

The Boston Globe's Spotlight team pries open the Catholic Church's decades-long cover-up of child abuse — one sealed record, one silenced victim at a time.

Scenes 4–10
Robby's Spotlight team operates comfortably inside its own routine, prospecting a modest police-corruption story under a departing editor's cover.
Scenes 11–14
Baron's outsider question exposes what the paper has never done: investigate whether Cardinal Law knowingly protected an abusive priest.
Scenes 15–24
The team sets aside its own project and enters unfamiliar territory: survivor networks, a hostile plaintiff's lawyer, and a legal fight to unseal church records.
Scenes 25–65
The team pays the cost of the work — hearing survivor testimony, chasing MacLeish's stonewalling, and combing church directories for a hidden pattern of reassigned priests.
Scenes 66–76
The directory search and Sipe's estimate deliver what they set out for: confirmation that the abuse spans dozens, then eighty-seven, priests across Boston.
Scenes 77–120
The cost comes due: 9/11 steals six weeks, Saviano accuses them of abandoning survivors, sources go quiet, and even finding Law's damning letters isn't enough to end the fight over when to publish.
Just before
Scene 129
Robby tells Jim he's out of time and needs him to confirm the list of seventy priests; Jim, furious, orders him out of the house but takes the list.
Scene 130
Outside, Jim confronts Robby for laying this on him at home and asks the question that indicts them both, where were you, what took you so long, then silently marks up the entire list before walking away.
Scene 131
Mike and Matt work the phones chasing a comment from the Cardinal's office through PR contacts Donna Morrisey and Larry Rasky, until Donna finally calls back.
Scene 132
This scene

132INT. GLOBE, MARTY’S OFFICE - DAY

Marty sits reading copy. He crosses something out. Ben, Robby and Sacha sit opposite Marty.

BEN

What?

MARTY

Another adjective.

Mike and Matt roll in.

ROBBY

Anything?

MIKE

Law just turned us down.

BEN

Jesus Christ.

MIKE

I just got off the phone with Donna

Morrisey. She said, quote:

(off his pad)

“We don’t even want to know what the

questions are.” End quote.

ROBBY

She really said that?

MIKE

(slight smile)

Yeah.

BEN

(to Marty)

That oughta do it.

MARTY

(writing)

“The Church had no interest in

knowing what the Globe’s questions

would be.”

(hands it to Mike)

Work it in somewhere before the

jump.

(to the team)

Anything else?

ROBBY

Matt wants to put the letters online

so readers can see it for

themselves.

MATT

We can run the URL at the bottom of

the article. It’s pretty

straightforward.

No one really knows what that means.

MARTY

Okay.

MATT

We also put the Spotlight tip line

at the end of the story so people

can call in. Goes directly to our

office.

SACHA

Matt and I will be in in the morning

in case we get any calls.

BEN