· · ·
turning to page one
turning to page one
Spotlight · written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy · 2015
Scene 139 of 143 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act three
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.
Robby's Spotlight team operates comfortably inside its own routine, prospecting a modest police-corruption story under a departing editor's cover.
Baron's outsider question exposes what the paper has never done: investigate whether Cardinal Law knowingly protected an abusive priest.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The team returns to its own newsroom and its own history, forced to admit the Globe buried MacLeish's 1993 tip and could have run this story years earlier.
Leaving Garabedian's office, Mike hears children laughing in the hallway and looks toward the sound.
Garabedian tells Mike about two more boys abused in Jamaica Plain just two weeks earlier, urging him to keep doing his work, as Robby sits alone in his car watching the trucks roll out at dawn.
At dawn, a copy of the Globe lands on a West Roxbury doorstep with the headline 'Church Allowed Abuse by Priest for Years,' outside the very treatment center near Matt's house.
This scene
We’re behind Sacha as she walks down the hall. She opens the firehose box, grabs a key. Unlocks the door to Spotlight.
174A INT. GLOBE, SPOTLIGHT - EARLY MORNING
Sacha enters, turns on the lights, takes off her coat. Matt enters.
MATT
Hey.
SACHA
Morning.
MATT
How’d you sleep?
SACHA
Not very well. You?
MATT
I haven’t slept well for months.
I’ve actually started writing.
SACHA
Writing?
MATT
Yeah, I’m working on a book. Gives
me something else to focus on.
SACHA
That’s great. What kind of book?
MATT
Horror.
Sacha reacts, the irony not lost on her. The phone RINGS. The tip line. They both stare. At last, Matt picks up.
MATT (INTO PHONE) (CONT’D)
Spotlight. Yeah. Yeah, of course.
Can I get your name please?
He grabs a pen. As he and Sacha trade a look, CUT TO --