Setting the record straight
Dominic Corry talks to the actors seeking justice for an American hero
WHEN A bomb exploded at a public event during the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 it was major global news. One person was killed and more than 100 people were injured.
The initial reporting focused on the heroism of a security guard named Richard Jewell, who had identified the suspicious-looking backpack containing the bomb and, before it exploded, had begun to steer crowds away, saving countless lives.
But the story became even bigger when it was reported that the FBI considered Jewell a suspect in the bombing, and he went from unlikely hero to vilified public menace overnight.
The fact that Jewell was innocent has become somewhat lost in history — and that’s what motivated film-maker Clint Eastwood to make Richard Jewell, which seeks to set the record straight and re-establish Jewell as the hero he was.
Kathy Bates, who plays Jewell’s mother, Bobi (a role for which she received an Oscar nomination), tells TimeOut that Eastwood saw what happened to Jewell — who died in 2007, never having really regained his reputation — as a terrible injustice.
“We had a meeting and the first thing I asked Clint was, ‘Why do you want to make this movie?’” says Bates. “He said, ‘It’s an American tragedy. It’s not fair, it’s terrible what they did to this guy.’”
Bates spent time with the real Bobi.
“One thing that really struck me was how raw it still is for her after 23 years,” she says. “He was her only child. He was 33 when it happened. And he died 10 years later. Bobi, still to this day, believes very strongly that it killed him. She’s happy that Richard is at last getting his fair justice.”
“This is really a victory lap for the Jewell family,” says Paul Walter Hauser, who plays Jewell. “And the people of Atlanta. I think and hope that that’s how they feel about it.”
Hauser says he worked hard to channel Jewell’s understated nature. “I would say the number one thing I tried to draw from the real man was this sense of being meek and having a sense of, like, dutiful humility. He really had all the right ideas in place: honouring family, honouring your community and standing up for people who needed help. That’s a life I have not lived. I’ve been very sort of selfish, acting and doing comedy and all these sort of fun, self-serving things but Richard was a very selfless guy, and I tried to draw that out.”
Jon Hamm, who plays a composite FBI agent character, says he was shocked by the perceptions he encountered while shooting the film on location in Atlanta.
“People would ask us: ‘What are you guys doing in town?’” Hamm tells TimeOut. ”’We’re making a movie about Richard Jewell.’ And they go: ‘Oh the guy that bombed the thing?’ No, no, no. He didn’t do it. So obviously in Atlanta, it’s a very memorable occasion but people’s
memory of it is, unfortunately, influenced by how the coverage ruined this man’s life and reputation.”
Richard Jewell has attracted criticism for implying that Kathy Scruggs — the reporter for the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution who broke the news that Jewell was being eyed as a suspect — had sex with an FBI agent to get the story.
Olivia Wilde, who plays Scruggs (who died in 2001), did not participate in the press junket for the film and has publicly said she had no control over how Scruggs was portrayed.
“I’m afraid the audience will think this is a vilification of the press, it’s a vilification of the government and all these things,” says Bates. “But it’s important to remember, in this case they got it wrong. We need the press, especially today. The press is being vilified by the wrong people. And we need law enforcement. So I hope people don’t paint it with too broad a brush and say: ‘Oh this is just Clint making a political statement’.
“It’s about real people whose lives were ruined.”
“I don’t think it’s so much an indictment on the Government or even the media,” says Sam Rockwell, who plays Jewell’s lawyer, Watson Bryant. (In the film, Bryant’s office contains a bumper sticker that reads ‘I fear Government more than I fear terrorism’.) “I think it’s more about this great injustice and about the humanity of this man who was a hero. I don’t think there’s a political undertone here. I think it’s really just melodrama. At the end of the day, it’s Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.”
“This film is about an isolated incident,” says Hauser.
“We’re never casting the media or the government in a certain light and saying that they’re all bad. We’re just saying, in this particular story, what they did was unconscionable.”