Newsman Keaton shines in Spotlight
WHEN i met Michael Keaton this week i gave him a little gift: A copy of the New York Times.
‘ Where’d you get it?’ he beamed, as we proceeded to trash Donald Trump (on the front page with Sarah Palin). ‘it’s so weird,’ he said, shaking his head and criticising both the liberal and the conservative media for being ‘lazy’ and not taking Trump to task for his often questionable stances.
i knew he liked the paper because at last year’s Telluride Film Festival in colorado, he (along with Meryl Streep and me) were about the only people to be seen reading the paper for real.
Keaton ( has always been a news junkie.
Probably more so since the star accepted director Tom Mccarthy’s offer to be part of the crack ensemble for his film Spotlight.
it tells how the Boston Globe’s investigative unit — ‘Spotlight’ — broke the story that catholic priests in Boston had been molesting children for years; and getting away with it, because high-ranking members of the church didn’t want the priests to be caught.
it’s such a terrific film — one of the best — and i keep watching it again and again, because i’m fascinated by how Keaton and co- stars Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Brian d’Arcy James and liev Schreiber get under the skin of the Spotlight team and the Globe’s editor Marty Baron.
Keaton portrays Walter ‘Robby’ Robinson, the Spotlight editor. ‘There’s something easy-going about him, but very strong. And sly,’ Keaton said. ‘You get the feeling from Robby that he could drop the hammer when he needed to.’ The actor, enjoying a renaissance thanks to his award-winning portrait of a stage actor drowning in his own ego in director Alejandro González iñárritu’s Oscar winning film Birdman, was ‘raised a nice catholic boy’.
‘ i liked being an altar boy and all that,’ he told me. ‘My mom went to Mass every day, unless she was really, really sick — and my mom never really had a legal driving licence. She was breaking the law every morning on her way to Mass,’ he recalled, when we met in london.
But even after the scandal, he hasn’t turned against the church. ‘i admire good strong catholics,’ he said. And he noted that Spotlight isn’t so much about religion as the institution of the church; and how the catholic hierarchy wielded power over the establishment in Boston — until the Spotlight gang got wise to what was going on.
it’s a banner headline kind of movie. Don’t miss it.