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In the new movie September 5, director Tim Fehlbaum takes viewers behind the scenes while ABC Sports covered the Munich massacre during the 1972 Olympics.
It is a stressful watch, combining the thrill of an Aaron Sorkin-like script with a strong visual language. The key was recreating the ABC Sports studio, as the crew had to make a replica of the actual studio where the events of the movie took place.
The immersive retro sets
Speaking to ClutchPoints at the September 5 junket, the cast and crew talked about the making of the new movie. Paul Mescal recently told us how having an immersive set as he did with Gladiator II helps immerse an actor. If you cannot act in those circumstances, he suggests that “you should look at yourself in the mirror and figure out whether you're in the right game or not.”
Star John Magaro called the replica set's impact “enormous.” He praised Fehlbaum for his “persistence” in getting
“He wanted to make it as authentic and as real and have as much stuff working as possible, ” Margaro said of Fehlbaum. “And those machines are the real machines that they had in the broadcast center. They were able to find them. They found some random person who still collected them.”
As a result, Magaro and the rest of the cast could look at the old TVs with actual footage from the 1972 Olympics. His co-star Leonie Benesch agreed.
“Julian R. Wagner, the production designer, also worked with Tim on his previous two films. Tim is a really loyal guy. And I think that element of world-building is so important.”
She added, “I don't feel like we had to act a lot. It was more existing in a space that was created for us.” It made it “easy” to act, as Benesch put it.
How starring in a movie like September 5 inspired John Margaro
Magaro said “the way that I consume media” changed by starring in September 5. Doing the movie allowed him to see “behind the curtain of journalism,” which some can take for granted with events like the 1972 Olympics.
“This moment in September 5 is where traumatic, tragic news events were covered live and shared globally, which is something you can take for granted,” Magaro explained.
Benesch credited the script for how it depicted journalism. As a result, it raises questions “that journalists in these kinds of newsrooms have to ask themselves, or should be asking themselves when covering things like this.”
September 5 was even more eye-opening for Ben Chaplin, who admits he “didn't know much about live sports broadcasting.” He finds acting to be a “calling,” but other jobs, like a journalist, take a similar love for the game.
“I consider what we do, to a certain extent, a calling. It's something that you do because you love it; you may hate it in equal measure, but you have to do it, at least that's how I am,” Chaplin explained. “And these people loved what they did.”
Peter Sarsgaard then weighed in, recalling meeting a journalist who is aware they may not be able to cover a certain topic due to the specific field of journalism they are in.
“[There's] something about needing to know the truth or to tell the story, right?” Sarsgaard pondered. “It overlaps with acting, certainly.
How being told “no” inspires artists
In September 5, the pressure is on the ABC Sports crew. After all, their job is to show the 1972 Olympics, not cover real-world events like the Munich Massacre.
Actors face similar challenges, being pigeonholed at times. From actors who get typecast to others who struggle to find work, they are used to being told “no.”
“I'm trying to remember a time where I was told ‘yes,'” Sarsgaard quipped, laughing. “It's constant because the things that you want are never the things that you are offered freely. It's always about challenging yourself and challenging other peoples' perspectives of you — it's very easy if you get to a certain level of acting to just think, Well, okay, I'll go play another person who has the same career as the last five people I've played.”
Chaplin then added, “In England, my parts get posher and more lines.”
It's always a fight. As Sarsgaard explained, “It's a constant search.” For himself, it's easy to identify the talent of others, not necessarily himself. “I take great pride in being able to recognize the talent in other people,” he said.
He was talking about Fehlbaum, whom Sarsgaard had high praise for. “He is so driven, so compelled; he is overcome with the need to tell,” Sarsgaard said, which Chaplin corroborated.
An added benefit was having each other. Sarsgaard and Chaplin were fans of each other heading into September 5, but they hadn't worked together on a movie. They also had a “fierce” mentor in common, who frequently told them “no,” which Sarsgaard impersonated.
What about for John Magaro and Tim Fehlbaum?
“Any actor who really cares and loves this likes a challenge,” Magaro said. “You gotta have a kind of rebellious nature to be doing this to begin with. And when you're told you can't do it, you want to do it even more. I think that quality exists in journalism.”
He then compared it to All the President's Men.
“It's people who are being told they can't or shouldn't do it, and they're going to prove you wrong because that's the excitement of breaking the story first,” Magaro explained. “And though these guys are sports journalists, they're still journalists at the end of the day.”
As a filmmaker, Fehlbaum is all too familiar with being rejected: “This is something you are being confronted [by] very often when making a movie.”
At the same time, filmmaking is about making compromises. Sometimes, a smaller budget results in a “more interesting result” to Fehlbaum because you see the “creative solutions” that were made.
“Our movie is an example of that,” he said. “While it is about a very big event, [it is] told from a very distinctive perspective. [There are] a lot of things we actually don't see.”
The intimate setting almost makes September 5 feel like a stage play. Fehlbaum concedes this was not intentional, but even he acknowledges that feeling, comparing it to a “chamber play.”
“It's almost a chamber play. In a way, we approached it almost like a chamber play. We [looked] a lot of movies that take place in a condensed environment and are told from a very distinctive perspective.”
September 5 is in theaters.
