THB #607: "September 5" Is For Real

Bloody Sunday, by Paul Greengrass, 2002 (written by Paul Greengrass)
No, by Pablo Larraín, 2012 (written by Pedro Peirano, Antonio Skármeta)
Argo, by Ben Affleck, 2012 (written by Chris Terrio, Tony Mendez, Joshuah Bearman)

These are the movies that kept floating through my mind as I watched Tim Fehlbaum’s new film, September 5.

Films that started or redefined careers of filmmakers who have helped define this last 20 years. Films that told the true story behind the legendary stories. Films that stuck.

If you are wondering who the hell Tim Fehlbaum, director of September 5, is, we are starting on the same page. He is a 42-year-old director of Swiss origin who made 2 other features before September 5, both sci-fi, both exec produced by big-budget producer/director Roland Emmerich, and neither ever released theatrically in the United States.

September 5 is not a sci-fi movie by any means. The opposite. Fehlbaum’s co-writers, Moritz Binder and Alex David, are minimally experienced and seem to have little connection to the real-life material from 1972, aside from Binder - like Fehlbaum, born in 1982 - being from Munich.

But somehow, this group has delivered one of the best movies ever made about making television… and more specifically live television news. The specificity of process. The beautiful grinding of the machinery. The human emotions of the people putting it all together slamming up against the pressures of delivering images and words to a hungry worldwide audience, live and with the weight of immediate consequences hanging over their heads. Even reflecting the simple pettiness of all workplaces, self-obsessed as we all tend to be, while the players rise above, seeing the worth in coming together and delivering to the world. (The film estimates almost a billion people watched the live production that ABC Sports delivered that day and night and day.)

I got a little ahead of myself…

September 5 is a film about the ABC Olympics team, led by Roone Arledge, covering the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany and how one late night, as one day’s production team was turning everything over to the next day’s production team - to be lead by a newcomer in Geoffrey Mason (who consulted on the film) - gunfire was heard from the Olympic Village.

The first goal was to find out what was actually happening. Once they knew what was happening, the next step was cobbling together a wide array of resources, figuring out how would they cover it. Would they keep control of the story ahead of ABC News, even with Peter Jennings embedded in the Olympic Village? And as the eyes for the world, how would they “dance” on live television with this first ever “terrorist attack” that was constantly evolving in ways they could not control or anticipate?

I haven’t seen a clock movie this powerful in years. (If you are wondering, a “clock” movie in one in which there is a limited window of time that will come to a climax whether anyone is ready or not, with the time pressure always hanging over the storytelling… tick tock.)

Hansjörg Weißbrich, the film’s editor, should be first in line for an Oscar nomination for his work here. Unlike the team he worked for, he is a 30-year veteran of the cutting room… and his work here is meticulous and smooth and nearly flawless (because nothing can really be flawless).

As much as this movie has the background of a horrible real-life event, which brings all kinds of emotion and tension, it is a movie about the intensity of creation. When I was in my early 20s, I spent a lot of time in cutting rooms at NBC and the first moments of FOX and this film predates that by more than a decade. But we were still working within the vestiges of the way things were done. Some of those things still haven’t changed. This movie takes place before the internet… cell phones… digital manipulation of images… drones… and other tech of this moment.

But September 5 reminds us that with all the new tools we have now, the core tools remain the same. People… intentions… focus… initiative… relentlessness.

Jim Brooks made one of my favorite films ever, Broadcast News, as a mixture of a poison pen letter and a love letter to live news. The creation of a news anchor who doesn’t really know the news but has the looks and the skill set to rule that world was at its center. In September 5, some of the same kind of exchanges between the control room and the talent happen… but here, you get an appreciation and admiration for how a guy like Jim McKay - a sports guy - did what he did so well. Peter Jennings too, though he has a bit more ego to manage here. Same coin, different meaning.

It’s kind of amazing that September 5 is being released in the same season as Saturday Night because the two films seem to aspire to many of the same goals. But because actually getting the show on the air is kind of the background to Jason Reitman’s entertaining film, it doesn’t come anywhere close to capturing the relentless intensity of September 5, which never disregards the painful history that is being covered by the ABC Sports team, but is really about getting the story told, above all else.

While Saturday Night offers Leo Yoshimura (who, 50 years later, is the only SNLer to have been there for every single episode) laying down bricks at home base in a more metaphoric than realistic storytelling choice. September 5, at one point, needs to figure out how to share a satellite feed - remember, it’s 1972 - and to keep control of its content… and it takes a village… and its simple and smart and unexpected and somehow, a triumph. This film makes literalism into metaphor.

There is something almost like a musical in the intricacy of television-making in the movie. It feels very real as it reminds the audience how many people hold how many pieces of the puzzle that ends up looking so effortless on the screen. It is the magic of the presentational arts… theater, television, film. We now live in the DIY world, though a lot of what looks homemade on YouTube hides the truth of a team and not the image of an individual.

The lead of the movie is John Magaro, who plays Geoffrey Mason. Magaro has been one of those actors who everyone has been waiting to break out - meaning, you know his name when you see his face - for years now. From smaller roles in movies like The Big Short and series like Orange Is The New Black, he broke out for indie audiences with First Cow in 2019. Since then, he has garnered attention for roles like the young Meyer Lansky, as the young Silvio in the Sopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark, in the limited series Super Pumped about Uber, and as the husband in last year’s Best Picture nominee, Past Lives.

He is great in this film and should be in the very top group for Best Actor consideration. In support, the always-great Peter Sarsgaard plays Roone Arledge, in what felt to me a bit like a years-later take on his Shattered Glass character, who was also a real guy. His principles have been a bit singed over the years, but somewhere in there is a serious journalist. And the biggest surprise of the film is Ben Chaplin, who is not playing the The Truth About Cats & Dogs pretty boy anymore, but plays a hard-bitten, dead serious, exhausted operations chief, Marvin Bader. They provide the view from above for Mason. Both are worthy of awards consideration.

Working under Mason in the film is a great team, led in this film by the performance of Leonie Benesch, who was great in The Teacher’s Lounge last year and who you may know from Babylon Berlin. She plays the only person who speaks German on the team, but she is so much more than a translator. She and a few other characters she interacts with bring the film a perspective from the German side… a country just a couple decades from Nazism, trying to turn a corner with these games and facing fresh doubts, as it is the Israelis who are under attack.

Zinedine Soualem, Georgina Rich, Corey Johnson, Marcus Rutherford, and Daniel Adeosun all bring varied perspectives in varied roles on the team to the film. Every one rings true as a bell.

It is very easy to imagine September 5 grabbing nominations in Production Design, Sound, Screenplay with categories like Cinematography, Hair/Make-Up, and Costume Design a harder reach because the film is so cleanly realistic. The Cinematography, for instance, is brilliant, really, dealing with a lot of interiors that change lighting constantly, brighter and darker, all kinds of sources, etc. This is much more complex than it looks. It is not sweeping or particularly pretty. So that is the fight.

Picture, Director, Lead Actor, Supporting Actor, Screenplay, Editor, Sound, Production Design, and Sound… that would be 9 nominations. That’s a lot. A scary level of ambition. I’ll but the over/under at 5. Doable.

I see September 5 as a huge underdog because of how we got here. The film was made in a partnership between Sean Penn’s Projected Picture Works and 2 German production companies. It is my understanding that somewhere in there, Paramount had some rights to the film. The movie went to Venice and Republic Pictures was hired to sell it. But from what I understand, the financial ask was pretty ambitious, 3x or 4x production without a theatrical. Less with a theatrical. But either way, with a very short window for a 2024 release, which is what the team wanted. Doable, but challenging.

But a lot of the response to the film was as passionate as my own. Ultimately, Paramount was inspired to make the push for award season this year and started rolling the film out in Hollywood this last weekend… oddly, on Yom Kippur. But the process has begun.

So how will it work?

The ambitious rip-off of Gurus o’ Gold, Gold Derby, has 53 Best Actor candidates listed and none of them are John Magaro. I mean, it doesn’t matter. But at the same time, it tells you how far the film is from getting where it needs to get. They have the movie listed at #12 right now, so it’s not like the voters are not aware of Magaro. Oh… yeah… they have him in Supporting at #16. And Sarsgaard at #9, which is fair at this step. So apparently, there is no lead. (Ben Chaplin is at #102 in Supporting… Tim Fehlbaum is at #17 for Director.)

Again, taking Gold Derby seriously is a sucker’s bet. But it gives you some sense of where the media is at this point. Pretty far away.

The best sell for this movie is the movie.

Right now, it isn’t a trailer because there is no trailer in English.

It was great seeing the film in a big theater this weekend, but they must not be coy. Show the film on every and any decent screen that is available. It sells itself… but people have to see it for it to sell itself.

I can’t go before bringing up the politics in the room.

The story being covered is group of Palestinians taking Israeli athletes hostage at the Olympics in Munich in 1972.

There is nothing in the telling of the story that is untrue. Anyone can argue the politics behind the action, even 52 years ago. But the movie does not.

If your personal meter on this is so sensitive that sympathy for the Israeli athletes who were taken hostage in 1972 or that one of the American characters is Jewish disturbs you, you may find a way to find the film political. There is also a character with an Arab background who expresses that “they”-ing Arabs is not okay. But none of the hijackers or hijacked are really characters in this film and as such, no side is really expressed.

Still… when the film started, it struck me that the details of this real-life event might have been part of dissuading American distributors from making a more aggressive deal for this excellent movie. But like I wrote, the movie is not about that argument… on any side… in any way.

But… I had to mention it… because the issue exists.

There are a handful of films left to see. But at this point, I believe September 5 is easily in that Top 10 and as movies go, kicks the movie crap out of a couple of the titles that have been touted heavily by a few white men with limited taste.

September 5 is for real. It is one of the very best movies of this year. And it is the best movie about the industry in over a decade.

See the movie about the small screen on the big screen. And be proud of this business.

Until tomorrow…

(ADDITIONAL INFO published the day after this piece)