Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro about how ‘5. September’ changed their media views

For Peter Sarsgaard and John Magaro, starring in the historical thriller September 5 was a bit of a full circle moment.

Set in the midst of the Israeli hostage situation at the 1972 Munich Olympics, the film is told from the perspective of an ABC Sports broadcast team that quickly switched from their scheduled coverage of the games to follow the crisis.

Magaro plays the young, ambitious TV producer Geoffrey Mason, who is eager to prove himself to his boss, the legendary TV executive Roone Arledge (Sarsgaard). While it’s quite a breakout role for Magaro, it’s not the first time he’s been in a film that explores this historic event. Twenty years ago he was an extra in Steven Spielberg’s Munichwhich followed the outcome of the same hostage situation that resulted in the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes.

Sarsgaard also happens to have a small connection to Munich, after attending a script reading with his wife, Maggie Gyllenhaal. But his relationship with September 5 is more personal: One of his best friends is a journalist, and the actor says he could see himself in the profession if his life had taken a different path. “He’s really someone who believes that the path to social justice is information and accurate information, and I just have tremendous respect for people who are out there now and doing that,” Sarsgaard says. Weekly entertainment. “I think for me that’s something I’ve always really appreciated. There’s some world where I wish I was a journalist. I’ve always had so much respect for journalists with good intentions. I think really, it’s an incredibly noble thing to do.”

Apart from their own connections and knowledge of the source material, it would not have been possible to play these real journalists without going straight to the source. Although Arledge died in 2002, the real Geoff Mason was an invaluable resource to the production, from advising on drafts of the script to helping secure the rights to the original broadcast footage.

“He was such a resource,” Magaro says of Mason. “Not only did he share his first-hand accounts, but he got me into CBS Sunday football and some ESPN basketball games where I was able to shadow directors and producers and really learn the tone of that room, the language of the room, the shorthand they For me it was really valuable to have that opportunity to shadow them and it made my job so much easier on the day.”

He adds of the experience, “Once that ball gets rolling, it doesn’t stop. And the economy of the language and the calling of a show, the focus, the tone of the room, the buzz—it’s just a very visceral thing, and I kind of let it sink in.” into my pores so I could do it during the day.”

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Beyond the technical aspects of managing live TV, Sarsgaard says he struggled internally with the concept of covering a violent crisis live on air. “I would think, why does it have to be live?” he says. “I understand why a sporting event is interesting to be live because you get the results of what’s happening there in real time, but wouldn’t we get the same information without a live camera from this thing?”

He continues: “It feels naive to me. It feels like maybe the live cam wasn’t meant for moments like this and he just had a new toy and he was pointing at it. Maybe it was for other reasons. It’s not something. I have the answer in my head. But now we have Facebook Live and all this, the genie has been let out of the bottle, and it is everywhere you can witness. no problem.”

Magaro sits next to Sarsgaard for this interview and nods in agreement. “I don’t think anyone asks that question anymore. You point and click on your phone at someone getting beaten up and then immediately post it on social media and there’s no thought…” he says and lags before Sarsgaard finishes his sentence: “Is this appropriate? Is it useful? Is it progress for the world we live in? It has to do with our taste for violence, I also think, as the sooner you recognize it, the more you can handle with it.”

While modern journalists are now accustomed to grappling with these questions, the hostage situation in Munich marked one of the first times a crisis of its kind was broadcast on live television. “There is something lovely about these characters, I think, because they are so innocent about it,” says Sarsgaard. “It’s almost picturesque in a way when you look back at the birth of this type of news media, and it’s almost folksy,” adds Magaro.

Overall, Magaro says he left this project with a “greater appreciation for all the effort and all the dedication that goes into” the latest news. But he also says the film “changed the way I see tragedies, how the news covers tragedies, that it’s so easily accessible, and I realized that I’ve become desensitized to it. And I think it’s okay to recognize that this is the world we live in. but I hope it will also make people think about how they consume this kind of news.”

“I kind of refuse to give up, even though the internet has kind of broken things apart, and there are a million other things,” says Sarsgaard. “I think we need to have this common story that we can agree on, this simple story (about the truth).”

September 5directed by Tim Fehlbaum and written by Moritz Binder, Alex David and Fehlbaum, is now playing in theaters.