'September 5' with Peter Sarsgaard and Leonie Benesch

Summary

All Of It: Episode 'September 5' with Peter Sarsgaard and Leonie Benesch

Introduction

In this episode of ALL OF IT, hosted by Alison Stewart from the WNYC studios in SoHo, the focus shifts to the gripping historical drama "September 5th." This film delves into the harrowing events of the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis orchestrated by the Palestinian terror group Black September. The episode features insightful conversations with actors Peter Sarsgaard, who portrays ABC Sports President Rune Arledge, and Leonie Benesch, who plays Mariana, a German translator pivotal to the unfolding narrative.

Overview of "September 5th"

"September 5th" centers on the critical decision-making process within ABC Sports during one of the most intense moments in sports and news history. Rune Arledge faces the monumental task of deciding whether to continue covering the Olympic events live or shift focus to the unfolding hostage crisis. This decision marks the beginning of a series of consequential choices that Rune and his team must navigate over the ensuing 22 hours. The film masterfully blends real archival footage with a tightly woven script to recreate the tension and ethical dilemmas faced by sports journalists during the crisis.

Guest Introductions

• Peter Sarsgaard as Rune Arledge: An ABC Sports executive grappling with the responsibility of live broadcasting during a national tragedy.
• Leonie Benesch as Mariana: A skilled German translator whose underestimated role becomes crucial in the crisis management.

Character Analysis: Rune Arledge

Peter Sarsgaard delves deep into the psyche of Rune Arledge, highlighting his visionary approach to sports media. Sarsgaard explains, "Rune was really into the idea that the viewer at home would have the best seat in the house for a sporting event... when this hostage crisis happened, it seemed very natural to him to take this live camera and point it at that balcony for 22 hours" (02:25). He emphasizes Rune's role in transforming media consumption, illustrating how Rune's decisions during the crisis set a precedent for live news coverage that persists to this day. Sarsgaard also touches on the ethical quandaries that arise from such real-time reporting, questioning the fine line between informing the public and inadvertently escalating crises.

Mariana's Role and Leonie Benesch's Preparation

Leonie Benesch discusses her character, Mariana, shedding light on the challenges she faced as the only woman in a predominantly male environment. She reflects, "I think in a way that I think most of us women, female identifying people, know or are used to being underestimated... there was a policewoman... no one took her seriously or tried to use her" (06:43). Benesch highlights how Mariana's character overcomes underestimation to play a vital role in the narrative, illustrating themes of gender dynamics and resilience.

Ethical Dilemmas in Media Coverage

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the ethical responsibilities of journalists in crisis situations. Peter Sarsgaard poses thought-provoking questions: "How do we change an event unfolding simply by putting a camera and pointing a camera at it? How is there such a thing as a neutral perspective?" (13:24). Both guests explore the impact of media presence on real-life events, debating when reporting transitions from informative to exploitative. They urge viewers to reflect on their media consumption habits and the broader implications of live coverage on societal perception and action.

Filmmaking Techniques: Claustrophobia and Controlled Spaces

Sarsgaard elaborates on the film's setting, particularly the confined environment of the control room. He notes, "The film creates its own sense of drama... It was smoky, it was hot, there were long hours..." (08:22). The deliberate choice to depict the control room as a cramped, high-pressure environment heightens the tension and underscores the characters' intense focus and precision. This setting serves as a microcosm for the broader chaos unfolding outside, emphasizing the isolating nature of decision-making under pressure.

Challenges of Depicting Communication: Off-Screen Walkie-Talkies

Leonie Benesch discusses the unique challenge of conveying her character's interactions primarily through off-screen walkie-talkies. Reflecting on the technique, she shares, "I love when a filmmaker is brave enough to trust that you don't need a close up of the actor speaking in order to create tension..." (10:05). This method demands a nuanced performance, relying on vocal inflections and timing to convey urgency and emotion without the aid of facial expressions or physical gestures.

Key Moments and Audience Takeaways

Both actors highlight pivotal moments in the film that leave a lasting impression. Sarsgaard recalls, "The moment that really gets to me every time I see the film is when the cameras are being switched back on and they see someone having a gun to the head on the balcony..." (10:21). This scene encapsulates the terrifying realization of the true stakes involved, prompting viewers to contemplate the profound impact of media choices on real human lives.

Final Reflections and Responsibilities

As the conversation wraps up, Peter Sarsgaard encourages the audience to consider their role in addressing societal tragedies: "I would love people to think more about addressing the situations and tragedies that are going on in their backyards." (11:41). Leonie Benesch echoes this sentiment, emphasizing the blurred lines between reporting and influencing events: "Where does the responsibility lie with reporting? When does reporting become exploitative?" (13:24). These reflections urge listeners to engage critically with media narratives and their own responses to global and local crises.

Conclusion

This episode of ALL OF IT offers a profound exploration of media ethics, personal responsibility, and the intricate dynamics of crisis reporting through the lens of "September 5th." Through the insightful contributions of Peter Sarsgaard and Leonie Benesch, listeners gain a deeper understanding of the film's themes and the enduring questions it raises about the role of media in shaping our perception of reality.

Transcript

[Ira Flatow]

Listener support, WNYC Studios.

[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for sharing some of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you are here. Coming up on the show, we have a new book celebrating the cartoonist from the New Yorker. It's called At Wit's End. We'll finish up our full bio series. We've been discussing the book. The name of this band is R.E.M. by Peter Ames Carlin. And now we continue our week of exciting movies. We've spoken already to Robert Eggers and Lily Rose Depp about Nosferatu. Halina Raine, who wrote and directed Baby Girl, was here yesterday. We talked to Adrienne Brody and Brady Courbet about the brutalist. And today we take a step back about 50 years with a new story that rock the world. In the beginning of the new film. September 5th, the President of ABC Sports has a big decision to make. It's the 1972 Munich Olympics, and a group of Israeli athletes has just been taken hostage by the Palestinian terror group Black September. The question is, should his team stay on the story or should they bring in the news division? ABC Sports president Rune Arledge, played by Peter Sarsgaard, insists his team is going to roll live on the story. It's the first of many consequential decisions he'll make over the course of the next 22 hours. As the story develops, the group of sports journalists begin to wonder if it's their coverage it might be escalating the crisis. September 5th uses real footage from the actual event coupled with a tight script. Joining me now are Peter Sarsgaard, who plays Rune Allridge. Hi, Peter.

[Peter Sarsgaard]

Hey, how are you doing?

[Alison Stewart]

All right. And Leone Benech plays Mariana, a German translator who was underestimated but played a key role. Nice to meet you, Leone. September 5th is in theaters now. And, Peter, I'm gonna start with you. What is something that you learned about Rune Arledge that really helped you with your performance?

[Peter Sarsgaard]

It was just about his role in media as we see it, that was really the most interesting. The background stories of these characters are really in the movie, in a sense. These are people under crisis, and people under crisis act in similar ways. Actually, I think the way that media was forever changed that day was they had this live camera pointed at sporting events, and Rune was really into the idea that the viewer at home would have the best seat in the house for a sporting event and have all the information in their ear and have the on field camera and all of that, the background story and the families. And then when this hostage crisis happened, it seemed very natural to him to take this live camera and point it at that balcony for 22 hours. And I think that that decision kind of forever changed the way that we expect to see our news, which is right up to the current moment, which, of course, brings up lots of ethical questions about the media being involved in the thing itself and also being able to. About censor violence, but also just about that. We have no perspective when we're live. And the story is usually something that takes a while to unfold. So it's a moment where the genie came out of the bottle. I thought that was what was really interesting about this script when it came to me.

[Alison Stewart]

Leonie, I read that you were able to speak with a translator as part of your preparation for the role. What questions did you have for them?

[Leonie Benesch]

We don't have Leonie. All right, well, let's keep going with Peter.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's play this clip.

[Leonie Benesch]

Rune decides right away that this is going to be an ABC sports story, and they're not going to give coverage over to the news division. Let's hear a clip from the movie. This is Roon rallying his team.

[Unknown]

Okay, look, I know this isn't a responsibility that everyone wants, but does it make more sense to have a talking head from news take over from halfway across the world? Our job is to tell the stories of these individuals whose lives are at stake a hundred yards away. And our job is really straightforward. We put the camera in the right place, and we follow the story as it unfolds in real time. News can tell us what it all meant after it's over. And I'm sure they're gonna try, but this is our story, and we're keeping it.

[Leonie Benesch]

That's from September 5th. Is that purely about competition, or is there something else going on?

[Peter Sarsgaard]

Yeah, I mean, look, this is an event that had 900 million people tune into it. And I think that the lesson that was learned that day and that Rune was always keenly aware of, and Rune was somebody who was really in the model of, like, selling sports to people that normally didn't consume it. And I would say ultimately selling the news to people that hadn't historically been interested in it by packaging it in a story. And, you know, I would say one of the things that has really hurt news has been competition. Right. You know, if it bleeds, it leads. Kind of trying to get the most eyeballs. Category 5 hurricanes get a lot of eyeballs. Whether or not. The people who aren't in immediate danger need to see a reporter standing out in the middle of it, I think is up for debate. So, to me, that is the thing, you know, I guess it's just the way the world is. It's very difficult to put the genie back in the bottle at this point.

[Leonie Benesch]

Leonie, can you hear me okay?

[Ira Flatow]

Yeah. Hi.

[Leonie Benesch]

Hi. I read you were able to speak with a translator as part of your preparation for the role. What questions did you have? Your translator?

[Ira Flatow]

I think what I was most interested in is how the hell does she do it? Because, you know, these people, I'm sure you've seen them in press conferences, they speak while they're still listening. So it's like their brain is finding words and already saying them whilst another part of their brain is still listening. And I find that fascinating. So I think I mainly had questions about that particular frame of mind or that kind of concentration.

[Leonie Benesch]

In the film, your character is the only woman in a room full of men. At one point, she's asked to go get some coffee for the men. How do Mariana's colleagues underestimate her?

[Ira Flatow]

Well, I mean, I think in a way that I think most of us women, female identifying people, know or are used to being underestimated. I think obviously, it's gotten much better. But I think there's a podcast I listened to in preparation for this project that takes apart what happened that day, and it's fascinating. And they talked about how there was a policewoman who was in contact with the leader of the Palestinian group, and he sort of trusted her a bit, but she was constantly referred to in the German media and all the other. Actually, all the media as a hostess. No one took her seriously or tried to use her as a way in to try and speak to him. I think that sort of says it all.

[Alison Stewart]

Do you remember the name of the podcast?

[Ira Flatow]

Yeah, it's called him, which means suicide mission.

[Alison Stewart]

My guests are Peter Sarsgaard and Leonie Benesh. We're talking about the movie September 5th, about ABC Sports Team who covered the hostage Crisis in the 1972 Olympics. Peter, the movie, it's really tightly controlled. It's in the control room. If you've ever been in a control room, it's that there's not a lot of space. What do you think about how that claustrophobia works for the film?

[Peter Sarsgaard]

Well, what's nice is that the film creates its own sense of drama. I mean, if you've ever been in those control rooms, I'm sure you have it's not a lot of shouting and running around, right. It's a kind of very focused energy. In my experience, it's everyone is laser beam so that we actually had the real size space. He made the dimensions the same. The walls did not fly out. We had two cameras in there with three people on each camera and about eight actors. There was no need to imagine anything. You know, it was smoky, it was hot, there were long hours and. And I was really interested in that idea too, that as actors, we didn't spend a lot of time creating drama. We were just people doing their jobs. And when you see people in these crisis moments doing their jobs, I frequently see people where, like, what is that expression they say? Where like, you know, if you go slow, that's accurate, that's fast. Instead of going running around the control room, everyone is just very precise. And yeah, it was in. All that equipment was sourced by these really eccentric hobbyists who love keeping analog equipment around. And a lot of it worked, which was very, very helpful.

[Alison Stewart]

Leonia, a lot of your acting is on walkie talkie, off screen, sort of. What challenges did that present to you?

[Ira Flatow]

I mean, I love that. I think it's. I love when a filmmaker is brave enough to trust that you don't need a close up of the actor speaking in order to create tension. And for me, that's just a little bit more of a lazy day at work. I mean, I love it.

[Alison Stewart]

Leonie, when you're talking about that moment, the first moment that Mariana and the team wonders if they're really in over their heads, what moment is that for you in the film?

[Ira Flatow]

Oh, gosh, probably. I mean, for me, as if I watched the film probably from the very beginning, I think probably the moment the gunshots are heard. But I think as viewers, or, you know, as an audience member, you want to. I think that's what works so well about the film is it tickles. That kind of lust for sensationalism, I think that we all have. So I think until for me, the moment that really gets to me every time I see the film is when the cameras are being switched back on and they see someone having a gun to the head on the balcony. And there's a moment of realizing what it is that they're reporting on what the story actually means. And I think that's a moment that really sticks with me.

[Alison Stewart]

Peter, so much of what you talked about is about the ethical dilemmas that are. That are presented in the film. What are some questions you would want people to ask themselves after watching September 5th.

[Peter Sarsgaard]

Yeah. Well, there's this moment, actually. I'm sitting right now in my office, and right behind me on the wall is this poster from the movie Visions of Eight, which was a film that was shot during that Olympics. And eight different directors, from, like, John Fletchinger to Claude Lelouch to, you know, Milos Forman, Arthur Penn, they all shot a section. And if you watch that movie and you know about the Olympics, one of the wild things is that you're watching these beautiful images of sports, knowing that in reality there was a hostage crisis going on, and they touch on it in the end. But there was a moment when I got the script where it goes back to sport, and you see people disassociating. You see people following boxing matches. And I think it's that ability for us to, like, tune in, like. Like Leonie was talking about, like, kind of with this feeling of, you know, a lust for drama and violence. And then the way we so easily tune out and go about our days. And we all, of course, do this all the time, where we wake up in the morning and we, you know, look at our phones and see what tragedies happen in the world, and then we manage to really do nothing active about any of it for the rest of the day. Obviously, change happens in your community level and not on a worldwide level, but I think that that is something that I would love people to think more about, is addressing the situations and tragedies that are going on in their backyards.

[Leonie Benesch]

Leonie, how about you? What would you want people to discuss after seeing this movie?

[Ira Flatow]

Well, I mean, Peter said it beautifully. I think that's definitely. I completely agree. What I find really interesting is the notion that I think we are beginning to discuss more in society, which is how do we change an event unfolding simply by putting a camera and pointing a camera at it? How is there such a thing as a neutral perspective? And where does the responsibility lie with reporting? When is it reporting? When does reporting become exploitative?

[Leonie Benesch]

September 5th is in theaters now. My guests have been Peter Sarsgaard and Leonie Benesch. Thank you so much for spending time with us on the phone.

[Ira Flatow]

Thank you.

[Peter Sarsgaard]

Thank you for having me.

[Unknown]

This is Ira Flato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, the science Friday team has been reporting high quality science and technology news, making science fun for curious people by covering everything from the outer reaches of space to the rapidly changing world of AI to the tiniest microbes in our bodies. Audiences trust our show because they know we're driven by a mission to inform and serve listeners first and and foremost with important news they won't get anywhere else. And our sponsors benefit from that halo effect. For more information on becoming a sponsor, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.