NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly all of the new film “September 5” takes place in the darkened, smokey control room from which ABC Sports broadcast the hostage crisis of the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.
All around the room is a buzzing clutter of period analog equipment. The video monitors act like windows, offering perspectives of the drama just outside: the taking of Israeli Olympic team members by the Palestinian militant group Black September.
Inside the control room are the sports producers who were thrown into covering one of the first breaking news events televised worldwide. Some 900 million viewers are estimated to have watched.
“September 5,” a taut procedural recently nominated for best film, drama, by the Golden Globes, suggests this was a seminal moment in media history. Inside the control room, a handful of producers reckon in real time with questions that still pervade today’s journalism: What’s appropriate to show? Are we informing or sensationalizing? Do we have our facts straight?
“What we’re trying to do is show this moment where media forever changed,” says John Magaro, who stars as producer Geoffrey Mason. “These people didn’t know what they were unlocking, what they were letting out of a Pandora’s Box. They were just trying to tell the story. But in doing that, they opened up a road to more sensationalism in journalism.”
“September 5,” which opens in theaters Friday, has been hailed as an expertly crafted pressure cooker of journalism ethics. While the Munich Olympics terrorist attack has been the subject of several previous films, including Steven Spielberg’s “Munich” (2005) and the 1999 documentary “One Day in September,” “September 5” – a kind of combination of “Spotlight” and “Rear Window” – keeps its focus entirely on the broadcast that culminated in Jim McKay’s much-remembered announcement of the hostages’ tragic end: “They’re all gone.”
“It wasn’t a group of experienced or trained news journalists reporting on this crisis,” says Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum, who wrote the screenplay with Moritz Binder. “It was a bunch of sports TV people. That offered an interesting opportunity to confront them with these questions, in an almost innocent way.”
In “September 5,” what was on TV screens in 1972, like McKay’s report, is likewise what’s seen in the movie. Real archival footage is a co-star. But everyone inside the studio is played by a sterling ensemble, including Peter Sarsgaard (a veteran of another striking journalism movie, 2003’s “Shattered Glass” ) as “Wide World of Sports” creator Roone Arledge and Ben Chaplin as producer Marvin Bader.
But if there’s a central figure in “September 5,” it’s Mason, a then-young ABC Sports producer thrown into covering one of the biggest news stories of the decade. It was likewise a leading-man chance for Magaro, the talented 41-year-old Ohio native whose sensitive performances in films like “First Cow” and “Past Lives” have made him a standout character actor.
“In a lot of ways, that’s what was the most intriguing part of the script for me,” Magaro says. “I don’t know how you can be an actor without feeling this competitive nature and need to seize opportunities when they’re presented because there’s not a lot them. I think it was the same for Geoff Mason at the time.”
Magaro’s first time on a movie set was as an extra in “Munich.” Since then, though, he’s grown as an actor through an ethic of hard work that he traces back to his family’s immigrant, working-class roots.
“Let’s be honest, I’m a 5-7 nebbishy white kid from Cleveland, Ohio,” says Magaro. “This kind of journey doesn’t happen to many of us. It’s been a hard road at times and it’s been a continuous climb. I never expected to get this far but I always had a drive in me to get better as an actor.”
In “September 5,” Fehlbaum put a premium on authenticity. From museums and collectors he gathered the then-cutting edge video technology of the early 1970s and brought it up to working order. Walking onto the set, which with near-accuracy recreated the ABC control room, was “like stepping onto a submarine everyday,” says Magaro. (The U-boat-set 1981 film “Das Boot” was, appropriately, as inspiration for Fehlbaum.)
The actors leaned into the same ethos. Magaro depended considerably on the anecdotes and advice of Mason who went on to have a decorated, decades-long career in television. With his help, Magaro sat in on CBS’s Sunday NFL control room and games at Madison Square Garden to soak up the fast-paced atmosphere.
“Geoff told me that day there was no chance to think. Their singular goal was to stay on the air to keep the story going, to do their job as sports broadcasters,” Magaro says. “Once the clock starts ticking, there’s no chance to think.”
In chronicling the minute-by-minute drama of covering the Munich terrorist attack, “September 5” sidesteps the political repercussions of one the most infamous chapters of Israeli-Palestinian relations. The film was in post-production when Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023. It first debuted at film festivals last fall while the Israeli war in Gaza continued.
On Wednesday, Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire, raising hopes that the 15-month conflict could be nearing an end. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, said the agreement was still not complete.
Yet “September 5” strives to keep its focus on media, not politics.
“Has anything ever really changed? That conflict has been going on since 1948 when Israel was created,” says Magaro. “It’s a question, no matter what side you’re on, you can ask yourself, even with the current situation: Is the media covering this the best way possible?”
Earlier foundational moments in the history of live news broadcasting stretch back to April 1949, when 3-year-old Kathy Fiscus fell down an abandoned well in San Marino, California. KTLA in Los Angeles televised more than 27 hours of the rescue effort live.
Today’s media landscape, populated by social media and digital platforms that are often riddled with misinformation in some ways makes the ethical questions wrestled over in “September 5” seem almost quaint. But for Fehlbaum, it’s less about what’s changed than what hasn’t.
“What I’ve observed is that while technology changes a lot, the bigger ethical or moral questions are still the same,” Fehlbaum says. “For both those reporting on a crisis and us consuming news.”
