‘September 5’ director separates fact from fiction in historical thriller

From the beginning, September 5 director and co-writer Tim Fehlbaum strove for a level of accuracy and attention to detail that would make the journalists at the center of the film proud. From archival footage to 1970s newsroom tech, everything had to be as real and functional as possible.

Set during the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, the film follows an American sports broadcasting team that had to quickly pivot from sports reporting to live coverage of the hostage situation, which ultimately resulted in the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes. Through this lens, September 5 provides a fresh perspective on the live broadcast seen globally by an estimated one billion people at the time.

At the heart of the story is John Magaro’s Geoffrey Mason, then a young and ambitious producer striving to prove himself to his boss, the legendary TV executive Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard). Together with German interpreter Marianne (Leonie Benesch) and his mentor Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), Mason unexpectedly takes the helm of the live coverage. As narratives shift, time ticks away, conflicting rumors spread, and lives hang in the balance, he grapples with tough decisions while confronting his own moral compass.

Ahead, Fehlbaum breaks down what’s real and what’s not, as well as the painstaking lengths his cast and crew went to recreate it all.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The real Geoff Mason, who would become a television legend in his own right, was consulted for the film. How much was he involved in the process overall, and has he given his review of the movie yet?

TIM FEHLBAUM: Well, first of all, he gave us the initial spark to tell the movie from this perspective. The first conversation with him we had was really long because we couldn’t stop listening to his experiences of what they went through and the challenges that they faced when they had to make the switch from reporting on the Olympics to reporting on these tragic events. Then, he was a really important collaborator in actually writing the script. He read every other draft because we wanted to make sure that we got not only the whole process of live television back then but also the language and how they talked to each other. Then he was a big support when we had to clear the copyright situation around the footage. That was not easy, but it seemed essential for us that we could…use the original footage that we have of the real [TV anchor] Jim McKay on these monitors. And I think without Geoffrey Mason, it would’ve been tough to clear that. And then I wasn’t there, but when he saw the movie for the first time, and after it was over, he called me via Zoom, and with tears in his eyes, he said that the movie took him right back into that room on that day. And that was probably the biggest compliment I got about the movie.

So, all of the Jim McKay footage is real. How much of the actual broadcast footage is real?

Yeah, so as I mentioned, whenever you see Jim McKay on the monitor, that’s him. And some of the scenes that are taking place in the Olympic Village, we had to reshoot, but it’s hard to say a number. Let’s say it’s very good that you can’t see the difference because, of course, we didn’t want people to tell the difference between the material we shot and the original footage.

What about the story itself? Is everything presented exactly as it happened or did you need to make any changes?

Well, I think the biggest example certainly is that, in reality, this broadcast stretched over 22 hours, and we wanted to condense that into a film that we very early on said shouldn’t be much longer than 90 minutes. And so, of course, that’s the major thing. But what we also did, for example, is that the character that John Magaro plays, Geoffrey Mason, in reality, there were different persons. There was one director, and there was one producing coordinator, and we combined that into his character so that the audience could engage with that character more. Also, Leonie Benesch’s character is a combination of certain stories that we heard about that day. I mean, within the ABC team, they did hire people from Germany to translate. So that is true. But we then also took certain artistic freedom to combine certain newsroom functions.

As a news junkie, it was so cool to see the inner workings of a newsroom at that time, especially the old equipment. Were any of those machines recreated for the film? Did the actors learn how to use them?

I don’t think that there was anything really built apart, let’s say, from the desks or so, but none of the electronic equipment was built. But rather the team around production designer Julian Wagner went to, for example, sellers of TV studios that still have all the equipment lying around. There’s a tremendous number of passionate collectors actually of that technology back then that they contacted and got some of it into a studio. And then we even had some museum pieces, for example, the walkie-talkies, we could borrow. And then our cast, for example, Ben Chaplin had to learn how to thread in film into a deck. And Georgina Rich [whose character has to place individual letters on a blackboard to create graphics], told me she asked the props department if they could get one of these blackboards to her hotel room. And she tried to practice because, in real life, her character would’ve done that a lot of times, very quickly. And for me, this is a good example of how even the actors in these, let’s say smaller parts like Georgina Rich played, had put so much dedication in so that what they do in their function of that crew feels authentic and as if they had done it a hundred times.

And that’s not so easy, but it was really important to us that we give the audience a feeling of how that was done back then. Because even though they are reporting on this tragic situation, in a way, the movie is also a tribute to the world of live television and especially the world of live television back then.

Was it challenging to work with all of that old equipment?

I can tell you what was really complicated was the whole coordination and technical setup of that monitor wall because we wanted to have monitors of that time. And what typically you would want to try to avoid — these lines or these dots or these interferences [on the screens] — we were actually looking for that. We wanted it to feel real for the audience. So there were original monitors from back then, and we had to reconnect them and then also make it work so that when Magaro’s character would give a direction like “cut to [screen] one,” it should actually happen on the monitors. All of that to coordinate was not easy.

What conversations do you hope the film will inspire as people see it?

Well, I hope that we provide a way for the audience to engage with questions about our own complex media environment, about our own consumption of news, but also give you insights. It’s also a tribute to the understanding of journalism in general, and especially crisis live reporting and the challenges, the importance, but also the impact that it has.

September 5 is now in theaters everywhere.

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