September 5 – Telluride Film Review

When terrorism disrupts the 1972 Munich Olympics, ABC Sports scrambles to become a news team. Tim Fehlbaum’s film offers a fresh perspective on this enduring tragedy.
Reporter addresses dark room of anxious employees.

Telluride FilmWatch Article

When a terrorist event interrupts the 1972 Munich Olympics, the ABC Sports division finds itself with its hands full, as it tries to convert itself into a news team. Tim Fehlbaum based his film on oral histories and research, offering a new window into a tragedy that still resonates today. He spoke with journalist Mark Danner about September 5.

MARK DANNER: I’m a reporter by trade, and I can’t think of another movie that captures the sheer intensity and, frankly, the pleasure of what it is to report the news.

TIM FEHLBAUM: I can’t say how much that means to me. You’re much more of an expert on the subject of journalism than I am.

There have been various movies—obviously, Steven Spielberg’s Munich, and also Kevin Macdonald’s One Day in September. What made you decide to tell the story from the point of view of ABC?

We wanted to revisit this day. Quite early in the research, we found Jeffrey Mason, who is the main character in the movie. During a Zoom meeting with him, I realized, the media’s perspective is one of the most interesting ones. And I’ve always been fascinated by movies that draw their strength from a certain restriction in perspective.

What was it about Jeff Mason, who was the producer of the ABC feed that day?

It was the way he told of how those hours passed in the control room. He described it as being constantly against the ticking clock. That was an interesting way to structure the script, being in a constant rush of adrenaline, in this live newsroom.

You succeed in showing the sheer excitement of reporting the news, and you capture the improvisation—sending in a guy with fake credentials, posing as an athlete, to bring film in and out.

When talking about the film, I describe it as a heist movie. But this movie is not about the hunt for money or a safe, but about the hunt for pictures.

Roone Arledge is a fascinating character. ABC asks him to hand the Munich story to the news division, but he keeps it for his sports division. And, of course, later in his career he takes over ABC’s news division.

One interesting thing that we found in our research, was that ABC Sports wasn’t popular before the ‘72 Olympics. They paid a record amount to gain the rights to broadcast it, and they succeeded in becoming the leading American sports broadcaster. But it wasn’t by broadcasting sports, but by broadcasting this tragedy.

Roone Arledge was a true pioneer of sports television. He made sports entertaining. From what we read, sports TV was based on the idea that the viewer at home shouldn’t have a better view than the person in the arena, because the teams wanted to sell tickets. That was the deal.

Roone completely changed the game. He gave the audience the best seat in the venue. He did personal stories that gave the athletes a hero’s journey story, adding their personal lives. He introduced slow motion, hand-held cameras.

There’s a wonderful moment when the ABC cameras get a view of one of the terrorists looking out the window. Jeff Mason says, “Can we see that again in slow-mo, please?” Of course, the news division would never think to do something like that.

Exactly, exactly.

The message one takes away is that terrorism is inevitably bound up with the media coverage of it, that the two are in some ways inextricable. You show that in real time. And since that time, we’ve lived in a world of terrorism being shown in the media. It’s an enormous story. Does this particular story tell you something about the relationship between the media and terrorism?

That’s a good question, and I would leave that bit to the audience to think about. I can say that we tried to reconstruct that day as accurately as possible. Perhaps by seeing it, people today, who are used to live streaming these events on their phones—everything that happens is immediately part of their lives—will find it interesting to look back in history and consider the first time terrorism was on live television. Maybe that will help people reflect on how we consume these events today.