The Oscar-nominated screenwriters Tim Fehlbaum–who also directs–and Moritz Binder approached writing “September 5” with a keen focus on the media’s role in relaying information to a global audience on that day.
Previous films have been made about the events at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich where members of the Israeli team were murdered and held hostage in the Olympic Village, including “One Day in September” and “Munich”. What sets Tim Fehlbaum’s frenetic film apart is its focus exclusively on the ABC Sports team reporting live from inside the studio control room and out in the field.
The film has also been nominated for the Producers Guild Awards, and screenwriters Tim Fehlbaum and Moritz Binder seamlessly weave archival footage into the narrative, from footage of ABC Sports anchor Jim McKay reporting the terrorist plot unfolding live on air alongside footage reshot out of respect for the Israelis who were killed. The script also demanded that the ABC studio be recreated for production.
“It was one thing to write all of that into the script, but it was another thing for the production designer, Julian R. Wagner, and his team to find all of this technology,” explains Fehlbaum. “We wanted a lot of these devices to still work so that the cast could actually interact with them in front of the camera because we also wanted to give the audience a feeling of the physicality that television making was still back then, in a way, in the analog age.”
The screenplay was informed largely by what Fehlbaum and Binder learned from their conversation with producer Geoffrey Mason, portrayed in the film by John Magaro, who orchestrated the live broadcast in ’72. Mason shared intimate details from the day, including how the German authorities stormed the studio to force the team to turn the cameras off. Binder notes how clearly he and Fehlbaum came to understand the importance of Mason’s testimony.
“l remember that forever when we were talking to Geoffrey Mason for the first time. We were scheduling a Zoom call, and we thought we were just talking to an eyewitness or a source, but then he talked us through his 22 hours, and the Zoom call got longer and longer, and we had more questions and more questions,” recalled Binder. “After the Zoom call, [Tim] and I called each other immediately and asked if this was our movie.”
Fehlbaum and Binder spoke with Awards Focus about how they came to focus on the ABC Studio perspective, touching on a recent effort to cancel screenings of the film because people saw it as “Zionist propaganda” and explaining how production would also influence the screenplay by incorporating archival footage and analog technology.
September 5 is currently playing in theaters.
Awards Focus: “September 5” has received acclaim during awards season, with recognition from the Producers Guild, Oscars, and Solzy Awards, among others. What do the nominations mean to you?
Moritz Binder: This is beyond our wildest dreams. When we started making this movie, we wouldn’t have thought of this journey at all. As you might know, we started in Venice in a side section of a side section. We had a premiere, so we really couldn’t expect a journey like this. It’s a great honor. It’s like walking through a dream, to be honest.
Tim Fehlbaum: I actually see it also as honoring the complete film. Also, it’s the category of best script now for the Oscars, but I see it as something that we all achieved before in front and behind the camera. It is important for us that the movie is still at the cinema in the States, Germany, and Switzerland right now. We also hope that this nomination motivates people to go to see the movie in theaters and find out why we got this nomination.
AF: This was a moment in time that changed the media forever as we know it. What led to the decision to make a film about the 1972 Munich Massacre?
Binder: The role of the media was something that we found out during our research process, and that was quite a remarkable moment. I will remember that forever when we were talking to Geoffrey Mason for the first time, who is now the main character played by John Magaro in our movie. We were scheduling a Zoom call, and we thought we were just talking to an eyewitness or a source, but then he talked us through his 22 hours, and the Zoom call got longer and longer, and we had more questions and more questions. After the Zoom call, we called each other immediately and said, is this our movie?
We were so intrigued by this very particular perspective and this closed set, almost like a chamber play. These journalists were sitting there, with the monitors as windows to the outside world, and they had to rely on every piece of information they received. This was something we hadn’t seen before, and we were quite intrigued.
Fehlbaum: I want to add that there has been a great documentary about the subject, “One Day in September“. We also had Steven Spielberg’s “Munich”. There have been films already on the subject, but what I think hasn’t been explored, and what we only discovered during research, is what an important role the media played on that day and how it was a turning point in media history.
In a way, that’s what we wanted to explore. I went out that even before the tragedy happened, these Olympics in Munich were at that changing point in media history because it was the first Olympics in Germany since the ones that were misused by Hitler for fascist propaganda in ’36. And now, Germany had a new mission to send out this image of the new liberal Germany, the generation that tries to free themselves from the past. They had this image and set up this unprecedented technical apparatus to send out this mission. It was the first time that everything and the Olympics was designed for optimal TV coverage. It was also the first time that they could be broadcast live globally via satellite.
And then suddenly, this whole apparatus switched from reporting on—as the Germans called it—the serene games—Die Heiteren Spiele—to this crisis. We found this very interesting. We were also very interested in the technological apparatus because our film is also, in a way, about how technology influences the media and, in that sense, how we perceive geopolitical events.
AF: I thought it was really impressive the way the control room was set up with some of the period technology.
Fehlbaum: Yes, absolutely. In writing, where I think Moritz—we’re both a little bit geeks also when it comes to that, the analog world. We were very interested in that, but I think it goes beyond that. It goes in that direction, what I just said. For us, it was also important to portray that apparatus accurately because it is part of the narrative. It’s technology and how technological inventions have an influence automatically and how we see something.
AF: I was young when I learned about what happened in Munich. Was there anything that surprised you during the research process of September 5?
Binder: I was born and raised in Munich and my parents were born and raised in Munich as well. They were quite like young adults when the Olympic Games took place and I kind of channeled them and the whole generation in Marianne Gebhardt in putting really high hopes in this Olympic Games. The story was very much around in my family as well. I thought I knew everything about it, but getting into the files we were researching and seeing on how many levels the German authorities and the police failed that day was very heartbreaking.
Also, like Tim mentioned before, the role of the media and what an unprecedented moment that was. They had to invent so many technical solutions that were never found before on that day. I had never heard before that this was a world-changing moment in broadcast history. That was completely new to me.
Fehlbaum: I can agree. For my research, at least, it is the first time that an act of this nature was on live television. That’s the first thing I didn’t know, which is, of course, the big part of our premise. I didn’t know that it was actually a group of sports journalists that made the whole coverage of this and that it was a host from sports, Jim McKay, who walked the audience through that day. So that, of course, was really interesting to find out. Then, as Moritz said, we did quite a broad research, also, beyond the media perspective. I find it striking, in a way, to see how much is also still unclear. I don’t know if you know, but Danielle, it started two years ago, a special investigation team from German officials are still trying to find out everything—what really happened on that day—because there are a few things that are still unclear.
But then, as we go deeper into the media perspective, there are a lot of things that we found out. For example, one thing that i found so striking or that i didn’t know before is that they still had to book this slot on the satellite, not to go on air and that they had this interview with one of the athletes who could escape that they had to stop because they were losing the slot on the satellite. Fom today’s point of view, this sounds so absurd, right, but this is what happened.
Another thing, of course, when we talked to Geoffrey Mason, he told us that the police came into the studio to tell them to turn off their cameras. That was also a thing where we’re like, Wow, yeah, we didn’t know this happened. On the other hand, I want to add to this—from our other research, we know that this probably wasn’t the reason why the police called off that action of trying to invade the apartment. It is more likely that they just were completely overwhelmed with the situation and the police wasn’t experienced or trained on doing action like storming the apartment.
AF: What was the most challenging aspect of the production?
Binder: I think to get it as thrilling as possible so that the audience can sit next to the journalist in that room and feel the time pressure and feel the small time windows they had for very big decisions. This is something that Geoffrey Mason told us in this first conversation already, which stuck because he said, We didn’t have time for any bigger thoughts that day. We just tried to make it happen, to get it done. That rush, this rush of adrenaline, this ticking clock, doing something that was never done before, getting confronted with ethical questions while doing it, that was something that we really tried to get on the page, to feel like a page turner and a thriller, because this is, I think, how it felt for them that day.
Fehlbaum: Yes, I agree with Moritz that generally, not only in writing, but also in shooting and editing. For example, when scoring the film, it was always an act of balance that this is a true story, so you want to treat it with respect and you also want to be as truthful as possible to whatever you find out in research. But still, we’re doing a feature film, not a documentary. As Moritz mentioned, we wanted the audience to be with that team, as Geoffrey Mason told us how it felt for them to be just in that rush of live reporting because everything happened so fast.
Another thing I want to say, from a practical point of view when shooting the movie, a big challenge was—it’s just something that you wouldn’t maybe assume if you see the movie—that monitor wall, making that work because we wanted to have the old monitors, the real technology from back then. We wanted it to be partly real images. For example, when you see Jim McKay, that’s a real image from original footage. But some of the scenes in the Olympic village, for example, we did reshoot. For example, out of respect, we didn’t want to show anyone who lost their life on that day so all of these scenes are redone. To have all of these scenes on the monitor wall, and actually, it could even work when John Magaro, as the director of the show, would call it “Camera one,” it would actually have an effect on the wall. All of that with the mix of original footage, recreated footage, no green screen on these monitors, but real images—that was quite complicated.
AF: I don’t think September 5 would have worked in the same way without using that archival footage, especially Jim McKay.
Binder: We always say the best lines in the script weren’t written by us. I mean, this is something we had in the material already. I think we always thought we would have a Plan B without getting that material, but we didn’t believe in Plan B. We really wanted to get that material because you can feel his emotions and you can feel his professionalism in that moment reacting to the events. That was a great effort by the producers, who really tried until the last couple of weeks before the shooting to get permission to use the archival footage. I totally agree.
Fehlbaum: Also, what we heard from Sean McManus, Jim McKay’s son, all these lines that he says, he made them up as he was going. In the movie, as we mentioned before—of course, we condensed the event—he had to talk a lot of time to the audience without a teleprompter. He just reacted to what was happening, what was coming at him, and the information. It’s just a very unique way of how he walked the audience through that day and it would have been a completely different movie if all of this would have been reenacted.
AF: How do you respond to petitions from theater employees wanting to cancel film screenings because they see September 5 as “Zionist propaganda?”
Fehlbaum: For us, I think it was clear immediately that, of course, what will have an influence on—how the audience perceives the movie—is what happens in the world today. But I think it’s also—if you see the movie—it’s very clear that this movie is talking about the media’s perspective and is about trying to provide a way for the audience to engage with questions about our complex media environment through that historical lens.
Moritz, do you have any additional thoughts?
Binder: No, I think Tim said it already, that we really can’t control what people bring to the cinema when they watch the movie. But if you watch the movie, you can see that the timely thing about it is the questions that arise while reporting on an event. I hope that people take away questions about their own consumption. This is what I took away, thinking about how I watch the news. I think it’s really about those journalistic questions that are still very important, and this is what we tried to achieve there.