Truth (2015)

Cate Blanchett as: Mary Mapes

Directed by: James Vanderbilt
Selected Cast: Robert Redford, Topher Grace, Elisabeth Moss, Bruce Greenwood, Stacy Keach, Dennis Quaid
Written by: James Vanderbilt (Based on Truth and Duty by Mary Mapes)
Release Year: 2015
Genre: Drama
MPAA Rating: R

IMDb | Photos | Videos | Official Site, DF Site

s a renowned producer and close associate of Dan Rather, Mary Mapes believes she’s broken the biggest story of the 2004 election: revelations of a sitting U.S. President’s military service. But when allegations come pouring in, sources change their stories, document authenticity is questioned, and the casualties begin to mount.

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Behind the scenes; PromotionalRelated Videos

The fourth video is a playlists of selected interviews and conversations with the cast and crew, just click on the playlist icon/thumbnails to see the other videos in it.

Quotes from Cate Blanchett

On what drew her to the script: “I loved the complexity and the varied perspectives. Jamie (Vanderbilt) has done the most extraordinary job as a writer. And then as a director, he was able to set aside the writing and direct the story. He was quite fearless in trimming some stuff, which many writer-directors are not. He’s done a superlative job. He is relentlessly buoyant and positive –and is searingly intelligent, and I think that comes across in the writing and the filmmaking.” (Variety, November 2015)
On Mary Mapes: “I knew nothing about Mary. I had obviously seen the Abu Ghraib story and then found out that she’s produced the Bush Guard story, which I thought was a very interesting counterpoint to all of that John Kerry Swift Boat stuff that was going on, except that one story floated and one story sank. But I didn’t know anything about the personal and professional fallout from the story, so the script was revelatory to me in that way. Of course, I started looking her up and trying to find anything about her on the Internet because she was behind the camera, and I saw a lot of interviews she’d given post the story breaking. She was clearly in lockdown and when I met her I found it very difficult to reconcile that Mary to this incredibly vivacious, vital, vibrant, hilarious, front-footed go-getter. I thought somewhere between the two lies Mary. But she was very generous, very self-deprecating, very wry and very, very passionate and full of heart.” (Huffington Post, October 2015)
“I had (the script) for a little while. My life is very full with the amount of children that we have and my husband running a theater company. Often by the time I get into bed at night and read a script it’s like taking a sleeping pill. I just fall asleep. It has nothing to do with the writing and everything to do with my age. But when I read this, I just ate it alive because you step on this conveyor belt, and you almost lose your balance because it goes so quickly. I knew about the story but I did not know about the fallout.” (Deadline, December 2015)

Quotes from Others

James Vanderbilt:
— On casting Cate Blanchett: “We started trying to put this together again in 2013, and sent it to Cate Blanchett’s agent. The agent sent it to Cate the morning after she won the Academy Award. It was one of those things where I was like, “Dude, come on!” She’s a) never going to read it, and b) if she does read it, she is not going to say “You know what I’d love to do after winning my second Oscar? Work with a first-time director.” What’s amazing about her is if she wants to do something, she wants to do something. She called me on the phone, we talked for about a half-hour, and she committed to the film.”
— On the film’s title: “The name of the movie is ‘Truth’ not because I know what the truth is. It is because it is the thing that everybody’s trying to get to in the movie. And it’s difficult to find. It’s elusive and tricky and you go down the rabbit hole looking for it sometimes. And clearly people lose careers over it but it still that thing that we all should be pulling for and we should want our journalists and media pulling for at the end of the day because that’s what keeps our society free.”
Robert Redford:
— “It couldn’t have been better. I suspected it was going to be good, but she’s [Cate Blanchett] the best. She can do anything – as she’s proven.”

Trivia & Facts

Filmed in Australia and USA.
The film premiered at the 40th Toronto International Film Festival on 12 September 2015.
The film was shot in Australia at Cate Blanchett’s request, as she wanted to be close to her family while filming.
Cate Blanchett was the first actor to be on board, she was sent the script after she had won her second Oscar.
This is James Vanderbilt’s directorial debut.
Just like in Carol (2015), where both Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara are on the end of the line of phone even though they are not required for scenes where Carol and Therese talk over the phone, Cate said in an interview that she did the same for this film (scene with Dennis Quaid), she told the AD to call her at home with her kids.