On the eve of its premiere at TIFF 2015, Entertainment Weekly has premiered the first clip for James Vanderbilt’s newsroom drama Truth, starring Robert Redford as real-life news anchor Dan Rather who got caught in hot water after airing a controversial report about President Bush at the time he was running for re-election.
For Vanderbilt’s feature film – acting as his directorial debut after producing David Fincher’s Zodiac – Rather’s career will underpin the narrative, as he climbed the ladder within CBS Evening News, dodging office politics and the like, to become a permanent fixture as the network’s news anchor. Loathed by some and respected by all, the investigate journalist was an authoritative figure in the news room, though his modus operandi was called into question when a report regarding President George W. Bush teetered on defamation.
In 2004, Rather’s and his producer Mary Mape (Cate Blanchett) targeted the former POTUS and questioned his time spent at the National Guard across four seething reports – a period where Bush seemingly ducked out of serving his country during the Vietnam War to enlist in the Texas division of the National Guard. Designed to scupper Bush’s reelection hopes, the documents were later exposed as lacking any professional investigatory techniques, eventually leading to the resignation of four chief CBS employees and Rather himself.
Ultimately, the entire event would later go down in the history books as Rathergate – because every political scandal major and minor needs a gate suffix.
James Vanderbilt’s high-profile take on Rather’s career will have its premiere at Toronto in a few days, before Truth opens for limited theatrical release on October 16.
