T
MESSENGER
ROEFTTUHREN
his one has all the ingredients of a dreamed-up Hollywood blockbuster: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist uncovers a big story involving drugs, the CIA and a guerrilla army. Despite threats and intimidation, he writes an explosive exposé and catches national attention. But the fates Kill the Messenger, a film coming soon to a theater near you, is the true story of Sacramento-based investigative reporter Gary Webb, who earned both acclaim and notoriety for his 1996 San Jose Mercury News series that revealed the CIA had turned a blind eye to the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contras trafficking crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles and elsewhere in urban America in the 1980s. One of the first-ever newspaper investigations to be published on the Internet, Webb’s story gained massive readership and stirred up a firestorm. After being deemed a pariah by media giants like The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, and being disowned by his own paper, Webb eventually came to work in August 2004 at Sacramento News & Review. Four months later, he committed suicide at age 49. He left behind a grieving family—and some trenchant questions.
shift. Our reporter’s story is torn apart by the country’s leading media. He is betrayed by his own newspaper. Though the big story turns out to be true, the writer commits suicide and becomes a cautionary tale. Hold on, though. The above is not fiction.
“HE was bR avE, HE was fl awEd. … I fEll I N l o v E w I T H G a R y w E b b .” JEREMY RENNER
Like others working at our newsweekly in the brief time he was here, I knew Webb as a colleague and was terribly saddened by his death. Those of us who attended his unhappy memorial service at the Doubletree Hotel in Sacramento thought it surely marked a conclusion to the tragic tale of Gary Webb. But no. Because here comes Kill the Messenger, a Hollywood film starring Jeremy Renner as Webb; Rosemarie DeWitt as Webb’s then wife, Sue Bell (now Stokes); Oliver Platt as Webb’s top editor, Jerry Ceppos; and a litany PHoTo by laRRy dalToN
Journalist Gary Webb, who worked at SN&R in the four months before his death, gained both acclaim and notoriety for his 1996 San Jose Mercury News series “Dark Alliance.”
of other distinguished actors. Directed by Michael Cuesta, the film opens October 10. Members of Webb’s immediate family—including his son Eric, who lives near Sacramento State and plans a career in journalism—expect to feel a measure of solace upon the release of Kill the Messenger. “The movie is going to vindicate my dad,” he said. Renner spoke to the News & Review about his choice to star in and co-produce it. “The story is important,” said Renner. “It resonated with me. It has a David and Goliath aspect. He was brave, he was flawed. … I fell in love with Gary Webb.”
‘ T h e f i r s t b i g I n t e r n e t- a g e j o u r n a l i s m e x p o s é’ There’s a scene in Kill the Messenger that will make every investigative journalist in America break into an insider’s grin. It’s the one where—after a year of tough investigative slogging that had taken him from the halls of power in Washington, D.C., to a moldering jail in Central America to the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles—Renner as Webb begins to actually write the big story. In an absorbing film montage, Renner is at the keyboard as it all comes together—the facts, the settings, the sources. The truth. The Clash provides the soundtrack, with Joe Strummer howling: Know your rights / these are your rights … You have the right to free speech / as long as you’re not dumb enough to actually try it. It took the real Gary Webb a long time to get to this point in his career. His father, a U.S. Marine, moved Webb around a lot in his youth, from California to Indiana to Kentucky to Ohio. He wound up marrying his high-school sweetheart, Sue Bell, with whom he had three children. Inspired by Watergate reporting and in need of income, he left college three units shy of a degree and went to work at The Kentucky Post, then The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, where he rose quickly through the ranks.
“MESSENGER”
BY M E LIN DA W E L S H
continued on page 14
MELINDAW@NEWSREvIEW.COM OPINION
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OCTOBER 2, 2014
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