1972 Munich Olympics thriller shows nail-biting decisions in ABC Sports control room

The 1972 Munich Olympics kicked off under the banner of hope and peace, hosted by a country eager to turn the page nearly three decades after the fall of the Nazi regime.

Instead, those Summer Games were marred by tragedy when armed militants affiliated with the Palestinian organization Black September took members of Israel’s Olympic team hostage. By the time it all ended, 11 Israelis, five Palestinians and a West German officer were dead.

ABC Sports was already on the ground covering the sporting events from its own production complex outside the Olympic Village. As the situation unfolded, the division took the dramatic decision to broadcast live with developments.

These events are recounted in director Tim Fehlbaum’s new Golden Globe-nominated film September 5. The film is set almost entirely in the ABC Sports control room and focuses on the real-time challenges faced by the broadcasters who improvised to get the audience as close as possible to the story.

“It was that group of sports reporters that had to make that switch,” Fehlbaum told NPR’s A Martínez. “They had this almost innocent view. They were not trained or experienced in crisis reporting. And so they made all these decisions on the spot.”

ABC Sports at the time was led by President Roone Arledge, played in the movie by Peter Sarsgaard. Arledge vigorously fought for his division to lead the story, refusing to bow to pressure from ABC News to take over news coverage from thousands of miles away in the U.S.

Some of the team’s heftiest challenges included making sure their live coverage didn’t inadvertently share with the armed extremists — via television screens the hostage takers might access — law enforcement’s moves and potentially broadcast hostage killings to the entire world.

The seminal moment changed how media covers breaking news in real time as journalists grappled with how evolving technologies might impact the subjects of reporting and the audience consuming the media coverage. The broadcast was also an early instance of news becoming infotainment.

Arledge, who created the primetime Monday Night Football broadcasts, won an Emmy Award for his coverage of the 1972 Munich Games and was inducted into the Olympic Hall of Fame. He produced a total of 10 Olympic Games.

As part of his research for the film, Fehlbaum had conversations with Geoffrey Mason, one of the few surviving members of the ABC Sports team who covered the events. At the time, he was pulled in as coordinating producer of the around-the-clock ABC Sports coverage.

“Everything that they were doing was against a ticking clock. Right. That’s basically the essence of live reporting also, is that you are constantly working against the ticking clock,” Fehlbaum said, recalling one of his exchanges with Mason.

Fehlbaum’s team obtained blueprints of the ABC Sports control room and pictures from that time so that the images on screen were “100% accurate.” All of the equipment shown in the film is vintage technology from the era, obtained from collectors and museums, and the cast was trained on using it.

The director, who is based in Switzerland, recalled how production buyer Johannes Pfaller at one point told him that all early 1970s era technology still in Europe was now in the film studio in Munich.

“I wanted these devices to work because I wanted the cast to be able to interact with this technology,” Fehlbaum explained. “So if John Magaro would give a direction to the monitor wall, it could actually have an effect on the wall. These telephones would really ring. And I wanted everything that comes from the outside to the cast in front of the camera to really happen.”

September 5 makes extensive use of original ABC footage. Securing access to the footage is what initially led the film to become an English-language one with an international production team backed by Sean Penn and his partners John Ira Palmer and John Wildermuth.

Combined with a tightly written script, the footage gives a sense of urgency and dramatic tension, all packed in a small room.

It’s also what distinguishes September 5 from past cinematic treatment, such as Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2005), which focuses on the aftermath, or Kevin Macdonald’s documentary One Day in September (1999).

“I thought the media aspect is an interesting story or aspect of that tragic day for today’s audience to learn more about. And we wanted to convey a way for today’s audience to reflect on our complex media environment through that historical lens,” Fehlbaum said.

“The moral and ethical questions are still the same that are being discussed every day. For example, can we show violence on TV or how fast do we let something out just to be the first? Or how many confirmed sources do we need?”

The broadcast version of this story was produced by Barry Gordemer. The digital version was edited by Obed Manuel.