‘Sleepers’ Director Barry Levinson Is Still Perplexed by Controversy
Jason Patric and Robert De Niro in Sleepers
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
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[This story contains spoilers for the 30-year-old Sleepers.]
Nearly 30 years later, Sleepers director Barry Levinson still believes that the discourse surrounding his star-studded drama lost the plot.
Based on Lorenzo Carcaterra’s book of the same name, Sleepers begins in the late 1960s, chronicling four teenage friends whose mischievous quest for a free hot dog goes terribly awry when they nearly kill an innocent bystander. Consequently, they’re sent to the Wilkinson Home for Boys where they endure 6 to 18 months of sexual and physical abuse by four guards.
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The New York-based film then jumps to 1981. Two of the four friends — John Riley (Ron Eldard) and Tommy Marcano (Billy Crudup) — spot their former lead abuser, Sean Nokes (Kevin Bacon), in a restaurant and gun him down on the spot. Their remaining friends — Lorenzo “Shakes” Carcaterra (Jason Patric), now a low-level clerk at The New York Times, and Assistant District Attorney Michael Sullivan (Brad Pitt) — vow to exonerate the imprisoned pair and expose the corrupt institution that ruined their lives.
In today’s context, a 1996 film that brings down a dangerous ring of child predators feels ahead of its time, but at the time of its release, there was more emphasis on poking holes in Carcaterra’s claim that Sleepers is based on his own true life story. The author maintained that the core of the tale is authentic despite fictionalizing names and dates. In any event, Levinson still believes that this inquisition undermined the larger point being made about institutional abuse.
“Why does film get caught in this cycle of whether something happened or didn’t happen? It’s a story. It wasn’t the craziest, weirdest thing you’ve ever imagined,” Levinson tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Sleepers brand-new 4K/Blu-ray release. “I never quite got that noise that was made at that time. It, in some ways, took away from what the piece was. It doesn’t need to be authenticated in that regard for us to pay attention.”
The other controversial aspect involved Robert De Niro’s Father Bobby and the false alibi he gave on the witness stand to help the childhood friends he mentored. A number of critics rejected the idea that a priest would ever lie, especially after putting his left hand on the Bible and swearing an oath. But one of the film’s often-overlooked details is that Father Bobby and his best friend also spent time at Wilkinson in their youth. If Bobby wasn’t a victim himself, his friend certainly was. So his reluctant commitment to perjury was not just about helping two men get away with vigilante justice; it was equally about bringing down anyone that had anything to do with covering up Wilkinson’s ongoing abuse.
“[The discourse] got caught up in whether or not a priest would ever lie on the stand. You can certainly have that, but that’s not the point of the movie. It was a much broader piece than that,” Levinson says. “It’s not a film that was trying to advocate this or that.”
Below, during a conversation with THR, Levinson also discusses the major studios’ deprioritization of mid-budget movies like Sleepers, as well as whether he sees himself making another movie.
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Do you remember what pulled you in the direction of Sleepers after releasing two films (Jimmy Hollywood and Disclosure) in 1994?
[Co-founder of Propaganda Films] Steve Golin gave me the book. He wanted me to take a look at it and see if I was interested in developing it. That’s really where it began.
Geoffrey Wigdor’s Young John, Joe Perrino’s Young Shakes, Jonathan Tucker’s Young Tommy, Brad Renfro’s Young Michael in Sleepers.
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
Given how heavy the material is, was Sleepers a tough sell to the studio?
I don’t remember it as being that, but I can’t give you the details thinking back 30 years.
There are countless reasons why you’d hire John Williams, but was part of the idea that he’d be able to provide glimmers of hope within this dark story?
I didn’t think of it in those terms. He’s a great composer, obviously. I thought that he could do quite well with this material, and I felt it needed a touch of [Leonard] Bernstein in a way. It needed just a