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In Venice, ‘Ink’ Director Danny Boyle Defends Journalism—and Rupert Murdoch’s Complexity

The film, which opened the festival, "doesn't monster-ize Murdoch, which of course, I think a lot of people do," said Boyle. "He represented, at the time, a breath of fresh air in what was a very rigid society."

It’s Larry Lamb’s world; we just live in it. Or so scream the headlines in Ink, Danny Boyle’s wickedly thrilling cinematic take on the dirty birth of modern tabloid journalism, which opened the Venice Film Festival this week and which Netflix releases theatrically on December 11 before streaming on January 8. The benefactor of this mainstream malfeasance that shook up prudish 1969 England was legendary Australian news mogul Rupert Murdoch (Guy Pearce). But his secret weapon was slighted newspaper editor and cocky Yorkshireman Larry Lamb (Jack O'Connell), who took gleeful aim at the dozen or so national newspapers legendarily packed onto one sliver of London real estate: Fleet Street.

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Goaded by Murdoch to embrace his gut instinct, feed his appetite for edgy entertainment and quench his thirst for revenge against the self-satisfied establishment, Lamb succeeded spectacularly. In 12 months, they turned bombing British broadsheet The Sun into the highest-selling daily in the world.

“This isn’t a film about tattoos!” grinned director Danny Boyle at the Ink press conference hours before its world premiere. “It’s about Britain, and it’s about Fleet Street, though no one knows what Fleet Street is anymore. We feel like we updated it to make a connection........

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