The Insider

The Frontline Club is running a series of screenings of films about journalism and asked me if I would choose one and introduce it. An easy choice - Michael Mann's The Insider, released in 1999.
Al Pacino plays CBS 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman and Russell Crowe playsJeffrey Wigand, the tobacco industry insider who, having been sacked, decides to tell 60 minutes that the US tobacco industry have been hiding what they know about the addictive properties of tobacco and had lied to Congress. It's based on a true story, written up for Vanity Fair by Marie Brennan as The Man Who Knew Too Much. It's a movie about conscience, confidentiality, the relationship between a journalist and his source, and how news and the corporate world don't mix easily.
Some fantastic performances, including Christopher Plummer as Mike Wallace. Mann's typically great shooting, lighting and editing and a strong soundtrack make it a compelling watch. It tracks CBS loss of nerve in the face of a potential law suit and how they were forced to air it by public pressure. CBS criticised the movie for fictionalising some elements of what happened. Mann clearly positions the film as the start of the loss of power and influence by the US networks. As Pacino says in the movie "What got broken here won't go back together".

I met Lowell a few years ago and asked him what it was like to be portrayed on screen by an acting legend. He said it was great because he could call up and get a table at any restaurant in Manhatten. The ony trouble was when he turned up they wouldn't let him take it as he looks nothing like Pacino!.

At the Frontline screening I met Gavin Macfadyen, now of London's Centre for Investigative Journalism, and a technical advisor on the film. He said Pacino took sometime to understand why anyone would put themselves at risk for their work - not something actors are expected to do. But it didn't stop him putting in a wonderful performance.

(Btw 60 Minutes veteran correspondent Ed Bradley died last week aged 65. Tribute here. )

Comments

[Kempton]

Hi Richard,

As an outsider (pun intended?), I consider the story of Jeffrey Wigand tobacco industry 60 minutes piece being CBS, 60 minutes, and Mike Wallace's darkest hours. I think I lost a bit of faith about all involved from that day on. (Plus 60 minutes less than precise in some of the stories that I know a bit on.) At an outsider, and not having my own career on the line, I think that Mike should have resigned then to protect the story. There are days that I wonder if the Fifth Estate gets the same story for Canada's CBC, what would have happened? I hope the editors would have backed the story's producer all the way. Thanks for the link to Marie Brennan's article.

(By the way, Ed Bradley was truly a great guy and will surely be missed. Even though I don't know him personally, watching his work for many years was quite a treat and I blogged about Ed in my blog here
http://kempton.ideasRevolution.com/2006/11/10/an-appreciation-of-ed-bradley/ )

Kempton