‘THE Insider,” starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe, is a fact-based retelling of a single incident in the history of “60 Minutes” and the tobacco industry.
But, in director Michael Mann’s grand style, it is also the epic story of whistle-blowers, of the fate that befalls honest, if flawed, men who take on corporations.
From this description, it would be natural that Wallace would be the white knight, the crusading reporter who fells the evil corporation.
But this is the true story of Mike Wallace and “60 Minutes” at their least shining hour. Earlier this year, Wallace and “60 Minutes” creator Don Hewitt began a campaign to discredit the movie, only to discover that their carping to the press created even more publicity for a serious film that runs 157 minutes and might otherwise be overlooked.
Wallace and Hewitt now are keeping mum, declining all interviews about the film.
But it may be too late.
The publicity juggernaut has begun. “The Insider” has gone from being a movie to a media event – and Wallace’s protests have fueled that process.
“The Insider,” which may stand as one of 1999’s 10-best movies, has become – even before its debut – a watershed for the discussion of the negative impact of media behemoths.
A darkly compelling indictment of corporate chicanery that recalls “All the President’s Men” and “Network,” the film takes a poke at “60 Minutes” and leaves the show with a black eye.
The movie from the director of “Heat” and creator of “Miami Vice” compresses an incident when CBS News briefly bowed to CBS Corporate – at a time when the network was being shopped to Westinghouse – and spiked a story that smoked out big tobacco.
In the process, big tobacco whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand (played by Russell Crowe) was hung out to dry.
Wigand claimed tobacco officials lied to Congress by denying nicotine’s drug-like power. The movie ends with “60 Minutes” producer Lowell Bergman (played by Pacino) leaking insider info indicting his own program to The New York Times.
In the most damning sequence, CBS news exec Don Hewitt (Philip Baker Hall) tries to convince Bergman that it’s all for the best to run a “sanitized” version of the story that omits Wigand’s stirring testimony but won’t risk a billion-dollar lawsuit.
Bergman turns to Wallace, expecting his longtime partner to back him. Instead, Wallace sells him short, saying “I’m with Don on this.”
Wallace claims the scene never happened.
“I think that . . . my role in that whole business has been used in a dishonest way,” he told CNBC’s Tim Russert. Of the 1995 Wigand incident, he recalled: “The producer [Bergman] and I were shoulder-to-shoulder all the way. The film has it as though I’ve lost my moral compass and I’ve sided with management.”
The indignity has been enough to raise Wallace’s trademark eyebrows, a movement that actor Christopher Plummer catches with silky success in an Oscar-worthy performance.
In a movie full of flawed heroes, Wallace may be the fall guy, but in the typical Mann universe, all men are flawed to some degree, which makes the struggle between dark and light all the more interesting.
The movie opens in theatres Nov. 5.
CBS news chief Andrew Heyward – who makes a point of reminding reporters that he inherited the Wigand incident from a previous news division president – characterized the episode as “painful and isolated.”
“I don’t see people walking the hall wringing their hands about ‘The Insider,’ but they’re curious about it,” he says. “For Mike and Don, it is of concern and I can tell you why.
“Mike is someone who has devoted the last 30 years of his life to building a broadcast that consistently, week in week out, upholds the best standards for broadcast journalism.
“This film represents a double distortion,” says Heyward. “One, it’s a story told from the sole perspective of one of the participants in the events portrayed who quite understandably makes himself the hero in contrast to just about everyone else.
“And two, and equally significant, it is a Hollywood movie which does not even purport to be an accurate depiction of what went on. It’s fictionalized to satisfy the rules of drama,” Heyward says.
The irony that “The Insider” is a Disney film – and that Disney is ABC’s parent company – was not lost on him.
In October 1998, ABC News Chief David Westin spiked a “20/20” story about the alleged hiring of sex offenders at Disney World.
That’s an irony that Mann would appreciate.