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The Insider: In Print (Articles, page 2)The following is an excerpt from the New York Times article "Thank you, Saturday Night Live, for firing me" (March 18, 2001) by writer/director Douglas McGrath on his experiences as an extra in several recent movies, including a scene with Russell in The Insider. I had never surrendered my dream of being an actor and, in between my writing and directing, had taken some parts. I made my debut in “Quiz Show,” in which, on my first take, I accidentally hit the camera with my head. There was a lull in my offers after this. The same casting agent boldly cast me again in “The Insider,” as a private detective investigating Russell Crowe’s past. I had two scenes: one in which I interview his wife, seeking to dig up dirt on him, and another much later, where I appear at his school. All my lines were on my first day. On my second day, I simply had to walk straight past Russell Crowe as he spoke on a pay phone. Meanwhile, Michael Mann, the director, would be upstairs with Al Pacino, simultaneously shooting the other end of the call. Because it was a highly emotional scene — for them — Michael said we would not rehearse it. “Just walk straight past Russell Crowe,” he said as he went upstairs. I waited in a small room for my cue. I could not have been more relaxed. They’d flown me out first class, put me up at the Four Seasons, sent a car for me. “I’ve come a long way from the old tutoring days,” I thought. The young man at the door, wearing the headset that let him know where Russell Crowe was in the monologue, gave me a five-fingered countdown and then dropped his arm like a flag. Out the door I came. Right away, there was a little problem. When I had been told to walk straight past Russell Crowe, the hall was empty and he was as visible as the Statue of Liberty. Now, the hall was swarming with extras playing high school students. How could I walk straight past Russell Crowe if I couldn’t see him? My heart began beating hyperactively, as if there were a child in front of me with math homework. Soon enough, though, I spotted him. He was about 20 yards away, and I bore down on him. Then there was another hitch. I saw that if I were to walk straight past him, I would collide with the sound man holding the boom, the microphone suspended from a long rod. He was standing next to the camera directly in my path. But ever quick on the McGrath toes, I thought: “No problemo. I’ll just veer past Russell Crowe.” And sure enough, smooth as butter, I made a subtle swing to the left and strode out of the scene. From a few floors away, Michael yelled, “Cut!” Then he yelled, “Cut, cut, cut!” Utterly relaxed, I crossed my arms and rocked on my heels. “Somebody must have botched a line!” I thought. But when Michael came around the landing, he inexplicably headed straight for me. I looked behind me to see who was in for it. My body temperature dropped when I saw that no one was behind me. And then he said my name in a tone that made me understand how he’d made Daniel Day-Lewis run so quickly in “The Last of the Mohicans.” “Doug!” But why is he saying my name? How could this be my fault? I didn’t have any lines. All I had to do was walk ... “Doug! Didn’t I say walk straight past Russell Crowe?” It was that. The walking straight past Russell Crowe thing. I quickly looked around. The whole room was staring at me. No one was moving. I had everyone’s attention in just the opposite of the way I wanted. My throat started pulsating, like something on a log on the Animal Channel. “But,” I said in a voice so high that I flinched to hear it. “But I couldn’t go straight past him because as soon as I got next to him, I realized I was going to hit the man holding the, uh ... ” It was at this moment that a calamity occurred that will hover over my face on my deathbed like a phantom. I forgot the word for “boom.” I am a director. There are only a few things on the set that I know with any confidence: the camera, the boom and my chair. But in my panic, with everyone staring at me, most particularly Russell Crowe, who was holding the phone so angrily I thought it would shatter, the word just left my head. Still I had to finish my sentence so I said, “I couldn’t because I thought I was going to hit the man with the mike pole!” The mike pole? Everyone winced and exchanged pitying looks. Finally, Michael broke the agonized silence. “Let’s do it again,” he said patiently. “You walk straight past Russell Crowe, but this time we’ll move the man” — he smiled kindly — “with the mike pole.” As I waited for my cue in that little room, my heart was pounding as if I were going to give Hamlet’s soliloquy. When I came out the door my face bore a look of berserk determination. If my grandmother had been on the floor reaching for her medicine, I would have stepped on her if it meant not walking straight past Russell Crowe. Just as I went past him, I heard Michael yell cut. I nearly fainted. Everyone froze. Russell glared at me. I heard Michael’s feet slapping down the stairs as he made his way toward me — and then passed me and spoke to Russell. Apparently, he’d blown one of his lines. I looked at Russell with a certain satisfaction. “Not so easy, is it there, big guy?” I thought smugly.
Contenders Ready to Battle RUSSELL CROWE Russell Crowe's impact as a film actor was rather immediate. He was nominated for an Australian Film Critics Award (Down Under's equivalent of the Oscar) for his first lead, in The Crossing (1990). The following two years he won Australian Film Institute honors for his supporting role as a well-meaning restaurant worker who insinuates his way into the lives of a blind photographer and his housekeeper in Proof (1991) and his lead part as a neo-Nazi skinhead in Romper Stomper (1992), showing a range not necessarily associated with the kind of movie star presence Crowe exudes onscreen. The fierceness and intensity of his perf in Romper Stomper foreshadowed his breakthrough role as the brutal yet vulnerable cop in Curtis Hanson's 1997 L.A. Confidential. For Michael Mann's The Insider, the 35-year-old Crowe gained 35 pounds and donned a gray wig to play the tightly wound Jeffrey Wigand, who sacrifices his career and marriage when he cooperates with 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman to blow the whistle on the tobacco companies. The role has earned Crowe best actor laurels from the National Board of Review and the Broadcast Film Critics Assn.
As Wigand, Crowe inspired the L.A. Times to describe him as "a powerhouse actor who joins an old-fashioned masculine presence with an unnerving ability to completely disappear into a role.
Smoke Lingers as 'The Insider' Does a Slow Burn;
By: Paul Lieberman and Myron Levin A year ago, when Michael Mann's film was still in the works, called just "The Untitled Tobacco Project," the folks at "60 Minutes" were the ones worried about their legacy. Mike Wallace, in particular, feared the reputation he built over three decades as "60 Minutes' " marquee correspondent would go up in smoke, so to speak, if he was portrayed as a passive figurehead more interested in getting a hotel room with a Jacuzzi than an interview with a Hezbollah terrorist . . . and who caved in when CBS higher-ups killed an interview with a tobacco whistle-blower. Fast-forward to last month's opening of Mann's movie, for Disney's Buena Vista Pictures. It now had a title, "The Insider." It also had fabulous reviews: Critics gushed over the tale of a behind-the-scenes "60 Minutes" producer who prods a former cigarette executive to tell all about Big Tobacco, only to have the segment squelched by Big TV. The film got that proverbial "Oscar buzz," as well, with talk of nominations for best picture, along with Al Pacino for his crusading producer and for Russell Crowe as the flawed whistle-blower--even for Christopher Plummer as the wavering Wallace. "The Insider" seemed poised to follow the path to success taken by other serious films in recent years, which allows for a slow build fueled by good press, heavy promotion, word of mouth and, finally, awards. So why are the filmmakers now the ones worried about their legacy? It's due, in part, to continuing challenges to the accuracy of "The Insider," complaints from such diverse sources as Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., and the Wall Street Journal that their roles in the real events were grossly distorted. The aging icons at "60 Minutes" have not let up, either--Wallace, especially, has refused to shrug it off as "just a movie." Mann has had to defend the dramatic license taken by him and screenwriter Eric Roth, of "Forrest Gump" fame: No, they were not making a documentary. Yes, they embellished to make their heroes more heroic and to pump up the suspense and--they hoped--put butts in those multiplex seats. Therein lies the main reason for the flip-flop in who's fretting now. Despite the reviews, the Oscar buzz and the controversy, which might figure to help box office, "The Insider"--costing $68 million to make, and millions more to market--has grossed just $22 million. Even constant stoking by pop culture mainstay Rosie O'Donnell--who promoted the film on three of her shows in a single week, interviewing Pacino, Plummer and the real-life whistle-blower, Jeffrey Wigand--could not get the fires burning. After four weeks in more than 1,600 theaters, Disney now expects the run to scale back, while awaiting February's announcement of Oscar nominations. Is it simply too long, at 2 hours and 38 minutes? Too complex? Or in an era of date movies and ghost stories and blow-'em-ups, is it mainly insiders who care about the insiders in the news biz? Figuring this out is voodoo--why some sleepers awake and sure things flop. Whatever the reason, the disappointing launch has raised questions about more than the short-term bottom line. The long-term strategy could unravel, too, if Oscar panels ponder the box office and controversy and have second thoughts. "Of course, I'd have liked it to have done more," Mann says. "[But] the film stands, you know, on its own two legs. It's going to be around," he insists, "for a while." He also insists awards are "not something to live or die for." At "60 Minutes," meanwhile, Wallace has watched the box office, too--with a chuckle. Eisner Calls Hewitt The mood has been somewhat lighter there since the grosses started coming in, along with a call from Disney, from a certain Michael. Not Mann--Michael Eisner, the CEO. The message is a bit murky, for Eisner won't discuss it and the man who got the call--Don Hewitt, "60 Minutes' " executive producer--refuses to go into detail. Hewitt has his own opinion of "The Insider," naturally--he wishes Paul Newman or Robert Redford had portrayed him. But "if I were the movie makers," he says, "I'd be a lot more concerned with what Michael Eisner thinks." With that coy quip in the air, Wallace advises Mann to keep his healthy attitude about Oscars not being important. "The best picture of the year? Please, give me a break," the longtime symbol of "60 Minutes" says. The man portrayed as the hero in "The Insider," former "60 Minutes" producer Lowell Bergman, says he cautioned Mann about exaggerating his role in the events that led Wigand, a former Brown & Williamson vice president, to go public as a critic of the tobacco companies. Not that Bergman was averse to getting recognition for his work, over 14 years, ferreting out stories for the show's on-air glamour boys, mainly for Wallace. "Oh, sure," he told The Times' Howard Rosenberg in 1994, "as I grow older, the desire to get more credit has grown." Soon after, he latched onto the tobacco story, and Mann--a friend and fellow University of Wisconsin graduate--immediately saw big-screen potential in the intrigue surrounding the interview with Wigand. Though he was not the most significant whistle-blower in the Tobacco Wars--an obscure paralegal had leaked reams of key documents--the testimony of a onetime top executive had symbolic power, and defied a confidentiality agreement he signed with B&W. Still, Bergman--now teaching journalism at UC Berkeley and reporting for "Frontline," the PBS documentary series--says he told the filmmakers "you're giving me too much credit and I'll get attacked for that and you'll get attacked." Even so, Bergman agreed they deserved leeway in making a film in which "nobody gets murdered. There's no car chases. There's no gratuitous sex. The message of the movie is that individuals can make a difference . . . in a world dominated by mega-corporations." If it took condensing, rearranging and dramatizing to get people in the tent, Bergman saw "60 Minutes" itself as a dramatization of the news; crafted to show a correspondent like Wallace as the hero who "appears to have done all the work, never makes a mistake and never loses an argument." "The Insider" starts with a blindfolded Pacino, as Bergman, arranging Wallace's interview in Beirut with Sheik Fadlallah, the Hezbollah leader suspected of being behind the bombing that killed 241 Marines. While Bergman was a central player in the assignment, another journalist, Jim Hougan, actually set up that interview--without a blindfold. The film ends with Pacino quitting CBS after scoring another huge scoop--the arrest of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. That, in reality, was the coup of CBS Washington correspondent Jim Stewart. Mann argues for artistic license, saying he could have used five real incidents to show how Wigand felt menaced by his former employer. Instead, he and Roth invented a scene in which a burly man shadows him at a driving range. "Was there a man at the golf course? No," Mann says. "But [that was] pretty much the way it felt to be there. That's what you do in drama." Yet a disclaimer at the end of the film--that scenes were fictionalized--was not much solace to the tobacco company. Nor did B&W appreciate the suggestion it left a bullet in the man's mailbox. It posted a rebuttal on the Internet--"Warning: Viewing This Movie Will Be Hazardous to Your Health"--including an FBI affidavit concluding that Wigand likely placed the bullet there himself to convince "60 Minutes" he was in danger. The firm has conducted polls outside theaters to gauge the damage to its reputation, concerned about the impact on potential jurors in upcoming liability cases. The Wall Street Journal, which won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on tobacco, similarly took offense when "The Insider" depicted it as relying on handouts from Bergman--and delaying a story at his urging. Even the Journal's thumbs-up review ("Not since 'All the President's Men' has a movie explored public issues and the workings of the press in such vivid detail") noted in a headline, "It Misrepresents Our Role." That's been the refrain, also, from "60 Minutes." Hewitt's main complaint is that audiences might believe he could have used his clout as the boss of "60 Minutes" to get the Wigand interview aired, as scheduled. He insists there was no dissuading CBS brass, who thought the risk of losing a lawsuit was too great. "The only way I could have put that story on the air," he says, "was to hire a bunch of gorillas and take the transmitter at gunpoint." Wallace says that while he, too, went along with the corporate decision, the script distorted how quickly he changed his mind--and publicly condemned his own network. Wallace bought $5 "senior citizen" tickets, for his wife and himself, to see the movie on the Upper West Side. He arrived minutes before show time, almost unrecognizable in a long overcoat and baseball cap. He sat stoically while the audience laughed at Plummer's rendition of his mannerisms, and groaned when he was shown lamenting that he did not want to wind up in "the wilderness of National Public Radio." "I wouldn't say that in a million years," Wallace complained. "I happen to be a fan of National Public Radio. . . . How would you like to have words put in your mouth that you never said?" Yet he agreed with the critics on one thing: the performances. "Crowe--he persuaded me he was, indeed, Jeffrey Wigand," Wallace said. "He got all of the subtleties, all of the insecurities." Plummer? "Look, he's a fine actor. And he got my moves, in effect, down beautifully. But. . . . " If not quite an Oscar nomination, close enough. Such an outcome was, from the start, a key part of the "tortoise" strategy to market a film whose natural audience has to be "nudged out of their chairs" in the words of Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, the box-office tracking firm. "Who watches '60 Minutes?' They are not the biggest moviegoers in the world," he notes. "They don't have to run out the first weekend." Thus the early November release: Disney Studios Chairman Joe Roth wanted to give "The Insider" a few weeks to nudge that audience before the holidays, when Hollywood offers up its big-budget crowd-pleasers-- and Oscar hopefuls , like "The Green Mile" with Tom Hanks and "Hurricane" with Denzel Washington. Now, after the painfully slow opening, Roth asks himself, "Why didn't you just go in two theaters at Christmas and bank everything on the awards?" Disney executives wonder whether this fall simply was a hard time for serious films, however good. But they're not giving up on "The Insider." "It's hanging in there just well enough," says Richard Cook, chairman of the Walt Disney Motion Picture Group, "that we are going to be able to navigate it into Christmas and hopefully [beyond], if we are fortunate enough to be recognized by many of the critical groups." Then, " 'The Insider' can reemerge . . . as a 'must-see.' " Roth says he has reassured Mann that the "East Coast-West Coast sniping" over the film "doesn't mean anything to an Oscar voter. . . . You go in the theater, the lights go down . . . you have a personal experience. And [small] box office didn't keep 'Chariots of Fire' from getting best picture." It could not have been overly reassuring to the filmmakers, though, when they learned that Disney's Big Boss had phoned the enemy camp. Hewitt, who took the "surprise" call from Eisner, tries not to fan the flames, saying, "I'm not going to characterize what he said. I didn't gloat over it." Wallace gives a less harmless account: "Michael Eisner, I'm told, calls what's-his-name, Michael Mann, a crazy missionary and wishes he'd never gotten involved." Disney's chief corporate spokesman, John Dreyer, says that's not true. It was basically a courtesy call to an old friend, he says. Eisner wanted to speak to Hewitt, but only after the film came out--so it would not look as if he were interfering. Eisner did "somewhat commiserate" with Hewitt, the Disney spokesman says, about how it feels to be at the other end of a stinging narrative, especially when you're "used to delivering." That aside, "he's proud of the film and hoping it does well in the awards circuit." Mann? The director accepts the Disney version, not Wallace's. "Michael [Eisner] saw the film, liked the film a lot. I think that it's vulgar and irresponsible for Wallace and Hewitt . . . to smear this film. Their comments are more fictionalized and synthetic than anything in the picture." Copyright (c) 1999 Times Mirror Co.
Counterpunch: 'Insider' Team Files a Brief for the Defense (Michael Mann directed "The Insider"; Eric Roth and he wrote the screenplay) It's interesting that print journalists, who have independence at stake, are repeating the distortions of a smear campaign against "The Insider." If the writers of "Smoke Lingers as 'The Insider' Does a Slow Burn" (Dec. 3, by Paul Lieberman and Myron Levin) had been in the crisis at "60 Minutes" in 1995, there's little doubt which way they'd have gone. They are not Lowell Bergman. There are so many opinions and falsehoods stated as fact in the article that it would take a treatise to set it right. Additionally, it is unbalanced. To not be so would have required lead writer Lieberman to return our calls or to perform the arduous scholarship of looking stuff up. And it would have required a little skepticism about protests from Brown & Williamson and Mike Wallace and Don Hewitt. One part of the Wallace-Hewitt spin that goes unchallenged, though contradictory documentation was supplied to your writers, is that they pled helplessness in the face of CBS corporate's decision not to air Wallace's interview with former tobacco industry executive Jeffrey Wigand. Walter Cronkite differed: In 1996, he told PBS' "Frontline": "The management of '60 Minutes' has the power there, quite clearly, to say, 'I'm sorry. We're doing this because we must do it. This is a journalistic imperative. We have this story and we're going with it. We've got to take whatever the legal chances are on it.' Well, they didn't. They felt it was necessary to buckle under the legal pressures. . . ." The article also repeats the Wallace complaint that he acquiesced only for a short 24 hours. The film doesn't clock time, but his protest evades the point: However long it was, it was long enough to condone CBS' decision to excise an exclusive interview with a whistle-blower on what would become a $246-billion issue. In the process, Bergman's source was abandoned. Another example of faux protest is the cry by Wallace that he would never disparage National Public Radio! Meanwhile, the issue he's evaded is the line of dialogue immediately prior: "What do you think? I'm going to resign in protest? To force it on the air? The answer is 'no.' " Until their actions were criticized in the media, Hewitt and Wallace accepted the corporate decision. According to a New York Times story (Nov. 9, 1995), "Both Mr. Wallace and Don Hewitt . . . said they agreed with the lawyers' decision and supported the revised report to be broadcast." The boosterish Hewitt even bragged that "the revised piece [without Wigand] was better, I think, than what we had before." About Bergman and his supposed glorification, Dr. Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco and an anti-tobacco industry veteran who has had frequent dealings with Bergman and appeared on "60 Minutes," said last month on KCRW-FM's "Which Way L.A.?": "Bergman . . . was absolutely obsessed with protecting Jeffrey Wigand. He felt that he had helped facilitate getting Wigand to stick his neck out and that CBS was sawing the limb off behind him. . . . People have said, 'Is Bergman being portrayed too heroically?'. . . I think in terms of the process--and his faith in the integrity of the process, which was shattered--that's all very real." Regarding the central issue of reportage versus dramatization, when real events are approached from the level of human experience, they come alive in ways that they cannot as news or factual report. That's what drama does. To protest that "The Insider" is a dramatization, as if drama is automatically tantamount to falseness, is ridiculous. "The Insider's" dramatization is faithful to the truth. People are judged by their actions, not their rhetoric. Meanwhile, Hewitt and Wallace continue to address only personal issues of reputation and legacy. None of what they did then or say now addresses the motion picture's central issues: the compromise of independence in journalism and the totalitarian crush of quite-legal corporate litigation, investigation and smear upon the heart and will of an insider who would speak out. Copyright (c) 1999 Times Mirror Co.
Fact, Fiction and ‘The Insider’: A Key Figure Comments
In your piece about “The Insider” (Smoke Lingers as ‘The Insider’ Does a Slow Burn’ by Paul Lieberman and Myron Levin Dec. 3), you report that the movie gives me credit for things I did not do. It does. I have always acknowledged that. But you also report that I should not be given credit for things I did in fact do. You do that because your reporters never asked me about these events, nor did they check their facts. Case in point: the Unabomber story. You credit “CBS Evening News" correspondent Jim Stewart with the "scoop." The fact is Andrew Heyward, president of CBS News, acknowledged this in a memo to the staff at the time -- I was a principal reporter on this story. Further, I did make a deal with the FBI to hold the story for three weeks to a month, and reported that to executives at CBS News. At the end of that time period another CBS News producer was alerted to what was happening and notified Jim Stewart, and we wound up running the story as the FBI reacted and decided to make the arrest. Afterward, the FBI acknowledged that CBS News had acted responsibly and held the,story until they were ready. Further, your story implies that I did not meet alone with representatives of the Hezbollah. That too is untrue. Jim Hougan did make the initial contacts for the interview, but I had one-on-one meetings with them too, and these meetings were key to Mike Wallace appearing on location. And while it is true that I never met with a Wall Street Journal editor, I did -- as the movie shows -- recruit a private investigator, Jack Palladino, who did meet with the reporters involved. Palladino could have told you about this, if you had asked him.
The filmmakers who created "The Insider" are clear. It is not a documentary. Unfortunately, your article pretends to be nonfiction, but does not in my opinion live up to the standards of basic reporting.
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