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Movie Review
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[11/04/99]

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Not just blowing smoke
"60 Minutes" producer Lowell Bergman reveals the real story behind "The Insider."

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By David Weir

Nov. 5, 1999 | Lowell Bergman has been one of journalism's better-kept secrets over the past 25 years as he's labored in the shadows to produce work for much more famous figures such as Mike Wallace and Ed Bradley on CBS's "60 Minutes." But within the business, he is known to be among the best of his breed -- an investigative reporter, producer and researcher.

Bergman's relative anonymity is evaporating now with the release of "The Insider," which may make him better known as "the character Al Pacino plays." The film dramatizes how CBS News bowed to corporate pressures when it decided to pull a damning interview Mike Wallace conducted with a whistle-blower from the tobacco giant Brown & Williamson.

Also Today The Insider An actionless thriller about a solved mystery somehow emerges as one of the best films of the year. By Andrew O'Hehir

In the film, Bergman is cast favorably as a man of his word, the moral force who eventually persuades Wallace to come around to the side of good -- a detail Wallace has vociferously challenged. But those of us who have worked closely with Bergman over the years know him as one of the premier reporters of his time. (I've collaborated with him on and off since 1972, at Rolling Stone magazine and the Center for Investigative Reporting, as well as on televised reports for "20/20," "60 Minutes" and PBS, and also as co-lecturers at the University of California).

A dogged, rough character who will go almost anywhere in pursuit of his story, Bergman also is a committed intellectual who has made a mission of spreading awareness of what he calls the "grammar of television" to as large an audience as possible. In this way, he's also an activist, one who believes in using the media to reveal how power is exercised, in the pursuit (though he is far too gruff and macho to ever admit this, even to a friend) of truth and justice. I interviewed him Thursday, a few hours before the Washington premier of "The Insider."

How are you?

I'm pretty good, now that Mike [Wallace] has surrendered.

Surrendered?

Yeah, in the New York Times yesterday. He said that he's been hearing from people that the movie is pretty good and he doesn't look so bad after all. And he's decided that he's now at peace.

Zeroing in on Mike for a minute ...

Mike has given up.

Yeah, I want to get to that. But, just matching movie with reality for a little bit here -- did his "I'm with you, Don" quote in the movie [implying Wallace's complicity with his boss, Don Hewitt, in withholding the tobacco story] really happen?

No.

OK, so that would be one of the events that captures what you call "the emotional and philosophical honesty" of the film?

Look, there's many things in the film that did not happen, and in fact, much of the film is the reconstruction of a time line. So that if you watch it closely as to certain developments, it's not logical.

I said to Michael Mann, "What is this?" And he said it's not a documentary. It's a dramatization of the events. And its a very effective -- in my opinion -- vehicle for expressing both the emotional -- particularly the emotional -- and psychological aspects of doing this kind of work and being in this kind of situation.

If it had been done in the chronological order as a documentary, I doubt anybody would watch it. It would be like what the CBS lawyers said to me when they signed off and released me to work on this movie. They said -- to paraphrase them -- "Have fun working on the movie. We know it's a very complicated story where there's no death or violence, so it's unlikely ever to be made."

Looks like they were wrong.

I guess.

I would assume one of those philosophically honest aspects was the fear that seems to have been the galvanizing emotion behind Mike and Don's decision to initially side with the corporate guys. I'd like to hear you talk about that, that corporate big-foot possibility.

Well, I mean the bottom line in all of this is that the company came over to news division and said, "Whether you believe them or not, what you guys are doing is going to result in a tobacco company owning CBS."

Did you believe that?

No.

And so they were ... blackmailing?

The presentation that was made by the general counsel was very, very persuasive, and it did not truck any dissent.

I see.

You couldn't ... if you said something, various questions were raised and [the corporate counsel] just kept saying, "No, that won't make any difference and that won't make any difference" and so forth.

And so in terms of what went on with Mike and Don, they were sort of, if you will ... they say they were sort of overwhelmed.

The general counsel presented it with the veneer that there would be a three-week period where this was all going to be considered by outside counsel. It wasn't permanent. Yet certain things happened in the following week that convinced me that that was just bullshit -- including them ordering me out of [whistle-blower Jeffrey] Wigand's house when I went back to him to sort of fact-check things.

The second thing that was going on here that was different from whatever Mike or Don or anyone else was considering was that I'm the one who had the intensive personal contact with Wigand and his family over a long period of time. So I'm the one who has to bear, if you will, the personal, emotional price of what this might mean for him. As well as the ethical question of having done a lot to try to get him to tell his story and help him tell his story.

Next page | Blowing the whistle on CBS