Overall, "The Insider" portrays an accurate
depiction of the events presented. The director, Michael Mann, has said the
film is based on actual events, yet he has admitted to taking dramatic license
with certain events and characters.
One of the film's key moments comes when Jeffrey Wigand, the whistle-blower who exposed inside information about big tobacco company Brown & Williamson, begins receiving death threats. His wife reads a threatening email and later Wigand reaches into his mailbox. Instead of letters or packages, Wigand finds an upright bullet.
A portion of the scene was a key part of advertising for the film and was inserted into the cinematic trailer. The message conveyed is a clear one: the tobacco industry threatens Wigand with an ultimatum: keep your mouth shut or someone will shut it permanently.
One of the film's key moments comes when Jeffrey Wigand, the whistle-blower who exposed inside information about big tobacco company Brown & Williamson, begins receiving death threats. His wife reads a threatening email and later Wigand reaches into his mailbox. Instead of letters or packages, Wigand finds an upright bullet.
A portion of the scene was a key part of advertising for the film and was inserted into the cinematic trailer. The message conveyed is a clear one: the tobacco industry threatens Wigand with an ultimatum: keep your mouth shut or someone will shut it permanently.
But speculation has caused critics of the film to question
if the event ever occurred.
Wigand did report finding a bullet and a threatening note in his mailbox but Ed Armento, an FBI agent who investigated the situation, suggested in a federal affidavit that Wigand orchestrated the event himself. The agent said he believed Wigand had placed the bullet in the mailbox himself.
"It became apparent to me that Jeffrey Wigand had produced and delivered a death threat against himself and his family," Amento said.
Wigand did report finding a bullet and a threatening note in his mailbox but Ed Armento, an FBI agent who investigated the situation, suggested in a federal affidavit that Wigand orchestrated the event himself. The agent said he believed Wigand had placed the bullet in the mailbox himself.
"It became apparent to me that Jeffrey Wigand had produced and delivered a death threat against himself and his family," Amento said.
Even Wigand's wife at the time, Lucretia Nimocks, questioned
the event. After the two divorced, Nimocks
swore she believed the incident to be implemented by Wigand himself.
CBS News had featured information about the threat in an evening news broadcast but felt the situation was too suspicious. CBS dropped the allegations when the network finally ran the famed "60 Minutes" Wigand interview it had previously canceled.
But the bullet in the mailbox is not the only controversy surrounding the implied message that tobacco companies make threats and take violent action when needed.
In one scene, Wigand is followed by a menacing and unknown figure. Mann and "The Insider" filmmakers have acknowledged this scene is completely fictionalized by writers for dramatic effect. Does this confession make it right, especially with the tobacco industry being made into the film's central antagonist?
The list of controversies and alleged inaccuracies continues with legendary reporter Mike Wallace and his take on the film. Wallace, portrayed by Christopher Plummer, was very outspoken about his depiction in the film. He said he never agreed with CBS management's decision to cancel the airing of the Wigand interview; rather, Wallace claimed he and "60 Minutes" producer Lowell Bergman had worked side by side to get the interview aired.
Before "The Insider" was released, Mann sent a draft of the screenplay to Wallace who immediately expressed concern about actual events being misrepresented.
"Oh, how fortunate I am to have Lowell Bergman's moral tutelage to point me down the shining path," Wallace told Mann. But the director took this dialogue to heart, immediately inserting it into the script as spoken by Wallace's fictional counterpart in the film.
Still, Wallace believed the film to be full of misrepresentations, especially those relating to him. "To make a film that suggests I would compromise years of building a reputation for accurate and fair reportage is mindless and insulting," he said.
However, with any portrayal of actual events there will be certain parties who aren't happy with their portrayal. Brown & Williamson made their intentions to sue clear in a letter sent to the Disney company. In it, B&W said it had "never threatened Jeffrey Wigand" and did not appreciate the implications made suggesting it had ever threatened Wigand's life.
Holman W. Jenkins Jr., a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, suggested in a column Wigand was likely not "the right person to turn into a celebrity witness for a politicized shakedown of a tobacco company" because he had been fired shortly before he offered the information to Bergman and CBS. It was a questionable call for CBS to use Wigand in the first place, having never questioned why he was offering the information, and conflicted with the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.
Bergman's involvement in the breaking of the story has been questioned by some individuals as well. But Bergman is caught somewhere in the middle on that same issue.
"Some people may say it makes me too much of a hero and I would agree," Bergman said. "It's Hollywood after all."
But Bergman fired back at the Los Angeles Times for reporting he had not actually done some of the things he was portrayed as doing. While Bergman did acknowledge he hadn't been involved in some of the dramatized events in the film, he maintained there was verifiable proof he had done several things the Times said were false.
"The filmmakers who created 'The Insider' are clear," Bergman wrote. "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."
Certainly Mann has used creative license to add certain specifics to the story, such as with invented dialogue between the characters, but Bergman insisted the biggest part of the story's essence was kept intact and true.
"The big, broad truths of this are all public record," Bergman said. "In that sense the film is basically accurate."
But "basically accurate" and "dead-on" are not the same thing. The real Jeffrey Wigand and Lowell Bergman had never objected to Mann's take on their characters and stories. But Bergman has said his representation in the film was "too neat" to be exactly like him. Al Pacino, the actor portraying Bergman, has said the character "was a composite of three or four people" in the minds of the filmmakers.
Even Wigand has said he never fell into the depression and emotional depths Russell Crowe depicted in his portrayal of Wigand in the film.
Mann, even with the freedom of creative license, was committed to telling the true story. He had to balance his obligation to tell an entertaining story with his obligation to tell the truth, balancing fact and fiction.
In one of the film's last scenes, Bergman is depicted as resigning from CSS soon after the Wigand interview is televised on Feb. 4, 1996. This is not the factual case though. Bergman left CBS to become a producer and correspondent for the PBS documentary series "Frontline" in 1997.
Don Hewitt, the "60 Minutes" executive producer, defended himself and his program against allegations they had merely buckled to corporate demands. The film portrays him as nothing more than a corporate puppet in the hands of CBS.
But Hewitt said it was out of his hands at the time.
"Look, the only way I could have put that tobacco story on the air was to go find a bunch of guerrillas and go take the transmitter, right, and stand there with guns," Hewitt said. "They said it's their transmitter, it's their network. I couldn't put that one."
More criticisms of the film have focused on Mann's compression of time in the film, combining some events and inventing others. The events in the film appear to take place within a set period of time but in reality occurred over a period of several years.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, John Darnton, said he loved the film, but was made uncomfortable with the alteration of facts for dramatic purpose.
CBS News had featured information about the threat in an evening news broadcast but felt the situation was too suspicious. CBS dropped the allegations when the network finally ran the famed "60 Minutes" Wigand interview it had previously canceled.
But the bullet in the mailbox is not the only controversy surrounding the implied message that tobacco companies make threats and take violent action when needed.
In one scene, Wigand is followed by a menacing and unknown figure. Mann and "The Insider" filmmakers have acknowledged this scene is completely fictionalized by writers for dramatic effect. Does this confession make it right, especially with the tobacco industry being made into the film's central antagonist?
The list of controversies and alleged inaccuracies continues with legendary reporter Mike Wallace and his take on the film. Wallace, portrayed by Christopher Plummer, was very outspoken about his depiction in the film. He said he never agreed with CBS management's decision to cancel the airing of the Wigand interview; rather, Wallace claimed he and "60 Minutes" producer Lowell Bergman had worked side by side to get the interview aired.
Before "The Insider" was released, Mann sent a draft of the screenplay to Wallace who immediately expressed concern about actual events being misrepresented.
"Oh, how fortunate I am to have Lowell Bergman's moral tutelage to point me down the shining path," Wallace told Mann. But the director took this dialogue to heart, immediately inserting it into the script as spoken by Wallace's fictional counterpart in the film.
Still, Wallace believed the film to be full of misrepresentations, especially those relating to him. "To make a film that suggests I would compromise years of building a reputation for accurate and fair reportage is mindless and insulting," he said.
However, with any portrayal of actual events there will be certain parties who aren't happy with their portrayal. Brown & Williamson made their intentions to sue clear in a letter sent to the Disney company. In it, B&W said it had "never threatened Jeffrey Wigand" and did not appreciate the implications made suggesting it had ever threatened Wigand's life.
Holman W. Jenkins Jr., a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, suggested in a column Wigand was likely not "the right person to turn into a celebrity witness for a politicized shakedown of a tobacco company" because he had been fired shortly before he offered the information to Bergman and CBS. It was a questionable call for CBS to use Wigand in the first place, having never questioned why he was offering the information, and conflicted with the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.
Bergman's involvement in the breaking of the story has been questioned by some individuals as well. But Bergman is caught somewhere in the middle on that same issue.
"Some people may say it makes me too much of a hero and I would agree," Bergman said. "It's Hollywood after all."
But Bergman fired back at the Los Angeles Times for reporting he had not actually done some of the things he was portrayed as doing. While Bergman did acknowledge he hadn't been involved in some of the dramatized events in the film, he maintained there was verifiable proof he had done several things the Times said were false.
"The filmmakers who created 'The Insider' are clear," Bergman wrote. "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."
Certainly Mann has used creative license to add certain specifics to the story, such as with invented dialogue between the characters, but Bergman insisted the biggest part of the story's essence was kept intact and true.
"The big, broad truths of this are all public record," Bergman said. "In that sense the film is basically accurate."
But "basically accurate" and "dead-on" are not the same thing. The real Jeffrey Wigand and Lowell Bergman had never objected to Mann's take on their characters and stories. But Bergman has said his representation in the film was "too neat" to be exactly like him. Al Pacino, the actor portraying Bergman, has said the character "was a composite of three or four people" in the minds of the filmmakers.
Even Wigand has said he never fell into the depression and emotional depths Russell Crowe depicted in his portrayal of Wigand in the film.
Mann, even with the freedom of creative license, was committed to telling the true story. He had to balance his obligation to tell an entertaining story with his obligation to tell the truth, balancing fact and fiction.
In one of the film's last scenes, Bergman is depicted as resigning from CSS soon after the Wigand interview is televised on Feb. 4, 1996. This is not the factual case though. Bergman left CBS to become a producer and correspondent for the PBS documentary series "Frontline" in 1997.
Don Hewitt, the "60 Minutes" executive producer, defended himself and his program against allegations they had merely buckled to corporate demands. The film portrays him as nothing more than a corporate puppet in the hands of CBS.
But Hewitt said it was out of his hands at the time.
"Look, the only way I could have put that tobacco story on the air was to go find a bunch of guerrillas and go take the transmitter, right, and stand there with guns," Hewitt said. "They said it's their transmitter, it's their network. I couldn't put that one."
More criticisms of the film have focused on Mann's compression of time in the film, combining some events and inventing others. The events in the film appear to take place within a set period of time but in reality occurred over a period of several years.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, John Darnton, said he loved the film, but was made uncomfortable with the alteration of facts for dramatic purpose.
"So while the broad outline of events may be more or less accurate, it's the little details that give me a problem as a journalist," Darnton said. "The movie opens with the producer, Lowell Bergman, blindfolded, being taken through the streets of Beirut — which never happened like that — and it ends with him quitting on the spot from CBS, which I'm told also never happened quite like that."
Blurring facts can get journalists and the public into trouble, Darnton said, in regards to what is presented and what is perceived as hard fact. This seems to be something all journalists should commit to memory.
(2:20-2:47)
While Russell Crowe and Chris Plummer deliver dialogue that is verbatim from the "60 Minutes" interview between Jeffrey Wigand and Mike Wallace, Crowe's portrayal of Wigand is quite different from reality.
In the film, Wigand comes across as a reserved, timid character, often avoiding eye contact with Wallace as if he was at a loss for words. But in reality Wigand was very confident and forthcoming during the interview.
No comments:
Post a Comment