Part Of This Record

It all used to seem normal. We didn’t know what was going to happen, we didn’t know how things were going to fall away. Michael Mann’s THE INSIDER played at the Vista some weeks back and I went to see it during that brief run, of course I did, then I made several attempts to write about the film since then but each time saying something in relation to the events of the day became something different as things continued to happen faster than expected before something else entirely fell into the headlines. All that needs to be said is the obvious fact that this film becomes more relevant every single day and it’s the collapse of what the news media was always supposed to be which spells that out more than anything else. And it’s safe to say that what happens in the film is no big deal at all when compared to what’s happening now. All this of course goes well beyond those idle thoughts of how nice it was to have a Michael Mann film playing right down the street for a few days and though it does feel like we barely go a few hours without somebody somewhere talking about HEAT, which is ok with me, right now it feels like THE INSIDER is the one that should be focused on for a few minutes.

In his mixed-positive review at the time, Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman called it “a good but far from great movie because it portrays truth telling in America as far more imperiled than it is” which is very likely one of the most misguided things ever written by a supposed major critic about a movie in the past half-century, coming off as words from someone with no real awareness or interest in the things that are really at stake. Which maybe describes a lot of people who work in the media. As of this writing we’re mere days away from marking 26 years since the release of the film on November 5, 1999 (coming in fourth for the weekend, behind the likes of THE BONE COLLECTOR and the Chris O’Donnell vehicle THE BACHELOR) and around 30 years since the events that it depicts took place, with a New York Times front page spotted announcing the acquittal of O.J. Simpson and whether or not that event matches up precisely with when things in THE INSIDER were occurring, it still makes perfect sense. More than it was ever clear in 1999, it feels like that trial marked the beginning of the end for what we thought of as the entire media landscape and though the two events are not at all directly linked, what gets portrayed in THE INSIDER shows the start of what came next as things began to get worse.

All this makes me think about all those things that used to be, one of which is what Mike Wallace once represented, the supposed voice of integrity in the media and all that. He worked longer than seemingly any journalist ever did but even he could only do his job for so long and that’s in the past now. At one point in THE INSIDER when Wallace, as brilliantly played by Christopher Plummer, begins laying into Gina Gershon’s CBS attorney with all the fury imaginable the scene cuts away before he finishes. There was only so much yelling he could do and even the great Mike Wallace had only so much power when it came to the whims of corporate desires. “I’ve been in this profession fifty fucking years. You and the people you work for are destroying the most respected, the highest rated, the most profitable show on this network,” he barks at her before the film moves elsewhere. Which, of course, is nothing compared to what was to come and what’s happening right now. The legendary 60 MINUTES anchor was unhappy with his portrayal in THE INSIDER feeling that it misrepresented his role in things when CBS was refusing to air the controversial segment in question but one of Plummer’s other best scenes, where Wallace wonders how he’ll be remembered, is something that also stuck out to me on this viewing. Because it’s a fair question of how much Mike Wallace is remembered at all these days, less than twenty years since his last appearance on air and as time goes on the portrayal in this film will likely be one of the primary ways he’ll be known. Considering where we are in the world right now it almost feels like a fair question if Mike Wallace left any sort of legacy at all beyond the immediacy of his broadcasts, the ‘infamy’ he speaks of to Don Hewitt at one point. So much of what we thought the world was then has been wiped away thanks to a media which refuses to adhere to any sort of concept of responsibility and it feels as though THE INSIDER depicts, if not the starting point for all that, at least a growing awareness of a lack of any sort of accountability for what is being put out there. It’s a film set during a time when so many of those things still mattered, the media, the news, television, journalism, those things people used to pay attention to for all the right reasons. The integrity of a news organization, whether print or TV, things which have all been wiped away by now, all hypocrisy exposed. Mike Wallace likely wouldn’t agree with this, but the way he hesitates in this portrayal when it matters the most makes sense now when all sorts of once-trusted news personalities have decided to set fire to their once-esteemed reputations in this era. In directing THE INSIDER, Michael Mann showed that all this was inevitable.