The More Truth He Tells, The Worse It Gets

Note: Spoilers for The Insider are discussed in this article.

Once upon a time, it was possible for a box office bomb to receive multiple Academy Award nominations. If it was good enough, and had enough muscle from big stars and well-regarded producers and directors, and had close-to-unanimous critical acclaim, a film could be nominated for Best Picture, Director, Lead Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, and Sound… even if winning any of them was another matter entirely.

In hindsight, it really shouldn’t have been surprising to see The Insider struggle to find an audience in 1999. Heck, it probably would have had a hard time breaking even in any year. Yes, Michael Mann was more or less the Coolest Director In Hollywood™ to film bros in the late 90s (David Fincher and Christopher Nolan were still a few years away from challenging him for that title), but even he can only do so much to sell a two-and-a-half-hour-long movie mostly taking place in offices and deposition rooms, all over a 60 Minutes segment about the tobacco industry’s efforts to conceal the addictiveness of their product. Not exactly a premise that would appear ripe for riveting cinema. Sounds boring, honestly. It’s not like Touchstone Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment were able to gather a team of consummate professionals all working at the height of their abilities and a cast of actors all delivering some of the best performances of their careers, right?

Yeah, about that…

The thing is, a truly great movie will transcend the circumstances of its release and establish its value over time. Audiences in 1999 were not interested in a film warning about the looming threat of corporate interests suppressing and perverting the public interest any more than they were willing to watch a movie about a generation of directionless, resentful men willing to burn the world down as revenge for feeling like they no longer had a purpose in it. But sometimes your only misstep was putting your film out in the world a little too early. So it was with The Insider, having literally nothing but top-shelf writing, directing, images, scene construction, and performances to sell itself to audiences and the Academy, eventually being able to add “only becoming more relevant over time” to its list of reasons to watch and re-watch decades after box office hits like Runaway Bride and The General’s Daughter have been long-forgotten.

It starts as something simple. Innocuous even – CBS News producer Lowell Bergman needs help understanding some technical documents for a story he’s working on about fire safety. He figures a former executive of a major tobacco company will be able to help him out. But the one he reaches out to, Jeffrey Wigand, is bizarrely defensive. He insists more on what he can’t say than what he can, which piques Bergman’s curiosity. And few character traits are a greater asset to a journalist, and more of a threat to certain elites, than curiosity. The elites don’t wait for their wealth and power to be threatened by those exercising their First Amendment rights. But, as it usually goes with elites who get spooked, the Brown & Williamson tobacco company overplays their hand. They harass Wigand so much (with the FBI being of no help), he decides to reveal that his former employer lied under oath about their knowledge of the addictiveness of their product and even invested in research into the addition of chemicals like ammonia to increase the addictive potency of cigarettes. Another day, another win for the truth.

Or that’s how Bergman expects it to shake out. In reality, Brown & Williamson threatens to sue CBS News if they air the segment. Not for libel, of course. Wigand told the truth. It’s precisely because he told the truth that the segment is such a threat to them. No, they decide to threaten suing for “tortious interference,” and CBS’s legal counsel are very concerned about the merits of this lawsuit. The fact that CBS is currently negotiating a sale to Westinghouse Corporation that could net said legal counsel millions – and a lawsuit could jeopardize that sale – is just a coincidence, I’m sure. Helen Caperelli and Eric Kluster for sure have the integrity of CBS News in their best interests.

The rest of the film chronicles Wigand being tormented and smeared by the press for the crime of telling the truth and Bergman fighting, alone, to get his story to air. The film takes on a very different tone than its oft-cited inspiration All the President’s Men. Also a masterpiece, that film always possessed an optimistic energy. Through the setbacks, the missteps, and obstruction, you get the sense that The Washington Post will stick by their reporting, keep their integrity intact, and get to the truth. Which, of course, they do. The overall atmosphere and attitude are far more harrowing in this film. There’s a sense, all the way to the end, that even when Wigand’s interview segment does air and Bergman is vindicated, something about their collective belief in the righteous power of the American press was lost by the craven capitulation of CBS News to the mere threat of legal action from a corporation with something to hide.

The only thing elites truly learn when their wrongdoing is exposed is how to better avoid accountability in the future. That’s why Watergate ended the presidency of Richard Nixon but no one faced serious punishment for the Iran-Contra Affair. What happens when the next owner of CBS News decides a story about a whistleblower exposing elite turpitude threatens his own bottom line? Will 60 Minutes always have a Lowell Bergman, with a deep sense of loyalty to the public and their profession above the interests of any sort of powerful institution? Or was he correct in the end? Is the news destined to be swallowed up by corporate interests and transform their journalism to be expressions of fealty to their deep-pocketed masters? The final words in the film were spoken by him:

What do I tell my source for the next tough story, huh? “Hang in with us, you’ll be okay… maybe.” No. What got broken here doesn’t go back together.

I really hope he’s not right on that point. Because I’m running out of heroes, man. Guys like Wigand and Bergman are in short supply.