Michael Mann is one of my favorite filmmakers. And Glen... well Glen just worships the guy. I'm one of them wacko that on some levels... prefers MANHUNTER over SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, but that's just for some of the stylistic tweaks that Mann embedded in that film. This material though seems like some tough as hell work, I can't wait to see how Al Pacino and Russell Crowe pull this one off...
BEWARE OF SPOILERS BELOW.... DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW!!!
Notes "Man Of The People", the Michael Mann "60 Minutes" script....
By Avid Boy
As a news junkie who's a student of the seemingly never-ending CBS News saga, I was quite lucky to get to read a numbered script for the untitled "60 Minutes/Tobacco" script in December, now possibly titled "Man Of The People." It's a cautionary tale of big media vs. big business.
As you may know, a "60 Minutes" story about a Brown & Williamson "whistleblower" was scrubbed/deleted/censored/postponed by CBS management, depending you your view, and now a Michael Mann film is being made about the whole embarrassing mess.
The script is unflinching, memorable, and it names names.
One would expect the script to center on bankable names like Mike Wallace or (60 Minutes Exec Producer) Don Hewitt, but instead the script deals mainly with the relationship between longtime 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) and the whistleblower Dr. Jeffrey S. Wigand (Russel Crowe), the former B&W executive.
The story starts about as far away from the tobacco saga as possible. Bergman, Jewish, is in a dangerous part of the Middle East. He's being driven, blindfolded, to a mystery lair, to negotiate ground rules for a 60 Minutes interview between Wallace and a powerful anti-Israel terrorist. After some blunt wrangling, Bergman skillfully closes the deal, calling NY to say the interview is on. Later Wallace arrives to find the terrorist's henchmen trying to back-pedal on some of the fine points of the agreement. Wallace proceeds to face down the machine-gunned thugs and verbally chews them a new asshole, so to speak, and the interview is back on. The scene effectively sets the pace for the rest of the story, implying that Bergman and Wallace routinely risk a lot for the sake of journalism.
The script then has some establishing material about Dr. Wigand, an unobtrusive family man in a nice Kentucky suburb, growing disillusioned with the deception going on within his industry. He begins to take home a variety of company research documents. Bergman learns of Wigand's disgust, and begins to try to persuade him to appear on 60 Minutes. Wigand knows that by merely talking to Bergman he risks his job, his 300k salary, his up-market home. Bergman must convince Wigand of the ethical power of talking to "60 Minutes" while Wigand alone knows the ultra-hardball tactics to which he'll be subjecting himself, his wife, and two young daughters. His main argument against going public is personal: one daughter's chronic illness and the need to keep his corporate health insurance. Bergman, however, emphasizes the integrity of the 60 Minutes forum: a soon-to-be empty promise when CBS execs eventually censor the segment.
After some spy-novel rendezvous, Bergman gets Wigand to agree to be on 60 Minutes. The tape rolls and Bergman exposes the industry's big lie. "Nicotine. It's addictive. We know that. That's how we talk about it."
His Brown & Williamson board, livid and bullying, call him in and fire him. He loses his insurance, his home and soon has Brown & Williamson-sponsored private dicks following him at all hours. Grave phone threats, vicious rumors abound. It is soon too much for his wife; she leaves him, taking the children. Dr. Wigand, the former Director Of Research for a tobacco conglomerate, now alone in barren bachelor digs, must apply for an opening for a high-school chemistry teacher.
The scene shifts to the NYC production offices of "60 Minutes." Don Hewitt and his team are thrilled that this exclusive is theirs, never has anyone inside a tobacco company so high up agreed to talk. But CBS corporate feels they risk a $10-15 billion-with-a-B lawsuit if the story airs, due to Wigand's confidentiality agreement with B&W.
Producer Bergman tells Hewitt and Wallace this is a no-brainer; the story must air without any corporate preview or meddling, and if it doesn't they should all resign and march the tape over to "Nightline." Wallace's position is far more timid than Bergman's, but still on Bergman's side. Meanwhile, Hewitt is getting calls from mega-buck PR firms with info that Wigand is a liar, a shoplifter, a drunk, and a variety of other trumped-up gumshoe discoveries, which Hewitt appears to buy into. Hewitt is at first non-committal on airing the piece without cuts, insisting that he will show it to Black Rock (CBS corp HQ) before it airs.
Even the high-school principal back in Kentucky is fed these private-dick rumors. In a heartfelt scene, Wigand goes to her to resign his chemistry teacher post for the good of the high school. She refuses. Unlike Hewitt she sees the rumors to be the smear campaign that it is.
All this takes place in the foreground of CBS CEO Larry Tisch's pending sale of the network to Westinghouse. (Tisch's own tobacco interests provide most of his family's income.) Tisch and his board in no way want this cozy deal sidetracked by a major lawsuit, First Amendment ethics or not. CBS's chief corporate counsel, Ellen Kaden, has been against the story from the outset and she along with CBS News President Eric Ober order Hewitt to delete Wigand interview from the segment. Surprisingly Hewitt accedes and orders the edits, saying it's not his $15 billion. Bergman refuses, Hewitt says go down the hall to the Avid suite and take out the Wigand soundbites or he'll find a junior producer to do it. Bergman in Avid makes the cuts, furious at CBS... and Wigand is soon even more furious at Bergman for letting him get hung out to dry. Wallace eventually sides with Bergman, but seems to try to have it both ways.
(The LA Times Calendar cover story on this movie from Nov. 98 indicated that Mike Wallace had a hand in some script revisions in scenes where the Mike Wallace character appears. But a Letter To The Editor two weeks later from the producers insisted this was not the case. Still, all the pages if the script I saw were dated to indicate the most recent revisions, and most pages involving Wallace had the latest dates, around mid-summer 98, most other scenes generally had dates from early '98.)
The script soon reveals that the successful sale of CBS would be financially beneficial to the many of network's top executives. In the big well-whaddya-know-revelation, over $1million in stock options would be going to CBS News President Eric Ober (presently head of the Food Network for God's sake!) when the CBS sale went through, and for chief counsel Ellen Kaden, more than $1 million in stock options and $3.7 million more from a salary buy-out and other benefits. The reporters and producers are in the dark about all this.
Exec Producer Hewitt does not to come out like a rose in this script, and this is sad because of his otherwise commendable contribution to freedom of speech over the decades. But he fucked up big time on this one and now he has to live with it.
The edited segment then airs on "60 Minutes" (see the for-real transcript at http://www.enviroweb.org/mcspotlight-na/beyond/cbstranscript.html ) without any of Wigand's "confidentiality agreement" material.
(HARRY NOTE: I have edited away the ending of sequence of events, I figured there were a bit too many spoilers as it was. Sounds like GREAT material, eh?)
A strong script. Should be an exceptional movie.
yours,
Avid Boy
