145: The Insider (1999)

"Are you a businessman or are you a newsman?!" Alex and Nick break down one of Alex’s favorite films, Michael Mann’s “The Insider.” Topics include the current state of journalism, corporate confidentiality agreements, tortious interference, poor communication skills, “60 Minutes,” all-timer performances from Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, and Christopher Plummer, and so much more.
Follow @WAYW_Podcast on Twitter and Instagram and Letterboxd.
Send mailbag questions to whatareyouwatchingpodcast@gmail.com

Transcript

0:25

Hey, everyone. Welcome to. What are you watching? I'm Alex Withrow. I'm from 60 minutes. If you take 60 minutes out of that sentence, no one returns your phone calls. And I'm joined by my best man, Nick, though. So, how are you doing there, Ron Motley? Ron, who the hell is that in this white, this talk of your face getting. Whether you like it or not, it's Bruce McGill's character. I love that guy. Jesus Christ, it's the best acting any actor has ever done in any movie. Just. Look, I'm I'm fucking hyped for this one, man. Dude, I'm so hyped. I know this is a big one. This is a big one. It's a big one. You excited to be? Oh, man. I'm, I, was I need to use a better word this time because we're talking about journalism. Ecstatic. I'm enthralled and thrilled to be here. And thrilled. Today we're talking about The Insider, directed by Michael Mann. Michael Mann is a director that's been brought up plenty on this podcast. We did a full breakdown of his masterpiece, one of his masterpieces, heat, ages ago. At this point, I've wanted to talk about this movie since we started the podcast for a lot of reasons, I. I think this is his most mature film. It's his most intensely dramatic. It's just white dudes talking in rooms, no guns, no explosions, nothing like that. It was very well-received when it came out by critics and by the eventually the Oscars. They gave it seven nominations, but no one really saw this movie. It was considered a box office bomb. Everyone who saw it liked it. It was just a really serious 2.5 hour movie, about 60 minutes, two hours and 40 minutes, actually about 60 minutes, and people didn't really show up for it. This movie's now 25 years old. I think it has gotten better and better and better with age. I think it showcases so many great performances and I want more people to see it. That's all. That's why we're talking about it today. This is it's weird to call it. This might be Michael Mann's kind of forgotten or hidden masterpiece because of people who know no, but I don't know how many people are catching have caught on to this in the, you know, decade, two and a half decades since. So I'm so excited to be here. I love this movie. This is a movie that I wonder how, because you were seeing how it ages. Well, in time, I can totally see that. But it also changes the way that journalism is today and was back then. Oh my god. Like, yeah, this is almost like a movie that shows the way things were done forever until they weren't right. And we are currently in the they're not done that way anymore. I don't know if it's ever coming back. It's I don't think I don't think the level of investigative journalism and what's conveyed in this. Yeah, that doesn't really exist anymore. We can yeah, we can open this up, open this up, this conversation. Certainly. I mean, I that was one of the biggest takeaways that I had from this rewatch in particular. And I mean, I'm jumping way ahead. But when you get to the end. And what Al Pacino does I'm what I should ask like is that really what happened to lo. Did he just. Yeah. Yeah. Was that were those his reasons or were those like movie reasons that made it a little bit more of like a poetic kind of end? Which part specifically because, okay, this is a very good I mean, he did not like what was going on. Yeah. How 60 minutes was treating his source. He went behind their back to the New York Times. He went behind their back to the Wall Street. Yeah, yeah. Ratted them out. They reported it 60 minutes, flipped their position, aired the actual real segment. And then he quit and and he went to go work for frontline and work with his wife, who's depicted in the movie for the rest of his career. Now he's retired, and we should say, because this is a deep dive. Spoilers are abound. Yeah. I mean, that's that's the only way we can do it. So again, as yeah, as we talked about in the Waves podcast, if you haven't seen it, then we're going to talk about it all. And if that doesn't bother you then, welcome. And if you have hook them. Here we go. So the thing that I took from it is, you know, he quit. I mean, he's got that great line where he's like, this broke us, or we got broken and there's no, there's no fixing this. And he is a man of so much integrity. Once this happened, there isn't any coming back. And when you fast forward to now and it's like, okay, this was how he felt then when he quit, he was right because that what broke in his particular situation stayed broke. And it's just gotten worse over time. And I think that's where this movie really hits in terms of the relevancy of how it ages so well. Was because in 1999, when this came out, I feel like that's just a really cool way to end a movie, but we're still kind of in the throes of is it broken? Is this just like a movie that's making a point that, hey, danger warning, investigative journalism could be in danger, could be in an endangered species, so to speak, like it presented that argument at the time. But when you fast forward to now and we know how journalism has has gone, this was now this ending to me is so much more impactful. Yeah, this is just a guy who saw it all before. It actually really happened. I cannot put into context how popular and respected 60 minutes was in 1995. When this movie is set, or in 1999, that fucking ticking clock theme song like it was in so many people's homes and so many people watch it. So many people, highly respected journalists from them to back down from a story because CBS corporate was afraid of getting sued by a tobacco company. That shit had never happened before. And lo, Bergman sees this and he goes, so we're now caving to corporate interests. Yeah, this is broken. What am I going to say to a source? Next time we'll protect you? Maybe. So when you jump ahead 25 years, if we talk about how money is involved in journalism, that's just a whole subject. But that's what it is. It's it's been incentivized. It's all based on clicks. Now it's click, click, click, click, click the cat way out of the bag. Yeah I mean it is broken. It's not going back to the way it was. There is so much money tied up in journalism now because what gets the most clicks? Who can get there fast. Yeah, yeah. Think about the insider. How hold it a week. Hold on a week. Because if you do it before then you're going to look like an asshole. Like those yokels in Louisville who air the smear campaign story right away. But the Wall Street Journal doesn't do that. It spends the time discrediting everything in that bullshit dossier that everyone now is like, we got to get it first. We got to get it first today. Who the fuck knows? Maybe CBS puts a story on the evening news, like the night that they find out about it, instead of doing the months and months and months of reporting. I don't know. One thing I want to say, and this is very important, when we talked about Twitter a few episodes ago and you told me what that meant to you in terms of weather, yeah, that Twitter is for you. What the insider is for me, for journalism. I was going there wasn't like a direct parallel that I remember, but I've gone on a mad Michael Mann marathon these past few weeks. I was just studying The Insider and the next movie we're going to do, but then I decided to open it up and watch watch them all. I hadn't done every Michael Mann movie in a while and rewatching some of his work, I'm like, I would be a fool to deny that. I went to journalism school and got a degree in journalism because of this movie, or that this movie didn't largely influence it because I love this movie. I saw this movie four times in the theater when I was 15. I this was one of the first DVDs I bought and watched it over and over and over, and then also rewatching Ali for the first time. Definitely the first time since the slap there. I already knew this, but this movie is absolutely, largely responsible for me getting into boxing, which I still do today. So journalism school was, really, really difficult. It was harder than any job I've had since. And I had a few jobs in journalism after. That's where I met friend of the tailor. If if my, the rigor my professors put me through to check sources, check dates, check facts, I cannot imagine what they think of the current state of journalism. I graduated college in 2008. Journalism has changed wildly, thanks largely to social media. But yeah, the journalism depicted in this movie is much more akin to the journalism and All the President's Men, as opposed to the journalism that we would find if we opened The New York Times yesterday, journalism that was largely opinion based that was a huge, huge no, no, just 25 years ago. And now there's a lot of editorializing in what are supposed to be news features from all sides. I'm not just banging on one side. I keep my pulse on this as much as I can. But yeah, I didn't even know we were really going to get into journalism, but this is a good jump off. I think it's important. It absolutely is. And I was obsessed with journalism, like obsessed with reporting, obsessed with investigative reporting, obsessed with the fundamentals of it, which could involve arguing because I love a good spirited debate and not necessarily picking an argument, but sniffing out bullshit, which Pacino is so good at doing this or detecting something like, I'm just asking this do to look at a box of documents. Why is he being all cagey? Why will he not talk to me? Who the hell cares? In sniffing that out? I never covered a story this big, but I mean, I covered a few murder trials. I covered some wild shit my day. So I love this shit. It is complete fodder for me. And this is one, if not the best journalism movie ever made. Right up there with All the President's Men. It's like A1A, one B, and I think like they're I mean, this is this is kind of crazy just because we're talking about like, the time frame of everything, but to like younger audiences, like, could you maybe explain what journalism was in America prior to even this movie? Oh, man. Yeah, yeah. Let me do my best and get my old man on. Before social media people got their news from the news and from papers. And these were very, very trusted sources because they had old timers in there who had been doing this for decades. And they're verification process was rigorous so that it was widely believed widely. Maybe we should take this with a grain of salt. I'm not saying it was perfect 25 years ago. Don't get me wrong. There's always been bullshit. There's always that bullshit. But it was widely believed that if you read it in a paper or sold on the evening news that it was real and it was true, now we all know that that necessary isn't the case. But there were so few sources agencies to get our information from. And then everyone went off and, you know, talked about it or debated about it on their own. Now it is, though with social media, everyone's opinion is equal in some, you know, Billy Joe on the street knows just as much about this topic as I don't know, Lester Holt, let's say, or someone else that's very popular, that's very famous in journalism nowadays. Jump 25 years ago, if I looked at my dad, for example, after we saw The Insider and he's like, yeah, well, Mike Wallace like doesn't know anything, that would just be patently absurd because Mike Wallace was one of the most trusted names in journalism. So we don't really have that anymore. We don't have these trusted figures that we can go to. Everyone gets their news from who the hell knows from any number of different avenues, different places, different agencies. And a lot of it, like I said, is opinion and a lot of it is bullshit. And a lot of it is just what I see more than anything is this rush, this insistence to get it online fast, fast, fast. We have to be first, first, first. Here's an exercise I love to bring up about my journalism schooling. Almost every teacher I had in every journalism class I had. If you could bring in a real newspaper, not some like yo Oakley Oakley newspaper, like a real one. Like I went to school in Richmond, Virginia. So the Richmond Times-Dispatch counted New York Times, Washington Post, any of that that had an actual typo or an actual factual error that you could prove was an error. They would give you one full letter grade higher on your final grade. Now, you can only do this four times a semester. So like if my final grade in the class was a 90 and I had found four of these in the semester, boom! They give me a 94. The exercise in doing this, it was ingenious. It made us all read fucking newspapers like crazy. We all read so many newspapers and it was tough. I was lucky to come up with a few every semester. If you had if you drop any newspaper in my lap today, including all the ones I just named, I can find a typo. Probably on a one on the front page. Wow. But no question, I do this when Allie and I stay in hotel. Sometimes I do this and I show her and I'm like, no, that's that's not how you well, you know, whatever, spell that or do that or there's just a typo and I'm like, yeah, no one fact checkers, copy editors I don't know, it just it's largely it is lost. Journalism is lost in my other Michael Mann love boxing is also fucking lost because goddamn clown show. It sucks. It really sucks. You you graduated almost seemingly at it that the actual turning Twitter was just becoming a thing. Yeah, it was just becoming a thing in my last few semesters. My last two I literally did articles about Will Twitter be a thing as a method of reporting news? Will it be a thing? And I remember saying in my classes, some people are like, this is so stupid, like, who's going to live tweet funerals or whatever? Like, this is so dumb. And I remember being like, this seems scary. I don't know, because how are we going to be able to identify, like, who's lying, who's not? And yeah, now, now you don't have trust in news sources or the news sources we used to trust are they just get dunked on so many times and they make so many fucking errors. And the people that who I trust to get news from, whether they are famous or whether they're just in my life, they brag on these, you know, news sources all the time now as well. So yeah, it's harder than ever. That's why everything's so fucking confusing out there. Yeah, that's why I'm not saying it wasn't before, but you got to go back 25 years or rather 30 years to when people knew that smoking was bad for them. You knew it wasn't a good thing. We all know drinking alcohol is bad for us. Smoking was bad for you, but it was denied in front of Congress that these fucking things were addictive because by doing that, the people who made them took away all the onus from them that, oh, all these people dying from our cigarets, that's not because they're addicted to them. They're doing that by choice. You can stop at any time. That's fucking crazy that it took a few really dedicated producers and reporters to sniff that out, and one very audacious whistleblower to blow that open. So, you know, I don't even know if whistleblowers have anywhere to go nowadays. So that's why Snowden just like releases it on self. And now he's like, you know, fucking hiding in Russia. I don't know it. It's crazy. But we are talking about a good movie today I promise. And we will start talking about the movie now, I know I, I think it's a, it's a great thing to kind of like view and also if you've never seen this movie, going into it and realizing that this is where the stakes are. Yeah. Because I think that was my first time watching this movie. You said you saw when you were 15 and and you. Oh, yeah. And you were watching it over and over. I watched this. Oh my God, this was a recommendation for me from my college theater professor. Sure. I can't believe now that I said this back then that I go, this movie's slow. Well, yeah, of course. I think people still have that argument. I get it, but I get it. There's it's not slow. It's not. It's is. Matter of fact, I would use the word incendiary. It's. Oh, yeah, it's fucking cooked. It pops. And but it's because you feel the stakes, but it's because it's there. It's a level of understanding that you need to have that this mattered. Yeah. Exactly. Like you even just kind of the way you ran through it. Of course, we know that smoking is bad, but but finding out that people are lying about it to make money and then exposing that like and and and then all the different avenues that it goes down like this is important stuff. This is for the benefit of humans. Like we need to have people know this so they can take care of themselves. We're we're looking out for each other here, there. And when you kind of look at all of that, like everything that starts to happen in this movie, it's just like one thing after another where I'm like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. It was like left turn, right turned. It was crazy. I loved it. So it's so crazy for me to think that I said this movie was slow at a time. Yeah. So this was one that I saw. I was in middle school, I saw it, and the next Monday, like when we were back in school, I was talking to my teachers about it. That would happen routinely to me in school that I would be. So I remember talking to like my eighth grade physics teacher about she went, you saw that movie? Oh yeah. Yeah. And I'm not saying I understood it all when I was young, but I was so interested in it and so. And it's so fucking well acted, so. Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, so in 1996, Marie Brenner releases this massive exposé. My PDF is 34 pages long. I read it for the first time. I can't believe I never read it. An article called The Man Who Knew Too Much about This whistleblower named Jeffrey Weigand, who blew the whistle on a big tobacco company. Brown and Williamson, and character was attempted to be assassinated by B and W. He became a whistleblower and went on 60 minutes, reported it all. And then the 60 minutes drama, the CBS drama. So this is a huge exposé about it. It makes its way to Hollywood quickly. Fame director Michael Mann picks up the property quickly. And I want to focus on man here for a little bit, because Mann is an obsessive. He is someone who spends. I don't even know if I did a good enough job of this describing it on our heat podcast. But he did not come out of nowhere. He wrote the screenplay for. He research that for decades, talking to the real people, that it's based on the cops, the criminals, all those people. He wrote the first draft of that 1979, so you can go back and find interviews for him when he's on the See the Thief press tour in 1981 talking about, yeah, I have this big like cops and robbers bank robbery script, but I don't know if it's probably too big for me. Maybe I'll give it to a different director. And then he made it as a TV movie in the 80s called L.A. takedown. It's not very good. And then he makes it again in the 90s heat. So I'm saying this is decades with this material decades. The insider is not like that. It's a very fast moving thing. He makes heat 95. It is, not surprisingly, a big movie in this theater. It did. It wasn't a huge box office draw, but of course it has a second life. On home video. They get to insider teed up. He hires Eric Roth to help him write the script, and in their research, Mann just becomes fascinated by all of this corporate fuckery. He becomes fascinated in interviewing Lowell Bergman, the 60 minutes producer there, when Lowell Bergman was sniffing out this case and meeting Jeffrey Wigand. They didn't really like each other. Like they didn't even really get along. Weigand was, you know, poor communication skills as he lets us know. And the the whole story is fascinating. And one of the reasons I don't think the movie is boring is because for like the first 45, 50 minutes, if you haven't seen it, you don't really know what's going on. Yeah. Parallel stories, 60 minutes. Producer then this other guy just got fired. Okay. Now they're going to meet another linked. And then the taping of 60 minutes happens like 70 minutes into the movie. It's I thought it was much later. They don't want to they don't want to air it. But then it kicks into the whole CBS drama. And that's like the last hour. So you keep finding these new gears. And that's what I love about it. But yes, that article really glad I read it leading up to this. I have so much more context now for this story and how Michael Mann was very. I you know, if we're telling the story of Jeffrey Weigand, it's a very accurate portrayal. His film is wow. Yeah, fucking crazy. It wasn't there like some sort of credit given to that. Yes. This is a dramatization. We've done this with it, dude. It's like the first credit because you have so many movies. One thing I shit on all the time. It's based on a true story or this is a true story and you find out it's not. That doesn't even say that in this movie. It's just the first in credit. It's like very well-written explanations about how we may have taken some dramatic liberties. We could never verify that Brown and Williamson actually threatened Jeffrey Weigand, or that they actually left a bullet in his mailbox. Yeah. So they're really covering their ass here. Like, please don't sue us. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Jeffrey Weigand could not talk with Russell Crowe during pre-production of this movie because he was still bound by his confidentiality clause while he was still bound by it. The only thing Russell Crowe had for research was the raw material from the 60 minutes interview. That's fucking crazy. So he mimicked. I mean, his accent is it's so goodness, he sounds just like him. That Bronx accent, that's all he had. Like, it's going to be so much fun just to open all this up. But yeah, Michael Mann, he convinces again. Yeah, okay, I'll do it. Bergman. You know, they come on as technical consultants. But again, why again is not talking like in-depth about the case. That's all what they're getting from the articles from research. Even if he's on set, like he's not communicating about the case a lot. It's crazy. It's just crazy. Well, getting to the players real quick before we start talking about the movie itself, we got three guys here who are these are like all timer performances for all of them. Al Pacino was an easy pick to play. Low Bergman. They just don't heat together. He was man's only choice. It's perfect. It's just perfect. Yeah. Man's only choice to play Bergman. I agree, absolutely perfect here. I mean, this is one of his. It's one of his best performances. And because it like Any Given Sunday came out this year, which he's also insane and but he's there's all this amazing stuff right around this time that not enough people talked about this with understanding most of the acclaim, acting, acclaim from the for the movie went to a relative newcomer called Russell Crowe, who seemed an odd choice to play Weigand because Russell Crowe was a dashing 33 year old man at the time he had, he gained weight, dyed his hair. They put a lot of old makeup on him. He was very nervous to do the role because he said, there's a lot of people wagons age, a lot of actors, wagons age who could already do this. Like, why me? But Michael Mann, the obsessive that he is, he I think he just saw some like raw footage. I don't know if L.A. confidential was officially out yet. If, you know, Curtis Hanson just showed him something or whatever it was, but he gets wind of Russell Crowe, flies all the way up to Alaska because Russell Crowe's filming mystery Alaska meets him. Crowe basically does Weigand for him, and he's like, yep, that's it. You're it's you. Cool. Wow. And that is a huge, huge deal. Because again, this was Russell Crowe's right on the edge of popping. This is what really makes him kind of explode over. He gets the Oscar nomination. Gladiator was what sends him to like all timer status of course. But I mean just fantastic casting. I hadn't seen LA confidential. I had love Bud White. That was the only thing I'd seen him in. But I think when I sat down for the insider, I didn't know that was the same dude I didn't have. Oh, yeah. How could you? Yeah, yeah, it's unrecognizable. And then in what was what is turned into one of my favorite performances of the 90s, Christopher Plummer is Mike Wallace. And where was Christopher Plummer at the time? Bigger career early in like stage Struck in 58, Sound of Music, of course, but not wasn't in a lot of this is what makes him a household name in America. This is what gets him like a bunch of roles. He was in stuff, he's in Malcolm X, like he was in stuff. But this is a very, very big deal. And he plays Mike Wallace perfectly. They didn't do anything to make him really look like Mike Wallace. Give him some nice spray tan. But there's no like heavy makeup which I love. And he is he's just a miracle in this movie. It is one of my favorite performances of someone playing a real person, like a really, really famous person. I love him in this, that. I mean, that's an astounding Russell Crowe. Sorry, I didn't know that like that because. Oh, yeah, he you look at Russell Crowe now and you're like, oh yeah, like that. That's that's easy. That's an easy that's an easy casting choice. But but like thinking about like what he was back then like, believe it or not folks, Russell Crowe back in the day was a sexual icon. And yes, he absolutely was. Yes. One foot or not. He was. I mean, yes, like Gladiator. Oh, wow. I mean it, Bud White is like sexy. Like he beats the shit out of people who beats up women like he's, you know, he's a tough dude. Yeah, yeah, I love Bud White. But it. Yeah, it was not until really Gladiator that it. But I remember seeing him at the Oscars because this was the Oscar one where he like never smiled when he was there for the insider is really funny. Billy Crystal kept kind of like poking fun at him, and he just kind of sitting there looking glum and I'm like, oh, wow, that he looks nothing like how he did in that movie. And then, yeah, Gladiator is a few months after the Oscars. He's glad Cloudera, I think, comes out in May 2000. And that's that's it. That's yeah. You know he wins. He wins the Oscar for that. But make no mistake folks, that was an Oscar win for Maximus. Yes, but it was also an Oscar win for Jeffrey White again. And Bud White. That's why he won that Oscar. Because we can litigate the Oscars 1999, which we've done before. But we can get to the end like, well, I'll ask you now, it's hard to say because so much has changed. But what do you think Russell Crowe in The Insiders better than Kevin Spacey in American Beauty? Yes. Yeah. Same here. I don't think I saw that in 1999. I thought American Beauty was like God's gift to man. And, you know, it's just that that has held up. Yeah. Yeah. That hasn't held up for, you know, multiple reasons. But I love Denzel Washington in The Hurricane. You love Richard Farnsworth in The Straight Story. They were all nominated. So it's a very tough year, but Russell Crowe sticks out way better now than he did then. Then he was the newcomer. So by Gladiator, when he's up against like Tom Hanks, they give Tom Hanks his third best Actor Oscar. He's, you know, up against big players and Harris for Pollock. Small movie but great performance. Oh, I love that movie. Yeah. Oh God, I love Pollock. I mean, it's my favorite Ed Harris yeah. Same here. So in here, Crowe is probably my maybe my first choice in 99. I love Denzel in The Hurricane. But it Denzel won for Malcolm X, then that's fine. You know it's all this when you start mixing stuff around it's oh give and take give and take. But his maximum performance I thought was like the fourth best of that running. I think the final one was Geoffrey Rush and Quills, which isn't a good movie. I'm doing all this from memory. So I'm I'm doing my. That's But that was just a thing. Like it was. Yeah, it was a thing. We'll see how Gladiator two does. What if this is what they get? Ridley Scott is Oscar for. I will laugh my ass off if he wins an Oscar for Gladiator two. I doubt it, I doubt it. But anyway, the insider so the first time you did see this was in college and you, how many times do you think you've seen it since? This is my second time seeing it. Holy shit. Ever, ever. Wow. And you okay. Good. And you liked it. This. This is what's nice because you bring to these conversations a sense of like, wow. Like you really get the span of, let's say, 15 years between viewings that you've had in like how much it's changed everything. Whereas I have checked in with this movie, honestly, like conservatively once a year, probably since I've watched it three times preparing for this, but once a year since it's come out, I love this. I had it on DVD, I never bought the Blu report, the Blu ray for this. It is, very rare Michael Mann movie that has no special features. There's a little making of which is nice. You get to see all the people. No commentary. And that's because I think this just lost a lot of money. It ended up having about a $90 million price tag, which is wild. That's a lot of money. It's for 1999. It's a lot for no action scenes. Yeah. And it made about 6060 million on a 90 budget. And who made this movie and released it folks. That's right. The Walt Disney Corporation true story. Wow. I mean, yeah, it yeah, it just it just didn't. If it would have made a little more money, this would have been like, man, we could have had a Michael Mann commentary, a Wigand Bergman commentary, like a Marie Brenner who wrote the article commentary. It just it really could have I don't know anything, but this is not on 4K. I think for that reason, because they don't, you know. But I want to say that before we actually get into the movie, Michael Mann, no stranger to going back in completely fucking with his movie, sometimes for the better, sometimes to the extreme detriment when I'm like, why did you do this? Why did this director's cut is not as good as the theatrical cut? And he will do this. There's three different versions of Allie. There's two different versions of Miami Vice. There's. He does this a lot. Yeah. He's never touched the insider. Nothing ever. Maybe that's because he's never been given the money to do it, or maybe because he thinks he got it right. And I don't know, there's something to that, that's all. Maybe there is something to the how fast it was. It was just sort of like, that's what I thought I was saying. Collateral was kind of the same way. Collateral was that fast, that script had been toiling around. But when he cut, when he got on to it and got, what else attached? When he got attached to it, it moved very quickly. And they made it very, very quickly. So and that, you know, is a really popular movie and did very well. And he has never gone back and fucked with that one either. There's no director's cut of collateral. It just it has never changed in 20 years. Anyway. Anyway, go change Ferrari. Jesus. Oh, God. Take 40 minutes out of that. Make it. You know. Wow. Messy black cat. He made it much better. Just structurally. No one's seen that. Though I still remember in our heat at when we are ranking all Michael Mann's movies, which now this is absolutely changed just because of, of of my opinion on this movie. But we got to yeah, we it has to be for our further up like I. Yeah. I don't remember where you had it I think I had one is heat of course. I think at the time I had Ali at two because that was pre slap and now I, you know I watched that movie three times in the past few weeks. I still love that movie, but I think insider is the second best movie he's made. I think I have to put it there. It was. I can't stress how good a time I had watching this. It was so good. Well, as we're going through this call out shit, you like shit, you forgot anything because we're going to get going here. Oh, it's about time. I love starting it. Well, it's about time. Sorry. I love these preambles we have. I didn't know we were going to talk about the current state of journalism. Are you a terrorist? I love that, how are you? Oh my God. Like they just question why I didn't do it. I love that are you? So this is another thing that's going to sound crazy, but he has some very, very immensely quotable lines. We all know what they are. Pacino loses it like it's just a it's a quotable movie for a few specific lines, the Michael Mann movie I quote the most is, without question, the insider, and I apologize in advance for the impressions. I do these all the time. I already did some at the top, but they just kind of come out of me. But I think this movie, some of the quotes in this movie, I think are fucking just brilliantly written. Yeah, I've written a few of them, but I love them. Good. Yeah, just great writing. Yeah, yeah. Great writing. So we're starting with this Prolog meeting. Lowell, you don't know who we're meeting. I love those POV shots of the blind fold. You're like, oh, I mean, I don't know if I'd ever really seen that. Like an actual POV of, like from the person's perspective with a blindfold on. I was going to say, like, like, like this is a Michael Mann movie. And your opening visual shot is this, I mean, we don't even know it's a blindfold yet. It's just this you don't, you have no idea. You can make out that it's some sort of towel. It's some sort of fabric. And there's this pulsing music that goes along with it. I remember I just I sat there, I go, all right, this is the very first shot. Like what? Yeah, like like okay. And I love opening shots because I just like to wonder why the directors started with this. Sometimes they're so easy. Like you're like, oh okay. Yeah. Sometimes they're on nail on the head. Yeah, yeah. And you're like, oh this there's a beautiful landscape or like whatever it is, but this is one where it's like, can't even make that out. Is that a towel? Yeah. But then, you know, you then as more of the movie starts to reveal itself to you, I don't know, I kind of almost kind of took that in a way as like, just go with it. You're going to you're going to find out, like what we're doing here. And that's exactly what happens because this movie gives you nothing. Nothing. It drops you in and does not explain itself that you have to kind of just keep going. You have to keep going with it. I think the cinematography helps speak to it too. It's that handheld just keeps it moving. But anyways, this is the journalism equivalent to like heat. What? You are dropped into heat. There is no explanation. They have a fucking job going on that like is never really explained. That's when they have to bail on. We walk and they and Val Kilmer is like, stop drilling and walk out. There's there's all this stuff going on. Similarly, in the Insider for what one of the things that showcase is so well is that a 60 minutes producer at Lowell's stature is not working on one story at a time. He cannot afford to be. So there's you always hear him like, yo, do you want Mexico City? Not know? He doesn't say you. Yeah. You want Mexico City for the for the evening news. You know, there's like, this Unabomber stuff going on. They're down in New Orleans like I shoot the fucking thing myself. So he's always got he's very busy. He's got all these things going on. But the thread that and when the movie starts, we are not having anything to do with smoking. He's no being led to the Sheikh, the leader of Hezbollah, played by none other than Cliff Curtis. Great casting there. Do you know that I love yeah. Curtis. So back in the day he used to I mean he took everything. He was playing Escobar two years later. Like he's like some I don't even know what ethnicity supposed to be in bringing out the dead. But you know, he's like that tripped out drug dealer. He's a Latino gangster in Training Day. Smiley. God, I love crip courtesy. You put a bit everything. You know, today, I love. They take that, like, the hood off. Pacino and the shakes like coffee. And he goes, yeah, thanks. Like you just got to perks up. He didn't know anyone was in the room. I love that. I mean, it also, you know, because you start putting together. Oh, he's being taken away. He is definitely in he's in a certain place of the world right now. He's in the Middle East and he's calm. He is he's not rattled. And you know, and I think that says a lot too, because like, it's really easy to watch a movie like this. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh no, this guy is, if he was fearful now all of a sudden he's a captive, right? No, he's a journalist. He's being taken here because he literally like these people can't let him let any let anyone know how he got here. He can't. Surplus. That's all it is. This is a meeting that they were going to have. And he sits down and he's like, you want to be on 60 minutes. You have something you want to say? Yeah. And if you want to get that out to the world, this is the most reputable way to do it. And this is what he's offering. Yeah. All the way out here just to try to get this guy on his TV show. And he's so calm about it, but he's so assured, too, is like, this is where you want to be. I love it, it just it lets you know everything about what we're about right away. Yeah. Like this is the level of importance that what I do is and what I can offer you to at least the American people. Yeah. And it's, he's like, you know, Mr. Wallace, like 60 minutes speaks for itself. All that. And I love, oh, God with a oh, when he opens the curtains and like, the aperture changes in camera and you can see out into where they are. But yeah, his poise as low Bergman is very telling because he's not nervous. He's not a captive. This is what he had to do. This is what the producers have to do. It is widely understood that people like Mike Wallace, Mike Wallace served his time in the field. He did all that. Now he is the one presenting the story. You watch 60 minutes to see Mike Wallace, his face. But he is not out there in the shit in the field. They fly. Bergman goes and chases down the story. In this case, they will fly Wallace out to do the interview, but for the most part, he's walking out of his the office at CBS, just a few steps onto the 60 minutes set in interviewing his subject. But so rolls role Lowell's role. That's fucking tough. Lowell's role. Bergman's role is much more boots on the ground, chasing after it. One of the great things about this, not unlike heat, how every other scene is, either it's McCauley or it's Hannah, and we're jumping back and forth or something to connect it to those stories. That's what we're doing. Yep. Here in this one two, we just immediately go to this guy like cleaning up his office. And I love that detail of there's this birthday party like in the background that he has not been invited to. And you're like, okay, now who the fuck is this guy? And that that camera is right on his face, like next to his ear? Yes. So he leaves here. So that's me. So I want to say the cinematographers, the great Dante Spinotti, who also does a lot of his own, operating. But the second operator is none other than Michael Mann. Michael Mann, he's not the credits cinematographer, but it is Michael Mann, usually for crazy ass shots like that holding the camera. He's the one holding the camera right next to Russell Crowe's face. He'll talk to him sometimes, like to his actors as they're going, not like barking out direction, but he'll say, you know, little things and man, you really feel that sense of that. Like kinetic energy. Movies about journalism stuff are not shot this way. This movie is fucking gorgeous. Like, this movie looks so good. The colors pop the way they use shadows, but then they'll also see harsh sunlight beaming in on them. Oh, but I love how close the camera says he's leaving. And then he goes in slow motion as he passes. Yeah, slow motion. Also very well used in this movie. Yeah, there's a lot of style that Michael Mann has to a lot of his movies. I mean, I mean, you can't get away from any Michael Mann movie and you don't see like that, like that breakdown of like the thirds where it's like the subject is in the far corner, and then the rest of it is just like the open space. There's this, just this thing. But with this the choice, because it happens all throughout the movie where we're literally right next to someone's head, or the focus is on like the ear in the eyes. Well, that's what journalism is. It's what are what are you seeing? Are you hearing I loved it, I thought it was just like, all right, we have we're right on the ground with this guy, but maybe we should pay attention to what he knows. That was initially like the very first thought I had. And that was all just due to the camera. Wagon's got a secret. Yeah, yeah, I'll do the camera goes home very telling that he starts, you know, hitting the source right away when he gets home. He's good with the kids. He is Russell Crowe's portrayal of Logan. I would not classify as like a congenial guy. It seems that he was playing him very well. Why, again, was a difficult character tough to get along with, standoffish. But he, by all accounts, got along very well with his kids, his two kids by this current wife, by Leann. And he loved to teach and he was a great teacher. And you can I love how Crowe, like, kind of comes alive in those teachings. Yeah, yeah, but right here you're being Diane Von Nora playing Leann, his wife. She's like a really good, just southern belle drinking the white wine. All done up. Oh. You're home. It's home early. And this is Al Pacino's wife in heat and. Yes, yes. So different. So crazy. How different she looks. It's the very stereotypical housewife role, but I think it's really done well here because we should. It shows eventually as it goes how broken that is. Yeah. And it because it brings out all these value systems in a lack of communication that just really was a very old fashioned way that people used to live, husband and wife. The husband goes up through the corporate ladder. So Jeffrey White Game was making 300 K a year in 1995 at Brown and Williamson in Louisville, Kentucky. That's a hell of a fucking salary. That's amazing. That's a great salary. She stayed at home and raised the kids when, in a snap, all of that is taken away as she is about to learn. Where did she go to first? Yes, she goes to medical coverage. What about medical care for the girls? One of his girls is sick, but then immediately goes to car payments, mortgage, house and it's like, you know, I love what a way he tells her to, like, he waits a really long time like it does. She doesn't know how to communicate. He doesn't know communicated literally. He says it's in the car forcing her to go to the car, and she's like, what are these boxes? And then, you know, oh, I'll go to the store. What for? Who the fuck is the store? So this was in the middle of dinner. I mean, there's there's a lot that you can tell they worked on. Even when he, like, gets up as he's sitting down, I. This may be the first time I realize it because I had the captions on, he says very dismissively to her instant rice, as if to say, like you made instant rice. This is a man who worked in Japan. I speak fluent Japanese. You serve me instant rice. That's what's waited in that comment. But yeah, the way he finds out I got fired from my job today. Well. Oh, God, what are we going to do? What? And yeah, we're seeing, like, there's different ways to communicate this. He, in real life did not tell his wife that he was going to tape for 60 minutes. That's an actual thing. Like they went up for that dinner and he was expecting never communicated to Bergman. Just expected Bergman to explain it to it. And Bergman was like, what the fuck, man? Like, yeah, yeah, my role like, this is your wife. Like, well, I mean, come on. But right before she finds about getting fired, I got gotta I got to make a comment about how good he is when he's explaining the asthma attack. That. Oh, yeah, that it's Michael Mann right there breaking something down. So scientific. It sounds so convincing, but very but easy enough to understand for a little girl to understand for us to understand. We're like, oh, okay. He's. Yeah, he does have skills. He's good with the kids. He may not be good at talking with adults, but the way that he's explaining this, it's like, you know, he doesn't like to have his integrity questioned. He doesn't like to have all this stuff. Questioning kids. I guess he when he can tell someone what to do, he can be more amicable. But if he's being told what to do, then it gets tough. But, you know. Welcome to adulthood, Jeffrey. Why can't I slow down with deep, deep. Well, I'm gonna. What? Yeah. We go. Deep breaths, deep breaths. Clint. What the Cuda. Who's dusty? Sweetheart. Dusty. You breathe him in. Okay, so what's having to look at me? What's happening to you now? Cells called mast cells. It's called your lungs. Don't breathe any more of that. Dust in the airways in your lungs are like branches. When the branches close up, you get an asthmatic attack and we give you medicine and you get better, Okay. Better already. I want you. I mean, it's also really great when a character. Because, I mean, just due to the nature of, of of certain conversations that need to happen from Lowell to Wagon. Wagon speaks very self-aware about his flaws. You know. You know, he'll he'll be like, I, I drink too much and, you know, I maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm not the best communicator. And there's something about when a character does that. And then we actually see that played out. Because what I love about Russell Crowe's performance in this is that he he behaves this way. He states that he knows that it's a bit of a thing. And then when he actually does engage in that behavior, there is like as it's happening in real time, this sort of self-aware, like, God damn it, I'm doing it again. Like I feel like like there is an immediate I am bad at this. And that's not getting better. And I don't know even what to do about that. I love that it it actually gives him a lot of empathy. Yeah, yeah. Because you can look at some of his decisions and behavior and be like, that's that's not the way to do it. But then when you see him, know that it's not the way to do it, but it's happening anyways. Yeah. It did. It's so fucking good. His performance is amazing. I can't say enough good things about him in this movie. It really is like it's it's a crowning achievement of his career. It's it's just something that has gotten so much better with age even. And, he's just. Yeah, he really is something of a wonder in it or less. We already kind of touched on it, but our last little Prolog here is meeting Mike Wallace. I love that ten. Like as soon as we to see him in the room, you see that tan. And again our relationship our the audience, his relationship with Christopher Plummer in 2024. You know, he's he won an Oscar. He's now past is different than it was in 1999. So there's some like Mike Wallace. There's more of a blending of you didn't necessarily see Christopher Plummer right away, but right out of the gate, this dude starts throwing haymakers and immediately all for show moves his chair and just starts messing with the sheets. Guys like, I can't conduct an interview from over there and just starts getting pissed at. I love Pacino in the background. Were there that he's like, you want to are you ready? Or you want to keep fucking around and warm up some more? And he goes, no, I've got my heart started. It's just that's like he's, you know, using a verbal defibrillator on himself, being like, let's go. I love that so much. So much. I mean, it now feels like a personal interview. It's I, I, I'll tell you. Hey, well, I'm talking to you. I'm his job, man. The hell do you think I am? A 78 year old assassin? Do you think I'm going to karate him to death with his notepad after you done? Hello. My name sheet. And in my illusion balance. I don't know what I'm saying. Yes. We're there. Good. Well, ask him if Arabic is a second language. That's not fucking mandatory. Oh, I see that. Oh, there. Oh, slow. Slow shake. Do you mind if you just would just turn your chair a little bit to face Mr. Walls and ask me, how are you? Okay, Alicia, how are you still okay? Okay. Yeah, I know how you. Are you ready? I you want to keep fucking around? Warm up some more? No, I've got my heart, star. Okay. Our Todd. I was I've literally wrote down that there is a version of your life where if, boy, if you could live in a job particularly, I think it would be journalism because that, like, there needs to be, like, a level of passion going on, like we're trying to get something done here, but like, I've known this about you and this, I've never been able to put it into words. But there is something about being in a job where stakes are on the line, and it's a bunch of like, hardened men that that are getting like heart attack level of like blood pressure going all just due to something so stupid. Yeah, yeah. Like you find that shit hilarious, like, oh, this is all over for sure, but I'm about to have a fucking heart attack about it, you know, in the background we're there. God, I love it. Great stress situation. It's just perfect. I just I literally wrote I was like, this is this is this is there's a world where you would thrive in this environment. Absolutely, absolutely. Thankfully, the people I work with now are relatively chill, but you never know if you have to throw down. Sometimes it gets tense on sets. Get a break. Bad. I've had to do it a few times. We will talk about those though. Fun day. I want to tell people about that. There I go. I have to tell that on the air sometime. Well, yeah, that that is a slightly different context now for. Yeah, sometimes you have to break bad and you to make your intention clear. Not like physically threatening people threatening me in my family. Oh, God, I love that scene. We'll get to it. But now the movie's really, like, kicking in. We've met everyone. You don't know how Bergman and Weigand are going to connect. You know, I learned a lot reading the Vanity Fair article is very common for Lowell Bergman to just have to get anonymous boxes of documents, but happen all the time because he was known for being this investigative journalist. Well, I'm going to talk a lot about Lowell's travel schedule because he was the when we cut to him and his wife, Lindsay Crouse, they're like, in bed. That's supposed to be in Berkeley, California. Okay, so that's Lowe's home base. Kim. Right? His office is in New York City. Wow. That's crazy. So when when this box of documents is just dropped off, that's all it is. It's these box of documents from Phillip Morris. He doesn't know why they came. They're they're gibberish to him. Makes a few calls because that's what he's good at. Finds out about this wagon guy. He's just looking for someone to make sense of this. This doesn't make sense to me. And then we get fucking Michael Mann. And you couldn't do this scene today because faxing is so obsolete. But 2.5 minutes of faxing back and forth, which is just brilliant, you know, can't talk to me, won't talk to me, don't want to talk to me. I remember sitting on the edge of my, yes, theater and thinking, this was so intense. Like what? What's going on here? No. If you want it in the way, you know, I've seen this movie so many times, it's such a nerd. But she knows very, touchy. He loves to touch his props. You'll see that a lot in this performance. And the way he puts up his glasses, and they almost fall, and he goes to, like, stop them on the desk when he's calling, like, in, you know, if you want to talk to me, I'll be in the lobby of he has to pull out the phone book. What's a what's a hotel in Louisville? I don't know, he has to pull it out, find it. And then that's that's how you would do it back in the day. These journalists, like. I do not know what the hell this guy's issue is. I was just given his name to transfer some or to make sense of some documents. Now this guy's flipping out his wife, saying he'll never talk to me. They don't even know who I am. So boom! At the drop of a hat, the presumption is that Bergman flies the hell out of Berkeley all the way to Louisville just to meet this dude in a hotel lobby, but I love that I'll maybe even show up. And maybe not. Maybe he won't. I mean, we've just seen him in some shitty blindfold get, like, driven around. He doesn't even know where he's going, you know? So this is nothing a flight to, you know, a commercial flight from Berkeley to Louisville. Cool. I'll do this. But then, yeah, you just, you know, sitting there reading the newspaper, the sounds great. The paper looks great. The sun's beaming in again. Walks in. So they actually met. This is how it happened I was crazy. There's so much coverage in this particular show. I mean, there is throughout the whole entire movie. There's not a lot of shots in this movie where he holds. We don't kind of get like that smooth Michael man. Like now he's moving. He's he's moving everything. The cuts are very fast. It's not a big like one take long takeoff. No but and just like Malik is and I always assume they are. And you watch and you're like now they're really not. Yeah. Hold these long, long takes. I think maybe it's because he just has such a wide lens in all of his. Like, this is how he likes his movies to look. It's just it's like gives it that wide space. So you feel like there's always so much to feast on because there usually is. But in this case, there really isn't. Like there's some shots you get at the end when he's like on the beach. I'm like, that's so Michael, man. Like, oh yeah, with the water and everything. But but what do you get some of these? I'm like, man, he is just cutting in this house from like the corner looking down like behind, like underneath. Pacino looking up at like I'm like, there's so much going on, but it's all intentional. It's all the kind of show, a little bit of like the, Like, I think we're more in Wigan's head space. Really? Yeah. Kind of just be like, yeah, I don't know what to do. I don't know why we're here. Like, there's a lot to think about. There's a lot to you and you're darting all around and that's that's what the camera's doing. So they meet in this hotel, you know, the first few times you see it, it's a little hard to understand. What, like, why is Crow so nervous? Yes. Or, you know, Crow again. Yes. He is talking to a journalist, so that's a little nerve wracking. But this hotel is right across the street from where he used to work, right across the street from Brown Williamson. So he's nervous, like, are they spying on me? Like, what's going on? That's why he's looking out the window at them. This movie really does thrive in its wordplay, because this scene is so good. You're really seeing a master journalist sniff out a story without being like, why the hell are you so paranoid, dude? Instead, he's kind of making light of it like it's room service. They usually knock first, and I love the way, like, Pacino when he leans kind of forward, he's in the sun. Then when he sits back on the couch, he's in the shadows like he's really back there and like, Crow goes, would you like to give me the documents? Now she knows, like, if you want to do it. Yeah. And he's basically saying CBS will pay ten grand to make sense of these documents for me. That's all. That's all I want from you. That I don't know why you're paranoid. These aren't. I don't even know where this guy worked before. These are Phillip Morris documents. These are not Brandon Williamson documents. And then he just admits, you know, I was head of research and development for Brown Williamson. I can't talk to you, but seeing Pacino put this together, like. Okay, big tobacco's a story, I get it. There's this, you know, transferred of energy a little bit where they can't get on the same page because they're not fully communicating. And I love that. And then immediately he's going to go back to New York, and we're going to meet his boss, Don Hewitt, played by the late, great Philip Baker Hall, one of his best roles. I love him in this. And right there they're kind of like sniffing, sniffing it out, like, is this? They're still talking about the chic story. So they're putting a button on that. They're finishing that up. And then yeah. Is this okay. Let's see. Is this going to be be a thing. And that's when Bergman get this is what plants see. And he starts to sniff out. All right let's let's look into confidentiality corporate confidentiality agreements. What's all this. But yeah, this hotel scene is just it's a really good little set piece of the movie. It's a really nice scene because it also, I mean, it it leads Russell Crowe. He wants to do this like, he doesn't know because everything he does is I can't. And then next the very next thing he does is he gives a little bit like he never breaks his, his confidentiality. But like he, he leans in more into I want to say something but but you know like because I mean literally I can't, I won't show up and all this and that. And then he shows up. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Can't do it. Won't do it. But yeah, he thinks it's going to be in the public's interest to share this stuff I love. There's a little line there. Some of Plummer's dialog, which is so good. As they're leaving the editing room, he goes, are you eating with us? Pacino. Yeah. Plummer. Bring it to tie. So they let us in the front door. I love that it's so good. All right, next sequence is Jeff's paranoia. Is it actually paying off? Because the next time we see him, he's being called back into Brown and Williams, and we call him B and W from now on. And he has to go before the CEO, Thomas Sandiford, played by just slime E southern Perfection by Michael Gambon. This is I love this scene. Top three favorite scene in the movie. Oh my god I love this is also one of my favorite ones to quote. I mean, Crowe is astounding in this. His nervousness is so palpable and the anger is right on the edge. And as soon as Sandford really not so subtly threatens him, it's just on. And then Sandford doubles down, threatens his family, and then we get, the great line. Now, don't be paranoid, Jeff. Yeah, we were together for weapons of three years. Now, the work we did here is confidential. Not for public scrutiny any more than I ones. Family matters. Threatening my family. Now to, They'll be paranoid. You have about the direction of research. Yeah. We may have had our differences. Research, you declare, is a badge of honor. You don't even know what makes water boil. Well, that's why we are scientists, okay? I don't believe you can maintain corporate integrity without confidentiality agreements. I was paid well for my work. The health and welfare benefits are good. The severance package is fair. I have no intention of violating my confidentiality agreement and disclosing that which I said I wouldn't. If we arrive at the conclusion that you're writing in bad faith, we would terminate right now payouts under your severance package. You and your family's medical benefits and initiate litigation against you. Mr. white, again. Thank you again, doctor Weigand. If you've examined the document, you'll see it's in your own best interest and you'll sign it. So what you're saying is, it isn't enough that you fired me for no good reason. Now you question my integrity on top of the humiliation of being fired. You threaten me, you threaten my family. It never crossed my mind not to honor my agreement. I will tell you, Mr. Sand, the firm and Brown and Williamson to fuck me. I will fuck you. In the Vanity Fair article, it is very clear to me that why, again, it's made very clear that Weigand was nervous and he was paranoid, and there was a lot of stuff, you know, I'm getting these calls, I'm getting emails, bullets in my box, stuff like that. But what is clear is that they were following him. He would get in touch with a lawyer, and within like an hour, someone would be contacting that lawyer trying to figure out like, oh, was Jeffrey, why get in here? So the fact that he was meeting across the street yesterday with a 60 minutes reporter, that has to have somehow gotten back to them. And, you know, this is this is a huge company. So now they're going we want you to double down sign like an air tighter, much more strict confidentiality agreement. And that disturbs why again sense of, let's say moral justice and integrity. Because he thought the one agreement he's already signed is enough. And I love that he ends this whole confrontation with it. Fuck me. Well fuck you. I, this is just it's great. Yeah, this is a great scene, but this is one of your favorites. Let's open it up. Oh, man. Well, it's there's so much. I mean, it's a scene where it's what's not being said, but then what? What actually ends up being said literally. Like they, they putter round and they talk about golf, golfing. I'd rather play than talk about it. Yeah, yeah. Like there's all this sort of stuff. And even like the threat to the family is, is sort of just sort of like, well, you don't need to get into this. It's not any real threat. It's insinuation. It would not be binding or illegal. He's you know, Sandford. He I like that he makes fun of his intelligence. You would even know what makes water boil it. Well, that's why we hire scientists. But he's. This is an intense guy. Like this is a threatening dude. Yeah, and you can tell with the Russell Crowe the way that he comes in knows this, but he also knows his situation, too. It's, if you watch Russell Crowe's, like, characterization, what he does physically in this movie, the the Brett's, it seems to me like they're just almost in every single scene. They're choked up right from the chest to the neck. Yeah. He's not a guy that's really like everything. He is not relaxing. And the more he gets worked up, the more you can actually see because he keeps his mouth shut, like his shifting eyes. All this stuff, it's all registering so beautifully in this scene. And and he keeps it throughout the whole entire movie. It's it's incredible. It's incredible stuff. Yeah. His body language, the way he is composing himself for his lack of composure, he's very look at look at the way he's composing himself here versus the 60 minutes taping where he's very like calm and very and delivering things. You know, you can go watch this on YouTube. It's 30 minutes long. Like you can see the real guy. So yeah, he is rattled here. Even says I don't like being back here. He, you know, questioning his word is enough to set him off. And then when you are doing these casual threats, he's like, I think you've taken it a step too far. And because Weigand is a reactionary character, he thinks that Bergman sold him out, which would make no sense for a 60 minutes producer to do. They would never be able to get sources. If after beating someone for five minutes, they call their former employer to wrap him out. What I love about this is, you know, they talk on the phone and yell, and what's going to lead to a couple minutes in the movie is Bergman has just hopped on a plane just to go to Lowell, just to go to why get house and be like, I didn't rat you out, I didn't burn you. Don't like in the rain. That's all for you. Came all the way down here just to say that. But you know, before that, we get some pure Michael Mann shit, which is just an angry dude going to drive some golf balls at night, going into the range, just getting stalked out by that Jack doing that suit, who's just crushing it was golf balls, just like blatantly looking at it. But I love this seed. This. It's so it's so well shot that, a still from the seed is Russell Crowe's image on the poster. I know it's so good. The blue I love this. I love that little seed, that golf scene. How's your handicap golf? I don't even know what that means. Okay, well, there you go. It says enough. Rather play it and talk about it. So yeah, Bergman and White. Well again connect I love these scenes. And again, that really shows the dedication of a 60 minutes producer like this about how you would have to go all over the country just for a story. Okay. I'm in New York where he got the call. We're Wiggins, you know, you ratted me out. How dare you? And then flies. Now they're talking in the rain. Now they're spending all day talking about it in the car and now in the car. We're finally learning what this movie's going to be about. We are finally starting to get a sense of the knowledge that we can possesses, which is that when these seven dwarfs the seven CEOs of Big Tobacco, when in front of Congress, they admitted and lied under oath that nicotine is not addictive. And that is something that Weigand and every other scientists in the tobacco industry, according to him, knows is emphatically not true. And you can read those sort of documents that Bergman is just handed him from Philip Morris. And you would be able, if you understand the language, decipher that very quickly. But he's in a pickle because he has said that he will. Now he will sign their enhanced confidentiality agreement, because if they don't, he doesn't get medical coverage. If he doesn't get medical coverage, his sick daughter get sicker. So that's the wheels that are spinning. And this was all a very, very real thing. So that's what this movie is going to be about. Can Lowell Bergman, who does not give a shit about corporate confidentiality agreements, part of his job is getting people out of them, because his job is to get people to talk if it's in the public interest and if it is truthful, so that that that's where we are. If Logan does it, he is threatened. But that seems like a low. Like he doesn't care as much about that. He's worried about his family. He's worried about his daughters, his wife, and that's it. That's it. And and and he and he wears those stakes for him so. Well, like, I mean, he talks about it like how he talks like talks to Lowell about it. But like you can see in every decision that he makes that this is what he cares about. It's so important to know, like what someone actually cares about because they're, you know, characters with families and movies that had families not a priority. Like that's not really matters. So when certain stakes are threatened, some of them are more lived in and, and, and, you know, from every step of the way that Russell Crowe cares about the well-being and safety of his family. Yeah, yeah, he doesn't really care about him as much, but it's like, stay away from me. Stay away from my family. Don't come here anymore. And as it goes on and it just helps to everything like you understand his conflict so much. Oh, absolutely. He goes and applies to be a teacher, which I really like, because he's going to get paid$30,000 as opposed to $300,000. And this means they got to give up. Yeah. But I mean, presumably he'll get health insurance, but they have to give up their cushy lifestyle to got to move to a smaller house. Doesn't look like his wife is too happy about that. Now. His daughter is apparently seeing people outside. We will learn that wagons got guns, paranoia, crank calls. Everything is building, building, building. And all the while now we have Lowell being like, how do I get this guy to like, is there a way to compel him to talk that is legal? So that's what he's doing behind the scenes, trying to figure all that out. Meanwhile, this is another one of my favorite scenes. Two dudes talking when they meet at this Japanese restaurant. Oh, so it's why Garnett Road scene in the hotel. There's a lack of communication going on where you're like, they can't get on the same page here. This scene is a really, really good encapsulation about how Lowell Bergman and Jeffrey Weigand in real life did not get along. They weren't friends. They did not see eye to eye on stuff. Bergman found him to be a bit entitled, a bit just all this stuff. But Bergman said, I don't have to be friends with a source. The this man has compelling information. This is going to make for a very good, very important story. And he was right. And their their inability to get on the same page, the inability to hit a groove. It's very, I keep saying palpable. It's very clear here. The unlike ability of Jeffrey Weigand, the abrasive man with poor communication skills, is very good here. And I just love this scene. This is also the scene where he kind of comes clean, like I drink too, too much. On a few occasions. Shoplifting charge was thrown out poorly in one time. Like, you know, he's admitting all this, but I love when he just assumes that Bergman, like, idolized his father. Then he's like you. My father was not the most ingenious man I ever knew. Let's, get back to you. I just I love that Bergman is like, we're not going to be friends, dude. Like, I'm not. Talk about the story. Great scene. And I think I think there is almost this in the performance of Crowe. Like, there is like an element that he has no one else. I was just going to say, this man has no friends. He has no one. Yeah, he's got no one. And Lowell ends up being that one person that he reaches out to when things get crazy and almost in a way that it is a friend. But but then he just chops him down all the time too. He blames him. So he's like, he calls you when he needs you. But then as soon as something goes wrong, you're the first person to blame, right? Right. Exactly. Shortly after that, we're getting introduced to Colm. Colm Fiore. I think it's how you say his name. I'm never really known to say that. It's Richard Scruggs, that lawyer. And this is a guy, real guy, who was filing lawsuits against Big Tobacco on behalf of Mississippi. He's got a team. This guy, Michael Moore, playing himself. There's a few people in the movie who play themselves. And then Bruce McGill as another lawyer, Ron Motley. Oh, yeah. Don't worry. We'll get to him shortly. It would be better if he called us. So that's I love that. It's like, you know, if we can get these two together and we can find out a way to make him testify, and that could get him out of his confidentiality agreement. But, yeah, it's getting tough at home. Liens getting we will kill you emails. Hell of an email. Hell of an email. Red screen. So when the ball in the box shows up and why again is so enraged by this that he calls Bergman and he's like, I want to get on tape now. Like I'm right. Yeah. You know, and Bergman, like, it would be illegal. Like we can't do it. It's like, I don't care if you have to hold it. I'm pissed off. I want to get on tape right now. Let's do it. It's when you go back and watch the real 60 minutes interview. Knowing that context, knowing that he hasn't gone to court yet, like all this stuff, knowing that he hasn't fully blown the whistle yet when he's doing the taping is really wild. But I love, when those FBI agents show up to, Crow's house and Bergman just right away sniffs it out, calls like one of his contacts and is insinuating, do they have people who are going to get jobs in private security when they tire as we fucking speak? And then one of the great lines of the movie, I'm getting two thing things. He stole stuff in pure areas. Oh, it's so good. It's I love that I'm telling you, your agents in that office are acting improperly. Now, who are they trying to protect? Let me tell you something, though. Look, look, look, you're talking about two agents in a regional office in Louisville. I got the goddamn Unabomber threatening to blow up L.a.x. I gotta move. I gotta move 45 agents from all over the country at the LA. All right? When I get a chance, I'll give it a look. You better take a good look, because I'm getting two things. Pissed off and curious. Now, any of these guys been, offered jobs in corporate security after they retire? Either one of those guys got X agent pals already in those jobs. Like, for instance, their ex supervisor who's already at Brown and Williamson as we fucking speak. I'll give it a look. You're getting my drift? I'll give it a look. So that's the stakes for Y again. This big tobacco BMW was so big in Louisville they would be able to flex on the FBI to go like take his computer, take his guns, make it make this all seem like it's his fault. Make it seem like he planted the bullet. That's crazy, man, it's like a real dude. This shit actually happened. And it's. And you feel the helplessness of that scene. Like when when he falls chasing after the guy who's stealing his computer and he gets up, they love it and his way, and he's just sort of like everything. Everything was on that computer. Like I like now. Now he's got no leg to stand on other than his word. Right? That music, I mean, if you're a fan of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, that song by Gustavo, Gustavo, they use that in a more is perilous 21g Babel I keep but I love I yeah, it's a really good scene. I love that you just like falls down in the in all place, so. Well, yeah. It's a good fall grateful I mean he reportedly do you know how he put on his weight because he gained a lot of weight for it and lost it? Of course, for Gladiator, I imagine he ate well. Yeah, of course he fucking ate. I'm saying, do you know his method? This dude would get cartons of ice cream, microwave them so they would melt, put olive oil in it, mix it up and chug them to gain weight. Oh my God. He put it all to him. Jared Leto said he did that for that. So he played the the. Oh, the guy who killed mine in the 70s. Yeah, he said he contracted gout because of it. Yeah, that's just stupid. And like, I mean, to do it, do that for a Michael Mann movie. Don't do it for a movie no one's ever going to watch. Like it's never made sense. Be 50 cent did that for a movie that no one seen the opposite though. He got like, like 100 pounds. He got so skinny for this movie that no one's ever seen. It's weird. It's, Anyway, I do it for Michael Mann, but I don't know if I do it just for, like, any old movie, it's going to be straight to streaming or something. Man. Chowing down ice cream. Yeah. Just like, going for it. Oh my God. And then we I already referenced this scene, but this is an all timer scene when they fly him to New York. So it's Leanne and Jeff having dinner with oh, Bergman and Mike Wallace. And you can tell she's so like. But the fact that she doesn't even really know why she's there and she puts it together. Like what? Taping and Wallace just looks like stunned. I mean, you know, it's the same journalists and it's it's one of the best exchanges in the movie. Like, who are these people? He's so baffled in the way Pacino throws it out. Ordinary people under extraordinary pressure. Mike, what the hell do you expect? Grace and consistency. You didn't tell her we were taping. What, she think she was coming to New York for? Talk about it. Think about it. Had a plan to ease into it, but I really don't know how to do that. Who are these people? Ordinary people under extraordinary pressure, Mike. What the hell are you expect? Grace and consistency. Oh, I love it. Oh, so that that is Michael Mann. That's that's, I get chills just saying that. What do you expect? Grace and consistency. It's perfect. It's like. It's perfect. And the way that Leanne is stormed out of that restaurant. Does Jess go after her? No, of course not. He goes to the bar to get to get a few fingers of booze. It's just great while she's kind of getting a kick out of it. I mean, you see Pacino because he's just sort of, like, the whole entire time. He's like, like, it's like you didn't tell her. You didn't tell it like. Like I was waiting for the right time. Yeah, but you were at dinner with Mike Wallace. Like, when's the right time? Like he did the way he kind of looks like a bird Crow does sometimes. Like peacocking his neck. Yeah, like turn dart. Really? Like, rigid, like he can't. And. Yeah, the breathing, like you're saying. Yeah. He gets worked up in a very believable way here. Yep. And it's all his fault. Like, this is one where it's like he just scales. Yeah. Yeah. He did not handle this. Well. No, no, he did not. And then it was straight to the eye. No seriously. Exactly. And we go straight to the taping, which we're again, we're not far into the movie when this tale takes place, but now it's on the open. Now we know the full story. Why, again, has definitive scientific proof that cigarets are a delivery device for nicotine, which is a highly addictive substance. And then beyond that, tobacco companies engage in a protest in a process known as impact boosting. I love the way he says that with his, the process is known as impact boosting, which manipulates the nicotine his. That's what he's just whole essence is so good in this scene. I love the way that he's playing it. It really is a good match up with the the actual footage. You can see just the ease of it. The hammer of why did they, you know, why did they fire it, what was the reason they gave you? And he takes that beat, you know, poor communication skills and you just great. And then you're watching Bergman watch them. And he's looking back at his assistant, played by Debbie Mazer, who's like, literally keeping a stopwatch. So old school journalism, then they're taking the temperature of the room, and it's like everyone in the room is going, this is lightning in a bottle, like we have it. This is incredible. No one has ever done this. Pacino's face is so darkly lit. So what's what's. There's no problem. We got this. We got him on tape. This is amazing. There's no issue. We are in the nicotine delivery business. And that's what cigarets are for. Delivery. A device for nicotine. A delivery device for nicotine. Put it in your mouth, light it up and you're going to get your fix. You're going to get your fix. You're saying that Brown and Williamson manipulates and adjusts the nicotine fix not by artificially adding nicotine, but by enhancing the effect of nicotine through the use of chemical elements such as ammonia. The process is known as impact boosting. While not spiking nicotine, they clearly manipulate it. And on March 24th, Thomas Sandiford, CEO of Brown and Williamson, had you fired. And the reason he gave you? Poor communication skills. There's also a great shadow on Crow's face. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's still a of a guy that's in conflict about coming out and saying this. Like even though he is full on in the open, but there is still like he there's a part of him that is scared and just having like that lit in that way. It's just, it's it's a well, I'm sure it looked like that in the interview. I'm sure they probably wanted to make it look as close as they could. Yeah. On just a cinematic level, it translates really well. There's a good thing when Wallace picks up on the threat and he goes a delivery vice for nicotine, you put it in your mouth, light it up. You got that's exactly from just right there from, you know, you going to get your fix. It's so, it's it's really good, but you're. Yeah. You're like what? Where where else can we go here. Okay. And then we pretty immediately go to him teaching which I love his. That's like kind of his happy place is teaching I love you know, it's one of the few times we see him smile. He's like, well, okay, you know, I never taught before, so we're going to be fine. I, I don't know, I love him in that classroom. Love him. Yeah. Bergman of course, doesn't trust the FBI. So he's hired private security for him. These guys are amazing. And there are going to be responsible very soon for my single favorite sequence in the movie. Oh, and great little touch. Wind blows in the house and, you know, meeting security, all this stuff the and storms out. But Pacino goes to one of the daughters and he's like, you want to go back to the game? I was we were playing before I was Pacino like guaranteed on set. They were playing a game and stuff. But that's also a Bergman thing, like get in good with the kids, prove to why again, that that you're cool with the kids and it's just it's a great little touch as an actor and as a producer. He really is great in this movie. I'm not trying to be like, Al Pacino is great in the movie. But yeah, no one talks about Lowell Bergman as one of his top five top ten performances. And it is. It really, really is. It's not as showy Pacino performance like how not until like the last until yeah. Yeah, exactly. Then you get full on Al Pacino. But I mean, really, I think we associate Al Pacino is that guy who's got like, you know, he's he's just this explosive actor, and he is. But I love when we get to see him just a little bit more. Kind of just like he's just doing a job, just doing his thing. And he's very calm throughout the majority of this movie. And he kind of matter of fact about so many things like, I like, listen, man, I don't know what to tell you. Yeah. I mean, he's he is never, misrepresenting himself or the stakes or anything like it, which is going to come into play real soon. Like, yeah, you, you could go to jail for this. It's up to you. I'm not telling you to go testify because you, you know, this shit could happen. I mean, by the way, that that's a crazy thing to be told as you're there. Oh, I read that point. We're in Mississippi. No, not yet, because. Not yet because we got two small things we gotta debate. If you are supposed to wash your hands in a bathroom sink or the kitchen sink, I love that little moment of frustration. Can you wash it? And she yells at him, okay. And this is that's how Michael Mann wants to show that the marriage is disintegrating, not a ten minute long argument, which may give the wife character a little bit more agency. No one, Michael Mann is accused often of underwriting his female characters. Okay, I understand this is again reading the Vanity Fair article. I think it was tense there at the end between Leann and Jeff. That's all. That's all made. But yeah, Mississippi is is the airport. I love the sequence so much. When he gets out at the airport now, he's got private security and he's walking through. And then we cut to him and it's slow motion. Then some guy with a box of flags is coming up to him, just presumably to be like, here, here's a flag. And his security ingeniously intercepts him. They push him out of the way. The sound is so strong it's slo mo. The guy grabs on the back a again, like, just keep walking. Everything's okay. It's like 45 seconds. But that's Michael Mann that. Yeah, you're so in the head space. The way he's cutting back from regular speed to slow motion. The look on Crowe's face, it is one of my just standing alone favorite little tiny things that not tiny, just little sequences in the movie to showcase his brilliant direction. And it's brilliant acting. I love that sequence so much. It's because what we get out of it, like, we yeah, we understand everything. Like we understand it while it's happening. Crow not being aware how much danger he could potentially be in. And then these security guys, by acting the way that they are being like, oh no, there is danger. And it's all kind of happening in a way where we have to become aware of it, like we as humans, like it takes us a little bit to process like a and but you can say there's like 45 second scene, but we're processing it all as it's happening and we're in that light bulbs are going off for us. That's what's so great about this is like, yeah. And then we're left with the impact of like, oh, this is a big deal. Holy shit. And then when you get served, it's it, it's scary because at that point you think that guy's going to come up with a gun because it's because within 45 seconds we didn't have that thought. Now we do now. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. That's very well said. All based on direction. Get just all that stuff. It's perfectly edited. Everything, even the sound when they grab the guy to like, move him away. The sound of the papers rustling when he tosses it. So yeah, he's been served with a gag order. Now he's going down to Mississippi. He he's been served a gag order from a Kentucky court. So basically, he if he testifies against being in Mississippi, where this lawyer played by Cold Fury, has a active case going, if he's compelled to testify by the court, then that could be a legal way to get around his confidentiality agreement. But it's all very, very gray. That's what this gag order is saying. The gag order says essentially, if you go and talk in Mississippi, we're going to send your ass to jail when you get back to it. Yeah. And yeah, when you step foot back in Kentucky, we end up like he has a team of lawyers telling him this, like, yeah, this is a very real possibility. Like, you could go to jail. He goes, how does one go to jail? And they're basically like, I don't know, buddy. Like, this is on you. And so it's all right there and then this is one of the reasons why the movie is so long. Man has to give him that time in that space to think about this decision to go out like whatever on the bayou there, just stare at the water and the song comes back and he's thinking, thinking, thinking. And I love, Bergman. Let him take a beat like, let's just let him think about it. Bergman kind of gives him an out. Like, maybe too much is maybe too much has happened. Maybe, you know, you got a wife, you got a family, I understand. And then a brilliant I mean, we love our fucking lines, but. Brilliant. Fuck it. Let's go to court. I fucking love it. And then call going Mister doctor, why game would like to leave now. Like not even letting a millisecond go by and then boom, they're off. Great scene. What's changed? You mean since this morning? No, I mean since whenever. I fucking. Let's go to court, doctor. Why again would like to leave now. It's a great scene. And it it is. It's so great that we're actually left with him thinking in that decision because, I mean, if you're in tune with the movie at this point, that decision is weighing on the audience, too. You're sort of like squad of War. What is what is he going to do? And, and it's an earned moment that's like such a big credit to this movie is that if you can feel the weight of that decision, the way that Crowe's character feels it, you've, you've, you've, you've done it. Fucking Michael Mann, fucking Michael Mann. And then what does he do here? He just gives his movie for a two minutes over to one of his favorite character actors, the great Bruce McGill. No stranger, Michael Mann. It's been a lot of his movies. I love Bruce McGill. Bruce McGill's playing this lawyer, Ron Motley. And, you know, they're wondering, like when they're working on the scene, they're developing it together and they're thinking, I need a way to snap this opposing lawyer, this a lawyer representing being, like, into a tension. It's not like he would scold a kid, like, wipe that smirk off your face. Yeah. And then they go, what if we just say that? And I already did at the beginning. But this, I mean, in the theater, the first time I saw it, having a somewhat of a relation, like knowing who Bruce McGill was, knowing that he was like, oh, that's that guy. And seeing him completely fucking lose it in a controlled manner for three sentences is, you know, oh, you got rights. Lefts upstairs. Yeah. Yep. And and just loses it. The icing on it is him turning still red faced, furious but turning. But back to why again. And just easing out. Go ahead, Doctor Reagan. And it's like perfect I this is one of my favorite scenes of the movie. Might be like the scene of the movie I love it. Just give it to a character actor for 3 to 4 minutes and he owns it. Oh, it's so good. Mr. Motley, we have rights here. Oh, you got rights and lefts. UPS and downs and middles. So what, you don't get to instruct anything around here. This is not North Carolina, not South Carolina, nor Kentucky. This is the sovereign state of Mississippi is proceeding like that. Smirk off your face. Doctor Watkins deposition will be part of this record. And I'm going to take my witnesses testimony. Whether the hell you like it or not. That's the question, doctor. Yes. It produces a physiological response which meets the definition of a drug. And it's so cool because we like I love how they stress. Like there's no judge here. Like, this isn't a typical movie courtroom scene. This is a deposition. That's it. Like when he's like, objection, objection. It's like, oh, she wrote it down. Yeah. It's been it's been noted. But there ain't no there ain't no judge here. Yeah. The southern state of is that I love that why I suck of your face. What the hell? You like it or not? So good. It looks like he's gonna have a fucking heart attack. Wagons. He does. He lets out a one sentence of testimony. Yes, it is addictive. Yes. And that's it. That's all. Yeah. Bruce, we go walking away, that's all. No more questions. The same thing you were saying on that 45 seconds in the airplane when he's in the back of that taxi or not the taxi, but whatever car is driving him back home. And we see that car on fire, car burning. Yeah. It's a way and film to register this paranoia that. Absolutely Weigand has were able to kind of like step into it from with with perspective though like we're we're not feeling like that exact like acute paranoia. But there's like a sort of like this idea that it's there. I don't know how as a filmmaker, if that's the your intent, you're like, all right, I'm, I want you to feel this, but this is how we're going to do it. It's so well done. Oh yeah, because both characters are on relatively easy street now. Like Bergman, we cut to Lowell, sitting there helping the editor literally piece it together. This is largely what I do for a living. Like taking all these different little segments and editing them together, seeing Pacino do it in this and I, I was just thinking these past couple of days, I'm like, this movie has to be responsible for the way I live. My life in some fashion, just how much I loved and was obsessed with this movie. Yeah, I mean, we're an hour and 40 minutes into the movie at this point and what else is there? He didn't. He testified, it's the the whistleblower one. Like he's smiling. I was being driven home. Bergman feels like he has a really good story. This is going to make for a really good piece. And then the movie just completely changes gears. I honestly think with the announcement of that burning car. But we change. So as soon as he as soon as he gets home, life is gone. And the way he that Crowe, when he opens that letter, it looks like he's going to vomit. He just looks like like he can't read it and that he's getting like some reflux that like he's getting sick to his stomach. Yeah, it's it's remarkable acting. It's so authentic. But then wife and girls are gone and then boom, we're in a CBS conference room and everyone's chummy Lowell sitting there talking to Mike, Dawn sitting there doing work. Everything's fine. And in walks in Gina Gershon, I don't know where. Just Gina Gershon as Helen temporarily, and the great Stephen Tobolowsky. Yes, I love Steve Lasky. I love Tobolowsky, so good. And for the first time, we hear the term tortious interference. And there's going to be a lot of very, very fancy word play for the rest of the movie. Regarding this term that the lot we've kind of already explained it up top, but the long and short of it is that CBS is afraid and afraid to the point of not airing the segment. They're afraid to air Weigand segment in fear that BMW will sue them, blind virtually into bankruptcy and ultimately own CBS. So for the first time in history, CBS corporate tells CBS news that they cannot air a segment that's not said outright. Right here, there's that takes a couple more scenes, but Bergman is the only one who's afraid of this, and I love that little beat it when she's like, the greater the truth, the greater the damage. Beep beep. Is this Alice in Wonderland? You said it's so good. Yeah. Where are you? Psycho. And no one's concern. Mike Wallace isn't concerned. We always, when we call the shots around here tortious interference. Sounds like a disease caused by a radio. So this is our first kind of instance that. Oh, we already knew that. Y y Ganz, life is in turmoil. Like, it's. Things have never really been going right for him. And now we learned that the calm one. Bergman, he goes and chases the story, but he he'll play with the girls. He'll he'll get the story out there. Now his sense of integrity is being fucked with. And he don't like this. Not too much. So things are going to start to get corporately wild from here. He's going to ultimately end up literally blowing the whistle on CBS to the New York Times. So this this movie's about two whistleblowers, and this actually happened like when Wallace comes to his hotel room and he goes, this is a breakdown of everything that went down in our shop. And he's saying, there's no way they could have known this unless your ass told them it's this brilliant. This is where the movie loses a lot of people. I get that, like especially on first viewing, because you get very, very technical, but then it just kicks into gear. I love it it. Yeah, it's it to me like, this is like the movie just sort of like just chokes up. And it did. Yeah. It's just, it's amazing. And it just it it just moves. It just keeps going. I love this, but let's get to the first big office fight. This is when Eric Cluster is coming into the office and saying, hey, no big deal. I'm just going to cut an alternate segment of the show. We're not going to show why. Again, it's going to put everyone in the clear and the chinos like I'm not touching my film. And we get I mean, now the movie's really taken off. You wondered like, I wonder if, like, Pacino, Pacino's going to show up, obey orders and fuck off. Oh, that's what I'm hearing. Put the corporation at risk. Give me a fucking break. I love it so much. I, you know, coming down. Do, I love when Phillip Baker all goes. You're an anarchist. Are you a businessman or are you a newsman? It's so, it's just so good, I hear. Shut the segment down, cut Weigand loose, obey orders, and fuck off. That's what I hear. You're exaggerating. I am. You pay me to go get guys. Like, why again? To draw him out, to get him to trust us, to get him to go on television, I do, I deliver him, he sits, he talks, he violates his own fucking confidentiality agreement. And he's only the key witness in the biggest public health reform issue. Maybe the biggest, most expensive corporate malfeasance case in U.S. history. And Jeffrey Weigand, who's out on a limb. Does he go on television and tell the truth? Yes. Is it newsworthy? Yes. Are we going to air it? Of course not. Why? Because he's not telling the truth? No, because he is telling the truth. That's why we're not going to air it. And the more truth he tells, the worse it gets. You are a fanatic, an anarchist. You know that if we can't have a whole show that I want half a show rather than no show, but no, no. Not you. You want to be satisfied unless you're putting the company at risk. What are you? Are you a businessman or are you a newsman? Because that happens to be what Mike and I and some other people around here do for a living. Put the corporation at risk. Give me a fucking break. These people are putting our whole reason for doing what we do on the line. Oh, what? I was done on this. The ultimate hammer scene being dropped when Mike Wallace sides with oh, Don Hewitt from here on out, the these scenes are why the real Mike Wallace, when he saw the film, said the movie was incredibly accurate for everything except the scenes. It involved him. So yeah, he he went on a very, negative campaign against the movie because he said that he never took this long to call CBS on their bullshit. That. But, I mean, you read the Vanity Fair article. It's just not true. So, yeah, Lowell loses and this infuriates him. But what a great argument just between the three of them or four of them. I mean, it's it's it's one of the great Al Pacino rants. But yeah, it really is devil's advocate Serpico, you know, and justice for all. Like, you got all these all these classic Pacino rants this, this, this one's up there, if not the best because the writing is so good. That's the thing. The writing is. So does it's such good wordplay. Volley back and forth, back and forth. And then another thing. This is another little gear of confusion or not confusion, complexity that the movie is throwing at us. He has done his journalistic due diligence, and now he's found that there's this SEC filing that CBS is selling a lot of its shares to Westinghouse. And then doing this, the Gina Gershon character, the Stephen Tobolowsky character, and the person who owns CBS, this guy Tisch, are going to get millions. You're going to make millions based on this merger. If this wagon segment airs, that will screw up the CBS sale. So he's like, all you assholes are going to make money from this. That's. And if we run the wagon segment, you're not going to make your bonus in millions. So fuck you. That's basically the the motive to see it I love it, I love it. It's just great. And then yeah, I mean poor why again now he's just in full on masochism. Oh, he's got a damn hotel room. The hotel room that they first met at. But it's directly across from the BMW building. What? I forget what Florida is. That's the legal. The Port Lincoln apartment. I mean, I forget what number it is. That's the legal department. That's where they fuck with my life. Yeah, but I mean, he he has to call him and be like, yeah. I mean, yeah, it calls them and says they're not going to air the story. Like, sorry. Pacino plays the way to that too. Of course, it'd be terrible for Weigand, but him being like, my hands are tied here, and I've never, ever, in decades of journalism been in this position. And yeah, because he's got he's got nothing else to say and he's going to be truthful. And, and he goes, he's like, I've never burned anybody. And this wasn't a case where he burned him. But the situation did. And and, and he's got enough integrity to own up to it. But man, when he sits down, puts his glasses down to make this phone call. Proof. And he calls Weigand when Wiggins and like, like I forgot exactly what he's doing. But it's like Weigand didn't need this phone call right now. Yeah. Yeah. Like and it because yeah, it's it's like he's been drinking I think this is when he comes home and tells his wife. Pacino does and he goes, I'm alone on this. And she goes, and it's Geoffrey again on the phone. And then he's like, you, oh, why you call me? And he's like, you called me? And then, yeah, they're talking. He's like, I just, I don't know how to say this, so I'm just going to say it. Yeah. Puts his glasses down. And then Logan just hangs up on him. He doesn't know what else to say. He's like, okay great. So this is was all for nothing. Yeah. And this was all wagons fear. Wagons. Fear was that I've put everything at risk. I've put my whole entire family. My family's left me because of this. Now it's not even going to. You fucked me. Basically is what? He's the cadet. Because it's the blame. He puts the blame on him right? Exactly. And and in this case, he doesn't really I he's not really, he's, he's sort of justified in that. Oh I just oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's not even. We ain't even gotten to the literal you fucked me scene because before things couldn't get worse, BMW releases this or they begin this exhaustive smear campaign, this character assassination, going through every facet of his life. And this is what they could afford to do. My favorite part of this little segment, you know, like the creepy dude, like, shows up at his ex-wife's house, they get her on tape. But then when he is talking to Pacino in the school on the payphone, that creepy bastard walks behind him, and so. Oh, really, I didn't know. Oh, yeah. Oh, she's stalking him. Oh, yeah. He's like walking right back there so that that editing in that scene is is, Oh, it's it's exactly when you want the cuts. Yeah. They're firing on all cylinders with everything, but it's just it's fucking brilliant. Yeah. Pacino's learning all this stuff. Did you, like about judo? Olympic team. You know, shoplifting all this crap, and then now Birdman has to do. I mean, this is crazy because he has to go on the offensive knowing that his corporation and CBS doesn't even want to air the as his story, he goes on the offensive, gets in touch with his sources at the Wall Street Journal to hold their story about this smear campaign on why again. Then he hires a husband and wife private investigator team. This is cool. That guy, the Boulder guy, Jack Palladino, he's playing himself here. So he's the actual P.I. who did this, investigating and discredited this ridiculous dossier. With all this pressure mounting, Mike Wallace goes to Bergman and says, you know, I really I smash CBS, you're going to want to watch this because I say that before our segment, there's a lot of things that are left out of it. You're going to want to watch it. And and then Mike Wallace goes and watches his little segment, and he sees that his response has been cut down drastically. And he turns and we get when he chews out with expert specificity chews out Tobolowsky and the jitter gunshot wind. Yeah. And if you notice the first time the first meeting she had with him, she's already dropping Mike. She's calling him Mike. Mike could do it all day. Yeah, yeah. And the way she does her first move is Mike and Mike. Mike, try Mr. Wallace. Oh, God, I love this. Yeah. So? So good. Tougher than ever. Where's the rest? Damn. Where the hell is the rest? Nebraska football fans voice there. You got it coming up in one hour. Goldberg. You cut the guts out of what I said. What's the time to generation? Bullshit, you corporate lackey. Who told you your incompetent little fingers are the requisite skills to edit me? I'm trying to Band-Aid a situation here, and you're not so damn to Mike my Mike. Mike, try Mr. Wallace. We work in the same corporation. Doesn't mean we work in the same profession. What are you going to do now? You gonna finesse me? Lawyer me some more? I've been in this profession 50 fucking years. You and the people you work for are destroying the most respected, the highest rate at the most profitable show on this network. Yeah. No, I think this is a great outburst. Like, it's a great I mean, it's just. Yeah, there's. What else can you really say about it? She looks like she's gonna she's like afraid. She's nervous when she's backing away from him. So good. And then. Yeah, we get the phone call, the long phone call. Because 60 minutes airs a segment with Y removed. He watches it in his hotel room, and it's essentially like breaking down. Bergman's been on a force vacation. Hilarious. I mean, the way this. Oh, this just goes. And he's. And he's, like, in the middle of the ocean. He gets a cell phone, has such bad reception. Why? Again, I don't know what the hell is going on with him. He's tripping out or something. The walls are changing. Everything's, you know, twisted. Flip it all around. It's so cool. Yeah. And the music, it's such a good. Yeah. Classic Michael Mann like, you know, like Michael Mann's music style. Like he, he he puts it in there and you're like, we're in a Michael Mann movie when we're getting this sort of rock. Kind of like techno. I don't even know what you describe it, but he's got a certain musical taste. He likes to put it in his movies. It's I love it. Oh yeah. This was the one thing Weigand said was the only embellishment about his life that the movie embellished was that he was never suicidal. That's what he said in real life. He wasn't very concerned about his family and all that, but he wasn't. It's nice where how Bergman kind of like, supports him in that way. Like there are a lot of people who care about you. I like that a lot. I think it's a good I love for these, you know? Yeah. Argue with the hotel manager. Tell him. Use these words. Get on the fucking phone. I can't say that. It's a kid. It's great. It's great. Yes, you can say it just like how I say it. Leo Bergman, I'm from 60 minutes. You take the 60 minutes out of that sentence. No one returns your phone calls. It's great. And now Bergman said enough. This is ridiculous. Like the smear campaign we've. We figured out that's all bullshit. So he calls the New York Times and blows a whistle on CBS. I love all those, like, meetings, like meeting in the bar and then meeting up with the journalists, you know, hold the story. Passing off papers under street lights. I love that shit, I love it, I love it. You. You see that? He's like, he he is doing everything that he can to, be the person that he's claimed to be this entire movie. I think that's like one of the most impressive, like, parts of this movie is, like, we've got a character that is all about honor. I love that one scene where he's like, I'm about it. A lot of moves. And, you know, he's cashing in. Everyone favors all all the bridges that he doesn't burn any. But all the bridges that he's made, he's going to all of them being like, I need this, I need this. Some of them are helping him. Like, there's the one guy is like, I can give you three hours, right? And like, before we air this. And then there's the other guy, he's like, hey, I need you to wait a on your story. And he's like, nah, not going to do it. So he's he's running up against help and hindrance in the entire time, but he's all doing it for his belief in what this should be. And it's Weigand like, he's like, I'm not going to let this guy go down for this. It's so good. Yeah, because he knows this stuff is bullshit and that everything in this smear campaign can be discredited and that should the smear campaign, as is, should not be in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, they should spend the three days discrediting this stuff. Not like the like the yokel local Louisville news story that Weigert says he's just trying to have a burger and a beer in a bar, and they come on like, this guy sucks Scott Sharpless, and he's a teacher at this school. You're like, God, Jesus. Like this sucks. And then, yeah, it's all out in the open. And then we get Mike Wallace and Leo Bergman in the hotel room. Great scene this summer that no explosions here. It's all understated. He looks like he's about to cry, honestly. Like it's a brilliant. Yeah, it's a brilliant scene. And and I think this is also just a testament to the writing. Mike Wallace is the the background character to this season, and he's an integral part of everything that's happening. But we don't really ever get a sense of how he feels. And outside of the outburst. And but this is the one where I'm like, this is just great screenwriting because like, to know how an outside character feels because we know how Weigand and Bergman are, and that's the focus of the movie. But when we get this guy that in detail describes why he sided with corporate over his friend and then talks about legacy and talks about this, it's an undeniable point of view that all of a sudden we're in the driver's seat of what the movie's giving us. But now we take like a little bit of a backseat detour to just what another character's point of view is, and it just opens up so much more like head space to think about. It's a great thing. Yeah, it's great, but it unlocks the movie when you are closer to the end of your life than in the beginning. Yeah, it's like you think about this stuff. I'm not talking about celebrity. I'm not talking about infamy. I'm talking about, yeah. How will you be remembered? It's. And then that final hammer of here's today's New York Times and it the editorial accuses of accuses us of betraying the legacy of Edward R Murrow. And you feel the pain in his voice when he says that and he just walks out. Yeah. Yeah. But yes, in me, it's such a big scene that it puts a whole new context on the entire movie. Twilight. It does. And it it and it and it it's I don't think Pacino ever questions what he's doing, like, in this, this race to like, he's, he's he's prepared to die on this hill for what he's fighting for, but have his best friend in the business come up and give him this piece of real life that, like Pacino, clearly has not thought about. Like he's been so like tunnel vision, focus and his what he believes in. I love that he, like Pacino's character, gives Wallace that grace. And you can see Pacino, he's like, fuck, I never thought that. Never. I never once actually thought about you. I, you know, this ever in any. And you look back and he hasn't. He goes, Mike, you're with me on this. He just takes it almost for granted that he does exactly what that's. And that's okay though, because they've built that kind of relationship like this. Guys. He's he's we're in the foxhole together. It's him and I we're always going to be this. But then when that's taken away he has enough like grace and respect to hear him out. It's not going to change his plan. He's going to still move forward with it. But it it's such a great scene that it gives us a little bit of a breathing room to just like the go, go, go that the whole movie. I love this scene. Might be my favorite scene, might be my favorite. Oh, I know, it's so good. That's a tough one. It is. It's a it's really hard to pick a favorite scene in this. But yeah, he doesn't Wallace doesn't chew a mouth chewing out comes in the next scene when Don Hewitt Baker Hall is, you know, you fucked us. No. You fucked. You don't invert stuff I love. Like, the movie can be so hyper articulate, but then it can just be. No, you fucked. You don't invert stuff. That's. It's like how we all talk that I love that, I love that, and then and also what The Wall Street Journal has done is they have printed in their pages. Why against testimony from Mississippi. So now the cat totally out of the bag. We have to air this. This is ridiculous. And I love I mean, one of my favorite lines is you just rushes over to the paper. He's like, I know I've done this to you before. You know the Wall Street Journal, not exactly a bastion of anti-capitalist sentiment. I love that it's so well-written. Television for caving to corporate in New York Times ran a blow by blow of what we talked about behind closed doors. You know, you fuck, you don't invert stuff. Big tobacco, try to smear Weigand. You bought it. The Wall Street Journal here, not exactly a bastion of anti-capitalist sentiment, refutes big tobacco smear campaign, has the lowest form of character assassination. And now, even now, when every word of what Weigand has said on our show is printed, the entire deposition of his testimony in a court of law in the state of Mississippi. The cat totally out of the bag. You're still standing here debating God, what the hell else do you need, Mike? You tell him you fucked up. Don't. And then, a complete flip from Wallace. Now we fucked up. Done. We just fucked up. Now, here's what we're going to do. And, and then, it's Mike. Well, what Mike Wells says, it goes in the air. It as is. Why gets to watch the show with his girls. A very effective sequence of Pacino in the airport. And we're seeing the people watching it like this was a huge deal when this story aired. It was a very, very big deal. Lowell seems to be forgiven as far as CBS goes. You know, he's chummy with Wallace. Everything's fine. They're they're editing the Unabomber package story. And then, yeah, he just calls him into a room and that he has said that he quits. What has happened here doesn't get fixed again. I love I love everything about this scene because it's show business. It's an ongoing wheel. It does not stop. So the levels of extreme that certain like like cases or situations like we just seen with this movie, the machine doesn't care what the gravity of people's lives it took to either get the story out or did it. Oh, bottom line, it aired like how many like, look at how many lives were ruined and what Lowell Bergman's character and Mike Wallace and everyone had to do to get this aired. But it's on to the next. And so Wallace kind of coming in to that scene, you know, talk about that moment before, talk about two polarizing different ways of these actors coming into this scene. Wallace is sort of like, well, basically it's like we got it done, you know? And now and now onward and upward and you and me, like, you know, like with not necessarily ignoring what happened, but it's it's like, well, now we're here and and Pacino, for the first time ever being like, we're not here. Oh God, I love that. Because this is what I was talking about in the way in the beginning of the pod was that line means so much more to me now than just the ending of a movie. It's a great way to end the movie, but when you look at what Pacino's character was talking about and what got broke. I don't, I like I just can't imagine that a person like Lowell Bergman at that time thinking that the system was broken. Imagine where it is now. It's just crazy, like where we've gotten I love it. Yeah, of course, the movie would have no idea how, telling it was going to be. That's how we started this conversation about the current state of journalism. But yeah, this, this stuff just doesn't really exist anymore. Not in this way. And that a little. Yeah. I mean, that's it. That's a Michael Mann dramatic masterpiece. No guns, no bank robberies, no thieves, no go fast boats. No. Just good old fashioned dramatic storytelling. I love his going out to those revolving doors. And we just kind of stay on the other side of the door. And he just goes. He's walking. Yeah. Music. It's a great ending. It's a great ending. Do you know what those boats do? Go fast. They go fast. PostScript. We said that, Michael Mann and Disney really covered their asses with those PostScript titles. It's basically all comes down to i.e., please don't sue us. Yeah. Why you and Jeffrey Weigand became teacher of the year. He's, to this day a professor in Michigan. Lowell Bergman, did indeed quit 60 minutes, took a job at frontline where his wife worked. He's now retired and still married to that same wife. Mike Wallace retired from CBS in 2006 and died of natural causes in 2012. He was 93 years old. Great life. Wow. Don Hewitt died from pancreatic cancer in 2009 at the age of 86. And if you read the Vanity Fair article, you know that the characters played by Gina Gershon and Stephen Tobolowsky did indeed make their millions of dollars. When CBS was sold to Westinghouse so low, Bergman was on to something there. The movie comes out. When the fuck did this come out movie? It's like kind of before Christmas. It was kind of before it. Yeah, it was early November 1999, 1999. 99, one of the all time great years for movies. People just don't show up for it. It's a bummer. It's extremely well-regarded amongst critics, ends up making a lot of top ten lists, gets nominated for seven Oscars. Extremely rare for a Michael Mann movie that hasn't happened before or since. Keep in mind this is coming off of heat getting zero Oscar nominations, which is totally bizarre. No sound. That's crazy. Michael Mann's films have produced one Oscar win. I don't know if you know what it is. It's not kind of random. When you hear it, you go, oh, that makes sense. I'll just tell it to you. Yeah. Last of the Mohicans Best Sound 1992. So his movie wins Best Sound in 1992, and then his next film has better sound than that movie heat and doesn't even get nominated at the Oscars are fucking ridiculous. I talked about TI. There's no I talked about it. There's no subsequent editions of The Insider. This is the only cut that exists, the Blu ray. What I can say is that it looks marvelous. It looks so much better. I've never seen this movie available on streaming. It usually isn't. It looks way better than my DVD. Another selling point this is Michael Mann's highest rated film on Rotten Tomatoes at 96%. Oh, crazy nice. Quentin Tarantino. This is one of his favorite all time movies. Not just Michael Mann movies, all time movies. He talks all the time, time, All time said it's one of the 20 best movies made since 1992, which is when he started making movies. He did a list a few years ago and this was on it. He talked about it. Go and make it about him. Well, of course he does. Tell him an interesting God. He was just on Bill Maher is not show but his podcast club. Random. They get smacked by the end. It's a cool podcast because he encourages. Bill always has a huge joint so he's like it takes place in his house. So he's getting high, encourages his, his guests to enjoy whatever libations they want. Tarantino is smoking out of a pipe that is about as big as the one Christoph Waltz has in the beginning of The Glorious Bastards. They're splitting joints the whole time, and he's drinking liquor. By the end of it, they can hardly talk. Highly recommend that interview. Talked all about how the press got, like, everything wrong about the movie critic, and that's sounds like one of the reasons why he abandoned it. It was really interesting. You know, that script that he was that was going to be his next movie? No it's not. Wait, what? Oh that's done. That's oh, that that leaks in the press, not leaked. He released that like months ago. Reads like I'm not doing this anymore. What I own this podcast. On this podcast I said I was so happy for Paul Walter Hauser getting the lead. Tarantino says in this interview. Bill Murray's like that just wasn't true. Like, I've seen that guy before. I was like CNN, but I never discussed casting with him at all. At all. But because I don't have social media and I don't go, why into the press about this, I just watch them all flip out about it. And that was reported on in variety that that guy was cast. It was a done deal agreement site. That's why I talked about on the podcast. So I don't know what he's done. I think he's just sitting back, just kind of enjoying himself because, you know, he has one movie left, but it ain't going to be the movie critic. I don't know what it's going to be. So he started over essentially. So we are I posited on our Tarantino episode, would this be our longest gap between Tarantino films, six, six years between Jackie Brown and Kill Bill one? And next year it's going to be our sixth year between Hollywood and whatever his last movie is going to be. And I, I don't it's it makes me a little nervous. Honestly. I think a little bit has been built up too much. It's kind of like we're talking about with Michael Mann. Like, is there too much thinking that's going into this? Is there like two, you know, whereas the insiders just boom, let's do it, let's get it, let's do it. I don't know. We'll see I don't know. We'll see. He set it up for himself real quick though, real quick because he does love it so much. I just I'll go through them quickly, I promise. I just want to see if you would have given any of these Oscars to the Insider. Could do it. Okay. Best editing the Matrix wins American Beauty, cider House rules, The Insider, The Sixth Sense, The Matrix Winning is pretty. It works, I agree. Works, yeah. Best cinematography, the end of the affair, The insider, Sleepy Hollow, snow falling on Cedars or American Beauty I like the American beauty, one that I love. Yeah, I it's tough. Yeah I would give it to American Beauty. Best sound the Green Mile, The insider, The Mummy, Star Wars episode one, The Phantom Menace, The Matrix wins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have a good category. Like it's a good game. It is. It's oh fucking hell. Best adapted screenplay. Now here's where I got this is ridiculous. Election, the Green Mile, the insider, the talented Mr. Ripley and by far the worst of those nominees, the cider House rules one. Oh, no. Yes. Of all those. Yes. Oh, no, thank Harvey Weinstein for that. I mean, that's when Michael Caine won supporting actor. It's ridiculous. Jesus Christ I mean, I think I would end up actually giving this out of all of those movies I would give writing to this, so would I. That's my Oscar for it, because I don't know if I would give it any other award, but that's my Oscar for it. Yeah. Oh, wow. I got oh man, I got Best Actor wrong. It wasn't Jeffrey Wright and Quills. That was the next year. It was Sean Penn and Sweet'n low down. All right Russell Christian for spider I do I'm done, I'm done to blow the whistle on myself Richard Farnsworth, the straight story Sean Penn, sweet and low down Denzel in The Hurricane Kevin Spacey wins for American Beauty. That's a tough one. That's a tough one. And if I'm going with me, I'm going with, with Richard Farnsworth. I think I'm going with Denzel. I think I am, yeah, it's tough. Director. Lousy. Hallstrom. Cider house rules. Jesus Christ, fucking Harvey Weinstein, Spike Jones, Being John Malkovich, Michael Mann, The Insider, and Night Shyamalan, the Sixth Sense Sam Mendez wins for American Beauty. Yeah, like you think that's. Yeah, I guess that's fair. Yeah, I guess best picture cider House rules, Green Mile Insider, Sixth Sense, American Beauty. At the time, it was like American Beauty was a thing. Like it was. It was a thing. And it was a huge deal that it won to like this smaller movie, like it was it was a big deal that it won. So I get it. At the time, I don't I would give it to the insider today, I guess, but that's when you look at these things through that lens. It makes it much, much easier. But I can see it though I still, I still think that there is a decent like American Beauty I still think holds up. I mean, regardless of its lead actor, whatever you want to say about him. But I mean, as a as a film, I think like it's I haven't seen it years. I haven't seen it since MeToo broke. And I noticed that like, oh my God, it's going to change. Like, it's just it's a weird movie. It was weird in 99 and it's. Yeah, the whole in what it's all about like that, you know, we say these things wouldn't get made today that had difficulty getting made in 99. That that was touch and go that, you know, just what it's about. And his, ultimate goal in the movie that thank God he thought. But still it's like it gets really, risky in there. And that living room. Oh, it sure does. It's it's it's not, it's not, I don't really watch it. I do, I want to see how well it holds up. Do you know what ruined it for me? That doesn't ruin it for me. But I can't watch this scene without. I can't take it seriously anymore. What? You know, there's the scene where. Where, he's he's, shooting the bag. The plastic bag floating around. Yeah, but everyone makes fun of this. Yeah, I know, but but South Park and South Park, family Guy did. Family Guy did it so well, it was hilarious. I can't see funny. It's so cheap, Brian coming out and, like, it's a fucking bag. It's so true. It's so tell me about that shit. That shit won in the moment. People are like, in tears in the theater over that. But now it just seems silly. Yeah, but anyway, the insider so happy we got to talk about this one. This is a dude. I'm so happy that you like it. Like, I remember when we first met, I was just finished writing a blog or two article about about a bunch of things I like about it. And I remember saying like, have you seen this? You're like, oh yeah, I like it. Yeah, it's it definitely go see it, people. It's not going to have a shootout like he does, but it has the intensity of heat. It really does. I swear. It kind of looks like it. Two same deep. Yeah. It was a movie that even when I first saw it, it wasn't like I didn't like it. So I can't say this is an about face because it sure, it was just one of those movies that when I watched it at the time that I did, I remember I go, this is a really good movie that I'm not ready for. Like, I'm just I'm not ready to kind of sit with this type of content and digest it and let it do what it does because, like this time, watching it around, I mean, like even from, like the first thing we're talking about, the opening shot, like, I'm curious as to what's happening just by a blindfold and then being like, taken by like the fact that the movie doesn't give us anything like we're dropped right in the middle and it's like, hey, figure it out. But like, you're in the hands of a master, like he's he's not going to let you down. And if you if you just stick with it, you got to pay attention. Yes. You can't even really get up and walk away. You're you're going to miss a very, very pivotal and an important either piece of dialog or, storytelling, piece. It really is a movie. You know, you have a cup of coffee with this one. Do you do you do. Yeah. Yeah, there's smoke and it's. All right. What are you watching? I can go first if you want, I don't care. Oh, yeah. I can't wait to talk about nine. Okay. I have one that kind of plays on theme. I was re I rewatched it last week. Just because it's just feels good to get in touch with a master. I'm going to say one of my favorite quotes from it. I gave her the show Schumacher. I'm putting the network new show under programing. Mr. ruddy has had a mild heart attack and is not taking calls in his absence. I'm making all network decisions, including one I've been wanting to make for a long time. You're fired. Robert Duvall, Frank Hackett and network fucking work that movie. Everyone knows it. It's so crazy looking at like, all the Oscar love it got won three Oscars. The only one it didn't win was supporting actor Jason Robards, won for paying for playing Ben Bradlee and All the President's Men, a performance I love. And wow, Ned Beatty is great in network. And his few scenes that they just they miss nominating Duvall. If you would have nominated Duvall, he could have won, and that would have been the only movie to win four Oscars for acting Oscars, then no movie has ever done that. So. But it's oh my God, getting back. You know, this is a very satirical look at journalism, but so well written by Paddy Chayefsky. It is I, I've been, you know, watching every Lumet movie, and I've seen that work a gazillion times, but he has so many movies and a lot of them are not good. The ones that you know are good are good. Dog Day Network, Serpico, all those are just great. Princeton City, oh my God, but it's great to just go. Okay, let me put let me start with all the all is, you know, lesser seen movies for a little bit and just boom, get in touch with one of the masterpieces and wow, does this thing hold up. Faye Dunaway, they're all great. Peter Finch, Beatrice Straight, everyone. I mean, William Holden got it. Just. And then the star is the screenplay and it is kind of position that way. It's presented as this is Paddy Chayefsky, Paddy Chayefsky network, not Sidney Lumet's network. So I cannot recommend that one highly enough. It plays really well with the insider to great shit. I have one that could play well with with with this two. I know what to do about it. I went and watched, here's Krzysztof Kieslowski, his first feature, The Scar. Oh, yes. Good call. Holy shit. I cannot stop thinking about this fucking movie. This thing is, I mean, we've talked many times about going back and and doing it. Another Kieslowski, whether it's on the Decalogue or just these other movies and just kind of, I he's he's top three for me. I love him, I guess. Yeah, top three like that. He's pushed Jarmusch down for. Holy shit, that's a big deal. It's, Yeah. Yeah. He's not. Top five is still top five. But this guy, man. So I guess what the scars about because I, I suppose I should teed this up, but it's about this is so it's war torn. But there's people that live there that have developed their own community and life. And here comes this corporation that wants to run it all over, create factories, industrialize it. And, you know, there's it's really also just about their gain. And it's not really. And and so this one guy gets assigned to basically be the guy to take hold of this entire operation. And it's just it's you're really kind of watching him and, you know, and Kieslowski is just the best at just putting up these situations for us to observe, witness and judge how we feel. He does not put any judgment of himself in the choices and decisions and behaviors that this character moves forward in. You watch the whole entire movie and you take away what you take away with it. But without this ending, the movie punches you in the face with the ending, with what it's trying to say metaphorically. Oh, yeah. In which is speaks to what this character's was trying to do this whole entire time. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. If I'll say this, if he if this was based on any type of kieslowski's real life experience, then he has a very mature outlook and point of view as to what he may have gone through himself or seen. Yeah, you really kind of come to this conclusion. I feel like it has to be something he like, witnessed or saw. But yeah, there's there's a lot of it's an interesting pairing with the insider because it's like corporate interests over or, you know, small town people. But then what do the small it's not like and also kind of reminding me honestly of there Will Be Blood where he's like, I'm plaguing you this whole new world. I'm bringing you water, I'm bringing you bread. And then some of the people in town and he's basically like, you should be grateful that I'm even bothering to build up your shitty little town. And some people, namely Paul Dano's character. What? What do they want in return for you showing up? So yeah, I, I it's a great movie. I love all of his movies, a lot of fun to talk about. The insider great pool on Kozlowski. They're like all of his movies are good. He really did not make that many. You know, the calm camera buff up no end. I mean, yeah. And then we get into three colors. I just saw blue. Not just like a few months ago. It was playing it three colors blue. Oh my gosh. Just and we saw you know we did our part on that. So good I love that. Yeah. Network. But the insider Michael Mann good. Love you I love this movie. I had so much fun, diving even further into it. Great conversation about journalism. I want to know what everybody's thinking is. You've seen this movie, what you think, if you're watching it. Anytime someone has watched a movie for the first time because of us, let us know, because I think that's awesome. You can tell us you didn't like it, so I'm sorry if you didn't like it, but I really want you to like everything. But you can tell us. Oh, you know, it didn't go this way or tell us you loved it. It's all good. Let us know at W underscore podcast. But as always, thanks for listening and happy watching. Hey everyone. Thanks again for listening. You can watch my films and read my movie blog at Alex withrow.com. Nicholas Doe still.com is where you can find all of Nick's film work. Send us mailbag questions at What Are You Watching podcast at gmail.com or find us on Twitter, Instagram and Letterboxd at wri w underscore podcast. But I misspoke. My journalism professors wouldn't give me an entire letter grade if I found an error in a publication. It was a number. So if my final grade at the end of the semester was a 90 and I call it two errors, then it's a 92. I can only do that four times this semester. Wow, did it work? Next time it's a Michael Mann double feature. Crockett. Tubbs. Smooth. That's how we do it. Miami vice. Stay tuned.