Word: michaels
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Michael Mann's The Insider is an epic-sized film based on the "60 Minutes" tobacco scandal of a few years ago; Mann succeeds in distilling a very convoluted and controversial story into a relatively taut two hours. However, his magnum opus is not without flaws and plays like an uncompleted character study, a film that stops just short of greatness...
...whole be less than the sum of its parts? In the case of The Insider, yes, it can be true. Although the film should garner nominations for Actor, Supporting Actor and Screenplay come Oscar time, I can't help but feel a little disappointed that Michael Mann's well-crafted film could have been a true contender, and instead came up short as an epic-that-almost...
...Before shooting The Insider, Michael Mann sent a draft of the screenplay to "60 Minutes" anchor Mike Wallace, who expressed concern about Mann's streamlining of actual events. Upset about being portrayed as floundering morally next to Bergman's shining knight, Wallace fumed, "oh, how fortunate I am to have Lowell Bergman's moral tutelage to point me down the shining path." Mann turned right around, and had Wallace's fictional counterpart spout the same line in his film...
...character in the film is "too neat" to really be him, and Wigand has said that he never quite sunk to the emotional depths that his character reached. Pacino has even been quoted as saying that his character, Bergman, "was a composite of three or four people in Michael's and [co-writer] Eric Roth's mind...
...certain responsibilities as a filmmaker, but he also has the right to tell a story; it is his decision on how to balance the obligations of fact and fiction, and hopefully he will respect the powers of each. "Wallace and Hewitt have criticized the film because it's Michael Mann's view of my perspective, or Wigand's perspective," Bergman says. Luckily, Mann, even with the dramatic license he takes, is still committed to telling the true story; but what if the next filmmaker who comes along decides to sacrifice fact for fiction's sake...