The Insider

Film of little music

• Al Pacino

• Russell Crow

• Christopher Plummer

• Music by • Pieter Bourke• Lisa Gerrard• Graeme Revell

Story

• A true story. Lowell Bergman of CBS 60 minutes approaches someone who can translate a document about tobacco into layman’s terms. Bergman is referred to Wigand, and calls him at his home only to be steadfastly rebuffed. Curious with Wigand’s refusal to even speak to him, Bergman eventually convinces him to meet in Louisville. Wigand agrees to translate the tobacco documents, but stresses that he cannot talk about anything else because of his confidentiality agreement.

• After leaving with the documents, Wigand meets with Brown & Williamson CEO who orders him to sign an expanded confidentiality agreement, under threat of revoking his severance pay and medical coverage and initiating legal proceedings. Wigand, enraged at the threats and believing that Bergman notified the CEO about their confidential meeting, calls and accuses Bergman of treachery.

• Bergman visits Wigand’s house the next day and maintains that he did not reveal anything to Brown & Williamson. Reassured, Wigand talks to Bergman about the seven CEOs of “Big Tobacco” perjuring themselves to the United States Congress about their awareness of nicotine’s addictiveness, and that the CEOs should fear Wigand.

• Bergman says Wigand has to decide for himself whether to blow the whistle on big tobacco. Bergman returns to CBS Headquarters in New York City, where he and Mike Wallace discuss Wigand’s situation and the potential damage he could do to Big Tobacco. Fired, Wygand begins a high-school teaching job. It is later suggested that an edited interview take the place of the original. Bergman vehemently disagrees, and claims that the reason CBS Corporate is leaning on CBS News to edit the interview is because they fear that the prospect of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit could jeopardize the sale of CBS to Westinghouse.

• Wallace and Don Hewitt agree to edit the interview, leaving Bergman alone in the stance of airing it uncensored. A PR firm hired by Big Tobacco initiates a smear campaign against Wigand, dredging up details about his life and publishing a 500-page dossier. Through Wigand, Bergman discovers that Big Tobacco has distorted and exaggerated numerous claims, and convinces a reporter from the Wall Street Journal to delay the story until it can be disproven. Bergman contacts several private investigators who do their own investigation.

• Bergman releases his findings to the Wall Street Journal reporter and tells him to push the deadline. Meanwhile, due to his constant fights with CBS management, Bergman is ordered to go on vacation. Soon after, the edited interview is broadcast. Bergman contacts the The New York Times and reveals the scandal that occurred at 60 Minutes, after which the Times publishes a scathing article that accuses CBS of betraying the legacy of their famous reporter, Edward R. Murrow for bowing to such attempts to silence publication of a truthful news story.

• Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal exonerates Wigand and reveals his deposition in Mississippi, while condemning Big Tobacco’s 500-page smear as “the lowest form of character assassination.” 60 Minutes finally broadcasts the full interview with Wigand. In the final scene, Bergman quits, “What got broken here doesn’t go back together again.”

The role of music

• Get the hell out of the way of the story

• Lightly underscore increasingly important events

• Give the film a point of arrival, where everything comes together

• Define the depth of the emotion of the two main characters, NOT by character driven, but by plot driven approach.

Is music for a film more important

• Because there’s so much of it

• Because there’s so little of it

Interesting factoid of the day

• 70 years ago a full movie would average a cut every 40 seconds

• Today a full movie will average a

• Cut every 4 seconds

• Music?

• Do films mirror society?