Based on the infamous incident in which an interview with tobacco-industry informant Jeffrey Wigand was scuttled by CBS management before airtime, the movie's script depicts former CBS News president Eric Ober as a corporate lackey more concerned with the pending sale of his network than with upholding the proud history of the news division. "60 Minutes" correspondent Mike Wallace and executive producer Don Hewitt are portrayed as profane egomaniacs who cave in to corporate pressure.
Director Michael Mann (Miami Vice, Heat) and screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump) declined to talk about the upcoming film, and a source close to the duo says script changes have been made that are not reflected in the version obtained by TV Guide. Still unless the changes amount to a complete overhaul, the only real-life participant likely to become a fan of the "60 Minutes" movie is Bergman, who served as a paid consultant on the project.
In Roth's screenplay, Bergman, to be played by Al Pacino, fights to air the tobacco expose with enough zeal to make Woodward and Bernstein envious. Think Serpico as journalist.
"I worked with Lowell for 13 years," says Wallace (who will be played by Christopher Plummer in the film), "and he's always felt he's never gotten the recognition he deserves. [The film] seems as if it's to be Lowell's story, all about his crusade and how he was left alone to twist in the wind." Bergman, who, not surprisingly, is no longer associated with "60 Minutes," says he "has nothing to say" about the film project.
The real events began to unfold in the fall of 1995, when Wallace and then-producer Bergman landed an interview with Wigand, a former director of research for the tobacco giant Brown & Williamson. (Russell Crowe has been cast as Wigand.) The "60 Minutes" correspondent and his producer thought they had scored a major coup with the eyewitness expose on the tobacco industry, but a frightened CBS management, fearing a multibillion-dollar lawsuit, killed the piece. The incident, widely criticized by other journalists, "almost destroyed the show," "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft later said.
As for the Hollywood version, Wallace hasn't been quiet about his objections, elucidating them in a series of letters and conversations with Mann. Wallace says the script unfairly and inaccurately depicts him as a prima donna who, unlike the Bergman character, does not fight for the tobacco story. Wallace took his crusade public in a July 2 interview with the "Wall Street Journal." The newspaper reported that Mann had agreed to cut a disparaging remark made by the Wallace character about Walter Cronkite as well as a scene in which Wallace demands a Jacuzzi and room service in his Beirut hotel. "Mann has really been quite civilized about the whole thing," says Wallace. "Still, I would be quite happy if they changed my character's name to something else."
Mann has already agreed to a name change for the Hewitt character, who, according to the "Journal," will be called Sidney Wicker. Even so, Hewitt isn't likely to be happy. In one crucial scene of the screenplay obtained by TV Guide (in which Hewitt had not yet been renamed), a CBS lawyer tells Hewitt, Bergman, and Wallace that the Wigand interview can't air, and Bergman alone fights the decision. In fact, the Hewitt character makes light of the whole situation. "Well, one thing I know," he says after the female lawyer exits the room, "she's got a dynamite ass." He then asks Wallace where to have lunch.
Later in the screenplay, Bergman discovers why the network is so scared of the tobacco story: The specter of a big lawsuit could squash the pending sale of the Tiffany network to the Westinghouse Corp. Bergman accuses Hewitt of standing to benefit financially from the sale. (CBS was sold to Westinghouse in 1996.)
The screenplay also presents Bergman as the source who tips off the "Wall Street Journal" and the "New York Times" about CBS's loss of nerve. In one scene, Bergman lunches with "Times" reporter Bill Carter, spilling the accusations of corporate interference. (The real-life, diminutive Carter might hope that his description as "heavy-set" won't make the final script).
As the screenplay draws to a close, there is yet another confrontation between Bergman, Wallace, and Hewitt. The Hewitt character is livid that Bergman has leaked the story to the newspapers. "You're doing us in!" yells Hewitt. "You're a f---ing traitor, Lowell! Conspiring with the enemy."
"What enemy is that, Don?" asks Bergman. "The press?" Later, Hewitt asks Wallace to support him, but Wallace has gone over to Bergman's side. "We f---ed up, Don," Wallace says.
In another heated exchange, Bergman says ABC is prepared to run the Wigand story if "60 Minutes" won't, and Hewitt says, "ABC?! Those f---ers couldn't get a hurricane story right if they were standing in the eye of the storm."
In the screenplay, as in actuality, "60 Minutes" eventually airs the tobacco story, complete with references to some of the behind-the-scenes network shenanigans that temporarily stalled the piece. In one of the script's final encounters, the Hewitt character congratulates Bergman and Wallace on the soon-to-air expose, saying, "You stood side by side with the First Amendment." Bergman, still tinkering with the tobacco piece, responds with a comment seemingly directed as much to the audience as to his colleagues: "I'd like to put back in Wigand saying there is no bigger lie than a half-truth."
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