Susan Zirinsky, the brand new head of CBS News, has rather a lot on her plate, and she or he is making adjustments rapidly. One factor she seemingly doesn’t want to fret about — for now — is the Sunday night time stalwart “60 Minutes,” nonetheless a top-10 rated primetime community broadcast collection when it’s not a rerun.
The program has endured, even whereas progressively dropping its all-star lineup. Mike Wallace, Harry Reasoner, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, commentator Andy Rooney and legendary creator Don Hewitt, have died. Steve Kroft, who inherited the Mike Wallace tough-guy position, simply retired. The present continues regardless that it’s been tarnished by #MeToo accusations which have led to the ouster of Jeff Fager, the chief producer after Hewitt, and contributor Charlie Rose.
So the timing of a brand new documentary, “Mike Wallace Is Here,” could both be an ideal salve, for longtime followers, or a lesson about nice journalism for youthful of us. Opening Friday in restricted launch, it’s a robust and tender take a look at the person whose early profession took many turns (together with performing, saying and pitching Parliament cigarettes) earlier than touchdown in the precise place on the proper time. The documentary additionally makes clear that Wallace felt he continually needed to show himself as a severe journalist due to his checkered skilled previous.
Also Read: ‘Mike Wallace Is Here’ Film Review: Unsentimental Doc Honors a Champion Newsman Who Was All About the Work
“Mike Wallace was an extremely complicated man and a very talented journalist,” Steve Kroft says. “The doc manages to capture both without pulling punches. We see the cutthroat competitiveness, the insecurities, the charm, the bravado and the unmatched ability to get to — and through — the heart of the matter.”
The movie gives clips of a few of Wallace’s most memorable interviews, together with with troublesome and hard-to-get celebs like Johnny Carson and Barbra Streisand, and political figures similar to Vladimir Putin and KKK Imperial Wizard Eldon Edwards. We additionally see him on the opposite facet of the microphone, being grilled by Bill O’Reilly and Barbara Walters. Watching them go at it, you understand that interviewing is, in actual fact, an artwork. Wallace and Walters confronted, however listened. O’Reilly, not a lot.
The doc additionally delves into Wallace’s private life, which was riddled with tragedy and loss — most significantly the dying of a son (whose physique Wallace himself found after touring to Greece). And we re-live the harrowing authorized battle between CBS and Gen. William Westmoreland over a CBS documentary on Vietnam that Wallace narrated and reported. The yearlong case contributed to Wallace’s personal private battle with despair. In one of the vital memorable scenes within the movie, he tells his colleague, Morley Safer, simply how shut he got here to ending all of it.
Also Read: Mike Wallace, ‘The Insider’ and TV News: Howard Kurtz and Lauren Ashburn Debate
Though it isn’t a key focus of the movie, the Wallace-Safer relationship was hardly a love fest. “They were like two scorpions in a bottle,” says David Browning, a long-time “60 Minutes” producer, “though they did mellow in old age. When the camera was on, the mood was let bygones be bygones. When it was off, there was a good deal of needling and one-upmanship.”
Interestingly, the person who made the movie is an Israeli, Avi Belkin. At a glittery screening in Manhattan, Belkin mentioned his “otherness” could have been a profit. “When you have someone looking at your country from another one, it has a less judgmental, more relatable viewpoint,” he mentioned.
“What I like is that this documentary takes viewers through several shifts in the culture and important historic and social moments,” producer Peggy Drexler, who helped finance the mission, mentioned. “It discusses poignant concepts about journalism, which Mike Wallace fought for and journalists are nonetheless combating for. These days, those that dare to ask the sorts of questions Mike…
