Three Moves Ahead 509: The Insider and All The President's Men

[Rob Zacny]

Three Moves Ahead 509:

The Insider and All The President's Men
Troy and Rob discuss two films about exposing the seedy underbelly of the institutions of power: Michael Mann's The Insider and Alan J. Pakula's All The President's Men. How has the film industry's portrayal of investigative journalism and corporate whistleblowers changed with the times? What can each of these stories still teach us today?

The Insider, All the President's Men

 

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[Arasmo]

Excellent show  !

 

Thanks to you guys, I watched both movies for the first time. I must admit I much prefered All The President’s Men : the Insider was way too melodramatic for my taste. 

 

Spoiler

 

I thought All the President’s Men aged extremely well: a lot of the scenes consist in phones calls and interviews, but they manage to be grippling, thanks to the great direction and very tight editing. I love the way the movie tries to show ‘how ordinary reporters work under extraordinary circumstances’ without overly glamorizing all the ‘grunt work’. Since I'm not very familiar with the Watergate scandal, I struggled with all the name dropping at first, but the movie did a good job in making the plot easy to follow without patronizing the viewer. The ‘Deep Throat’ scenes add a layer of mystery to the plot while helping the viewer make sense of all the information gathered by the reporters.

 

As you said in the show, Beirnstein and Woodward aren’t really painted as heroes with noble motives, but more like ambitious journalists who hope this investigation will be their ‘big story’. They operate under heavy pressure, which can lead them to take shortcuts to the truth: they have to publish a steady flow of articles and try to ‘get scoops’ before The New York Times (the only other newspaper mentioned in the movie). As their investigation advances, Beirnstein and Woodward become less and less scrupulous: at the start of the movie, they try to coax their interviewees; at the end, they are blackmailing them (the ‘appartment’). The plight of the whistleblowers isn’t at the core of the movie, but I think it’s shown in a very effective way: you can feel the fear of the interviewees while Woodman and Berstein are only concerned in prying as much information as they can from them. And I find it interesting that the reporters never really question ‘Deep Throat’ motives, even if they suspect at the end of the movie that they are pawns in a bigger game : they just seem happy to have someone giving them their ‘big story’. 

 

I think the decision to cover only the first seven months of the investigation is a brilliant move, because it highlights Bradlee’s brave decision: he keeps faith in Woodward and Bernstein despite them having only a few pieces of the puzzle and the journal being under heavy flak for its coverage of the Watergate business. It also underlines the fragility of investigative journalism : the search for truth isn't always compatible with the search for a big story, reporters can be manipulative but also manipulated, and  publishing a controversial story, even in an "elite" newspaper like the Post in its heydays, is a risky gamble.

 

 

Anyway, thank you very much for this episode and your insights on a fascinating subject !

 

 

 

 

 

[ilitarist]

That episode was cool and thought-provoking. I watched both movies for the first time before listening to it.

 

Those movies reminded me why Hollywood doesn't do a lot of slow thoughtful movies about law or journalism. When I watch a movie about badass cop who does what has to be done even if he has to lose his badge I can understand the motivation and morals of the characters. But those movies, while fascinating, feel deeply alien to me. At the moment in my Belarus people are killed on the street and instead of investigating police jails journalists who do investigate the murder. But everybody sees this as something temporary. Meanwhile, a lot of details in this movie seem insane.

 

In Insider early on you learn that tobacco companies never lose a trial even though everybody knows they're in the wrong. Everyone understands that ex-researcher of tobacco company definitely knows some dirt about the company. And this is not a problem in the movie, it's not even regarded as something wrong. Maybe I should understand that this is wrong and judge character behavior accordingly, but I'm not sure what the movie assumes I know or feel. It's much worse in All the President's Men. I'm glad you guys have said that the plot is incomprehensible to you. Insider at least shows you some bad guys, here most of the characters are voices on the phone, most of the film they investigate people you never see. But the real issue for me was understanding moral and law framework everyone operates in. There is a clearly illegal break-in in this movie, but beyond that I don't know what's illegal, what's legal but amoral, what's illegal but everyone knows about it and does nothing, what's illegal but no one dares to prove it. Is campaign fund usage governed by some law? Is "rat-fucking" legal? The lawyer suggests it is but it's hard to believe. I still liked All the President's Men more cause it shows some real investigative journalism. Insider, like the recent The Post is more about presenting trolley problems instead of investigating them.

 

Also Insider is weird to me. Crowe plays an unlikeable guy nicely, as you say. But it seems the movie really wants me to feel for him. And his great tragedy is that he has to leave a huge house he's been living in for years and go live into a slightly smaller house with a huge backyard?.. His daughter has asthma and what, in USA only rich people can get a treatment for it?..

[chanman]

Speaking of motivations for whistleblowers, I imagine they have more than a couple things in common with individuals that choose to be suicide bombers or carry out suicide attacks or self-immolation (a suicide attack against reputation) - whatever their particular cause, they are firmly in the camp of fanatics or nihilists in that they neither care about nor for consequences. It's not a question of having a lot (or nothing) to lose - they are clearly driven past the point where that will motivate them to back down. So it's not surprising that the drivers come along powerful emotional vectors - spite, hate, resentment - speaking can be a powerful way of attacking those who have wronged them and also a spectacular act of self-destruction.

 

I'm sure there are idealists who want their actions to drive systemic change, but I suspect at least some public (vs. private/anonymous like Deep Throat) whistleblowers set off on their course of action wanting to be witnessed in their act of defiance against the powers arrayed against them. And we should bear testament to that.