Mike Wallace Is Here **** / *****
Directed by: Avi
Belkin.
When
making a documentary about a figure from the past – even the recent past – I
often find myself asking the question of “why now?” – why is this story, about
this person, relevant to today, and why should we care. Avi Belkin’s Mike
Wallace is Here pretty much defines the “why now” in its very first clip – a
2007 interview the legendary 60 Minutes journalist did with Bill O’Reilly –
then the biggest thing in TV news – where Wallace challenges O’Reilly on his
brash, offensive style – and O’Reilly immediately hits back that without Mike
Wallace, there would be no Bill O’Reilly. That what Wallace did for decades
morphed and changed into what O’Reilly is now doing. In that way, the film
reminded me a little of Best of Enemies – the documentary about Gore Vidal and
William F. Buckley at the 1968 Conventions – where the network couldn’t get
footage of the speeches themselves, so they just aired the two intellectual
titans arguing with each other about them. By the next conventions, all
networks were doing the same thing – and eventually it morphed into modern news
culture of endless yelling and bickering at each other. That Vidal and Buckley
were excellent at it – and had intelligent points to make didn’t matter.
Viewers turned in for the yelling.
That may
be the ultimate lesson of Mike Wallace is Here as well. The film features no contemporary
talking heads speaking about Wallace – who died in 2012 – putting him in
context, or explaining anything. The film is entirely made up of archival
footage of Wallace himself – almost all of it of either him interviewing
people, or being interviewed by others. There is also a lot of footage of
Wallace in the early days of TV – when he wasn’t a journalist, but kind of a
jack of all trades. He could be a pitchman or an actor, a game show host or
contestant, etc. – whatever you want him to be. When he did get an interview
show, he took that flair for the dramatic with him – and asked deliberately
provocative questions, challenging his guests, sometimes angering them. It’s
the style that Wallace would keep throughout his career.
The film
is not an anti-Wallace screed by any means. It documents all the great work he
did over his career – on Watergate, on Vietnam, on cigarettes, etc. – and also
has a lot of interview footage with him with celebrities, asking the kind of
questions that the likes of Bette Davis, Barbara Streisand or Shirley MacLaine
probably weren’t used to getting – which is exactly why you’d want to watch
those interviews, rather than a puffball interview on a talk show. Was he a
prick? Sure – but he got answers.
But it
also documents perhaps the slippery slope of what Wallace did. He certainly
practiced “Gotcha!” journalism – when he did all those stories on scams on 60
Minutes, busting two bit hustlers and scam artists in a way that would seem
familiar to anyone who has seen “To Catch a Predator”. And how many degrees is
it from Wallace asking hard questions, sometimes pushing the boundary of what
is acceptable, and someone like O’Reilly telling his guests to shut up, and
turning off their microphones.
The film
also delves into his personal life – not much about his multiple marriages, but
he certainly does admit he wasn’t a good father, and over a series of
interviews, over what was obviously a series of years, he gets more and more
real about his battle with depression – and suicidal thoughts.
The film
then is really about the contradictions with Mike Wallace. How he redefined
Investigative Journalism – and pushed it to what he probably thought was the
brink, never imagining that people would come up behind him, and push it even
further. That’s not really Wallace’s fault – although without him, who knows
what would have happened instead.
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