 |
|
|
|
Quotes of Movie: The Insider [1999]
|
|
Lowell Bergman: You'd better take a *good* look, because I'm getting two things: pissed off and curious. (unknown)
Mike Wallace: Will you tell him that when I conduct an interview, I sit anywhere I damn please! (unknown)
Jeffrey Wigand: Fuck it. Let's go to court. (unknown)
Mike Wallace: Do me a favor, will you - spare me, for God's sake, get in the real world, what do you think? I'm going to resign in protest? To force it on the air? The answer's "no". I don't plan to spend the end of my days wandering in the wilderness of National Public Radio. That decision I've already made. (unknown)
|
Mike Wallace: "Mike"? Try "Mr. Wallace." We work in the same corporation, doesn't mean we work in the same profession. What are you gonna do now? You gonna finesse me? Lawyer me some more? I've been in this profession fifty fucking years. You and the people you work for are destroying the most-respected, the highest-rated, the most-profitable show on this network! (unknown)
Mike Wallace: [after watching a preview of the "60 Minutes" Wigand interview that has been edited] Where's the rest? Where the hell's the rest?
[we see Lowell turning to see Mike shouting at the monitors in disbelief]
Mike Wallace: [to Eric Kluster] You cut it! You cut the guts out of what I SAID!
Eric Kluster: It was a time consideration, Mike.
Mike Wallace: Time? Bullshit! You corporate lackey! Who told you your incompetent little fingers had the requisite skills to edit me! I'm trying to band-aid a situation, here, and you're too dim to...
[Mike is suddenly interrupted by Helen Caperelli, who walks up to Wallace and Kluster]
Helen Caperelli: Mike... Mike... Mike...
Mike Wallace: [to Helen Caperelli] Mike?
[there is a long pause]
Mike Wallace: Mike? Try Mr. Wallace. We work in the same corporation doesn't mean we work in the same corporation. What are you gonna do now? You gonna finesse me? Lawyer me some more? I've been in this profession FIFTY FUCKING YEARS! You and the people you work for are destroying the most-respected, the highest-rated, the most-profitable show on this network! (unknown)
Mike Wallace: You cut it! You cut the guts out of what I said!
Eric Kluster: It was a time consideration, Mike...
Mike Wallace: Time? Bullshit! You corporate lackey! Who told you your incompetent little fingers had the requisite skills to edit me? (unknown)
Jeffrey Wigand: I told the truth. (unknown)
Mike Wallace: Who are these people?
Lowell Bergman: Ordinary people under extraordinary pressure, Mike. What the hell do you expect? Grace and consistency? (unknown)
Agent: Do you have a history of emotional problems, Mr. Wigand?
Jeffrey Wigand: Yes. Yes, I do. I get extremely emotional when assholes put bullets in my mailbox! (unknown)
Jeffrey Wigand: I have to put my family's welfare on the line here, my friend! And what are you puttin' up? You're puttin' up words!
Lowell Bergman: Words? While you've been dickin' around at some fucking company golf tournaments, I been out in the world, giving my word and backing it up with action. (unknown)
Jeffrey Wigand: I'm just a commodity to you, aren't I? I could be anything. Right? Anything worth putting on between commercials.
Lowell Bergman: To a network, probably, we're all commodities. To me? You are not a commodity. What you are is important. (unknown)
Mike Wallace: No that's fame. Fame has a fifteen minute half-life, infamy lasts a little longer. (unknown)
Mike Wallace: In the real world, when you get to where I am, there are other considerations.
Lowell Bergman: Like what? Corporate responsibility? What, are we talking celebrity here?
Mike Wallace: I'm not talking celebrity, vanity, CBS. I'm talking about when you're nearer the end of your life than the beginning. Now, what do you think you think about then? The future? In the future I'm going to do this? Become that? What future? No. What you think is "How will I be regarded in the end?" After I'm gone. Now, along the way I suppose I made some minor impact. I did Iran-Gate and the Ayatollah, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Saddam, Sadat, etcetera, etcetera. I showed them thieves in suits. I've spent a lifetime building all that. But history only remembers most what you did last. And should that be fronting a segment that allowed a tobacco giant to crash this network? Does it give someone at my time of life pause? Yeah. (unknown)
Lowell Bergman: Now are you going to go and do this thing or not? (unknown)
Helen Caperelli: [Referring to CBS News] Our standards have to be higher than anyone else because we are the standard of everyone else. (unknown)
Lowell Bergman: 'Tortious interference?' That sounds like a disease caught by a radio. (unknown)
Jeffrey Wigand: You manipulated me into where I am now - staring at the Brown and Williamson Building. It's all dark except the tenth floor. That's the legal department, where they fuck with my life! (unknown)
Sharon Tiller: You won.
Lowell Bergman: Yeah? What did I win? (unknown)
Lowell Bergman: You pay me to go get guys like Wigand, to draw him out. To get him to trust us, to get him to go on television. I do. I deliver him. He sits. He talks. He violates his own fucking confidentiality agreement. And he's only the key witness in the biggest public health reform issue, maybe the biggest, most-expensive corporate-malfeasance case in U.S. history. And Jeffrey Wigand, who's out on a limb, does he go on television and tell the truth? Yes. Is it newsworthy? Yes. Are we gonna air it? Of course not. Why? Because he's not telling the truth? No. Because he is telling the truth. That's why we're not going to air it. And the more truth he tells, the worse it gets! (unknown)
Richard Scruggs: I know what you're facing, Jeff. And, I think I know how you're feeling. In the Navy I flew A-6's off carriers. In combat, events have a duration of seconds, sometimes minutes. But what you're going through goes on day in and day out. Whether you're ready for it or not, week in, week out. Month after month after month. Whether you're up or whether you're down. You're assaulted psychologically. You're assaulted financially, which is its own special kind of violence because it's directed at your kids. What school can you afford? How will that affect their lives? You're asking yourself, "Will that limit what they may become?" You feel your whole family's future's compromised, held hostage. I do know how it is. (unknown)
Lowell Bergman: This news division has been *villified* by the New York Times! In print, on television, for *caving* to corporate interests!
Don Hewitt: New York Times ran a blow by blow of what we talked about behind closed doors! You fucked us!
Lowell Bergman: No, you fucked you! Don't invert stuff! Big Tobacco tried to smear Wigand, you bought it. The Wall Street Journal, here: not exactly a bastion of anti-capitalist sentiment, refutes Big Tobacco's smear campaign as the lowest form of character assassination! And now, even now, when every word of what Wigand has said on our show is printed, the entire deposition of his testimony in a court of law in the State of Mississippi, the cat *totally* out of the bag, you're still standing here debating! Don, what the hell else do you need?
Don Hewitt: Mike, you tell him.
Mike Wallace: You fucked up, Don. (unknown)
Tobacco Lawyer: Object!
Ron Motley: Is there an echo in here? Your objection's been recorded. She typed it into her little machine over there. It's on the record. So now I'll proceed with my deposition of my witness. Does it act as a drug? (unknown)
Mike Wallace: And do you wish you hadn't come forward? Do you wish you hadn't blown the whistle?
Jeffrey Wigand: There are times when I wish I hadn't done it. There are times when I feel com... compelled to do it. If you asked me, would I do it again, do I think it's worth it? Yeah I think its worth it. (unknown)
Lowell Bergman: What do I tell the next source when the next tough story comes along, huh? 'Hang in with us, you'll be ok maybe'? What got broken here doesn't go back together. (unknown)
|
Movie: The Insider [1999]
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
