TMR 252 : The Insider (Movie Roundtable)

For the 6th of our Movie Review podcasts here at TMR we welcome back our good friends Antony Rotunno (Freethinker75 blog), Frank Johnson (Ancient Aliens Debunked blog) and Mark Campbell (Bowler or Fez Film Reviews) for a roundtable discussion on the 1999 based-on-truth thriller The Insider directed by Michael Mann and starring Russell Crowe, Al Pacino and Christopher Plummer. Unceremoniously ejected from the third largest tobacco company in the US, research scientist and high-up executive Jeffrey Wigand (Crowe) has a story to tell that 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) s desperate to get his hands on. But personal threats against Wigand and his family, and legal threats against CBS if they venture to air Wigand's story, almost succeed in silencing the whistleblower. In the end his words do become public, and his testimony has huge implications for the tobacco industry, but in the process we witness the wheels of power attempting to crush the Lone Voice and a media landscape compromised by the pressures of legal and financial challenges. Join us as we discuss the film's production and consider some of the messages implied by the movie's storyline. [Podcast theme music by Antony Raijekov (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).] For show notes please visit https://themindrenewed.com