TODAY'S NUGGET: The Insider (1999) - Subtext --> Actors --> Aha! Bridge

[Quick Summary: 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman fights his parent company (CBS) which shuts down his hot story about tobacco whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand.]

In an interview, writer/director Michael Mann stated that his focus was subtext:

INTERVIEWER: There seem to be five things going on in every scene.

MANN: I wanted to direct, I tried to direct the subtext.

He then mentions a particular scene (below):
(Note that:
- Wigand has been fired from working at B&W, a tobacco company.
- Wigand is bound by a confidentiality agreement to B& W, but wants to talk.
- Lowell is asking for Wigand's help on a case unrelated to B&W.)

 INT. A HOTEL ROOM, LOUISVILLE - EARLY EVENING

...WIGAND: Should I just take the documents now?

LOWELL: If you want to do it.

He turns to leave...Lowell gets the door for him...Wigand momentarily slows...

WIGAND: I worked as the head of Research and Development for Brown & Williamson Tobacco company. I was a Corporate Vice President. Mr. Bergman...

And he goes out the door... Lowell's still. Wigand's job title resonates. Lowell turns to the window, casually looking into the early evening...and he comes face to face with what Wigand was staring at, The Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company Headquarters Building, lit up right across the street...

Mann spoke about how the actors played the subtext to get us to the aha! moment:

Al Pacino just took over Lowell’s great reporter’s intuition to sit there and laser-scan Jeffrey with his eyes. You know, he looks at him, looks at him, and doesn’t move, until, after all the fidgeting and shuffling with the papers, Russell, as Jeffrey, gets to say his great line—”I was a corporate vice president”—with the attitude “Once upon a time, I was a very important person.” And that [Mann snaps his fingers] is when Lowell has it. Suddenly, here’s the significance of this meeting: “He’s the former head of research and development at Browne & Williamson Tobacco Company, and he wants to talk to me.” Without hitting anything on the head with exposition, without any of that awful dialogue, like “Boy, have I got a lead which may give us the newsbreak of the decade,” you know that Lowell knows he’s on the scent of a helluva story.

WHAT I'VE LEARNED: This example shows what subtext is needed to be on the page for the actors to play that kind of subtext.

The Insider (1999)(11/5/99 draft)
by Eric Roth and Michael Mann