{"id":2446495,"date":"2019-07-18T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-18T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=309642"},"modified":"2019-07-18T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-18T22:00:00","slug":"director-avi-belkin-discusses-his-timely-new-mike-wallace-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/director-avi-belkin-discusses-his-timely-new-mike-wallace-documentary\/","title":{"rendered":"Director Avi Belkin discusses his timely new Mike Wallace documentary"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
The new documentary \u201cMike Wallace is Here\u201d will screen Monday at Paepcke Auditorium.<\/strong>
Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

The words \u201cMike Wallace is here\u201d could strike fear in a subject during Wallace\u2019s 50-year reign as television\u2019s most famous investigative journalist.<\/p>\n

From his perch on CBS\u2019 \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d Wallace subjected politicians, celebrities and other public figures to his trademark \u201ctough questions\u201d in a relentless pursuit of the truth.<\/p>\n

Israeli filmmaker Avi Belkin, in his compelling new documentary<\/a>, captures the intensity and flair of Wallace \u2014 both the hard-driving personality and unflinching reportorial style of the man who transformed Sunday night television for millions of viewers.<\/p>\n

In a recent phone interview, Belkin explained that the idea for \u201cMike Wallace is Here\u201d came to him three years ago (before the current president\u2019s election). Disturbed by trends in the news industry and wondering how broadcast journalism got to such a contentious tipping point, Belkin began researching its history. He kept stumbling upon Wallace\u2019s ubiquitous presence.<\/p>\n

\u201cMike was like a Zelig or Forrest Gump character, intersecting all the right moments in the evolution of journalism,\u201d Belkin said. \u201cI got this idea of doing a portrait of Mike and through that portrait focusing on his career, I could tell the bigger broadcast journalism story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadly, Wallace, having died in 2012 at age 93, was no longer available to answer Belkin\u2019s questions. Not wishing to resort to the secondhand talking-heads format of a conventional documentary, Belkin resolved on a novel approach: \u201cTo do a Mike Wallace interview with Mike Wallace.\u201d He pitched this idea to CBS, the producers of \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d and they allowed him unprecedented access to their vast film and video library.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was the first time they had ever opened the \u201860 Minutes\u2019 archives,\u201d Belkin said. \u201cI watched roughly 1,500 hours of raw materiaI.\u201d<\/p>\n

About two months into his archival research, Belkin came upon a Vanity Fair interview with Wallace.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn it Mike said something that struck a nerve in me,\u201d Belkin explained. \u201cHe said he was very much aware of his own Achilles\u2019 heels. When he went into an interview, he framed those weaknesses of his in questions for others. I searched interviews looking for moments where Mike\u2019s questions were revealing his subconscious \u2026 So I went back and forth between him interviewing people and being interviewed. That\u2019s basically the spine of the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, the film reveals some surprisingly personal and poignant moments. No spoilers here.<\/p>\n

Belkin\u2019s research left him in awe of Wallace\u2019s skill: \u201cTo see him go into an interview, how he played it out, how he choreographed the questions. That was beautiful to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wallace\u2019s determination and courage also impressed the filmmaker.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere a lot of other reporters would have backed down, Mike was never going to be stopped,\u201d he said. \u201cEven if it were Ayatollah Khomeini in the middle of the Iranian Revolution, he was still going to get his tough question across, and I think that\u2019s remarkable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Belkin emerged from the troves of CBS and other archives with hours of footage featuring a who\u2019s who of headline news from over half a century. The filmmaker estimates that 50% to 60% of his documentary includes never-seen-before outtakes including parts from Wallace\u2019s interviews with Vladimir Putin, Barbra Streisand and Bill O\u2019Reilly, among many others.<\/p>\n

To shape his materials into the final documentary, which screens Monday in Paepcke Auditorium at the summer\u2019s New Views series and will be released in theaters July 26, Belkin again took his cues from Wallace.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re doing a documentary, a dangerous pitfall is being boring,\u201d he said. \u201cMike was a relentless ticking bomb. I wanted the film to have his energy and his rhythm so that\u2019s how I approached the editing process. I wanted it to be very fast-paced, making sure that it feels relevant and tracks throughout like Mike.\u201d<\/p>\n

The director forges a complex and surprisingly timely portrait of a consummate practitioner of the art of the interview, and of the times in which he flourished.<\/p>\n

Fittingly, for a film about a relentless truth-seeker, Belkin leaves us with a set of open questions: \u201cWould Mike be as successful as he was today? In today\u2019s climate is there a place for a guy like Mike? Are people really interested in the tough questions or are they just looking to be reaffirmed in their beliefs? Back in the \u201970s when Mike became a star, journalism was a star. It was the time of Watergate and Vietnam. People wanted (answers). Today there\u2019s a question mark about how much people want tough investigative journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new documentary \u201cMike Wallace is Here\u201d will screen Monday at Paepcke Auditorium.Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures The words \u201cMike Wallace is here\u201d could strike fear in a subject during Wallace\u2019s 50-year reign as television\u2019s most famous investigative journalist. From his perch on CBS\u2019 \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d Wallace subjected politicians, celebrities and other public figures to his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2446495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-21 13:31:19","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}