Awesome / The Insider

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• Ron Motley (played by Bruce McGill)^note he plays D-Day in Animal House tearing the Brown & Williamson lawyer a new one: "You got rights... and lefts. Ups and downs and middles. So what? You don't get to instruct anything around here! This is not North Carolina, not South Carolina, nor Kentucky! This is the sovereign State of Mississippi's proceeding. [The lawyer smiles condescendingly] WIPE THAT SMIRK OFF YOUR FACE! Dr. Wigand's deposition will be part of this record! And I'm gonna take my witness' testimony whether the hell you like it or not!"
  • When Motley bellows at the lawyer to lose that condescending smile he has on his face, the lawyer immediately does so. Because the lawyer, quite rightly, looks fucking terrified.
    • Best part? All of this is downplayed. Per the transcripts of the deposition, Motley didn't even need to raise his voice; his calm, systematic dissection made the opposing attorney's repeated "object to the form" interruptions go from Revealing Cover-Up to Digging Yourself Deeper. As outstanding as the scene is, the reality was even better - just longer. He didn't need to start Chewing the Scenery; he buried the opposition with deadpan snarkery.
  Ron Motley: Sir, at any time did you learn that Brown & Williamson was using a form of rat poison in pipe tobacco?
  Tom Bezanson: Object to the form.
  Jeffrey Wigand: Yes.
  Ron Motley: What form of rat poison is that, sir?
  Tom Bezanson: Object to the form.
  Jeffrey Wigand: It is a compound called coumarin. It was contained in the pipe tobacco—
  Tom Bezanson: Object on trade secret grounds and instruct not to answer.
  Ron Motley: You are objecting that the man is revealing that you used rat poison as a trade secret? [to Wigand] You may answer, sir.
  Tom Bezanson: Object to the form.
  Ron Motley: Go ahead. If they used rat poison in pipe tobacco that human beings were taking in their bodies, I want to know about it. Will you tell me about it, sir?
• This moment:
  Mike: "Where's the rest? Where the hell's the rest? You cut it?! You cut the guts out of what I said?!"
  Eric Kluster: "It was a time consideration, Mike."
  Mike: "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..."
  Helen Caperelli: "Mike... Mike... Mike..."
  Mike: "Mike? "Mike." Try "Mr. Wallace". We work in the same corporation doesn't mean we work in the same profession. What are you going to do now? You're gonna finesse me, lawyer me some more? I've been in this profession 50 FUCKING YEARS! You, and the people you work for, are destroying the most-respected, the highest-rated, the most-profitable show on this network!"
  • And the scene cuts off rather abruptly at that point, suggesting that Wallace kept going and Kluster and Caperelli had to just stand there and take it.
• When Don Hewitt angrily confronts Lowell for tipping off another station about the censorship of Wigand's interview.
  Hewitt: Did you tell them that we're lying?
  Lowell: No. I should have.
• Infuriated that 60 Minutes ran an edited version of his story over his protests out of fear of being sued by Big Tobacco, Lowell has his own investigators take all of Big Tobacco's allegations and fact-check them all and hands the results off to rivals at The Wall Street Journal and urges them to do the same before they run their own story on Wigand. Running out of time, he decides he can't wait and calls The New York Times and tells them about CBS caving to corporate interests, potentially burning every bridge he ever had. They run a front-page story about CBS' lack of journalistic integrity and provide a scathing editorial titled "Self-Censorship at CBS", which points out that CBS censored Wigand's interview to save their asses and protect their bottom line from a lawsuit that Brown & Williamson had not even threatened to file. They predictably scream for Lowell's head to roll... until The Wall Street Journal's story runs later that day. It confirms his assertion that Big Tobacco was running an unprecedented smear campaign against a reluctant whistleblower and prints the Mississippi deposition that Wigand was part of 2 months earlier in its entirety. The tirade Lowell unleashes on CBS News and 60 Minutes when he gets back to the office is made of awesome:
  Lowell: This news division has been vilified in The New York Times! In print, on television, for caving to corporate interests!
  Don Hewitt: The New York Times ran a blow-by-blow of what we talked about behind closed doors! You fucked us!
  Lowell: 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.

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