One of the true horror stories of our time that most people seemingly haven't heard of is the one involving Jeffrey Wigand and Brown & Williamson, a whistleblower who lifted the lid on the American tobacco industry and the methods they went to make a more addictive - and dangerous - cigarette.
The Insider, Michael Mann's 1999 drama detailing those events, makes for sobering viewing. Starring Al Pacino as Lowell Bergman, a journalist for CBS' famous 60 Minutes, and Russell Crowe as Wigand, the film depicts Bergman's investigation and the subsequent harassment Wigand endured at the hands of his former employers. He's targeted maliciously, made to fear for his life, and he still comes through, in the end, having been subjected to the full might of one of the country's most powerful industries.
It's a film made in the Pakula mould, and while the validity of Wigand's claims of harassment have been drawn under close scrutiny in subsequent years, it in no way nullifies the tension that dominates Mann's film.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
