40 August 29 • 2019
jn
R
ough-and-tumble journalist
Mike Wallace is remembered
for not holding back on any
questions he thought his television
viewers wanted asked — whether of
political leaders, business notables
or entertainment luminaries.
Wallace demanded answers and
didn’
t mind repeating his questions
in different ways to elicit what he
thought should be known.
When it came to questions asked
of him, however, Wallace, a contro-
versial presence, usually knew how
to rebuff them. When asked how
many wives he had, an answer was
avoided.
Another question Wallace
wanted to steer away from had
to do with whether he had tried
to commit suicide during a battle
with depression. Making a denial
to Barbara Walters and others, he
revealed that time of desperation
to personal friend and 60 Minutes
colleague Morley Safer.
Wallace, so otherwise strong and
compelling on air, had decided to
relent during a television moment.
The personal side of the legend-
ary broadcast journalist is included
but holds only a small part of the
film Mike Wallace is Here, being
shown Friday-Sunday, Sept. 6-8, at
the Detroit Film Theatre. The film
focuses on his career and how it
gained journalism momentum after
beginning with commercial narra-
tion and acting.
Israeli-trained filmmaker Avi
Belkin directed the documentary.
“I think there’
s
something about
the pace of the film
and the way it moves
that is reflective of
Mike, which is what
I was trying to get,
”
says Belkin, 41, who
began working on
this production at
the end of 2017 and
finished at the start
of 2019.
“My angle was broadcast jour-
nalism, so I wanted to show more
about his career and less about his
personal life.
”
Belkin watched some 1,400 hours
of footage before whittling that
down to one-and-a-half hours of
film dominated by excerpts from
interviews with people who range
from the Ayatollah Khomeini to
Barbra Streisand, from an in-busi-
ness Donald Trump to an in-gov-
ernment Vladimir Putin.
“When I started working on
the film, I was living in Tel Aviv,
and journalism was very much in
debate back then,
” recalls Belkin,
a prizewinning filmmaker in his
home country and now living in
California.
“It was before Trump was elected,
but it already felt that journalism
was at a tipping point, and I was
looking for a story I could do about
broadcast journalism that would be
engaging for audiences.
“I like to choose a smaller
story to create a bigger story, and
Mike Wallace was in all the right
moments in time. I had the idea
of doing a portrait of Mike and,
through him, tell about broadcast
journalism because of his unpar-
alleled career, which was over 60
years.
”
Doing a smaller story to convey
a larger story was at the center of
Belkin’
s first film, Winding. It fol-
lowed a river and its landscape to
tell the story of Israel and won best
picture at a Haifa International Film
Festival.
In communicating the Mike
Wallace presence, Belkin took note
of the strength of Wallace’
s voice
even in his 80s.
“We worked with footage from
all periods of time,
” the filmmaker
says. “Sometimes I’
d have a scene
with Mike at 40 next to a scene with
Mike at 80, and you couldn’
t tell the
difference in age because his voice
was consistent, and that goes to
show how professional he was.
”
Belkin’
s professional life began as
a photographer. On extensive trav-
els after
fulfilling his military obli-
gation, he decided he had an eye for
finding interesting sights and aimed
his camera.
“When I was 25, I started film
school in Israel,
” Belkin recalls.
“When I finished after five years, I
started directing. I felt I then had
the ability to tell a story with the
right images and the right sound.
“When I was going to film
school, I started scripting a film, but
SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MAGNOLIA PICTURES
Follow-Up
Question
arts&life
Mike Wallace in Mike Wallace Is
Here, a new documentary
Avi Belkin,
director of Mike
Wallace Is Here,
a Magnolia
Pictures
release.
fi
lm
King
of the
Film Mike Wallace is Here
examines the broadcast
legend.