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.

