I met a documentary film director. I was 
suddenly fascinated with the documen-
tary because I felt it could be almost any-
thing to tell a story. I felt it was a much 
more free medium and 
got into it.
” 
A Vanity Fair article 
about Wallace, read and 
retained by Belkin, delved 
into how the broadcaster 
became more reflective 
as he aged and described 
how he was fascinated 
with people’
s weak spots 
and very aware of his own 
Achilles’
 heel while posing 
questions.
“I’
m an interviewer as 
well because a documen-
tary filmmaker always 
does interviews,
” Belkin 
explains. “I was looking 
for moments that revealed 
Mike’
s character, where it 
felt like he was talking to 
himself in a way.
”
Although Belkin does 
not present any segment 
related to Wallace’
s Jewish 
background, research left 
the filmmaker with the impression that 
there was pride in his religion. During 
Middle East coverage, the filmmaker 
says, it seemed to remain important for 

Wallace to include the Palestinian point 
of view.
Omitted from the film is part of a 
conversation with playwright Arthur 
Miller. Both men went to 
the University of Michigan 
and recalled times there.
“Learning about Mike 
was inspiring for my 
work,
” says Belkin, cur-
rently represented in an 
AMC miniseries, No One 
Saw a Thing, about vio-
lence in a small Missouri 
town. “Watching the raw 
interviews, just looking at 
the craft, was school for 
me. 
“Mike was all about 
research, relentless about 
getting into the core of 
his subject. There isn’
t a 
moment in those hours 
when he’
s drifting. He’
s so 
focused and so sharp.
“The second thing I 
realized was about asking 
the follow-up questions. 
People talk about Mike as 
inventing the tough ques-
tion, and he was the master of it, but also 
the master of the follow-up. The second 
question is sometimes more important 
than the first one.
” ■

Details
Mike Wallace is Here 
will be shown Sept. 
6-8 at the Detroit Film 
Theatre in the Detroit 
Institute of Arts. $7.50-
$9.50. (313) 833-4005. 
dia.org/events.

Mike Wallace featured 
in an episode of CBS 60 
Minutes in Mike Wallace 
Is Here.

Mike Wallace interviews Ku Klux 
Klan leader Eldon Edwards (1957) in 
Mike Wallace Is Here.

Print journalist Charles Eisendrath had two 
full-time careers. During the second, he 
developed a strong friendship with Mike 
Wallace and brought some 
good, even light-hearted, 
times to the otherwise 
intense broadcaster. 
After working as an 
international correspon-
dent for Time magazine, 
Eisendrath joined the 
University of Michigan 
(U-M) faculty. He went on to become 
founding director of the Livingston Awards 
for Young Journalists and 
invited Wallace to be a judge. 
Wallace, who graduated 
from U-M in 1939, turned into 
a major donor as Eisendrath 
founded and directed the 
Knight-Wallace Fellowships 
and the Wallace House, a cen-
ter for journalism programs.
What a surprise — for 
Wallace and spectators — as 
Eisendrath gave thanks by 
arranging for the 60 Minutes icon to lead 
the marching band at a football halftime.
“One of the nicest things Mike said 
repeatedly and publicly was that his con-
nection with me and with Wallace House 
had given him back his university,” says 
Eisendrath, who raised more than $60 mil-
lion during his 30 years at the school. 
“I proposed Mike for an honorary degree, 
and he got one.”
Eisendrath recalls many stories that 
involve public figures and public events that 
came his way, and they include covering 
arms smuggling out of France and outright 
unrest in Chile. He also has dramatic sto-
ries that tell of his life after retiring in 2016 
from U-M and taking to the rural appeal of 
family property in Charlevoix County. 
Many of those stories are described 
through the pages of his new book, 
Downstream From Here (Mission Point 
Press), a series of essays compiled at 
Overlook Farm, where he experienced the 
outdoors and entered the world of entre-
preneurship.
“I’
m a fisherman, and if you’
re a fish-
erman, you find yourself thinking that the 
most interesting things are going to be just 
around that next bend,” says Eisendrath, 
78, who asked one of his two sons to head 
up Grillworks, which markets an outdoor 

grill the journalist developed before mar-
keting his maple syrup through Overlook 
Farm Maple and Lake Charlevoix Maple. 
“If you’
ve floated a canoe, as I often 
have, [you watch for] just over there, where 
the water gets a wave. The same is true 
of time. The most interesting things to me 
always seem to be coming in the future. 
“I put those two ideas together to come 
up with the book title that seemed right for 
me.”
The essays, which follow subjects and 
not a timeline, also reveal very personal 
moments — reaching from the history of 
his Jewish family and his own religious 
and spiritual outlook to issues faced with 
his wife, Julia, a distant cousin of the late 
Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo.
“The book gave me a chance to tell my 
story in terms of a place that I loved all 
my life; but writing about my own life was 
much harder than writing about others’
 
lives,” he explains. 
Eisendrath’
s wrote essays over many 
years and kept them in a box.
“I did not think about the 
essays very much, but when 
retirement [from U-M] was com-
ing, I said I’
m going to see what’
s 
in that box,” he recalls. “Thinking 
I would find maybe 75 pages, 
I found 350, thought it all was 
book length and hired an editor. 
Eisendrath felt compelled to 
document the emotions of coping 
with a son’
s serious illness and his wife’
s 
critical injuries after a plane crash.
“If you’
re going to be honest with your 
reader, you have to include everything,” he 
says. “It’
s a clear and balanced idea of the 
life that’
s being examined.”
Now immersed in the upper reaches 
of Michigan’
s lower peninsula, where he 
connects with neighbors and knows vaca-
tioners, Eisendrath is thinning the woods, 
experimenting with pawpaw trees and 
reading Richard Powers’
 The Overstory, a 
novel about trees.
As he promotes the idea of the farm 
staying with Eisendraths for generations 
to come, the continuing writer hasn’
t for-
gotten about emerging journalists and is 
thinking journalism could be at the center 
of a possible next book.
“This is the best time ever to become a 
journalist if you’
re young,” he says. “For the 
institutions that have fallen apart, there are 
new institutions that are taking shape, and 
the cost of entry is very low. 
“It won’
t be the same world I enjoyed, 
which is to say being paid a nice salary 
at someplace like Time to run around the 
world and report, but it’
s an exciting time 
and can be lucrative, too, as a freelancer or 
founder of an organization.” ■

o 

n-

s 

Eisendrat

y

e
re
in
in
I 
I 
b

d

BEN EISENDRATH

Charles 
Eisendrath

CHARLES EISENDRATH

August 29 • 2019 41
jn

A Life 
Examined

SUZANNE CHESSLER 
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

MIKE WALLACE’
S CONTEMPORARY 
PUBLISHED NEW BOOK OF ESSAYS.

