Eric Roth

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…

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!

In the real world, when you get to where I am, there are other considerations.

I'm not talking celebrity, vanity, CBS. I'm talking about when you're nearer the end of your life than the beginning. Now, what do you think you think about then? The future? In the future I'm going to do this? Become that? What future? No. What you think is "How will I be regarded in the end?" After I'm gone. Now, along the way I suppose I made some minor impact. I did Iran-Gate and the Ayatollah, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Saddam, Sadat, etcetera, etcetera. I showed them thieves in suits. I've spent a lifetime building all that. But history only remembers most what you did last. And should that be fronting a segment that allowed a tobacco giant to crash this network? Does it give someone at my time of life pause? Yeah.

Do me a favor, will you - spare me, for God's sake, get in the real world, what do you think? I'm going to resign in protest? To force it on the air? The answer's "no". I don't plan to spend the end of my days wandering in the wilderness of National Public Radio. That decision I've already made.

I mean, he's got a corporate secrecy agreement - give me a break! I mean, this is a public health issue! Like an unsafe airframe on a passenger jet or some company dumping cyanide into the East River, issues like that! He can talk, we can air it! They've got no right to hide behind a "corporate agreement"! Pass the milk.

A servant of God? Really? Americans believe that you, as an Islamic fundamentalist, that you are a leader who contributed to the bombing of the US Embassy...

Ordinary people under extraordinary pressure, Mike. What the hell do you expect? Grace and consistency?

Jeffrey, where are you going with this? Where are you going? (Pause) You are important to a lot of people, Jeffrey. You think about that, and you think about them. (Pause) I'm all out of heroes, man. Guys like you are in short supply.

You pay me to go get guys like Wigand, to draw him out. To get him to trust us, to get him to go on television. I do. I deliver him. He sits. He talks. He violates his own fucking confidentiality agreement. And he's only the key witness in the biggest public health reform issue, maybe the biggest, most-expensive corporate-malfeasance case in U.S. history. And Jeffrey Wigand, who's out on a limb, does he go on television and tell the truth? Yes. Is it newsworthy? Yes. Are we gonna air it? Of course not. Why? Because he's not telling the truth? No. Because he is telling the truth. That's why we're not going to air it. And the more truth he tells, the worse it gets!

This news division has been villified by the New York Times! In print, on television, for caving to corporate interests!

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?

You'd better take a *good* look, because I'm getting two things: pissed off and curious.

In all that time, Mike, did you ever get out a plane, walk into a room and find that a source for a story changed his mind? Lost his heart? Walked out on us? Not one fucking time. You want to know why?

What do I tell the my source for the next tough story, huh? 'Hang in with us, you'll be ok maybe'? No. What got broken here doesn't go back together.

I never left a source hang out to dry, ever! Abandoned! Not 'til right fucking now. When I came on this job, I came with my word intact. I'm gonna leave with my word intact. Fuck the rules of the game!

And I don't like paranoid accusations! I'm a journalist. Think. Use your head. How do I operate as a journalist by screwing the people who could provide me with information before they provided me with it?

I'm Lowell Bergman, I'm from 60 Minutes. You know, you take the 60 Minutes out of that sentence, nobody returns your phone call.

Well that's the whole point, Jeffrey. That's the whole point. Anyone's. Everyone's. They are gonna look under every rock, dig up every flaw, every mistake you've ever made. They are going to distort and exaggerate everything you've ever done, man. Don't you understand?

"Words." While you've been dicking around some fucking company golf tournaments, I've been out in the world, giving my word... and backing it up with action. Now, are you gonna go and do this thing, or not?

You fought for me? You manipulated me! Into where I am now - staring at the Brown & Williamson building, it's all dark except for the tenth floor. That's the legal department, that's where they fuck with my life!

There are times when I wish I hadn't done it. There are times when I feel com… compelled to do it. If you asked me, would I do it again, do I think it's worth it? Yeah I think its worth it.

So, what you're saying is it wasn't enough to fire me for no good reason. Now you question my integrity? On top of the humiliation of being fired, you threaten me? You threaten my family? It never crossed my mind not to honor my agreement. And I will tell you, Mr. Sandefur... and Brown & Williamson too - fuck me? Well, fuck you!

I believe Mr. Sandefur perjured himself because I watched those testimonies very carefully.

Part of the reason I'm here is that I felt that their representations clearly misstated - at least within Brown and Williamson's representation - clearly misstated what is common language within the company: "We are in the nicotine delivery business."

The process is known as "impact boosting". While not spiking nicotine, they clearly manipulate it. There was extensive use of this technology known as "ammonia chemistry". It allows for the nicotine to be more rapidly absorbed in the lung and therefore affect the brain and central nervous system. The straw that broke the camel's back for me, and really put me in trouble with Sandefur, was a compound called coumarin. When I came on board at B. and W., they had tried the transition from coumarin to a similar flavor that would give the same taste, and had been unsuccessful. I wanted out immediately. I was told that it could affect sales, so I should mind my own business. I constructed a memo to Mr. Sandefur indicating I could not in conscience continue with coumarin, a product we now know and we had documentation was similar to coumadin, a lung-specific carcinogen.

I sent the documents forward to Sandefur. I was told that we would continue to work on a substitute but we weren't going to remove it as it would impact sales, and that was his decision.

You manipulated me into where I am now - staring at the Brown and Williamson Building. It's all dark except the tenth floor. That's the legal department, where they fuck with my life!

A can opener! A $39.95 can opener. I cancelled payment... it was junk. You ever bounce a check, Lowell? You ever look at another woman's tits? You ever cheat a little on your taxes? Whose life, if you look at it under a microscope, doesn't have any flaws...?

Maybe that's what you've been telling yourself all these years to justify having a good job. Having status. Maybe for the audience, its just voyeurism, something to do on a Sunday night. And maybe it won't change a fucking thing. And people like myself, and my family are left hung out to dry, used up, broke, alone.

I have to put my family's welfare on the line here, my friend! And what are you puttin' up? You're puttin' up words!

I find chemistry to be magical. I find it an adventure, an exploration into the physical building blocks of our universe.

Up to you, Jeffrey! That's the power you have, Jeffrey! Vital inside information the American public need to know! Lowell Bergman, the hotshot who never met a source he couldn't turn around!

If the sun were to explode, you wouldn't even know about it for 8 minutes because thats how long it takes for light to travel to us.

For eight minutes the world would still be bright and it would still feel warm.

It was a year since my dad died and I could feel my eight minutes with him... were running out.

My father died at 9-11. After he died I wouldn't go into his room for a year because it was too hard and it made me want to cry. But one day, I put on heavy boots and went in his room anyway. I miss doing taekwondo with him because it always made me laugh. When I went into his closet, where his clothes and stuff were, I reached up to get his old camera. It spun around and dropped about a hundred stairs, and I broke a blue vase! Inside was a key in an envelope with black written on it and I knew that dad left something somewhere for me that the key opened and I had to find. So I take it to Walt, the locksmith. I give it to Stan, the doorman, who tells me keys can open anything. He gave me the phone book for all the five boroughs. I count there are 472 people with the last name black. There are 216 addresses. Some of the blacks live together, obviously. I calculated that if I go to 2 every Saturday plus holidays, minus my hamlet school plays, my minerals, coins, and comic convention, it's going to take me 3 years to go through all of them. But that's what I'm going to do! Go to every single person named black and find out what the key fits and see what dad needed me to find. I made the very best possible plan but using the last four digits of each phone number, I divide the people by zones. I had to tell my mother another lie, because she wouldn't understand how I need to go out and find what the key fits and help me make sense of things that don't even make sense like him being killed in the building by people that didn't even know him at all! And I see some people who don't speak English, who are hiding, one black said that she spoke to God. If she spoke to god how come she didn't tell him not to kill her son or not to let people fly planes into buildings and maybe she spoke to a different god than them! And I met a man who was a woman who a man who was a woman all at the same time and he didn't want to get hurt because he/she was scared that she/he was so different. And I still wonder if she/he ever beat up himself, but what does it matter?

And I see Mr. Black who hasn't heard a sound in 24 years which I can understand because I miss dad's voice that much. Like when he would say, "are you up yet?" or…

And I see the twin brothers who paint together and there's a shed that has to be clue, but it's just a shed! Another black drew the same drawing of the same person over and over and over again! Forest black, the doorman, was a school teacher in Russia but now says his brain is dying! Seamus black who has a coin collection, but doesn't have enough money to eat everyday! You see olive black was a gate guard but didn't have the key to it which makes him feel like he's looking at a brick wall. And I feel like I'm looking at a brick wall because I tried the key in 148 different places, but the key didn't fit. And open anything it hasn't that dad needed me to find so I know that without him everything is going to be alright.

And I still feel scared every time I go into a strange place. I'm so scared I have to hold myself around my waist or I think I'll just break all apart! But I never forget what I heard him tell mom about the sixth borough. That if things were easy to find...

And I'm so scared every time I leave home. Every time I hear a door open. And I don't know a single thing that I didn't know when I started! It's these times I miss my dad more than ever even if this whole thing is to stop missing him at all! It hurts too much. Sometimes I'm afraid I'll do something very bad.

There are more people alive now than have died in all of human history, but the number of dead people is increasing. One day, there isn't going to be any room to bury anyone anymore. So, what about skyscrapers for dead people, that are built down. They could be underneath the skyscrapers for living people, that are built up. We could bury people 100 floors down. And a whole dead world could be underneath the living one.

Hi, you've reached the Schell residence. Today is Tuesday, September 11th. Here's today's fact of the day: It is so cold in Yakutia that breath instantly freezes with a crackling sound they call "the whispering of the stars".

I started with a simple problem... a key with no lock... and I designed a system I thought fit the problem. I broke everything down in the smallest parts... and tried to think of each person as a number... in a gigantic equation.

But it wasn't working... because people aren't like numbers. They're more like letters... and those letters want to become stories... and dad said that stories need to be shared.

I had anticipated a six minute visit with each person named "Black"... but they were never just six minutes. Everyone took more time than I had planned for... to try and comfort me and make me feel better about my dad... and to tell me their stories. But I didn't want to feel better and I didn't want friends... I just wanted the lock. I wasn't getting any closer to my dad... I was losing him.

What if you could ride an elevator down to visit your dead relatives, just like you take the bridge to see your friends in Brooklyn, or the ferry to Staten Island? Dad once told me that New York used to have a Sixth Borough, right next to Manhattan. But you can't visit that anymore, because it floated away and no one knows where it is.

I'm sure people tell you this constantly, but if you look under "incredibly beautiful" in the dictionary, there's a picture of you.

You might want to know, the key wasn't meant for me. It was meant for a Mr. William Black, who maybe needed it even more than I did. I was disappointed... obviously. But I'm honestly glad that it's where it belongs. And I'm even glad to have my disappointment, which is much better than having nothing.

Doesn't anybody know that there isn't anybody in the coffin? We should have filled it with his shoes or something. It's like a pretend funeral, for a goldfish or something.

I didn't know what was waiting for me. Although my stomach hurt and my eyes were watering I'd made up my mind that nothing was gonna stop me. Not even me.

I've never been on a cow farm before. It seems to me that the bulls have the best time. Just laying around the fields waiting for someone to come along and ask them to do their work.

A million years before man they grazed the vast empty plains, living by voices only they could hear. They first came to know man as the hunted knows the hunter. Before he used horses for his labors, he killed them for meat. The alliance with man would forever be fragile. For the fear he struck deep into their hearts was too deep to be dislodged. Since that neolithic moment when a horse was first haltered, there were those among men who understood this. They could see into the creature's soul and sooth the wounds they found there. The secrets uttered softly into troubled ears. These men were known as the Whisperers.