Are the low-information types who can’t be bothered with absorbing the particular, easy-to-research facts about Obama or McCain the same ones who didn’t go to The Insider because they didn’t want to see a movie that was about how smoking gives you cancer? That’s how Al Pacino explained the apparent lack of interest in this 1999 film during a press conference that I attended.

The fact that corporations and their sociopathic agendas are taking over everything is as dramatically “real” and punchy as the Capone gang taking over Chicago in the 1920s. Michael Mann‘s movie showed exactly how this malignancy affected CBS News and 60 Minutes back in the mid ’90s, and yet millions of good citizens of the USA didn’t go because they didn’t want to see a smoking-is-bad-for-you movie. Brilliant.
One of the best corporate thrillers ever made and certainly one of the finest films of the ’90s, The Insider made only $29 million domestically. This was partly because Disney screwed up on the marketing, granted, but also because the tele-tubbies couldn’t be bothered to bone up or read reviews.