Gary Webb Never Said No to the Truth

“My friend, some stories are too true to tell,” federal prosecutor Fred Weil (Michael Sheen) warns San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner) in one of the key moments of the sad but gripping Kill the Messenger.

The scene is among a handful that seem to have been inspired by Oliver Stone's JFK, although give director Michael Cuesta (L.I.E., Homeland) credit for eschewing Joe Pesci's freaky David Ferrie eyebrows. Weil is commenting on the biggest scoop of Webb's career: that CIA operatives allowed the sale of crack cocaine in American inner cities to help fund Ronald Reagan's shadow war to arm Nicaraguan Contras against the Sandinistas.

There is, of course, irony in that because of Nancy Reagan's famous “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign. When a federal suit tries to rationalize that the contra-cocaine scheme's aim was to prevent American boys from dying in a Central American war, Webb shoots back, “American boys did die, just not the ones you care about, I guess.”

Smart dialogue such as that is packed into Kill the Messenger, which was written by Peter Landesman (who, speaking of JFK, adapted Parkland, Vincent Bugliosi's book about the chaotic events that occurred at the Dallas hospital the day Kennedy was assassinated). Of Danilo Blandon (Yul Vazquez), the government informant who estimated he made $1.5 billion smuggling cocaine into the U.S., $6 million-per-day, Los Angeles street dealer Freeway Ricky Ross (Michael Kenneth Williams) confides, “Look, man, I was an elf. Blandon was Santa Claus.”

The irony extends to Weil being a fictional character. He's based on Jack Blum, who was the lead prosecutor in then-Senator John Kerry's probe of the contra-cocaine connection in the 1980s. Kill the Messenger is only, as an onscreen disclaimer informs, “Based on a true story.” While Landesman relied on the nonfictional source material of the books Dark Alliance by Webb and Kill the Messenger by OC Weekly's own Nick Schou, facts are shifted, events are condensed, and, yes, dialogue, scenes and people are invented for the screen. How else is one to tell a complicated story clearly, quickly and with the blessing of legal counsel?

Which brings us to the greatest irony of all: that Landesman and Cuesta's literary jujitsu is akin to what investigative reporters such as Webb must do to present complicated stories to mass audiences. Otherwise, classified-advertising sections would have to be cleared out for all the footnotes. But that can lead to gray areas in reporting that, once married with a typo here and a non-essential incorrect fact there, critics pounce on to discredit the higher truth of the story. That, as Kill the Messenger shows, is what the CIA, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, The New York Times, the rest of the mainstream media and, eventually, the Mercury News did to Gary Webb.

Renner, who earned his first producer credit with the film, is believable conveying the passion that drove the reporter, although he simmers with a borderline menacing discontent that his subject may not have shared. He has a great cast of veteran actors to lean on, including Sheen, Oliver Platt, Andy Garcia, Robert Patrick, Barry Pepper, Tim Blake Nelson and Ray Liotta. Wait, are we sure Stone didn't direct this? Nope, because the most credible characters are women. Rosemarie DeWitt as Webb's wife, Sue, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as his editor Anna Simons make you feel the suffering of a man being broken in front of your eyes.

Speaking of which, solid editing can save a reporter's butt. It can also save an otherwise-disjointed film. Brian A. Kates deserves special recognition for keeping Kill the Messenger from becoming one of those. By my count, he had four montages (including the clever opening sequence) that expertly layered true-life footage, shots of the movie's players and just the right music (including the Clash!) to push the story along.

Sheen's Weil/Blum shares with Webb Kill the Messenger's cautionary tale, explaining it took 10 years to climb out of D.C. obscurity after getting too close to the truth about America's crack epidemic funding the Gipper's war. Cuesta and Landesman, perhaps unwittingly, make the case that Webb should not have ignored the advice—advice that seemingly all of mainstream media now follows. We have a daily-newspaper publisher in Orange County who values “building community,” not journalism. We have empty newspaper bureaus in the state capital that may as well be broom closets. We have a national media more obsessed with listicles and quick-hit “he said, she said” stories than investigative reports that uncover the truth.

What I got out of Kill the Messenger? Mr. Webb would have been better off just saying no.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *