Mike Wallace’s Role

Thank you for Myron Levin’s article on “The Untitled Tobacco Project” (“A Filtered Look at Tobacco Row,” Nov. 29). It was particularly engaging to be interviewed by someone with such an extensive background in reporting on the tobacco story.

We would like to make one important comment. Contrary to an impression Levin may have received from Mike Wallace, there were no changes to the major content of our film as a concession to Wallace. The major changes he sought had to do with who ought to be the story’s central protagonist at CBS, he or “60 Minutes” producer Lowell Bergman, and his capitulation to corporate pressure in pulling the interview with Jeffrey Wigand. Both requests were turned down by Michael Mann. We felt that what was dramatized in the screenplay was authentic. Some very minor dialogue, which we in fact had gotten wrong, was changed prior to filming.

The idea that the architecture of Wallace’s character and his role in large events was altered as a result of some campaign of his is fiction. Neither of us negotiates the content of our work.

MICHAEL MANN

ERIC ROTH

Los Angeles

Mann is the director and Roth the screenwriter of “The Untitled Tobacco Project.”