USA,
2005, 110 min
Shown in 2005
CREDITS
- dir
-
Alex Gibney
- prod
-
Alex Gibney, Jason Kliot, Susan Motamed
- scr
-
Alex Gibney
- cam
-
Maryse Alberti
- editor
-
Alison Ellwood
- mus
-
Matt Hauser
- source
-
Magnolia Pictures, 49 W 27th St, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10001. FAX: 212-924-6742. EMAIL: ebowles@magpictures.com.
-
COMMENTS
Alex Gibney in person.
OTHER
Michael Moore, move over: There’s a new guy exposing America’s big-business buffoons, and his name is Alex Gibney. Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room reveals the appalling, heartbreaking and at times comical story behind the rise and fall of one of America’s largest corporations. Anchored in Houston, but with its fingers in pies across the U.S. (and the world), Enron began as a natural gas pipeline company but blossomed into a massive energy conglomerate. Its remarkable collapse in 2001 exposed not only fraudulent accounting practices and a risible disregard for anything except profits, but also predatory attempts to manipulate the California energy crisis in order to raise prices. Based on the book by Fortune investigative reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, the film broadens its source material’s horizons by weaving in televised coverage of congressional hearings, follow-up allegations and indictments, and a treasure trove of corporate footage from Enron’s own vaults. From videos of morale-raising speeches to bizarre corporate-written comedy sketches designed to stress the glories of accounting, Enron plays like a real-life Texas version of The Office. And if you were living in California during Enron’s shameful shenanigans, prepare to be especially enraged—though we request you don’t throw your soda at the screen.
FACTOID #49
Some of the filmmakers whose works screened in our New Directors series include Cinda Firestone, Susan Sontag, Shu Shuen, Conrad Rooks, Shirley Clarke, Sandro Franchina, and Mitsuo Yanagimachi. This series, which began in 1965, was a predecessor to the New Directors series at Lincoln Center, which started in 1971.
