Enron the smartest guys in the room movie

#Enron the smartest guys in the room movie movie
#Enron the smartest guys in the room movie series

I broke rule #1A of the Filmmaking Handbook: Never make a film about accounting. Was this something you were conscious of while planning out the film and making it?ДЄlex Gibney (AG): Yes. Jennifer Wood (MM): ItвЂ™s really amazing how your film contained a wealth of business data and information but maintained a completely entertaining feel throughout.

#Enron the smartest guys in the room movie series

He may not have taken home an Oscar, but Alex Gibney has certainly scored one for the accountants! His Academy Award-nominated doc, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, takes audiences inside the biggest scandal to ever hit corporate America.ДЄs the first completed project of Todd Wagner and Mark CubanвЂ™s HDNet Films, whose mission is to produce a series of low-budget digital or HD films to release simultaneously into the theatrical and cable television markets, The Smartest Guys in the Room made its premiere at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.ДЇollowing the filmвЂ™s release on DVD courtesy of Magnolia Home Entertainment and on the eve of the release of his Herbie Hancock: Possibilities, Gibney speaks with MM about turning words into film, the legal realities of shooting a doc of this magnitude and how the Enron case is boosting revenue.

Comment Alex Gibney directs Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

One thing is for sure it is hard not to be amazed at the magnitude of this debacle.

#Enron the smartest guys in the room movie movie

The movie shows how during a Senate enquiry into the downfall of Enron, Jeff Skilling, a one-time CEO of Enron, was still claiming no knowledge of many events even when faced with overwhelming evidence to suggest otherwise.ДЄt the very least, 'Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room' is an entertaining expose but it does also try to dig deep and determine whether the executives from Enron really were smart guys.

Narrated by Peter Coyote, this often biting and stinging indictment on capitalism serves somewhat as a lesson for the future and homes in on Enron's own tagline, 'Ask why?' as if to question how the executives at Enron managed to fool so many people for so long. Added to this is an assortment of music subtly and not so subtly used to emphasise different aspects. The movie is broken into time-lined mini-chapters that follow the company along the path to its ruin with these chapters being interspersed with various other sources of information including a rather fun snippet from an episode of 'The Simpsons' that ridiculed the whole Enron affair and another involving a bizarre psychological experiment. The movie uses present day footage along with archival footage of (past) employees of Enron and includes interviews, taped phone conversations (mostly very damning), and some of the legal proceedings since the demise of the company of which some are still pending. One of the overwhelming aspects of this companies collapse was how much money senior executives walked away with (often millions of dollars) and how many long-term blue-collar employees were left with nothing not even a superannuation payout. 'Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room' is a story of Enron, it's rise and fall and the far-reaching implications of it's demise. After a meteoric rise to becoming one of that nation's largest companies, Enron plummeted into bankruptcy in 2001 with staggering job losses and a multi-million dollar financial debt that was almost beyond comprehension. In 1985 in the United States, Ken Lay founded a natural gas pipeline company called Enron.

As a result, we come to understand how the avarice of Enron's traders and their bosses had a shocking and profound domino effect that may shape the face of our economy for years to come. The film comes to a harrowing dГѓВ©nouement as we hear Enron traders' own voices as they wring hundreds of millions of dollars in profits out of the California energy crisis. Based on the best-selling book 'The Smartest Guys in the Room' by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind and featuring insider accounts and incendiary corporate audio and videotapes, Gibney reveals the almost unimaginable personal excesses of the Enron hierarchy and the utter moral vacuum that posed as corporate philosophy. Rated: M moderate coarse language, moderate sexual references, adult themeДirected by Alex Gibney, this is the inside story of one of history's greatest business scandals, in which top executives of America's 7th largest company walked away with over one billion dollars while investors and employees lost everything. Cast: Peter Coyote (narrator), Jeff Skilling, Ken Lay, Andrew Fastow, Gray Davis, Peter Elkind, Bethany McLean, Kevin Phillips, Nancy Rapoport