Go to jail Enron bastards… oh, and there’s an Enron documentary out on DVD
By S Simmons. Filed in Editing, Movies |
With the start of criminal trial of the Enron liars, cheaters, thieves, ex-executives, I think it is worth taking a second look at the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. I saw the piece last year and it is now available on DVD. It’s a great piece that does what would seem like the impossible; putting ultra-complex (and quite boring) accounting practices into something semi-understandable. According to the doc and every news report on the downfall of the company, Enron’s executives used serpentine accounting methods to pump up their stock while lining their own pockets and stealing millions and millions from the employee’s pensions… or something like that. I’m sure it’s still “allegedly†at this point but that is the shorthand of what I understand about it all.
The thing I want to talk about is the documentary genre itself. Docs have long been associated with boring, educational programs that nobody wanted to watch. They were the ultimate niche market product in that the majority of viewers who watched any particular program had to be interested in the subject. Ken Burns came along and made documentaries, not to mention history and PBS, cool and fun to watch. Michael Moore then kicked everything into overdrive and showed the world that docs can be successful at the box office. After that we get Morgan Spurlock, Mad Hot Ballroom and a bunch of penguins making out and having babies! The most financially successful docs are usually more of a novelty or “stunt-filmmaking†as I once saw Super Size Me called.
But these days a doc can do so much more. In 1988, Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line helped get a convicted man a new trial. This feat was equaled in 2005 when Keith A. Beauchamp’s documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till was cited by the U.S. Justice Department when they reopened a decades old murder. Try that with a song or a painting. There is Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” though. I also heard a story on NPR a few weeks ago about a teacher who assigned his class the project of making a doc on a local unsolved murder. It was directly responsible for the local authorities making an arrest. I can’t remember where this happened though… so a lesson was learned. When writing a blog, make a note of every good story you hear. The “relatively†low cost that a doc can be made for has open up the market to rebuttal movies as well. Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 was answered with a slew of other movies trying to counter Moore’s film and discredit him in the process. The recent exposé Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices saw the big-box mega-retailer finance it’s own positive image piece. While neither of these films has seen major theatrical distribution, the former has been playing in small theatres, bars, public venues and even peoples homes for a year. This “underground†distribution method saw success with the Rupert Murdoch bashing Outfoxed. That adds one more channel of distribution and as any filmmaker knows, there can never be enough avenues for distribution because a filmmakers always wants his/her work to be seen. And if films get seen then there is a chance at that elusive holy grail of movie making … profit.
