CBS flick shows difficulty of making drama out of Enron
Dec. 23, 2002, 8:04PM
chron.com
By BILL MURPHY
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle
With its special-purpose entities, mark-to-market accounting and
other arcana, the Enron story seems to defy lucid treatment by
Hollywood.
But some say it can be done, by using the corporate scandal as
only a backdrop to a story about a few characters caught up in the
debacle.
CBS will make the first try on Jan. 5, when it airs The Crooked E:
the Unshredded Truth about Enron. Fox's cable channel, FX, says it
hopes to shoot a movie about Enron next year.
Whether the movies are any good remains to be seen, but the
scandal certainly has the stuff of which a great movie can be
made, said Jim Ragan, director of the University of Southern
California's professional writing program.
"Many of the great movies are about backdrop. Doctor Zhivago had
the Russian Revolution. Gone with the Wind had the Civil War," he
said. "Enron has greed, deals in Washington, a company trying to
show profits at all costs. That's the approach I would take. That
would be the backdrop.
"The right film could win an Academy Award."
Hollywood often makes a hash of complex business stories. In
1990, expectations were high for The Bonfire of the Vanities, based
on Tom Wolfe's best-seller centered on a Wall Street executive who
goes on trial for murder. It was a box-office and critical failure.
On the other hand, Oliver Stone's Wall Street, about a young man
who discards all integrity to emulate his mentor, did very well in
1987, earning an Oscar for Michael Douglas as corporate raider
Gordon Gecko.
So it is possible to make a good movie based on a business theme.
But Enron?
"As I read it and followed it in the newspaper, the machinations of
how Enron did it were really tough to follow," said Robert
Greenwald, executive producer of The Crooked E. "People
approached me about doing an Enron movie. I said, `No, it's too
complicated. It's not interesting from a dramatic point of view.' "
His attitude changed when an agent sent him two chapters from
Brian Cruver's book Anatomy of Greed: The Unshredded Truth from an
Enron Insider.
The book is Cruver's take on the nine months he spent at Enron
before it cratered. Upon getting his MBA, he writes, he became a
willing novitiate at Enron, immersing himself in a culture that
valued only deal-making and money. By the time he is laid off, he
has heroically undergone a sea change.
"It was personal; it had humor. And it was not the upstairs point
of view, but the downstairs. I went to CBS and I said, `I've got a
way to do it,' " said Greenwald, director of The Burning Bed, starring
Farrah Fawcett, and Steal This Book, a film about hippie protester
Abbie Hoffman.
The Crooked E turns a building in Winnipeg, Canada, where the
movie was filmed, into Enron's headquarters. Instead of the real
crooked E logo, producers have forged a faux E.
Critics may view The Crooked E as a cheesy and slapped-together
made-for-TV movie, but it does show the daunting problem of
conveying, even if only in shorthand, the complexity of the Enron
story.
Screenwriter Stephen Mazur relies on several devices: narrative
voice-overs by the Cruver character, played by Christian Kane,
describing Enron's methods and culture; video clips of Ken Lay
(played by Mike Farrell of M*A*S*H) discussing Enron events; and
scenes in which experienced Enron bosses bring Cruver up to
speed.
In short, there is a good deal of dialogue devoted to background explanation.
"It's a lot of information to throw into 83 minutes," said Crooked E director Penelope
Spheeris, who helmed Wayne's World and The Decline of Western Civilization documentaries
on punk and metal rock. "A movie that tried to be exact would be a 10-day miniseries."
In his book, Cruver writes of Mr. Blue, a composite character based on several Enron
executives who introduced him to Enron's arrogant ways. Brian Dennehy, who won the
Golden Globe best actor award last year for his role in a TV version of Death of a Salesman,
plays Mr. Blue in the movie.
The movie includes a plot line that never happened in real life. The Cruver character's
fiancée leaves him when he loses his bearings in Enron's soulless culture.
"Aspects of his life were fictionalized. But those scenes really helped reach the core of
what was going on emotionally for Brian. In that sense, those scenes were a good device,"
said Mazur, one of the writers of Liar, Liar, starring Jim Carrey, and The Heartbreakers,
starring Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt.
A screenwriter should try to convey higher truths, not mimic reality to please a small
group that took part in an event, said Richard Walter, screenwriting professor at the
University of California at Los Angeles.
"I always tell my writers at UCLA we are searching for bigger truths," he said.
Movies about living people, however, often can't indulge in as much poetic license as
films based on historical figures -- unless movie makers get permission from the film's
subjects, said USC professor Ragan.
"When you approach a film like that, the risk of a lawsuit is very great," he said.
On the Crooked E set, there were "fact-checkers going left and right," Spheeris said.
Still, a movie is a movie. And Mazur's script is laden with campy lines unlikely uttered by
any real-life character. In one scene, Cruver's boss explains how former Enron executives
Jeff Skilling and Lay approached risk.
"They eat risk for breakfast. They crap out monster earnings by lunch," he says.
Movies based on recent events pose other problems. Historical occurrences often can be
satirized without causing affront. But many people may be offended by a movie based on
a current event.
Producer Greenwald and Mazur originally wanted to lay a heavy satirical edge on The
Crooked E. The first cut included five flashback scenes and several animated scenes that,
in some instances, mocked former Enron executives.
In one flashback, the Lay character mentions in passing that Enron had to restate its
earnings by $1 billion -- a restatement that sent the company into a death spiral in
October 2001.
The first cut of the movie then shifted to a sleeping Cruver. He dreams of Little Kenny
Lay telling his mom about his grade on a spelling test. Like the older Lay, Little Kenny
throws in an aside that he lost $1 billion and then winks at the camera.
CBS executives and others were worried that such levity might seem insensitive to
former Enron employees and others devastated financially and emotionally by the
company's collapse.
"When I got the script, all those scenes were in there," Spheeris said. "I shot them, and
Les Moonves, the head of CBS, saw them and said, `They shouldn't be in.' I prefer it that
way.
"Since (the movie's) core is a very serious subject, you have to watch treating it in a
frivolous way."
FX plans on skirting satire to present a sobering take on Enron, said Gerard Bocaccio,
senior vice president of entertainment.
Enron "almost rose to a mythical status, with Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling and (Andrew) Fastow.
It became the precursor of the meltdown of the Clinton, go-go 1990s," he said. "We're
taking the issue of corporate excess very seriously."
Complicated business stories are nothing new to Bob Cooper, the project's executive
producer and former HBO president. Barbarians at the Gate, a film about the leveraged
buyout of RJR / Nabisco, was made during his tenure at HBO.
Barbarians, based on a best-selling book by two Wall Street Journal reporters, told the
story of RJR / Nabisco head Ross Johnson's attempt to lead the takeover of his company.
Other firms then moved in with offers and the battle raged for weeks. Johnson lost.
Screenwriter Larry Gelbart, who wrote 97 episodes of M*A*S*H, narrowed his focus to
several main characters and took a tongue-in-cheek look at the takeover. Barbarians won
an Emmy for best made-for-TV movie in 1993.
The Enron movie, Bocaccio said, will be loosely based on the still unreleased book Power
Failure by local writer Mimi Swartz (who is married to a Chronicle assistant managing
editor) and Sherron Watkins, who wrote a famous memo criticizing Enron's accounting.
Lowell Bergman, the former 60 Minutes producer portrayed in the movie The Insider
starring Russell Crowe and Al Pacino, is serving as a consultant on the project.
Dissatisfied with the first script, FX is lining up another screenwriter, Bocaccio said. He
wants to infuse the movie with a Chinatown sense of mystery, slowly revealing various
aspects of the debacle and how they are intertwined.
"Is there a Chinatown-like connection between all the events?" he said. "We're interested
in connecting the California energy crisis to the other events."
Watkins will be "an integral character," but the story will not be told through her eyes,
he said.
Some Hollywood observers doubt that FX will make the movie. Only rarely will a network
or cable channel decide to make a second made-for-TV movie on the same subject, said
Barbara Corday, chair of USC's television production division and former head of
prime-time programming at CBS.
"They try to avoid it like the plague," she said. "I don't believe anybody will make a
second movie."
Feature film producer Scott Rudin took an option on Marie Brenner's Enron piece in
Vanity Fair, but there have been no signs he is nearing production. Rudin didn't return
calls.
Corday said a TV movie does not preclude a feature film.
Given the scandal's complexity, USC's Ragan said it will not be surprising if several duds
emerge from Hollywood's takes on the subject.
"Those that rush to be the first to the screen and choose to focus on the sensationalism
will do a disservice to the discriminating American public," Ragan said. "But the
producer, director and writer who take their time have an excellent opportunity to study
an entire system that failed us." |
