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Non-Tech : The ENRON Scandal -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (4730)	1/2/2003 9:10:47 AM
From: Labrador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5185

Jan. 1, 2003, 6:23PM 'Crooked E' looks at Enron culture By MIKE McDANIEL Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle An exceptional scandal cries out for exceptional storytelling. CBS' The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron is not it. Those who make time for the movie (8-10 p.m. Sunday, Channel 11) have every reason to expect either an intense docudrama or a film with unbounded sarcasm or unfettered satire. This is neither. Instead, we get something in between -- a mix of fact and fiction so obliquely depicted as the same that to categorize the movie as satire or docudrama takes a bit of research or an act of faith or both. The Crooked E is a hybrid that serves little purpose. It doesn't educate because it does not add new information to the still-unfolding story. It offers just enough truth to make it interesting and too many lies to take it seriously. It doesn't entertain because it is simply not witty, and perhaps because it's too soon to laugh at the misfortune it has caused still-hurting Houstonians. It doesn't mollify because it lacks a proper denouement, and it doesn't focus on the principal players. It is out too early to know the fates of the principals. And it paints the executives with a brush too wide and too black. But it has been made, and CBS deserves a modicum of credit for that, because a story about energy trading, virtual accounting and financial collapse is not the easiest to tell. If the movie does nothing else, it provides understanding about what the fall of Enron was all about. Loosely based on Brian Cruver's Anatomy of Greed, the movie screams for more wit and cleverness than screenwriter Stephen Mazur (Liar, Liar) can provide. It focuses too much on Cruver, who worked at Enron for only nine months, and not enough on the real "stars" of this show, the executives at the helm when the ship went down. We see Cruver as he joins the company, learns the lingo and gets swept up in a win-at-any-cost atmosphere. We see the negative effect the company's slide has on his impending marriage -- a completely invented scenario since the marriage of the real-life Cruver and his wife was never in jeopardy. Cruver, played with a perpetual grin by Dallas native Christian Kane, is inadequate as hero, the movie's extraordinary manipulations of the truth notwithstanding. In one scene that would make him out as hero, Cruver is shown trying to shred documents that will save one of his clients from financial catastrophe as the Enron ship goes down. But Cruver was not a hero. He did not help that client. He was not a whistleblower. In fact, as a young and newly hired Enron employee, he hardly got hurt by the company's collapse. What makes him the movie's focal point is the knowledge he collects for his book. A movie doesn't have to have a hero -- look how badly everyone came out in Barbarians at the Gate, which skewered all the players involved in the attempted leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco. That fiasco made a wickedly witty 1993 HBO satire, thanks to the talents of writer Larry Gelbart (MAS*H) and actors James Garner and Jonathan Price. That scenario wouldn't work for The Crooked E -- and for good reason. To focus on the culpability of Enron's higher-ups would incite lawsuits. We must make do with snappy snippets of Enron CEO Ken Lay (Mike Farrell) and Jeff Skilling (Jon Ted Wynne) delivering out-of-context statements that make them sound like buffoons. What Cruver does provide, in voice-over and through his relationships with such characters as the composite Enron corporate insider Mr. Blue (Brian Dennehy, delivering another fine performance), is a glimpse inside the company's culture. The real Cruver has described as "extremely accurate" the scene in which Mr. Blue outlines to Cruver the nature of the shenanigans. That culture, as depicted here, is empowered by "Enronized," or avarice-crazed, employees and engineered by lazy bookkeepers more interested in their golf swings than proper accounting. As long as virtual accounts were engorged with virtual money, everyone was happy. It inaccurately depicts a company filled with people thriving on greed at any cost. It shows a permissive culture that made room in its ranks for busty women who worked at gentlemen's clubs. It shows, at film's end, the women and men of Playboy and Playgirl. Director Penelope Spheeris (The Little Rascals, Wayne's World) gives us an uncomfortable mix of fact and hyperbole. How do you separate the truth from the farce? Not able, for legal reasons, to use the real crooked E or its likeness, the movie makes use of an E with an extended middle bar -- a middle-finger metaphor that sums up the company's attitude and its near-term future. This is the image that will survive the memory of an inadequate TV movie made too quickly and focused too much on the insignificant. The Crooked E, 8 p.m. Sunday, CBS/Channel 11. Grade: C+.

To: Mephisto who wrote (4730)	1/7/2003 11:33:56 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 5185

The disquieted Americans The release of a critical account of the Enron collapse suggests that post-September 11 self-censorship is finally ending, writes Duncan Campbell "But the links between the Lays and George Bush and Dick Cheney have not received the kind of relentless headlines that would certainly have been the case had it involved the Clintons and might have been the case had it not been for September 11." Los Angeles dispatch Tuesday January 7, 2003 guardian.co.uk After September 11, there was much nervousness in the worlds of film and television in LA about screening or embarking on any production that might appear to be in bad taste or deemed unpatriotic. Some of this was for understandable reasons of sensitivity but a timid self-censorship played its part, too. Plans for a film about the Florida election fiasco of 2000 were dropped and anything that appeared to show the president or the US military in a poor light was reckoned to be unfeasible. A raft of television shows in which the CIA were shown in a flattering light appeared. But is the climate finally changing? What prompts the question was the screening this week on prime time CBS of the Crooked E, the Unshredded Truth About Enron. Directed by Penelope Spheeris, it was based on the book Anatomy of Greed: The Unshredded Truth from an Enron Insider by Brian Cruver, a 26-year-old graduate from Harvard business school who joined Enron just in time to see the whole sorry saga unravel. Since Mr Cruver was an insider, the story has a ring of authenticity to it, from the frantic shredding of incriminating documents as the end neared to the tattoo of the Enron logo - that crooked E - on the breast of a loyal employee. It made grimly fascinating viewing and it had some fine veteran actors in it - Brian Dennehy as a senior and unscrupulous Enron executive and Mike Farrell as the former chairman, Kenneth Lay. But what was remarkable about it was its very overt political message - that the greedy souls behind Enron and their political protectors had ripped off the poorest and most deprived people in America by their selfishness and dishonesty. Last month, after more than a year of havering around, The Quiet American, the film based on Graham Greene's book, was shown here. Because it contains a plot line about a CIA man instigating the murder of civilians in Vietnam, albeit during the French colonial era, it was thought to be too risky to show. It came out last month, got some nice reviews and will almost certainly win an Oscar nomination for its star, Michael Caine, who, as he pointed out himself, is hardly anti-American. The lesson was that the studio had been unnecessarily over-cautious in delaying its release. There must have been some of the same nervousness at CBS at showing such a full-on political film as the Crooked E, particularly because of the company's White House connections. Kenneth Lay's attorneys warned last week that they would be watching to see if their client was portrayed as "cunning, unfeeling and greedy." Perish the thought. Last year, the Lays tried, with disastrous results, to use television to make a case for their own defence. Lay's wife, Linda, went on NBC to tell the world that they were broke, a ploy that backfired when it turned out they still had a stack of properties worth many millions. But the links between the Lays and George Bush and Dick Cheney have not received the kind of relentless headlines that would certainly have been the case had it involved the Clintons and might have been the case had it not been for September 11. Perhaps now that the Crooked E and the Quiet American have been shown and the sun has still come up in the morning - at least it did today in California - other directors and producers will be emboldened. Email duncan.campbell@guardian.co.uk guardian.co.uk