Following in the mainstream success of documentary feature films like “Fahrenheit 9/11” (2004), director Alex Gibney’s scathing look at corporate greed gone wild, “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” (2005), scored a political bulls-eye during a year filled with more than its usual government tumult. Although not a feel-good money-maker like its fellow Academy Award nominated documentary “March of the Penguins” (2005), “Enron” did something else. It repositioned a big microscope over the somewhat forgotten Enron scandal, provoking a renewed outcry against corporate fat-cat greed and a demand that someone be held responsible for the largest public bankruptcy in American history.The multi-talented and prolific Gibney, who graduated from Yale with a Japanese literature major, before attending UCLA’s Graduate School of Film and Television, made his initial impact in TV documentaries he either wrote, produced, directed or a combination of all three. He served as writer-producer on “The Pacific Century” (PBS, 1992) which won an Emmy Award for Best Historical Program. He later wrote, directed and produced the highly rated documentary series, “The Fifties,” (1997) for the History Channel, based on the best-selling book by David Halberstam. Like the book, the eight-part miniseries dispelled myths about the popular decade. After doing “AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies: Love Crazy” (1998), Gibney wrote, produced and directed “The Sexual Century,” a six-part documentary for ITV and the Canadian Broadcast Company.
In 2000, Gibney was a senior producer on “Soldiers in the Army of God,” an HBO documentary about radicals in the anti-abortion movement, and was a producer on “Speak Truth to Power” for PBS, a dramatic special focusing on human rights activists, featuring Sigourney Weaver and Alec Baldwin.
Gibney wrote and produced the controversial “The Trials of Henry Kissinger,” (2002), his best known pre-“Enron” film, which made the case that the former U.S. diplomat under President Nixon was responsible for war crimes during the Vietnam war. Gibney then produced the popular 2003 PBS mini-series, “The Blues,” with installments directed by Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood and Wim Wenders, among others.
Gibney decided to take on the Enron scandal as his next important project, after reading Fortune magazine reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind’s 2003 book of the same name. Released in spring, 2005, the Academy Award-nominated documentary used a clever juxtaposition of news footage, music and interviews to expose the truth behind just how top Enron executives Kenneth Lay, Jeff Skilling and Andy Fastow, among others, bankrupted a company but walked away with millions of dollars, while investors and employees were left with nothing. Gibney’s film struck a nerve with an American public growing tired of corporate excess, making $4 million in a long and limited box office run. The DVD release was timed to coincide with Lay and Skilling’s January, 2006 fraud trial. Though the documentary lost to “March of the Penguins” at the 78th Academy Awards, the film effectively did what Gibney had wanted it to do all along – open a lot of eyes.
While savoring the success of his hot-button film, Gibney began developing his next documentary projects: “Hancock,” a film about jazz pianist Herbie Hancock and “Hunter,” a profile of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.
