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- ENRON THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM TRANSCRIPT DOCUMENTARY TRIAL
- ENRON THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM TRANSCRIPT DOCUMENTARY SERIES
When she studied the virus outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in February, her worst fears about the disease’s contagiousness were confirmed. “In late January, we were cautiously monitoring, trying to assess, when it hit us how big the scope of the calamity that we were looking into,” Dr. Lee was part of an email chain of doctors and medical officials expressing alarm about government inaction amid the growing outbreak. Eva Lee, a pandemic expert known for modeling infectious diseases, who studied the early reports out of Wuhan and sensed that the world was heading towards pandemic. Bowen’s worst fears came true when the nation was faced with a drastic mask shortage. We meet Mike Bowen, owner of the biggest surgical face mask manufacturers in America, who recounts how he urged the federal government to ramp up domestic mask production both before and during the early days of COVID-19 but was ignored.
ENRON THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM TRANSCRIPT DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Subscribe to Observer’s Keeping Watch NewsletterĪlong the way, it’s chilling to hear from a series of health officials and private-sector authorities, who all tell variations on the same story: I tried to sound the alarm, but nobody listened. The film accomplishes this by offering a detailed play-by-play of how leadership lapses and bureaucratic failures sabotaged the CDC and FDA’s development of a mass testing program in February, allowing the virus to spread undetected for weeks, and by directly contrasting the nation’s failures with South Korea, where officials quickly mobilized to ensure a wide supply of tests and where the death count hasn’t topped 500. The resulting film conveys the dizzying sensation of chronicling history while it’s still unfolding.Īt its best, Totally Under Control functions as a thorough corrective to the outrageous lie- currently peddled by Mike Pence and other Trump minions-that the present administration did the best job possible in curbing the coronavirus and that 200,000 American deaths were sadly inevitable along the way. Gibney is a veteran documentarian, known for sharp, incisive looks at scandal and corruption ( Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer), but he has never made a film quite like this before: The three filmmakers never worked in the same room at the same time, and some of their interview subjects were shot using a remotely operated contraption dubbed a “COVID-cam,” which was sent to interviewees from afar. It was filmed in secret by filmmakers Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, and Suzanne Hillinger during the frantic months immediately following the economic shutdown, and is now being rushed to release (albeit not indoor theaters) before the election. government’s bungled response to the virus that has now killed nearly a quarter-million Americans. The film is Totally Under Control, an urgent and infuriating new documentary chronicling the U.S. What I did not imagine is watching a film about the pandemic on my couch, still in quarantine, as the pandemic continued to rage on in the outside world. I imagined myself watching it in a Manhattan screening room, surrounded by fellow critics, all of us relieved to have left that crisis behind. In March and April, as the COVID-19 pandemic devastated New York and forced us all to adapt to the rhythms and rituals of life in lockdown, I figured someday I’d watch a well-researched documentary about the disaster. Arrogance, pride, power, the abuse of power – they’re all here.Totally Under Control NEON and PARTICIPANT Without putting too fine a point of it, the film has all the elements of Greek tragedy it is hubris that ultimately brings down the main characters.
ENRON THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM TRANSCRIPT DOCUMENTARY TRIAL
At this writing in early 2006, the principal players in the sordid drama of Enron - believed by some accusers to be the most egregious corporate malefactors in American history - are about to go on trial for pillaging their company and devaluing its stock, leaving thousands of employees and investors holding the bag while they absconded with millions.Īlex Gibney’s documentary examines the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of this Houston, Texas-based firm, which for a time made its top officers wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, and all by engaging in business practices alleged to have been little more than a complex shell game.Įnron founder Ken Lay and his successor as CEO, Jeff Skilling, are pretty well skewered in Gibney’s film, which in its own way is every bit as riveting as a suspense thriller.