Will Enron's Story Make Great Television?

N E W  Y O R K, Jan. 2 -- CBS is betting that its made-for-television movie about Enron's collapse, The Crooked E, will be compelling enough to keep viewers from switching channels. It won't be easy.

The topic has already saturated the media, Enron's stiff-suited executives and complicated financial dealings are hardly sexy fodder, and who wants to think about work on a Sunday? Even the movie's executive producer, Robert Greenwald, was originally turned off by the idea.

"When Enron was exploding, several people asked me if I wanted to do an Enron movie, and I said no. It was too complicated and obtuse," says Greenwald. The network, which is owned by Viacom, airs the movie Jan. 5.

Greenwald's perspective speaks to a widely held opinion in Hollywood: Business is boring. "Once you start to write about numbers, it's sedative time," says Syracuse University television and film professor Richard Dubin.

Because there's a higher potential for a business story to elicit snores than, say, a romance or an action flick, it's that much more impressive when it doesn't. The fine films that Forbes' panel voted best of the best overcame their potential pitfalls.

While it's easy to understand how the Mafia can pique initial audience interest, industries such as media, finance, tobacco and aluminum siding are hardly as inherently fascinating to outsiders. Who knew that a crew of pathetic, small-time real estate salesman (that's Glengarry Glen Ross) could be so heart-wrenching?

Enron from Everyman's Point of View

What makes these business movies work — and, for that matter, any good story — is that they're about the business of people.

That's what eventually sold Greenwald on an Enron movie. He was pitched a book, Anatomy of Greed: The Unshredded Truth from an Enron Insider, written by a young, laid-off Enron worker named Brian Cruver. The autobiographical tale was told from the viewpoint of an employee fresh out of business school.

"It was what I call a rat's-eye view of the Titanic," says Greenwald. Cruver, the feeling goes, represents everyman: lower-level employees who have no clue about what's really going on in the executive suites.