Synopsis
Friends since high school, 20-somethings Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman have an idea: a Web site for people to conduct business with municipal governments. This documentary tracks the rise and fall of govWorks.com from May of 1999 to December of 2000, and the trials the business brings to the relationship of these best friends. Kaleil raises the money, Tom's the technical chief. A third partner wants a buy out; girlfriends come and go; Tom's daughter needs attention. And always the need for cash and for improving the site. Venture capital comes in by the millions. Kaleil is on C-SPAN, CNN, and magazine covers. Will the business or the friendship crash first?
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Cast
- Kaleil Isaza TuzmanSelf
- Tom HermanSelf
- Kenneth AustinSelf
- Tricia BurkeSelf
- Roy BurstonSelf
- David CampSelf
- Dora GlottmanSelf
- Julian HerbsteinSelf
- Christina OrtezSelf
- Jonathan AgusSelf
Recommendations
- 100
Entertainment Weekly
For sheer dramatic wallop outpowers virtually every fiction feature I've seen this year. - 90
Wall Street Journal
A thrillingly, thoroughly wonderful film. - 88
Charlotte Observer
The coolest film in town offers industrial espionage, power struggles, thwarted romance, betrayal and suspense - and best of all, it's true. - 80
Village Voice
Has all the hallmarks of a Pennebaker production. The editing is seamless, the drama builds throughout, and the arc of the central character is as shapely as in a Hollywood fiction. - 80
Film.com
The result is a movie that turns the financial phenomenon of Web startups -- the crazy kids with ideas, and the crazier bankers with more money than sense -- into a moving human drama. - 80
Time
This gripping documentary doesn't exactly say what went wrong, but the pain and puzzlement of its principals as things inexorably fall apart is palpable and saddening. - 80
Variety
Topical film, which goes beyond its potentially dry diet of facts to incorporate the juicy human drama of Machiavellian manipulations, ambition, torn loyalties and crushing betrayal. - 80
Salon
A story about risk, about hubris, about youth, about the old way and the new way, and about what happens when you trade everything for something that really isn't there.