Sundance Documentary To Include Jack Abramoff-El Paso Casino Connection

“Casino Jack and the United States of Money,” a documentary on disgraced super lobbyist Jack Abramoff, will include El Paso, according to the film’s director. The film will debut at the Sundance Film Festival this month.

After the Tiguas’ Speaking Rock Casino in El Paso’s Lower Valley was shut down by the state in 2002, Abramoff told the tribe he would try to help them reopen. It would later be revealed that Abramoff had helped shut the tribe’s casino down, according to a US News & World Report article.

Oscar-winner Alex Gibney, director of the film, told indiewire.com that he wanted the film to “wanted to try to capture that secret agent quality of Jack which meant going to all sorts of places – from Miami to the Marianas, from El Paso to Washington, DC. We wanted a look that morphed and evolved like the movie festival of Jack’s mind. Sometimes a Western, sometimes a thriller, sometimes a slapstick comedy. So the film has a number of different looks. It’s playful and dark. It’s a comedy; but the joke is on us.”

Abramoff pled guilty in Miam in 2006 to federal conspiracy and wire charges.

For more information on the Tiguas and Jack Abramoff, read the US News & World Report here.

For more information on “Casino Jack and the United States of Money,” click here.