Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room Reviews

• As good as the best books on Enron

  
  By A2QHM5HBSIXRL4 on 2005-06-20
  I went into Alex Gibney's "Smartest Guys in the Room" having read Robert Bryce's "Pipe Dreams" and Kurt Eichenwald's "Conspiracy of Fools" thinking to myself: should be good, but no way the movie is going to come close to telling the story like those two authors did.
  
  Well, surprise, surprise: the movie is outstanding on its own terms and all credit goes to Gibney. While the books focus on unraveling all of Andy Fastow's 'Special Purpose Entities' like the Raptors, LJM, Chewco, etc., Gibney brilliantly focuses on showing us things that are simply better on film: audio recordings of Enron traders jacking the California energy system; a devastated Portland Gas line worker after his 401K has gone to seed; an uncomfortable Skilling getting grilled by a Senate panel while Sherron Watkins glowers at him from 10 feet away; some Enron HR flack urging its employees to put all their 401K money into company stock, etc.
  
  And there are two incredible, spine-tingling moments if you know the Enron story:
  
  - An audio recording of the famous quarterly results analyst call where Skilling loses it and calls an analyst an a------. [The analyst only asked why the company couldn't produce a balance sheet.] Reading Eichenwald's book, you know Skilling is clearly unhinged at this point. For many, this call was the turning point of the great unraveling.
  
  - A secret video recording from Merrill Lynch of Andy Fastow's LJM2 pitch to a bunch of bankers. This is *mesmerizing* stuff. Fastow is front and center in the books, but remains a spooky, off-camera presence in the movie. However, this one piece nails him. He's perpetrating a major fraud with that spiel.
  
  Most of all, the movie is a tribute to the work of reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, both of whom had the guts to ask at the beginning "How does Enron make money"? No one at the company could answer the question and management's response was to attempt to bully McLean and then, in turn, bully her editors. They didn't bend. The story ran. The rest is history. In business writing, this was journalism on the level of Woodward and Bernstein. All glory belongs to Ms. McLean and Mr. Elkind.
  
  Two other great moves by Alex Gibney:
  
  - Getting Amanda Martin on film to talk about the tragedy of Cliff Baxter's life and of Jeff Skilling's career. What a smart filmmaker. The camera *loves* Amanda Martin. Far better for your film to have her tell that story than have Ken Rice, Lou Pai or any other member of the Skilling inner circle.
  
  - Getting Peter Coyote to narrate. His is the perfect voice for this saga.
  
  

• Decades will not wipe out this catastrophe.

  
  By A1FG91CM8221X1 on 2005-05-06
  Alex Gibney's "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," based on the book by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, is a riveting, masterful documentary about the most appalling catastrophe in American corporate history: the collapse of Enron, brought about by the ruthlessness, greed and treachery of its top executives. Although Gibney is adept at adding touches of dark humor to the film, the only emotions I felt at the end were sorrow and outrage that Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Andrew Fastow were allowed to perpetrate their monstrous fraud for so many years, eventually ruining the lives of 20,000 Enron employees and who knows how many Enron shareholders. (There are also those who have never been called to account, such as the elusive and vindictive Lou Pai, who left Enron before the crash with $250 million in his bank account.) A former Enron executive interviewed for the film compares the Enron disaster to the movie "Body Heat," with Fastow playing William Hurt to Skilling's Kathleen Turner. (I have an even better analogy: the Enron collapse as presented by Gibney is like the movie "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer," with Fastow playing Otis to Skilling's Henry.) As for Ken Lay, as this film presents him, he's more like Gertrude Stein's description of Oakland: There's no THERE there. Gibney presents in horrifying detail not only the hubris and dishonesty of Lay, Skilling, Fastow and their cohorts, but also the blind greed of Merrill Lynch, Arthur Andersen and other corporations that blithely ignored the signs of impending doom in order to have a share of the pickings. The film's real tragedy is that, however satisfying it is to see Lay, Skilling and Fastow led off in handcuffs at the end, we know the damage they wrought, both financial and political, will last for decades after they're gone. I give one example: of course everyone knows that the California energy crisis brought about largely by the rapacity of Enron energy traders was the main reason for the successful recall effort against California Governor Gray Davis. And most people probably realize, though they don't think about it much, that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chief who refused to help Davis was appointed by George W. Bush on the express recommendation of Ken Lay. But what people almost certainly DON'T know--unless they've seen this movie--is that during the crisis Ken Lay called a meeting in Los Angeles of Enron's Caifornia supporters. No minutes from this meeting have ever come to light, but one of the attendees was Arnold Schwarzenegger. You do the math.
  
  

• Understanding the fall of Enron--from a former employee

  
  By A2OAYIM13WIXCH on 2005-11-25
  If you were an Enron employee, as I was, you will cry watching this movie. It is sick with greed, manipulations and facts about no one minding the store. But, it is a good movie to watch to understand big business and corporations, and yes, their political agendas and their political friends. The fall of Enron encompassed many other big companies and their complicity is shown well in this movie. The reporters did a great job putting this very complicated situation into an understandable story. I recommend this movie no matter who you work for--it will help you protect yourself if in no other way but to always question what these companies are up to. And a lesson in NOT putting your savings into the company who also writes your paycheck!
  
  

• Greed, Greed and More Greed

  
  By A9I40WFF40R4 on 2005-05-12
  This is a pretty awful movie, awful in that it shows just what uncontrolled, unregulated greed can do. Based on a book by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, the film is a documentary with the chief villains-- Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Andrew Fastow-- playing their greedy selves. This movie packs so much punch because we get the whole ugly picture in about two hours as opposed to news clips here and there on the nightly news. I had forgotten that "Kenny Boy," the second George Bush's favorite term of endearment for him, and Enron were the chief contributors to Mr. Bush's first election campaign. My favorite scene from the movie for what I would call "chutzpah unadorned" is the wife of Kenneth Lay-- and I cannot recall it word for word-- but in essence she says something to the effect that "we are devastated. Our savings have dwindled down to twenty million dollars." Remorse is as alien to these awful people as the Great Wall of China.
  
  Right after seeing this movie, I had lunch with a dear friend from Canada. When I told her about seeing the movie a few days before, she related to me that after the death of her husband a few year ago, she had sold their home and had invested the proceeds in Enron stock. Needless to say, she was not amused by Mrs. Lay's sorrows.
  
  And poor Martha Stewart got locked up for a mere forty thousand dollars.
  
  

• Greed as a Creed

  
  By A9L6L5H9BPEBO on 2006-05-16
  Narrated by veteran actor, Peter Coyote, this DVD is disturbingly real. It reveals the depths that people will sink at the expense of others, and it reveals how widespread it was.
  
  First, Arthur Anderson Consulting signed off on "mark to marketing" accounting. In other words, Enron could report their projected earnings as actual profits. They could "report" profits of millions of dollars that they didn't have. They paid bonuses and other excesses with these projections.
  
  Next, Jeff Skilling was hired by Ken Lay to run the operations of the company. Skilling was a man with fresh, or some would say, grandiose ideas. This is just what Lay wanted--a man of vision.
  
  Skilling soon instituted promotions and bonuses for analysts who produced more than the other guy. Creating a classic cuthroat environment, the producers were given phenomenal bonuses while their less successful counterparts were shown the door. These were all being given on projected earnings.
  
  One rebel market analyst from Merrill Lynch would not give Enron a "strong buy" rating. Skilling contacted Merrill Lynch who promptly fired the errant employee, and Enron gave Merrill Lynch a fifty million dollar contract.
  
  Enter Andy Fastow another Enron executive in the mold of Jeff Skilling who managed to set up dummy corporations which were paying Enron. Several prominent banks knew of the scheme and went along with it. (You may even have your money in one of them.)
  
  Another Enron executive, named Pi was an executive cuthroat who knew his predilections and his limits. He left the company after making $250,000,000 and married his pregnant, stripper girlfriend.
  
  Stilling, Fastow, and Lay kept attempting new investments in energy and other ventures which flopped miserably. The DVD shows how they were beginning to lose their ability to think of new ideas to fool the public and the investors who never saw an Enron balance sheet or earnings statement.
  
  The most chilling part of this is the Enron analysts who were able to create rolling black-outs through California. They invested in the stock of power companies before they called the power companies and asked them to shut down the power for hours at a time. This, in turn, created demand, which increased the price of the stock and their profits. The real chill is you hear what is tantamount to their psychopathic laughter at the misery and hardship they helped create throughout the state. In another instance, they actually began cheering when a forest fire shuts down a power plant. Their "profit cheering" with no regard for the misery of the people without power may make the viewer want to drop these guys from a tall building.
  
  It gets even better--I mean, worse. Ken Lay said he didn't know what was going on. Interviewees told Ken Lay what his analysts were doing. None were fired or disciplined. How did he not know? He, like other top executives, sold off almost all their shares in the company just before the bad news hit. The common worker who had his or her 401K tied up in Enron stock was not allowed to sell it as the company and its stock value collapsed. They lost everything. One common power company worker who was interviewed said that his pension went from $340,000 to $1,200. This was painful to listen to.
  
  One last thing, these "Enron entrepreneurs" fought tooth and nail to keep California's energy laws deregulated. Everything has its positives and negatives. If free market enterprise is unchecked it does lead to invention and creativity. It also leads to greed and excesses.
  
  Maybe a little regulation is not such a bad thing.
  
  Update: Lay and Skilling have been found guilty. Their lawyer fees, expensive. The verdict, priceless!
  
  
  
  
• Read the far superior Eichenwald book instead
  By A1C1BJD5L7WI6K on 2005-06-21
  After hearing so much about Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, I was eager to see it. What a disappointment. The underlying story is deep and worthwhile, so I was amazed that the film makers opted at every turn for cuteness over insight. Let me offer two specific examples:
  
  1. Among many examples of a diseased corporate culture run amok, perhaps the purest were the special purpose entities created by Andrew Fastow,ostensibly to hedge risks for Enron, but in actuality to take debt off its balance sheet at great expense to shareholders, while enriching Fastow and his partners. These transactions were complex, but comprehensible, yet the film makers spent virtually no time trying to help us understand them except at the most superficial level.
  
  2. Much is made of Enron's behavior during the crisis in the California wholesale electricity market. While this made for some flashy scenes, and allowed the use of shocking audio tapes of Enron traders being ruthless money-makers, it did very little to illuminate the failings that were particular to Enron. The trading behavior we witness was -- as the film points out -- also happening at other firms at the same time. Moreover, the opportunity to take such wanton advantage of the taxpayers and consumers of California was the result of deeply flawed market design. Finally, in order to maintain laser focus on Enron, the film makers allow Gray Davis and others who bear no small accountability for this disaster to make self-serving, and completely unchallenged statements.
  
  If you have any interest in the Enron story -- and if you're in business, you should -- PLEASE read Kurt Eichenwald's excellent book "Conspiracy of Fools." Afterward, this film provides a useful supplement in that it does allow you to see and hear the amazing lies directly from Lay, Skilling, Fastow and others. This film is worth seeing, but compared with the depth of coverage in a typical Frontline, this is a music video.
  
  
• Can you Criticize this Film, without Supporting Enron?
  By A34PCCROYXQM77 on 2006-06-26
  I know this will not be as popular a critique of this film as others, because it raises some questions that fly in the face of some of the emotions driving many of the responses here.
  
  Let me say upfront, that this is a very effective documentary. It does bring out a lot of facts that many are unaware of, especially those who have gotten their news on this event in the form of sound-bites. It does a great service and is to be commended in that regard.
  
  In terms of Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, if I could lessen their pain and suffering for what they both did with their power and leadership, by waving my hand in a dark room .... I wouldn't bother to wave it. They got off easily in comparison to what they did. No arguments here. My emotions run high too when I consider the human suffering they inflicted by their abuse of their power and influence.
  
  The pain and suffering inflicted by their irresponsibility, greed and ego-maniacal behavior is too great to even begin to calculate. Jobs were lost, families destroyed, retirements ruined, suicides prompted, divorces in the wake of financial ruin, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
  
  So, if all this is true, what could I have to say about this film that could argue for the techniques used in comparison with that?
  
  Just this;
  
  Emotions are a legitimate response to the magnitude of this event. When emotions replace critical thinking and follow an agenda however, a disservice is done to those watching as well as those whose suffering is dehumanized and diminished by their suffering being used as a tool for political or ideological purposes.
  
  I think this movie missed some salient elements that would have resulted in a more even-handed dealing with the issues.
  
  What emotional issues am I referring to?
  
  How about the use of camera techniques to morph an Enron executive into a red skinned effigy of Satan? How about the focus on George W. Bush as governor of Texas, a constitutionally weak governorship, while ignoring the current president and appointer of SEC governance at the time? How about mentioning contributions to the GOP, which is true, while ignoring similar contributions to the Democrats?
  
  I viewed this film in the context of a Master's Degree class asking the question of whether leadership really matters, and what this film has to say in regard to that question.
  
  Enron was more than a single event. Enron took place in a context that included:
  
  1. The Toxic Leadership of Lay, Skilling and a host of others in Enron. This comes through in the documentary and is more clearly presented than any other element. This is understandable and defensible in my opinion. Both these "gentlemen" misused their power and position and violated any number of ethical standards. They deserve what they get in this documentary and more.
  
  2. Shareholder profit expectations at the tail end of the Dot Com were driven through the roof by the excitement of investors believing they just couldn't lose in the strongest bull market run ever witnessed in modern times. Enron struck upon the "innovation" of accounting for "potential" profits at the inception of an idea and using this as a basis for valuation. It wasn't a new idea. It was a new application though in the context of a company supposedly dealing in hard energy commodities. The movie captures this, but doesn't give the context of how this accounting was used in intellectual companies such as the dot-coms. Enron is isolated in this instance and context is lost.
  
  3. The complicity of Arthur Anderson as the auditors of the firm. Corporate auditing had moved by this time from being an adversarial relationship to one of a willingness of the auditor to view itself as a "partner" with its "client." Anderson was the recipient of over $1 million dollars a week for their oversight role in auditing Enron. They acted to preserve this at the expense of holding Enron to accounting standards that were designed to be enforced to the benefit of shareholders and analysts. This more than anything else, is what led to Sarbanes-Oxley legislation following Enron's colossal collapse. The movie references this, but in the end paints Anderson and its employees, a similar number of whom lost their jobs when Anderson failed too, as fellow victims. Really?
  
  4. Stock Analyst's complicity in the presentation of the numbers "massaged" by Skilling and Company. The movie rightly captures the influence exerted upon such brokerages as Merrill Lynch et al to keep the positive presentation flowing. It fails however, to hold as accountable those who could have raised the issues presented earlier. McLean story in Fortune is amazing, not for its raising hard questions, but for the fact that it took this long for someone to ask them. This documentary would have you infer that they were victims or complicit with Enron management. There is a much bigger picture here, that is not completely captured and further minimized in the agenda to take Enron and caste it into the desired light of sole corporate corrupter. Enron was complicit. They were not the only ones and Stock Analysts manipulated their analysis to benefit themselves and companies like Enron before Enron came along. They still do. Where's the statement on that?
  
  5. Banker's cooperation in the debt manipulations needed to extend the Ponzi Scheme that was at work here in presenting quarter after quarter of illusory profits. Try to walk into a bank with no balance sheet and ask for a loan and see how far you get. Enron was not the banking industry. Again, who was overseeing the banks at this time? Was it George W. Bush? Maybe the heretofore unnamed president prior to January of 2001 had some responsibility too. Who was that, anyway?
  
  6. Deregulation in California certainly played a role. Pete Wilson and the California legislature made some decisions that opened a pandora's box in a manner not seen for many years. Was the idea of limiting options speculation leverage by debt a new one? No. This had happened in the past with similar predictable fall-out. Why did Enron engage in the activity it did? Because they could. Who allowed them to and created an environment where to fail to do so meant competitors would? Does it excuse Enron? No, it doesn't. What they did was legal however in the strictest sense in view of the deregulation of the industry. Why not focus more upon those in the state and at the Federal level who made it so? Why simply focus on Schwarzeneger based upon a "guilt by association" type argument because he met one time with Kenneth Lay. Could there have been complicity? Maybe. No proof however, coupled with a limited scope that ignores others with more proof to incorporate. Hardly seems balanced to me.
  
  7. The greatest outcome of this whole debacle was Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. Why no mention of this? Does the need for such legislation perhaps, lessen the agenda of the documentary and the points they wanted to make?
  
  Hopefully you get the picture. This is not a hatchet job documentary in the vein of Michael Moore where all rational thought is thrown out the window to make a political point. It is some ways is more insidious than that. One senses that more than political passion, there is a set agenda here to make a point and to lead the average watcher to conclusions that fail to appreciate the big picture.
  
  That is a shame in my opinion. I give it 3 stars because it does educate and I am in no way a defender of Enron, Lay or Skilling. I don't blindly support Bush and Republicans either. There is plenty of blame to go around at many different levels. This film misses the opportunity to make a broader statement and to educate more broadly and in view of that, 3 stars are the most I can give it. I do recommend people view it. Just view it critically.
  
  
  
• definitely worth a few bucks and two hours of your time
  By A2X3E8EU2KBVN8 on 2007-02-04
  OK, I admit it. I didn't get the whole Enron thing a few years back. The Enron collapse happened too soon after 9/11 and I was completely preoccupied with that and our subsequent war on terror to pay much attention to the Enron story. Plus I figured that it was probably too complex for me to understand without doing a lot of research and I just didn't want to give it that much attention. And on top of that, I had never even heard of the company before so understanding what had happened at this Texan company clearly wasn't a priority to me. So...I enjoyed the documentary in helping me to finally understood what happened... Well, now I get it. And I'm soooo suprised to learn about so many connections I hadn't put together before like California's "energy crisis", the Enron collapse, and the political (yet ignorant) motivation for naming Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor. The documentary is extremely well done, definitely kept my attention, and provides an uncomplicated, riveting look at corporate greed and narcissism. It is definitely worth a few bucks and two hours of your time.
  
  
• Depressing but necessary
  By AJYGQV81FSFE2 on 2005-06-07
  Enron has been in the news for years. The accounting sleight-of-hand, Arthur Andersen driven out of business for its part, the works. This film does an excellent job of summarizing what really happened, even the terminology the accountants used to rationalize the phony books.
  
  Andy Fastrow seems to be the major culprit. He was the CFO who paid himself a fortune while doctoring the books. But the film also indicates that he was the fall guy; Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling also needed to know what was going on.
  
  That Ken Lay is a Baptist minister's son doesn't surprise me much. The whole company was run on a theology, rather than on any remotely useful business practice. Between Skilling's theological risk taking--despite any evidence that the motorbike risks OR the business risks were doing anyone any good--and the faithful doctoring of books are truly acts of religious faith, but the type of irrational thinking that caused Bertrand Russell to write, "Why I Am Not a Christian."
  
  It's intriguing to see how particularly Skilling rationalizes the company's--and his--activities. Even when confronted by a Senator on how he was encouraging employees to invest in Enron, he was cashing out to the tune of many millions of dollars. He still felt he was "right" in doing so. "No, I didn't do nuthin' wrong." Like a spoiled pre-adolescent.
  
  That the director had access to so much information--e-mails, audio tapes of criminal activity, Senate hearings, made the film particularly valuable, and certainly credible. And the clear implication of Arnold Schwarznegger's peripheral part in the scheme--at least his election to governor of CA because of Grey Davis's inability to confront the Enron debacle head-on--is something to examine, and keep our eyes on during the Lay and Skilling's trials early in 2006.
  
  Much of what I could say other critics have already noted. But one point not yet covered was stated by the whistle blower perhaps most responsible for spilling the Enron beans: There's little reason to think it's an abberation.
  
  And, before I forget, many interviewed for the film, those " in the know," insist that the banks who participated HAD TO KNOW TOO what was going on. They too should be tried for their part in the debacle.
  
  I think it's important that Lay and Skilling be tried--and convicted--for their heinous crimes. But I may be in the minority who thinks that those lower on the corporate totem pole--those, for instance, who were talking of the megabucks they were making off of the California energy consumers, and of retiring at 30--should also pay for their crimes. One can't rationalize their behavior either, just because the corporate culture seemed to foster it.
  
  Well, seeing the film has prodded me to get the book, read it, and work zealously to prevent other things from happening in the future.
  
  
• A disappointment. Wish the movie could be more informative
  By A39KES33IH1GXR on 2006-01-19
  i have wanted to see this movie for a long time. for one, i know Enron was really an innovative company but i wanted to learn how the company failed. after watching the movie begin to end for 2 hours (including the special features), i was totally disappointed. reasons below:
  
  1. heavy on popularism and light on business/financials. Enron is a business financial story but the movie attempted to do a "Roger & Me" (Michael Moore). so you threw in the conspiracy theroies that Bush family is intimately linked to Lay , threw in Bush 21, Bush 23, Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan's deregulations, evils of free market, evils of capitalism - voila!! the source of all evils and the satan is released from hell!!! :) No doubt this appeals to a certain segment of political sensivities, however, it shined little light on the true nature of Enron's failure in business finance, in legal, in corporate governance. this is the most glaring weakness of this movie.
  
  2. weak on business finance, heavy on pseudo "good vs evil" psychology. just one example.
  - Enron's play on california's rolling blackouts . the movie laid the blame on the greedy and evil traders (yes the movie called them evil). however, the movie never called out the fact that california legislators and energy managers failure in managing the state's energy supply prudently. for one, california insisted to buy energy at spot rate and refused many hedging proposals that most states used which would "lock in" energy prices at a fixed rate. CA would rather take market risk (or some political commentators stated that they have no option) as spot rate was very low compared to hedged rates. problem is, if you have no risk management system, you get wiped out when risk came. case in point, the reason your burger at McDonald is always sold at the same price despite the constantly fluctuation of cattle price is McDonald's got into sophisticated hedging strategy such that no matter what the spot market price of a cattle, they always pay the same fixed price to get the beef. thus Enron's traders were totally LEGAL in their trading activities. legally and financially, all good and legit. politcally, bad. simple question, why the other 49 states did not have rolling blackout and only CA? the film blamed Bush administration for not helping CA.
  
  3. the whistle blowers - Sharon Watkin was made to be a heroine in this movie. she may very well be. however, let's face it. she was just an accountant counting beans in the organisation. never in her career at Enron she contributed any creative money making idea (if she did, the movie did not highlight that). it is easy for someone to "pile it on" when Enron was collasping. so beware the do gooders. they may be the worst losers.
  
  4. Enron employees loss of $12 billion retirement funds. you are talking about many PGE and Enron workers whose entire investment and pension funds were 100% invested in Enron stocks. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT. c'mon. these employees thought Enron stock was a sure win when Enron was rising 100% a year. so they moved all their assets into Enron, deliberately and knowingly. some even borrowed money to buy Enron!! i am not saying this is bad but if you decided to win it all with one roll of dice then you cannot be complaining when the numbers did not turn out your way. of course, the movie did not dwell on this as this is unkind of blame the 'small guys' when the big guys are making big bucks. however, if you play it like Vegas, you can't be complaining when the house wins.
  
  i strongly suggest you see this movie but definitely check out the Enron documentary produced by CNBC which in my opinion is a much better, more informative (yes there were corporate fraud and financial misdeeds at grand scale). however, Enron truly had lots of smart guys and some of their trading and investment strategies are total sophisticated and unique. (the movie never touched on this).
  
  
• The Smartest Men In A Room Full Of Stupid People
  By A3GI22GLBVBGC2 on 2006-04-07
  Rather than repeating what other reviewers have already written, I will only confirm that the 5 Star reviews here are pretty much right on target. This is an exceptionally good documentary for anyone interested in Corporate America in general, or the Enron scandal in particular. It is no small accomplishment to create a riveting film about accounting, but writer/director Alex Gibney somehow did it. Don't let the word "accounting" scare you away--this is a human interest story all the way.
  
  However, there is one thing that bothers me about this film, in that it places Enron executives on a kind of pedestal in the tradition of Greek tragedy, as if Lay, Skilling, Fastow, Pai and others deserved special recognition despite their actions. The commentators often give them credit for working hard and rising from poverty to the upper echelon of wealth, and they call that "success". To me, "success" has more to do with being a decent human being, whether you end up rich or poor, and decency seems to be completely absent in the major characters of this "tragedy". Indeed, for those who are not part of the corporate cult mentality, one could easily argue that these men probably would never have risen to such great heights if they had been decent, because the corporate model doesn't reward decency. It rewards only those who make the bottom line their God.
  
  The commentators also repeat their belief that the Enron executives, and Skilling in particular, were "smart" or "brilliant", and again the only evidence to support this is the fact that they rose from poverty to wealth, as if intelligence and wealth were somehow correlated. Having watched Skilling in action, "smart" is about the last word I would use to describe him. Clever, perhaps, but not smart. After all, these men devastated the lives of countless employees and investors, interfered with the U.S. government regulatory process, forced millions of Californians to endure unnecessary rolling blackouts, and generally destroyed everything they touched (except for Pai, who got away free and clear with a quarter billion dollars and a stripper). How could that possibly describe the actions of people who are "smart"? Again, they are confusing wealth with intelligence, when the two are completely unrelated (just compare the wealthy George W. Bush with impoverished Abe Lincoln in terms of intelligence and literacy).
  
  Lastly, I was horrified by the ease with which Kenneth Lay could express so much false empathy for the lives that Enron destroyed, while his actions show a completely different story. For example, after listing a litany of devastating effects the Enron collapse had on so many poor people, he notes that he and his wife will have to live with that shame for the rest of their lives. Then he notes that he himself has suffered right along with them when his net worth dropped to a mere $20 million. Poor baby.
  
  These were not the smartest men in the room. They were among the stupidest people our society has produced. If there is one lesson to be learned from the Enron scandal, I hope it is the lesson of what happens when stupid people aquire wealth and power, while others put them on a pedastal as being worthy of our consideration at all simply because they achieved that degree of wealth and power.
  
  
  
• A great book and story gets a Moore type treatment
  By AMWSZ61FILX2J on 2005-11-11
  The book "Smartest Guys in the Room" is an excellent story, well written, fascinating, and compelling. The film is not as effective, as it gets a "Moore" treatment with too much emphasis on politics.
  
  Despite the early weak attempts at linking the Enron executives to the Bush administration, the film finally gets down to the real story - how Lay, Skilling, Fastow and others created a corporate culture that gave rise to the biggest corporate scandal in the industrial era. Included is the discussion on how horrifically bad their forced curve on performance rating was, and how this enabled the culture of greed at all costs. The lead players are studied in detail, to the point of psychoanalysis, and the result is quite disturbing.
  
  This is a film that is a strict documentary styled depiction. Interviews, voice overs, and clips from C-Span are woven together to tell the story of how this scandal occurred. The "Apocalypse Now" voice over at the beginning is a nice touch. Some of the "dramatizations" are really poorly done, and even comical. However, it is indeed amazing that so many were fooled outside the company into buying the stock and raising it to heights and an unprecedented fall.
  
  Perhaps even more amazing than the company story is how many people came out of the woodwork like typical Monday morning quarterbacks. In reality few if any of these people spoke out during the rise of the company. It is a story that should serve as a warning buoy to corporate America.
  
  Overall, if you have not read the book, I suggest doing so as it is far better than this film, nonetheless, if you have 110 minutes to spare, this film does tell the story in pictures. It is at least entertaining and keeps your interest, while the editing and the weak political slant detract from the story.
  
  
  
• A moral passion play . . .
  By A1ORMINOCZ051E on 2006-02-07
  This is a great documentary which captures the go-go 90's, the rise of the internet, and the rise(and fall)of funny money. Maybe they were the smartest guys at Enron, but they were silk-suit wearing con men who operated a macho ponzi scheme that bilked countless investors who felt secure that something so big could never fall so fast. It is an indictment of corporate greed . . . and I say this as a conservative. This is capitalism run amok. The movie puts the rise and fall of Enron in its proper context . . . a metaphor for the '90's . . . when the only direction on wall street was up.
  
  
• Untrustworthy film with an agenda: Beware
  By A2VEB9Z1W5DD4C on 2006-03-16
  I was very hopeful that this documentary would dig into the core of the Enron scandal and show the corruption that went on within the company. Unfortunately, the director was more concerned about making a political statement than with presenting what actually happened.
  
  Early in the video, the narrator states that Enron was closer the the Bush administration than any other company has ever been to any other administration. However, the director then fails to prove this, other than by showing a video of Bush wishing happy birthday to Ken Lay. What was the point of that comment? We're never shown any corruption on the part of the Bush administration, yet the statement of association is presented in such a way to imply that the Bush administration was somehow involved.
  
  We are also a treated to series of shots and comments that imply that Enron was responsible to the California energy debacle and that deregulation was a bad thing. In Texas, our electricy market was deregulated about the same time, and the result was and has been huge savings for the consumer. Yet the documentary doesn't address the successes of deregulation, it just tries to hammer home the point that California was a pure victim. The documentary never seems to consider that California's poor leadership set up a system that invited corruption.
  
  The film does a good job of showing Fastow as a crook, but Lay and Skilling are never fully implicated of any deliberate wrongdoing. The suggestion is certainly there, but I was hoping for a little more hard evidence. I'm left with the impression that they may have just been too aggressive, all the while thinking that they would pull everything off.
  
  The documentary keeps refering to the fact that the top executives sold a lot of stock right before Enron tanked, but the film never shows us the dates and amounts of these sales or shows the percentages sold by the executives. I don't know if Lay sold $1 million out of $50 million or if he sold everything. Unfortunately, I don't trust this documentary to be even-handed, so I have ignore that part of the show.
  
  Finally, I have an issue with the constant interviewing of former Enron executives. Note that the ex-executives who give interviews are NEVER shown in an unfavorable light. That makes me wonder if they agreed to be interviewed only on the condition of a favorable presentation of themselves. Then, they are free to skewer everyone else to the delight of the movie makers.
  
  In summary, I never felt I could trust this film. The director had an agenda, and seemed to prune away everything that didn't support his way of looking at things. While I am very convinced of wrongdoing on the part of the key executives, this film didn't present much evidence I could trust. Beware of believing what you see here.
  
  
• In the dictionary next to "hubris"....
  By A14QAT1XDSCLEO on 2005-04-25
  One powerful theme in "The Smartest Guys in the Room" is expressly articulated and repeated for emphasis: this is the story of people, not arcane financial accounting methods; and because it is people, it can happen again. Enron is just the manifestation of the evil begotten by hubris, in spectacularly public fashion. It is classic Greek tragedy, and it is one from which its chief protagonists, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, must not escape.
  
  Yes, it is a movie with a point of view, but this is no Michael Moore documentary, where facts are subservient to the point of view. Director Alex Gibney brilliantly lets the story tell itself simply by interviewing people who were participants in the events, showing the time lines of those events, and playing an astonishing amount of video and audio footage taped at Enron, by Enron itself. The movie resolved for me the question: "What did they know, and when did they know it?" They knew. They not only knew; they designed the company to be the ultimate shell game, with no pea. The only thing Enron ever had to sell was its stock price. And the guys at the top always knew that was their only product.
  
  As a Houstonian, I admit that I, a supposedly sophisticated business professional, was intimidated by Enron's assertion in its glory days that the reason I didn't understand its business was just that I wasn't smart enough. My friends, managers and lawyers, some from Harvard themselves, also admit to the same intimidation. It was not that the questions were not being asked; it was just that we were silenced when Enron averred that they were the smartest guys in the room. They asserted it, and we believed them. Thank good Fortune that one reporter, Bethany McLean, in almost too soft a voice to be credible as a giant killer, kept asking.
  
  
  I wish this movie might inspire a larger remedy than the one being attempted by the Department of Justice. Why doesn't Harvard deny admission to people like Jeff Skilling, who, when questioned in his entrance interview whether he was smart, replied, "I'm (expletive deleted) smart"? Why isn't some humility and modesty still ranked a virtue? Why do we celebrate the rise of the "specialist" who is educated only in his field? Those "specialists" (in law, in accounting, in finance, yes, but now also in medicine and other fields as well) seem to be wholly ignorant of the inevitability of the fall of the Greek protagonist who becomes blinded by arrogance, power, greed---- in short, hubris. Why is ethics today a "specialty" study, instead of integral to every field of study?
  
  I sat open-mouthed as the tape showed Jeff Skilling seriously selling a new business idea: selling futures in the weather, his next big thing after trying to make Enron the power broker of broadband availability. He parodied himself on tape: he had a new, better idea than the "mark to market" booking which allowed Enron to book future theoretical profits once they had signed a deal; now he would institute "hypothetical to book", booking profits as soon as he had an idea. What, ultimately, was the difference between the parody and the reality?
  
  The horror of listening to traders (who sat in a room directly below Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, with spectacular staircases between their executive offices and the trading floor) laughing at the misery they were inflicting on California as they extorted profits from that misery, leaves me outraged. They threatened and may have cost lives with their fraudulent tactics. They admit it on tape, laughing. They knew. It was their business plan. To make Andrew Fastow the only obvious scapegoat for what Enron was developing as its business plan before he was ever hired is simply the continuation of the shell game with no pea. Look for the "designated fall guy". They still think they are the smartest guys in the room.
  
  No, I'll never be selected for the jury pool now, but I wouldn't have been anyway. I'll buy the DVD when it comes out, and watch it during the trial and afterward, lest I forget. Excellent movie, the best kind of documentary.
  
  
  
• A Timely Work Of Genius
  By A15NS9ERV7LT7A on 2006-02-10
  As the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal unfolds, the public is starting to read shocking, specific allegations of political corruption. But for a dramatic primer on financial and, some suggest, political corruption make sure you watch Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, now available on DVD.
  
  But, before you do so, make sure you visit Enron's website. That'll give you a bit more context about how far the once mighty company has fallen.
  
  Based on the book of the same name by Fortune magazine reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkin, Enron should be required viewing for all Americans. Why? Because it's the story of big dreamers who did dream the American dream...which any American can do. And then they put the dream into action, which any American can do.
  
  But then rather than work hard and play by the rules they worked hard and fudged the rules: on bookkeeping, on California energy pricing, on what they told stockholders and their ill-fated employees, who lost everything (some management fatcats got out on time and at least one is out there living on millions).
  
  Directed by Alex Gibney, the story is told so that anyone junior high school and up can easily grasp this morality (or is it immorality) tale that unfolds. This is done via skillful use of archival footage, often-clever music, chapter headings, original interviews plus the superbly written narrative explaining each step of the corporation's quick rise and shocking fall.
  
  Gibney is of the new school of documentary makers who have yanked documentaries out of the old, high school history class boring form and mastered the art of educating and opining while reporting and entertaining. You won't look at your watch when you view this DVD - which seems much shorter than it is. Most importantly, Gibney portrays flesh and blood characters, not caricatures...yet, you do see the "good guys" and the "bad guys."
  
  
• not bad but not nearly as good as the book
  By A3U3BEZMH3F01Q on 2006-01-21
  I read "the Smartest Guys in the Room" and found it to be a fascinating story about greed, arrogance, and irresponsibility in corporate America.
  
  Having now watched the film, I can say that it doesn't quite measure up to the book. But I was still "entertained" and the documentary serves as a sort of companion to the book and helps bring the heroes and villains (mostly the latter) to life.
  
  For me, the most interesting and chilling part was the part that dealt with how Enron energy traders "gamed" California (deliberately playing with the power supply to create shortages and drive up prices and profits). Listening to the traders gloat about that is probably one of the best arguments against "laissez faire" capitalism I have ever seen.
  
  But not surprisingly, the movie doesn't deliver the same amount of information and analysis as the book. Financial wizard Fastow's financial shenanigans with limited partnership entities like "Chewbacca" and "LJM" are only fleetingly covered. They should have gotten more attention.
  
  Another thing that I didn't like was the comparison of the energy traders' actions with the experiments that Milgram did some decades back on obedience (people being ordered to deliver what they thought were excruciating shocks or even fatal ones). I really don't think that was at work with what the energy traders did (blind obedience to "authority"). I think that a different dynamic was at work (greed and love of the sense of power from disrupting people's lives in California).
  
  The biggest mistake that the film made though was engaging a bit of paranoid conspiracy theorizing regarding the California energy crisis. One would get the impression that the film-makers believe that this was done to unseat Gray Davis as governor and put Arnold Schwarzenegger in his place. Frankly, I think that is just crazy, and I have never heard anyone else suggest that such a "plot" took place. Furthermore, the book did not contain any such speculation and innuendo.
  
  Still, the film was an entertaining ride ...while it lasted ...kinda like Enron itself.
  
  
• Whatta Story
  By A2DIKVZN2EDVP7 on 2005-11-15
  It's a little early to review the DVD as it won't be out for a couple of months so the following comments pertain to the film.
  
  Alex Gibney's Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room is a well produced documentary that would appear to be inspired by rather than based upon Elkind/McLean book of the same name. It plays like an extended case study from `The Corporation' with higher production values and a generous budget for song rights, etc.
  
  Another reviewer has stated that this is a `Moore' (presumably Michael) treatment of the subject. This statement is wholly inappropriate and betrays an ignorance of either Michael Moore or Enron:TSGITR, or both. This film is not really up to Michael Moore's standards, but it does contain a small touch of irony when the soundtrack plays Traffic's Dear Mr. Fantasy or Dusty Springfield's Son Of A Preacher Man (told you the rights acquisition budget was nice). A more appropriate comparison would be, say, Ken Burns with an emphasis on satire rather than empathy.
  
  The same reviewer then laments weak attempts `at linking the Enron executives to the Bush administration'. I agree, the attempt was much weaker than it should have been on the political corruption side of the story (and it's not all GOP baddies, watch Frontline's Bigger Than Enron).
  
  The film is all archival footage, interviews, & voice overs. There is only one dramatization I recall; the opening sequence of the film - effective if unremarkable. Overall a valuable document that captures about 1/10th of the Enron story (yes, it's that big) in a stylish manner.
  
  
  
• Travesty of a Film, Complete waste of time
  By A1BSP0C0A9F2ZC on 2006-01-22
  I brought this movie after reading all the positive reviews. But as usual it turned out be the usual hype. This movie tries to appeal to the female segments by using positively dressed female narrators who somehow are remotely related to the Enron story. This movie does not cover by any means what was Enron actually doing? What was Anderson doing? How did they inflate earnings? It tries to demonify skilling and Lay, by identifying their greed. Well what Harvard MBA is not in for the money? what corporation is not trying to whatever it takes to stay afloat? To sum up, this movie completely fails to explain what enron was doing and why was it bad? Any college educated person will find this movie a complete waste of time.
  
  
• An Admiration of Appearances
  By A387BD735MI50R on 2006-05-22
  This movie doesn't begin to explain the executive manipulations that led to Enron's downfall. That's a difficult subject to explain. But I had heard a few news commentators summarize the ways in which subsidiaries had been created and funds shuffled between them to make it look as if the Company as a whole was reaping huge profits. I had hoped to learn more details about such shifty operations here. But you won't find out much about the how's from this documentary.
  
  And I'm not sure you'll learn much about the why's either. The movie presents patchwork biographies of the main players (and "players" is the right word for these executives). Learning about Jeff Skilling's love of competitive, dangerous sport and about Lou Pi's penchant for attending strip clubs does give some insight into their characters. However, none of what is presented about these men justifies the director's assertions about how "interesting" and "fascinating" they are. If anything, the film's bios would probably leave most viewers with a sense of how little and dull these men tended to be in their daily lives.
  
  However, something revealing about the Enron collapse does emerge, albeit unintentionally, in the director commentary for the DVD version of this documentary. You can hear Alex Gibney's tone of admiration underwriting this whole project. Yes, there is a sort of envy and approval that leaks through in his voice as he narrates the making of this film.
  
  I'm reminded of another movie, Deliberate Stranger, a dramatized account of the life of killer Ted Bundy. There's a character in that movie, played by George Grizzard, who oozes admiration for the young Bundy. He sees an ambitious young man who wears the right clothes, is attending the right law school, has the right political affiliations, and who seems to be on the fast-track to every sort of social and financial success. And that's all Grizzard sees, and all that he sees he envies.
  
  Not that I'm making a comparison between the deeds of the man in Deliberate Stranger and the deeds of the people in The Smartest Guys in the Room. However, there is a comparison that can be made between the primary reactions of the bystanders in the two films. In both cases, they admire appearances, they admire the macho traits in others, the symbols of superficial success that others clothe themselves in. They fall in step. Hardly anyone cares to see what lies underneath the trappings. No one complains until devastating loss is exposed.
  
  So even though the body of this film may not give you a clear sense of how the Enron scam gathered momentum - listen to the DVD bonus materials. Listen to the producers' and director's commentary. Maybe The Smartest Guys in the Room inadvertently shows how it could happen after all.
  
  
  
• must-see documentary
  By A19ZXK9HHVRV1X on 2006-08-24
  ****1/2
  
  Don't be surprised if you find yourself throwing things at the screen while watching "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," a brilliantly effective and meticulously researched documentary (based on the book by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind) that is guaranteed to get both your dander and your adrenaline up to dangerously high levels.
  
  Rarely does a real life event provide us with as clear and universally recognized a symbol of a larger social theme as does the fall of Enron, which, in the years since it happened, has come to stand for everything that's wrong with corporate America. It is the classic tale of corruption and unethical behavior performed in the service of unbridled greed. That the men responsible for the disaster took so many innocent people down with them is what makes it a tragedy. In fact, more than one person interviewed for the film draws the parallel between the downfall of Enron and the sinking of the Titanic - an apt analogy if ever there was one, only, in this case, the captains had no intention of going down with the ship, preferring instead to ruthlessly knock over any number of helpless women and children in the desperate race to the lifeboats.
  
  The beauty of the film is that it takes a very complex and convoluted story and makes it completely comprehensible to those of us who might otherwise get lost in the maze of arcane corporate-world details. The movie introduces us to the key players - primarily CEOs Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay, and CFO Andrew Fastow - showing the step-by-step process by which they built the energy corporation virtually from scratch, raised it to the position of seventh largest company in the world, then slowly destroyed it through deceit, hubris and greed - but not, of course, before bestowing obscene multi-million dollar packages on themselves as compensation. We see how they employed little more than smoke-and-mirror accounting schemes to pull the wool over the eyes of investors, regulatory commissions and fellow employees. However, the film makes it clear that a large number of "reputable" banks and loan agencies must also have been complicit in the company's malfeasance for all of this to have come off so effectively.
  
  As always, it is the "little guy" who winds up getting shafted. Probably the greatest hair-pulling section of the film involves Enron's cold-blooded creation and manipulation of California's bogus "energy crisis" in the early 2000's, which drained billions from the state`s treasury, a situation which the newly elected President Bush, ever sympathetic to his buddies in the energy business, refused to help rectify. Just as bad is the CEOs' callous encouragement of their own lower level employees to invest their retirement savings in the company's 401K plan that the chief executives themselves knew would soon be defunct. With hissable villains like these around, who needs fiction?
  
  The sole consolation is the fact that the system did work in the end, that the wrongdoers eventually overreached to such an extent that the house of cards they had built finally came tumbling down. There's certainly a great deal of joy in seeing the creeps responsible for the catastrophe being carted off to jail in handcuffs and sweating under the public scrutiny of a congressional investigative committee. (It should be noted that the film predates Ken Lay's death in 2006). The movie also balances the case by highlighting some of the "heroes" in the story, primarily whistleblowers within the company and a resourceful reporter for FORTUNE magazine who was the first to hint in a public forum that Enron might just be the corporate equivalent of the emperor with no clothes.
  
  This is more than just a mere "talking heads" documentary. It explores the details of the story within the broader context of unbridled capitalism, de-regulation, and corporate corruption. The movie also shows us how strangely immature the men at the head of this company were, with their frat boy antics and the daredevil activities they indulged in to erase their "nerd" image and to establish their bona fides as real "macho" men. The fact that individuals of this caliber could spell the ruin of so many trusting people is what gives the movie's title that little ironic kick.
  
  By all means, don't miss this film - though you might want to have a good stiff drink handy for when it's over.
  
  
• Greatest Movie About Book Cooking Ever
  By A3I7OX03X6KDMN on 2005-04-25
  I am in the minority on this, I'm sure, but I firmly believe that the Enron scandal was good for America. From where I'm sitting America had it coming. This is a country that after 8 years of peace and prosperity decided that they needed a president who would not only make them more money, he would also give them more money in the form of a tax cut. Yes, we were a land choking on it's own greed. Lucky for us we had Enron then, and we have "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" now. Currently our president is telling us that we should gamble our future on the stock market. That's right, take all of your social security money and give it to guys like Ken Lay. This movie points out in a brutally informative and entertaining way why this is a bad bad idea. Using great interviews and very competent editing techniques this film shows us the ins and out of Enron's rise and fall, the California power crisis, and why it was all possible. If ever a movie made a case against libertarianism this is it. Personally I don't want my power grid being traded on the free market so some numbskulls can get rich off of it... call me old fashioned. Also, do you want a free market if it results in a man being fired for seeing through a scam that was going to cost thousands of people their jobs, and then have the company rewarded for firing him with a $50 million contract? I say all this as a red blooded capitalist, I just don't believe in the market above all. I believe in a level playing field and I'm sure that is the last thing Ken Lay would ever want. This film also did a great job of alleviating me of any sympathy I had for the Enron employees. They were the ones who stopped wearing glasses simply because their boss did, and who bought into these ridiculously artificial pep rallies there. I also got a kick out of seeing my former Senator (Carl Levin who I proudly voted for) tear into Enron's corporate hacks. As far as documentaries go everybody is playing catch up to Michael Moore, but this film is closer than most. Of course some jokes write themselves, and in this film many of the jokes wrote themselves. However, these filmmakers did not just sit there and repeat those jokes. They expanded upon them and showed the inner workings of the corrupt corporate machine known as Enron. This is a very good movie. ***3/4
  
  
• It's not money, but people who are at the root of all evil
  By A2HR0DJG4WMR8R on 2005-05-02
  This documentary exposes how greed, arrogance, power and corruption converged to create the biggest corporate dismantling in America's history. The film begins by getting viewers familiar with the background of key players at Enron and morphs into an analysis of how a thirst for continuous profits created a culture of ethical recklessness and all out greed. During the film, we are introduced to the mechanics behind Enron's overly exaggerated financial reporting. Mark to market accounting was the method used to overstate revenues and earnings but it was the greed of Enron's management that ultimately caused the company to fail. While the film was an interesting review of the company's demise, the one thing that resonated most with me is how other corporations, Arthur Andersen, Enron's banks, attorneys, etc. allowed Enron to run amuck. Had any of these company's looked beyond their own financial gains; they might have been able to minimize the damage that Enron caused. Instead, thousands of individuals lost their jobs, retirement packages and savings. The company's that survived their encounter with Enron took a hit in terms of their reputation in the market. How do we avoid this from happening again? Unfortunately I don't think we can. As this film points out, money is not necessarily at the root of all evil, people are. It was the people that destroyed Enron. The same people who came up with highly innovative ideas also came up with unethical scams to implement them. The recorded phone conversations between traders towards the end of the film were incredibly revealing and indicative of how individuals bought into the culture of greed. I hope that corporations around the world will encourage their management and staff to see this film. A copy should be purchased for every corporate library and become part of the new hire orientation process. Perhaps with this level of exposure, the film can actually prevent another Enron. Highly Recommended and well worth the time. . . the sound track is quite nice as well!
  
  
• Power and the Power Company
  By A3KJ6JAZPH382D on 2005-05-15
  You want to leave the theater with a solid case of righteous indignation? Then, by all means, go see "The Smartest Guys In The Room." In the space of about two hours, you'll see how a core trio of men engineered the biggest business fraud ever foisted upon the American Public. Never mind the bankruptcy and the sniffling presumption this unholy triad of men maintain that they've done nothing wrong, but focus on the fact that Lay, Skilling and Fastow invented all these invisible profit-generating concepts to hide money and make it look like they had billions in cash, when all they were really doing was building the elaborate shell games wherein the final punch line is there really was no pea to be uncovered.
  
  When you see the ideas laid bare (mark to market, selling shares in the weather, rotating power shares to drive the prices up), and then the utter shamelessness the sellers had in forcing false California electrical power shortages and undeliverable promises (a billion dollar power plant in India that has yet to go online), plus the bald faced gall of their political attachments (the Bush's one and two both on video tape professing their loyalty to Enron Execs), you'll wonder how Enron managed to keep this runaway train from ever getting derailed. To that end, they truly were the brilliant hucksters the movie title claims them to be.
  
  Ultimately, this documentary exposes what a couple of snake oil merchants with a load of hubris and the right connections can do. The movie closes on the note that Ken Lay's trial will begin in 2006, but you have to wonder why Martha Stewart - who got raked over the coals for far less - has already been to jail and back while these life ruining robber baron scum buckets are still on vacation.
  
  
• Find out who some of your ruling oligarchs are
  By ANVOS4JLN2MKR on 2005-11-14
  Satan does exist. And when he comingles with amoral yuppies, you get stories like this one. An excellent truth serum for ignorant sheople who still get their news from mainstream propaganda sources (any TV, radio, newspapers, magazines--nearly all are bought by one of the "Big 5" mega-corporations in modern fascistic Amerika).
  
  
  
• The Who, What & Why of Enron's Massive Fraud.
  By A3UPYGJKZ0XTU4 on 2006-02-06
  "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" is director Alex Gibney's take on the mess that was Enron, based on the book of the same name by Fortune magazine reporters Peter Elkind and Bethany McLean. Elkind and McLean are interviewed in the film, as are some former Enron executives including Amanda Martin-Brock, Mike Muckleroy, and Sherron Watkins, former Enron accountant John Beard, and former Enron traders. Stock analyst John Olson, one of the first to question Enron's financial health, and various writers and attorneys also articulate their views of Enron from the outside looking in. Former Enron CEOs Jeff Skilling and Kenneth Lay, who are on trial as of this writing, and Enron Chief Financial Officer Andy Fastow, who turned State's witness in exchange for a reduced sentence, are represented through their statements at Congressional hearings and through videotaped corporate speeches. The film focuses on those 3 individuals more than other Enron executives who may have been equally incompetent, probably because these 3 are suspected of being nefarious as well as foolish. It follows Enron's evolution from a natural gas company to a "logistics company" or quasi-brokerage or whatever it may have intended to be -does anyone even know?- from 1992-2002, approximately the period of Jeff Skilling's reign.
  
  I cannot say just how much material this documentary adds to Peter Elkind and Bethany McLean's book, as I have not read it. The film could not be nearly as detailed as the book, but Alex Gibney did make an effort to find new material for his audience. One startling bit of new material is tape-recorded conversations of Enron traders manipulating the power supply in California during the state's 2001 energy crisis. It's absolutely unreal -not to be missed. Director Alex Gibney holds a skeptical view of American corporate culture and laissez-faire economics. The film asks, "Was Enron the work of a few bad men, or the dark shadow of the American Dream?" He sees Enron as an exaggeration of what goes on every day in corporate America. Bethany McLean sees Enron's fraud and subsequent collapse as human tragedy: self-made, ambitious men and women who rose to great heights and were brought to ruin by their own enormous hubris and self-delusion. Both of these views are represented in the film, but not crammed down the audience's throat. They are food for thought, and the filmmakers obviously believe that Skilling, Lay, and Fastow broke the law, but, beyond that, they allow the audience to draw its own conclusions.
  
  The DVD (Magnolia 2006): Bonus features include 4 deleted scenes, 7 featurettes, "A Gallery of Enron Cartoons" (18 political cartoons), the entire text of 3 Fortune magazine articles about Enron including Bethany McLean's original 2001 article entitled "Is Enron Overpriced?", & an audio commentary by writer/director Alex Gibney. In "We Should All Ask Why?: Making the Enron Film" (14 min), Alex Gibney talks about his perspective in the film and Bethany McLean talks about Skilling, Lay, and Fastow. "Where Are They Now?" (3 min) is an update on 4 former Enron executives. "A Conversation with Bethany McLean" (7 ½ min) is footage from her interview that was left out of the movie. Interesting insight. "A Conversation with Peter Elkind" (5 min) is footage from his interview that was not in the movie. "HDNet's Higher Definition: Highlights from the Enron Show" (12 min) are interviews with McLean and Elkind hosted by Robert Wilonsky of "The Dallas Observer". "Firesign Theater: The Fall of Enron" (3 min) is a Houston radio program spoofing a Wagner opera as the saga of Enron's demise. In "Alex Gibney Reads Enron Skits" (41/2 min), Gibney reads the scripts of 2 of the Enron skits, similar to the one we see in the movie. These self-incriminating skits are one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen or heard in my life. In the audio commentary, director Alex Gibney discusses music, editing, what he left out and why, the people he interviewed, and his intentions with each scene. His personal view of Enron comes across more clearly than in the film itself. Subtitles for the film are available in Spanish.
  
  
• A total waste of time
  By A29RUTHB9JKE6X on 2006-02-27
  This really isn't a documentary; it's a propaganda film. Rather than interview a variety of people who know anything about what happend at Enron, the film spends the vast majority of time interviewing the two people who wrote the film. We get a lot of opinions and very little real information. This is the sort of propaganda film that the Nazis and Communists used to make. The film attempts to connect George W to Enron. Yes, there were connections to the Bush family but virtually all the mis-deeds committed by Enron were done while Clinton was President. If there was any failures by the regulators it was the Clinton administration that was responsible. The film makes no mention of the regulatory failures of the Clinton administration.
  
  If you want to find out the truth about what heppened at Enron, you won't find it in this film. But, if you want to see an anti-Bush, anti-free market film and don't care about the truth than this film is for you.
  
  
• Read the book. Skip the movie.
  By A1VTFWNYYCJMG0 on 2006-05-02
  As someone who has closely followed the Enron story, I found this film to be disappointing. This documentary fails to capture the inherently dramatic story of Enron's rise and fall.
  
  The documentarians commit several factual errors by way of oversimplification. All trading activity cannot be dismissed merely as pure gambling - just ask any airline that has hedged against rising fuel prices. What's more, "mark to market accounting" -- standard procedure at most trading houses -- is not inherently bad. Rather, it was Enron's aggressive interpretation (immediate recognition of future cash flows aka "mark to model" accounting) that caused so many problems. Finally, not all of the ideas at Enron were wacky. Even the company's much maligned "weather derivatives" now enjoy a robust market at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
  
  Worst of all, the documetarians don't adequately analyze the crooked ecosystem that facilitated Enron's misdeeds. Key suspects include: consultants at McKinsey who were too eager for business at Enron, accountants at Arthur Anderson who sanctioned the crooked accounting, the partners at law firm Vinson & Elkins who endorsed the legality of Enron's worst schemes, self-congratulatory academics at Harvard Business School who gave management intellectual credibility, greedy energy investment bankers, and cronies in the federal government. Pacing was sometimes a problem. The directors disrupted the narrative by inserting hokey interludes including long shots of BMX bikers, cartoonish magicians performing tricks, and other irrelevancies.
  
  The movie was at its best when it used footage of senior management exhorting employees and investors to buy rapidly plummeting Enron stock just as the executives were dumping. Tapes of traders fixing the California energy markets are equally damning.
  
  If you want a better account of the Enron saga, stick to the book that the documentary was based upon.
  
  
• Get the right message
  By AF3X7J0XC391L on 2007-09-19
  The knee-jerk reaction to watching this documentary might be to immediately pull all your retirement money and stuff it under your mattress then calling your congressman and demanding more regulation. Neither reaction would be wise nor would they be effective. The root message is not that deregulation is bad, the root issue is greed and greed is no less prevalent in the government that would seek to regulate business than it is in the business themselves - in fact, history would seem to support the notion that we have far more to fear from governments than from businesses or free markets. Regulating business with government control is not a solution any more than hiding your money under your mattress. Republicans, Democrats, and yes, even Libertarians are just as greedy as business leaders - giving them control is no safer than letting the market control itself.
  
  A better lesson to learn is that stated by a former Enron employee at the end of the movie when he suggested Enron's own motto - "ask why?" Be a wise investor and know the company in which you are investing. If you cannot understand how they make their money it does not necessarily mean you are too stupid to understand - it might just be you understand even better than they. Be a wise citizen as well and note how money influences your representatives - do not assume their rhetoric is entirely accurate but ask them difficult questions until you understand the issues. Do not respond with fear, respond with seeking understanding instead.
  
  An excellent documentary that makes you think and makes you ask, "why? " You will want to see this.
  
  
  
• Unfettered Hubris Drives Intriguing Account of Enron Scandal
  By A13E0ARAXI6KJW on 2005-05-09
  Even after reading Kurt Eichenwald's "Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story", I was not prepared for the near-Greek tragedy presented in this smartly produced documentary of the Enron scandal based on yet another book by journalists Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind. Directed by Andy Gibney, the film follows the complicated rise and fall of Enron in an easy-to-follow, chronological order, from the mid-1980's to the present, using actor Peter Coyote's lucid voice-over narration. Enron started as a moderate-sized Houston gas-pipeline company that grew exponentially, reaping benefits for shareholders and far more so for the Enron executive team for a long, uninterrupted stretch. Billions of dollars were collected due to speculative mark-to-market accounting techniques approved by the SEC, and Enron consequently became one of the world's largest natural-gas suppliers.
  
  What resonates most from this searing film is how circumstantially pathological the chief villains are in this true corporate morality story. While the infamous Ken Lay comes across as the corrupt figurehead we have already come to know through news reports, it's really Enron CFO Andy Fastow (dubbed appropriately "The Sorcerer's Apprentice") and especially President and COO Jeff Skilling, who are mercilessly exposed here. Skilling is portrayed as a brilliant leader and a corporate Darwinist, whose favorite book is Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene", which he apparently translated into a bloodless performance review policy that worked like a genetic algorithm for people. Employees were rated on a 1-5 scale based on the amount of money one made for the company. Skilling mandated that between 10-15% of employees had to be rated as 5's (worst). And to get a rating of 5 meant that one was immediately fired. This review process was dubbed "rank and yank." Such was a typical example of his survivalist thinking. However, the corruption spread throughout the company, as Enron was responsible for, among other things, gaming the Northern California "rolling blackouts" in 2001, whereby the company profited as huge parts of the state were plunged into darkness. Citizens were threatened by a deregulation plan that essentially enabled a number of immoral Enron traders (led by Tim Belden) to place calls that drove up energy-market prices and took advantage of power-plant shutdowns. Of course, the Bush family dynasty does not come across unscathed in the Enron story and justifiably so according to their inextricable ties to Lay.
  
  Gibney effectively uses video footage from testimony at congressional hearings, as well as interviews with disillusioned former employees such as Mike Muckleroy and whistle-blower Sherron Watkins (who uses some effective pop culture references like "Body Heat" and Jonestown to get her points across). There are some amusing vignettes and images that tie some of the disparate elements together with excessive glibness. The documentary is best when it sticks to the facts, for this is one inarguable case where fact is truly stranger than fiction. Highly recommended.
  
  

• Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
• The Corporation
• Barbarians at the Gate
• Who Killed the Electric Car?
• Wall Street