I think there’s an inclination to feel stupid if you don’t understand. I sat down with Gibney, a documentary producer and editor whose previous films include, as a producer, The Trials of Henry Kissinger and, as a director, Manufacturing Miracles, and Bethany McLean, whose reporting on Enron was instrumental in the company’s unraveling, in Fortune’s office in midtown Manhattan.įILMMAKER: It’s interesting that after all this media attention most people still can’t explain what Enron did before it went under.
#ENRON THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM SOUNDTRACK FREE#
But when the Bush administration is out there touting Social Security privatization, when deregulation and reliance on the free market are promoted as economic panaceas and when some of the biggest players in Enron’s rigged games were held only minimally accountable, it’s clear that the lessons conveyed by this engrossing and necessary picture are ones we still need to learn. And if that were the end of it, I’d recommend Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room simply for its entertainment and historical value. “People think it’s a story about all these complicated financial transactions and most people think, Ugh! But in reality it’s a story about people, and it’s understandable on a very human level.”Įxpertly capturing the almost surreal quality of Enron’s corporate culture and the near insane behavior of its leaders, director Alex Gibney’s new film is a compelling human drama, a tale of hubris writ large. “People don’t want to admit that they still don’t understand Enron,” comments Fortune reporter Bethany McLean, co-author with Peter Elkind of the book Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. While most Americans can perhaps recite a vague explanation of what Enron did wrong - something having to do with phony deals, shell companies and stock manipulation - few can accurately discuss what the company actually did during its glory days as an exemplar of the New Economy. Yet even after this media barrage, massive confusion remains about the energy trading company. At the story’s end, pensions were wiped out, fines were assessed, books were written. In the months following Enron’s collapse, its key players - Chairman Ken Lay, CEO Jeff Skilling and Andrew Fastow, who masterminded the company’s fraudulent investment vehicles - were paraded across front pages nationwide as their stories, and indictments, unfurled. In 2001 it became America’s largest corporate bankruptcy. In 2000 Enron was the world’s seventh largest corporation. BY SCOTT MACAULAYįormer Enron CEO Jeff Skilling outside the company’s Houston headquarters. POWER SURGE Alex Gibney’s Enron:The Smartest Guys in the Room, based on investigative journalist Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind’s non-fiction book is a smart, spirited and essential chronicle of America’s largest white collar crime.