Documentary Review: Enron The Smartest Guys in the Room

Enron The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)

Directed by Alex Gibney

Written by Documentary

Starring Jefffrey Skilling, Ken Lay, Andrew Fastow

Release Date April 22nd, 2005

Published May 25th, 2005

Ask yourself this question: Where is Jeffrey Skilling right now? The former CEO of Enron, Skilling guided what he called "the number one company in the world" directly into the biggest corporate scandal of all time as he and his boss, Ken Lay, and any number of subordinates ripped off the country for billions of dollars. Where is Jeffrey Skilling now? He is not in jail, not yet anyway.  He goes to trial in January of 2006.

No doubt Jeffrey Skilling is currently occupying space in some upscale gated community as his lawyers pull every trick in the book to save his ass from federal prison. Despite being indicted and obviously having screwed millions of people, employees and shareholders alike, Jeffrey Skillings has yet to see the inside of a prison and no one seems to care.

One guy who does care is Director Alex Gibney who's extraordinary documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room details every crime committed by Skilling and his associates. It's a documentary so thorough and so damning that if it were shown to jurors they would convict Skilling and Lay without a shadow of a doubt.

The crimes of Enron all revolve around one clever scheme.  And what a scheme it was. Essentially this mostly unethical maneuver took Enron from merely being an energy creator to being energy traders. They converted to a new form of economics, sanctioned by goverment agencies, that allowed them to project profits where none existed. They would complete a business deal or stock transaction, claim the amount that could theoretically be made from this deal as profit and even if the deal went bad and no money was made the fake profit was still considered profit and was plowed into future product.

Much of the fake profit, such as money from Enron's failed bid to get into Broadband internet sales, was converted to Enron stock which could then be cashed by Executives even though, and this is the most important thing, their was no real profit to convert. The Enron executive in charge of the failed Broadband biz cashed out of the company with some 350 million dollars despite never getting the business out of the planning stages.

Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, who some say is being scapegoated by Lay and Skilling, was the architect of a plan that converted Enron debt to stock through a complicated set of fake companies that took on Enron debt for stock. Since Fastow was technically the head of these fake companies he skimmed off the Enron dollars from both sides of the table. It's again difficult to explain, and Mr. Gibney's film is at times a little unclear, but despite witnesses who say Fastow is a patsy, it was clear to me at least that he's as much of a weasel as Skilling and Lay.

That is just a skim off the top of the damning evidence in this astonishing documentary, much of which is based on the book of the same name by Business Week writers Bethany McClean and Peter Elkind who both appear in the film. They, along with whistleblower Sherron Watkins provide the most damning evidence. Watkins is particularly brave because she will be testifying in both Lay and Skilling's trials.

Director Alex Gibney, whose previous work includes the superfluous AFI's 100 Years 100 Movies, shows a journalist's care for facts and story structure and combines that with a dark sense of humor that is expressed in title cards about the companies slogan "Ask Why" and in his soundtrack of pop tunes which pop up in perfectly pitched moments and provide a running commentary alongside actor Peter Coyote's  occasionally mocking narration.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is an absolute must see. Required viewing for business schools which could use a shot of the ethical cleansing this film delivers. Required viewing also for anyone thinking of getting into the stock market. After watching this film and seeing how easily and complicitly the major banks of the world and the stock market analysts that everyone looks to for guidance went along with Skilling, Lay and Fastow, some to the point where they too were sent to jail, one must wonder just how safe the stock market truly is.

nron: The Smartest Guys in the Room shines a very bright light on some very startling information about the flaws inherent in our Corporate based America and does some powerful, yet entertaining and informative finger-pointing.  See this film and you might not be able to sleep thinking about your future in the hands of the next Andrew Fastow.