Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Theatrical Release Date: 2005 04 22 (USA - Limited)

UPC: 876964000406

Studio: Magnolia Home Entertainment

MPAA Rating: R   Contains:[Brief Nudity, Adult Situations, Profanity]

Summary: Alex Gibney, who wrote and produced Eugene Jarecki's The Trials of Henry Kissinger, examines the rise and fall of an infamous corporate juggernaut in Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, which he wrote and directed. The film, based on the book by Fortune Magazine reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, opens with a reenactment of the suicide of Enron executive Cliff Baxter, then travels back in time, describing Enron chairman Kenneth Lay's humble beginnings as the son of a preacher, his ascent in the corporate world as an "apostle of deregulation," his fortuitous friendship with the Bush family, and the development of his business strategies in natural gas futures. The film points out that the culture of financial malfeasance at Enron was evident as far back as 1987, when Lay apparently encouraged the outrageous risk taking and profit skimming of two oil traders in Enron's Valhalla office because they were bringing a lot of money into the company. But it wasn't until eventual CEO Jeff Skilling arrived at Enron that the company's "aggressive accounting" philosophy truly took hold. The Smartest Guys in the Room explores the lengths to which the company went in order to appear incredibly profitable. Their win-at-all-costs strategy included suborning financial analysts with huge contracts for their firms, hiding debts by essentially having the company loan money to itself, and using California's deregulation of the electricity market to manipulate the state's energy supply. Gibney's film reveals how Lay, Skilling, and other execs managed to keep their riches, while thousands of lower-level employees saw their loyalty repaid with the loss of their jobs and their retirement funds. The filmmaker posits the Enron scandal not as an anomaly, but as a natural outgrowth of free-market capitalism. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi

Category: Business [nf]

Awards: In Competition – Sundance Film Festival Best Documentary – Independent Spirit Awards Best Documentary (Runner-up) – Los Angeles Film Critics Association Best Documentary – Broadcast Film Critics Association Best Documentary – Chicago Film Critics Association Best Documentary Screenplay – Writers Guild of America Best Documentary – Online Film Critics Association Best Documentary Feature – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Documentary – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Features: Feature commentary with writer/director Alex Gibney
Higher definition: Enron episode (1080i)

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Format: High Definition

Release Date: 05/30/2006

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Theatre Wide-Screen

Runtime: 110 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) English

Subtitles: Spanish,English

Donald Guarisco

This quietly devastating documentary is one of the most effective indictments of the big-business mentality ever committed to film. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room succeeds because it never goes overboard in manipulating the viewer. Instead, it treats the rise and fall of Enron with clinical precision, using interviews and copious file footage to lay out the facts of the case and allowing viewers to come to their own conclusions. The end result is a scary documentation of how the profit-first approach of companies like Enron has led to a situation where all the components of the business machine are tainted with corruption. Indeed, the most upsetting part of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is discovering the company's founders were allowed to keep their schemes afloat for so long because they were able to buy off business analysts and major lending institutions. As a result, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is fascinating viewing -- both as an exploration of big business's inner workings and also as a true crime story. ~ Donald Guarisco, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Joana Vicente  Executive Producer 
Alex Gibney  Director 
Alex Gibney  Producer 
Alex Gibney  Screenwriter 
Jason Kliot  Producer 
Mark Cuban  Executive Producer 
Todd Wagner  Executive Producer 
Susan Motamed  Producer 
Matt Hauser  Composer (Music Score) 
Peter Coyote  Actor 

Country: USA