The filmmaker posits the Enron scandal not as an anomaly, but as a natural outgrowth of free-market capitalism. 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. 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. The Smartest Guys in the Room explores the lengths to which the company went in order to appear incredibly profitable. But it wasn't until eventual CEO Jeff Skilling arrived at Enron that the company's "aggressive accounting" philosophy truly took hold. The emphasis is on human drama, from suicide to 20,000 people sacked: the personalities of Ken Lay (with Falwellesque rectitude), Jeff Skilling (he of big ideas), Lou Pai (gone with 250 M), and Andy Fastow (the dark prince) dominate. 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. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room movies online A documentary about the Enron corporation, its faulty and corrupt business practices, and how they led to. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room Synopsis: Enron dives from the seventh largest US company to bankruptcy in less than a year in this tale told chronologically. 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. Pai are known, the legal fates of Lay and Skilling are still in front of the courts at the time of the production of this film.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. While the outcomes for such major players within Enron as Cliff Baxter, Andrew Fastow and Lou L. The film also details others who were complicit to the goings-on at Enron, such as the banks and Enron's auditor, Arthur Andersen, for whatever multitude of possible reasons from greed to ignorance to not wanting to cross the all powerful Enron. While many of the top executive were able to liquidate the majority of their shares from the company before the plunge, the general investor and the employees, who sunk much if not all of their 401s into the company, were the ones who ultimately got burned, let alone those, such as California utility users and payers, who were negatively affected along the way.
The film focuses primarily on the two at the top who were responsible for setting the corporate culture for all those under them: Chair and CEO Kenneth Lay and COO Jeff Skilling.
The stories generally focus on the people who built what was a house of cards called Enron, knowing what they were doing was mostly smoke and mirrors, often illegal, and often at the expense of the working class, but still proceeded out of pride, arrogance and/or greed. The fortunes of Houston-based Enron Corporation, which went from having $65 billion in assets to going bankrupt in less than a month, are chronicled. It tells the story of how Enron rose to become the seventh largest corporation in America with what was essentially a Ponzi scheme, and in its last days looted the retirement funds of its employees to buy a little more time. Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (DVD). No matter what your politics, 'Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room' will make you mad. Gray Davis as Himself - Former Governor of California Arrives by Wed, Nov 3 Buy Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (DVD) at.