Enron - The Smartest Guys in the Room - B+

Out on DVD.

This is a documentary chronicling the rise and fall of Enron and its key players, Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew Fastow, and Kenneth Lay. It is imminently watchable and somehow turns a subject that gives me extreme tired-head into a fascinating and informative picture of what went wrong.

Prior to my viewing of this movie, I had a sketchy understanding of who the players were and what went wrong. If nothing else, this movie gives a good primer on one of the most significant events in the last 10 years. The director makes good use of recognizable music and film clips to keep the presentation lively, and interjects facts and commentary about the key players along the way. The shell games the company played are explained concisely and it seems ridiculous in hindsight that many of the schemes were viewed as remotely legitimate, such as 'mark to market' accounting, which allows you to book all of the projected future profits from a deal the day it is signed rather than when the money actually comes in.

The weakest points of the film are the parts trying to incorporate the Bush family into the success of Enron. Ken Lay was friends with George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush and gave them a lot of money. The filmmakers waste a small amount of time on this, and it isn't all that distracting, but to lay this at the feet of the Bushes is a joke. Enron folded in December of 2001, 11 months after George W. Bush took office. Enron's meteoric rise took place primarily from 1996-2000, aided in large part by decisions of the SEC, at that time under the control of the Clinton Administration.

Favorite line: In an admissions interview for Harvard Business School, a professor asked Jeffrey Skilling if he was smart. His reply: "F-%king Smart."