Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

I got a preview DVD of a documentary about Enron that's about to be released. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room will remind you just how shameless the Enron guys were. Rather than dwelling on the thousands of people who lost their retirement money, it focuses primarily on the the conscious, willing, and intentional fraud Enron's executives executed. The movie takes us step by step through the games the execs played, as if they couldn't believe that anything guys as smart as them did could possibly be wrong. These were first class bastards.

The format of the movie is conventional: Some talking heads, some insider footage of rah-rah corporate meetings...although the footage Bushes senior and junior shot to pass their good wishes to one of the execs is a pretty startling reminder just how close Kennyboy and the Bush family are. The documentary takes us step by step down the path that led to Enron going from boom in the good sense to boom in the bad sense.

At 110 minutes, it felt a little long to me, and some of the stock footage (e.g., a guy in freefall) and music choices struck me as too predictable. But it tells quite a story. We can only hope that the Enron boys become the smartest guys in Cellblock C.