Following on this earlier post regarding the new Enron documentary Smartest Guys in the Room, the Houston Press’ Joe Leydon is breathless in praising the documentary:
Please don’t misunderstand: Alex Gibney has no great beef with capitalism. Indeed, many of his best friends back in Summit, New Jersey, are investment bankers. But when Gibney looks at the prodigious rise and precipitous fall of Enron in Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, the remarkable documentary that premiered January 22 at the Sundance Film Festival, the award-winning filmmaker sees the collateral damage of an economic system dangerously out of whack. And when he looks at Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, the former Enron executives now charged with perpetrating egregious fraud and deception during their stewardship of the now-bankrupt company, Gibney sees the lead players in a worst-case scenario that eventually could undermine capitalism itself.
My goodness. I haven’t seen the Enron documentary yet, so I will reserve comment on it until I do. However, it is staggering that presumably bright people such as Mr. Leydon write such drivel in a film review without even seeking so much as a comment from an objective business or legal commentator regarding the film’s portrayal of Enron. I mean, how many “Sherron Watkins good/Enron bad” stories are we going to have to endure before the mainstream media (“MSM”) or moviemakers move on to some of the really important issues raised by the Enron saga? At this point, does anyone even recall that Ms. Watkins’ famous memo to Ken Lay essentially depicted Enron’s now infamous accounting problems related to Andrew Fastow‘s off-balance sheet partnerships as a manageable public relations problem?
To understand this phenomena, it is helpful to take some time and review Professor Ribstein’s recent post and his interesting law review article — Wall Street and Vine: Hollywood’s View of Business — on how business is portrayed in film. Here is the abstract and the conclusion of Professor Ribstein’s article:
American films have long presented a negative view of business. This article is the first comprehensive and in-depth analysis of filmmakers’ attitude toward business. It shows that it is not business that filmmakers dislike, but rather the control of firms by profit-maximizing capitalists. The article argues that this dislike stems from filmmakers’ resentment of capitalists’ constraints on their artistic vision. Filmmakers’ portrayal of business is significant because films have persuasive power that tips the political balance toward business regulation.
Generations of filmgoers have sat in darkened theatres regaled by larger-than-life images of the evils of capital. This consistent message is not mere happenstance. Films are made by people who work for and have particular attitudes about business firms. Moreover, the fantasy about business that audiences see presented in films has real world political effects in government regulation of business. The trial lawyer as hero becomes the trial lawyer as vice-presidential candidate. Filmmakers? attitude toward business may change as the medium evolves. In the meantime, the best way to counteract films? misleading message about business is to let business speak for itself.
So, while moviemakers and the MSM continue to trot out stories on the Enron morality play, they ignore the harder but more compelling stories — the sad case of Jamie Olis, the federal government blithely depriving thousands of innocent people jobs by pursuing a questionable prosecution of Arthur Andersen, the “Justice” Department sledgehammering businesspeople into pleading guilty to dubious criminal charges out of fear of receiving of what amounts to a life sentence if they risk asserting their Constitutional right to a trial, how Enron’s corporate governance system contributed to the company’s collapse. The list of fascinating issues goes on and on.
As Professor Ribstein notes, depth does not sell well in Hollywood, at least in regard to portrayal of business in films. But maybe, just maybe, a Pulitizer Prize is waiting for an enterprising reporter who is willing to go beyond the simple story of Enron and examine the complex issues that are really at the core of the fascinating Enron tale.
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Last night, my boys and I attended Cinderella Man, the Ron Howard-produced movie about Depression-era fighter and folk hero Jim Braddock (played by Russell Crowe), the unlikely underdog who defeated heavyweight champ Max Baer in a 15-round free-for-all in 1935.
Recently, my wife pulled me to the new Farrelly Brothers’ (Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary) movie,