I’ve just added “Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room” to the Movies You Might Not Know list. It’s a terrific documentary that explains in detail what Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Peter Fastow and others at Enron did, all in the name of greed — from manipulating California into rolling electric blackouts to bankrupting their own employees to lying about how good the company’s future looked at the same time they were selling millions of dollars in company stock. The trials of Lay and Skilling will take place any day now (Fastow has turned state’s evidence), and if you want a primer in what it’s all about, this is the movie to see.
The movie is based on the work reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind did for their book, “The Smartest Guys In The Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron.”