IR: Well, that's true. Tone of voice is something a book can't do. And in the movie, that was pretty effective, I have to say.
Your documentary contains a lot of complex information. How did you manage to make it so entertaining?
AG: [Laughs.] Well, you know. I just hope that … We worked very hard at times. There were times when my editor and collaborator Alison Ellwood almost threw up her hands in trying to explain things like mark-to-market accounting. But at the end of the day, the thing was to keep working and working and working. Also, to keep two things in mind. Follow the money. And follow the main characters. And by doing that, I think we made a story that had some dramatic punch, but was very much true to the real events.
IR: To my mind, the music in "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" was particularly good. How did you go about picking music to fit particular sequences so well?
AG: Well, that was, you know, one of the things that was the most fun for me. If you look over my career, I've done a lot of music stuff. I produced "The Blues" series with Martin Scorsese. I did the film "Lightning in a Bottle." And even some of the documentaries I've done in the past have made heavy use of music. As soon as I got started on the Enron film, I started listening to lots and lots and lots of music and kind of categorizing it in terms of this might be a Fastow song, this might be a Skilling song, this might be a Lay song.
And also trying to get ... there are certain kinds of songs that I was particularly interested in. That's why you see a lot of Tom Waits in the film. His songs are sort of bitterly ironic. And what he often does is to have a bouncy, jaunty melody with a very dark lyric. And vice versa.
Which is also what I like about the Billie Holiday song "God Bless the Child." That's one of the most beautiful melodies you'll ever hear. Her voice is so lilting. But the lyrics themselves are so very dark. You know, all about how the powerful crush the weak. Which is also, as it happens, a theme of the film. So that's how I went about it.
But every song also had to work in the film. It had to work and feel as if it were coming out of the film. But it also enabled me to have a voice. The music ends up kind of being a toe-tapping Greek chorus. And from time to time, it's my way of injecting a little commentary on the enterprise.
IR: What lessons do you think can be learned from the Enron debacle?
AG: Well, the biggest one of all is the flip side of the Enron slogan "ask why." You know, I think one of the reasons that Enron was able to perpetuate its fraud was because no one really asked why in a fundamental way. They took Enron on faith instead of investigating. Sometimes when people would have misgivings or doubts about Enron, they'd be swept away by the confidence of the Enron executives, and people wouldn't have confidence in their own doubt or skepticism. So I think that the biggest lesson of all is—and a broader cultural lesson—is ask why, and make sure that people in power give good and understandable answers to your questions.
Interview Continued on the Next Page
