IR: In what ways has the DVD provided an opportunity for you to communicate your ideas about Enron to others?
AG: In what ways did the DVD … extras did you say?
IR: Well, just, even just the movie and the extras—the whole DVD package. In what ways has it provided an opportunity to communicate your ideas about Enron to others? I mean, in one way the documentary has a point of view—and I'm not one of those people who object to a documentary having a point of view—so it's really not that issue. So as nonfiction with a point of view, in what ways has the movie itself and the extras on the DVD provided an opportunity for you as a writer, director, producer, human being to communicate your ideas to other people?
AG: One of the things that I've been really interested in are kind of grand cons where people in power convince the relatively powerless of something that is really not in their best interest. And you see it a lot today. So that was one of the areas where I felt that Enron was a great story to explore that.
And another thing that has disturbed me in our culture ... a couple of things that have disturbed me in our culture over the last, say, ten or fifteen years is that it seems to be a kind of winner-take-all culture. In which, you know, the end always justifies the means. As long as you come out on top, it doesn't matter what kind of immoral acts you commit on the way up. And that seems to be pretty wrong. And I think also too, one of the reasons I put Ronald Reagan in the film saying that government isn't the solution, it's the problem. You know, I think that you saw in the wake of [hurricane] Katrina just what kind of fallout that can have, and the Enron story was a classic example. You know, because the government is a way that people have to express their will. And when you cast doubt on the government and essentially eviscerate it, then you don't really have a democracy. And you see what happens when Jeff Skilling's law-of-the-jungle theories play themselves out. I mean, I think it shouldn't be surprising that a few lions, tigers and bears show up and eat people alive.
IR: Well, thanks for talking to me, Alex. And thanks for making such an interesting, thought-provoking and entertaining documentary.
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