I have been watching a spate of documentaries lately which seem to share some common elements. The topics have been greed, Enron, greed, the development and crushing of the electric car, greed, America’s military wars, greed, America’s history in the Middle East, and did I mention greed? These films prove the adage that reality can be stranger than fiction, and more disturbing as well precisely because they are about events that really happened.
Take, for example, the movie Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room (2005), which is based on the book by the same name. Regardless of your prior disposition – most likely negative – toward Enron, this movie will make you more angry and cynical.
I already knew a great deal about Enron, more than enough to make me furious with how the executives of the company manipulated the electric market, deceived the public, and manipulated its budgets. Some of my knowledge came from reading newspapers, while I learned still more by reading News Junkie by Jason Leopold. I will soon be publishing an interview with the author, who describes going from being a drug junkie to doing investigative reporting, including some of the key stories that led to the downfall of the company.
But this movie made me mad as hell, to quote the classic movie Network. It included material I had not heard about before, from skits by company executives about how easy it would be to manipulate its numbers to speeches where an executive encouraged employers to continue investing in the company stocks at the same time the same leaders were privately dumping their own stocks and making millions in profits in the process.
Even more infuriating are tapes of conversations in which Enron traders joke about how rich they are getting by messing with California’s electric plants in actions that ultimately led to a phony state energy crisis and rolling blackouts. Put simply the traders would ask managers of power plants to shut down, thus raising the price of electricity.
This movie is not about numbers and dollars as much as it is about people, which Movie Mom eloquently describes in a review she wrote about the film. Unfortunately, the people in the movie are not the only ones who will bend the rules to fit their actions. The movie does an excellent job of using footage which may at first seem totally unrelated, such as film of a skydiver (clue: think the myth of Icarus, who flew to close to the sun).
Article comments
1 - Kent Beuchert
I'm contnually amazed at how those who are psychologically dependent upon conspiracy theories will distort reality in order to fit events to match one of their silly theories.
This writer's description of the EV-1, a crappy little car that only a well-heeled Hollywood actor could afford or tolerate,is a good exampleof picking a tiny aspect of a broad story and creating a distorted view of reality.
I notice that the movie never showed those owners who got out and kicked their EV-1s when they
ran out of juice long before that event was foreseen, or the exorbitant cost ($45,000+) for
a glorified golf cart,whose batteries cost over $25,000 and needed replacement every 5 years or so. The idea that supposed mature adults (inspipid Tom Hanks notwithstanding) could actually tell bald faced lies in front of millions, as Ed Begley did in the film when he preposterously claimed that the EV-1 met the needs of 90% of the driving public, is a new low
for our national ethical standards. Hell, not even 80% of drivers even have a place where they can recharge an electric car, much less afford $45,000 for a second rate second car that can't even manage to get you out of the county, much less out of the state and back. Any objective
analysis of the EV-1 would show it to be a completely impractical alternative to ICE
technology that also wasn't as clean environmentally as the Honda Insight. So all that cost and inconvenience had no possible benefit. Well, that's what can happen when you let Hollywood stars determine environmental policies. They are ACTORS, they are not scientists, they are not energy analysts. They make money and fame on the basis of their LOOKS, not their brains. "Who Killed the Electric Car?" will surely be studied for years as a method of mass propaganda. It's ability to convince depended upon the gullibility of its audience to believe totally silly and laughably illogical conspiracy theories and their almost complete ignorance about the subject matter of the film. I doubt that even one in 100 of those viewers understoodwhat any average 7 year old does, that you can't build a practical electric car without a practical battery. An accurate film about modern electric cars and why they have failed requires a run time of , oh, about 2 minutes. At most.
2 - Scott Butki
What do you really think of that movie?
3 - El Bicho
Glad to see you got around to WWF. I'll have to check out that Enron movie.
4 - Scott Butki
Hi, El Bicho. Thanks for the comment.
My next spate of reviews is going to be on music documentaries, like the Dixie Chicks one, the Neil Young one. I'm open to suggestions/requests for other music documentaries.
Kent, you spent quite a few paragraphs attacking the EV1 but didn't seem to address the bigger, more currently relevent, question: Will the electric car come back one day? Or is it never gonna happen.
5 - Hugh E Webber
Ah, we've seen the work of Kent Beauchert before; he always attacks EVs, especially the EV1, which GM itself publicly pronounced the most efficient car in automotive history. Except for his comments on actors not necessarily being Nobel-winning physicists (he isn't, either,) everything he has to say in this latest rant in wrong.
GM may have seen the error of its ways, having recently committed to producing the electric-drive Chevy Volt. This year, we in the Electric Auto Association are cheering GM on. Beuchert, on the other hand, sounds as if he's close to some kind of breakdown.
The review of Who Killed the Electric Car was accurate, well-judged and fairly written, if a beat late.
Thanks!
6 - Scott Butki
Ever feel like Tom and Jerry are running in your topic thread?
7 - David Scorca
Why do people still harp on the EV-1? The EV-1 was an experiment and was never intended to be the "final solution" to be offered by GM.
The real crime committed was the squashing of the emissions regulations. By pumping money into defeating the legislation and by placing a proponent of fuel-cells in charge of the committee we have delayed a workable solution for many years down the road. If not for the movie I doubt the Volt would have been presented earlier this year. I only wish serious effort were put towards the development of a better EV solution had continued when the EV1 came out, maybe we would have the batteries needed today instead of the technology still being years off.
We need to push for new technology such as batteries that can power a car 40+ miles between recharging, 120v charging capability, environmently sound battery materials, long life spans. All this, along with renewable energy such as advances in solar and wind generators, will bring us to a much better place than we are today.
I'd much rather see $500 billion dollars spend on tax breaks to consumers who purchase EVs and for the maintenance of EVs than $500 billion dollars spent towards a war in Iraq searching for WMDs invented more by the Bush Administration than Iraq scientists.
8 - Lyle L.
Kent's comment has some interesting points but I have to deeply discount those points. GM having invested so much money in the EV1, why wouldn't they sell the cars "as is" to the people that wanted to buy them? You can debate this or that fact, but the destruction of the EV1 speaks volumes. The Toyota RAV4e was sold and it's reported on the web several have over 100,000 miles and still have a 100 mile charge range using NiMH batteries. Did GM wish to get rid of any evidence that the batteries would be long lasting potentialy useful in a battery-electic or a series-hybrid? And why on earth would a car company sell their NiMH battery patents to an oil company who currently limits configurations too small to power an electric vehicle?
"It is also important to note that there are large-format NiMH batteries available which are not subject to control by the Cobasys patents. Electro Energy Inc. and Nilar Inc. both manufacture large-format NiMH batteries, but the bipolar design used in these batteries is fundamentally different from the design of the Cobasys batteries, so these batteries can be produced without paying licensing fees to Cobasys. Both companies are actively building batteries."
"Actions speak louder than words"
9 - soldado
Eugene Jarecki always bringing interesting subjects to us all. Thanks for sharing all this useful info. I like the motto: actions speak louder than words. It's great!
10 - scott butki
Thanks.