Prologue Flashcards
Skilling: Change
‘Enron online will change the market…We’re trying to change the world.’
Skilling: Transparency
‘It is creating an open, transparent marketplace’
Skilling and stage direction: Blindness
Stage Direction: Three suited individuals enter, finding their way with white sticks. They have the heads of mice
Skilling: ‘marketplace that replaces the dark, blind system that existed.’
Skilling: Ease
‘It is real simple.’
Stage Direction: Three blind mice
The three mice-men have wandered across the stage, feeling their way with sticks. Perhaps one turns and seems to stare at us.
Stage Direction: Light
A single bright light sharply illuminates the Lawyer
Lawyer: Pauses
‘Somebody. Divides up. The money.’
Lawyer: Mini aside
‘(I could explain to you how it works but I don’t have the time and you don’t have the money.)’
Lawyer: Reference to God and hypocrisy
‘Then when things get desperate we find ourselves a great man, look up to him and demand he change things. Hypocrites.’
Lawyer: Great man
‘Within every great man there’s a buried risk.’
Lawyer: His description of Enron
‘the man behind the corporate crime that defined the end of the twentieth century and cast a shadow over this one.’
Lawyer: Truth
‘But we’re going to put it together and sell it to you as the truth.’
Lawyer: Use of narrowing focus for effect
‘Here in the beating heart of the economic world: America. Here, in the heart of America, Texas. And in the heart of Texas, Houston. There was a company.’
