After seeing Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer I am here to tell you that the game is rigged, the engine of capitalism is eating itself, and we are all fucked.
After seeing Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer I am here to tell you that the game is rigged, the engine of capitalism is eating itself, and we are all fucked.
Client 9 is the ironic and tragic story of Eliot Spitzer’s fall from grace, masterfully told by Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney Taxi to the Dark Side. We all know how that happened; it’s the oldest story in the book: a powerful man has a penis. But what we really didn’t know, and what we really do need to know, is what Eliot Spitzer was doing before he was banging whores, mainly prosecuting crimes by America’s largest financial institutions and some of the most powerful executives in the country.
What started out as a movie about a public figure who couldn’t keep it in his pants evolves into a movie about getting railroaded by powerful special interests. So which is it? Maybe both.
Client 9 tells the story of a financial system run amuck and the only sheriff in town is NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Ever since FDR broke up the banks, they have been trying to put themselves back together again. In 1999 they finally did it, and along the way they have managed to buy off any and every government regulator and politician in sight on both sides of the aisle. So Wall Street was the wild west and the people who were supposed to protecting the investor and making sure there was a level playing were turning a blind eye to corruption and broad malfeasance.
It’s also the story of how our Government gets bought off by the mountain of cash thrown at them by Wall Street, which is exactly why a guy like Eliot Spitzer became the unlikely sheriff and hero here. He could not be bought. He grew up wealthy, his father financed his campaign for Attorney General, and he was not intimidated by the bankers’ money nor was he in need of it.
Client 9 reveals in stunning detail how Spitzer was the only government official willing to investigate and prosecute the high flying wall street fraud machines, and how his success at nailing the bad guys earned him the wrath of the most powerful people capitalism had to offer. And how those powerful enemies conspired to bring him down.
We find out that Spitzer was investigated in a highly unusual way, (for instance, prostitution investigations never target “John’s”) and Gibney implies that he was investigated by the Bush justice department for political reasons.
One of the biggest sex related revelations is that the women credited with bringing down Spitzer, Ashely Dupree, was actually with him only once. His favorite girl, “Angelina” , gave Gibney plenty of interviews but would not consent to appear on film, so Gibney uses actress Wrenn Schmidt, to tell her story. She gives us lots of surprising details about the profession and the mindset of the women who participate. For instance, she notes that most professional dates treat women much better than a “normal” guy and a regular date. And that most girls, herself included, quit normal, not-for-profit dating all together in favor of the better treatment usually afforded by a paying customer.
My only complaint of the documentary is that I found the super close up style of shooting to be off putting and at times hard to watch. I like a close up as much as the next guy, but I don’t need to be able to count the hairs in Eliot Spitzer’s nose, which I was able to do. Seven, in case you were wondering. In the end I recommend Client 9 and bravo to Gibney for giving us much more than the quotidian sex scandal story.
—Jimmy Dore
