Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (2010)

This is How Movies Should Be Made

Did you people see the same film I saw?

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

The story of Eliot Spitzer is certainly interesting: an abrasive man who fought the demigods of Wall Street; a moral crusader brought down by his own lusts. The tale also provides insights into high-class prostitution and raises the idea that a conspiracy existed against a man who made a career of making enemies. But the problem with this documentary is that is doesn't ask hard enough questions. Spitzer is allowed to brush off charges of his own monstrous behaviour; his enemies likewise side-step the charges of conspiracy; while the call-girls are allowed to simper their way through the program unchallenged. And some stories are silly - Spitzer implies his father was ruthless because he beat his son at 'Monopoly'! One is tempted to feel that all of them deserve each other; but the ordinary people of New York lost a highly flawed champion when Spitzer fell - you may not like him, but the financial services industry suffers little authority gladly, and arguably we are all now living with the consequences.

Eliot Spitzer is a marvelous human being. He is exceptionally brilliant, literate, intellectual, and on the side of light. What he is not, according to the known record and this documentary, an exceptional piece of filmmaking, is a great chess player. In 2006, he began to associate with a "call girl ring", a term that, for me, currently, feels and sounds ludicrous. The idea that consensual sex between adults is still illegal, even as a trade, in this day of comparative enlightenment is to me rather bizarre. A man who "cheats on his wife" --- This is no one's business since the relationship and contract is with his wife and not the public.Before becoming Governor of New York, Spitzer had taken on Wall Street and The Dark Side, and did it with such success and gusto that only Alfred E. Newman could not have known that the Dark Side would not begin to gather around a knife sharpening ceremony. The Dark Side used our basic American hang-up and continuous obsession with sex against Spitzer because they could. Indeed, I agree with the Governor that he is fundamentally to blame, after all, it was Spitzer who created this vulnerability. Ultimately, however, it was our immaturity as people obsessed with sex and infidelity that has probably ended Spitzer's sure climb to the presidency. We have all placed that nonsense over every good, productive and constructive thing the man had ever done and he did it for us, the public.

If I could give this a zero, I would. I was a fan of Spitzer's early in his purported campaign against Wall Street. As a New Yorker, I had followed his silk purse career from the beginning.What the writer director does here is imply, use innuendo and ultimately avoid the bottom line single issue. Eliot Spitzer hired prostitutes and flew them all over the country, nay, the world, all the while prosecuting the same behavior in others. Worse, he was hiring young women, the same age as his own daughters. A truly sleazy individual.But it goes much farther than that. It totally ignores all of the financial shenanigans of Eliot and his father, which would have derailed any national run for office. His father, one of the largest real estate developers in NY, gifted Eliot numerous apartments which provided most of his multimillion dollar income. His father even paid the gift tax on it.Bernard also loaned Spitzer's campaigns millions of dollars, $5Million +, and worse, made enormous donations to the campaigns of those who were his son's "allies".That is almost unimportant next to the real issues. Spitzer's supposed campaign against Wall Street. In most of the cases that he made sure to hold press conferences when issuing subpoenas, he ended up settling for virtually nothing, or never even pursuing in court.Worse, he lost the most high profile prosecutions he pursued, including the one showcased in the movie against Dick Grasso of the NYSE (never mentioned in the movie that Grasso was vindicated in Federal Court) and was shown to have been nothing more than a personally vindictive, wildly undisciplined attorney general.By his own admission in the film, again, brushed over by the filmmaker, he admits to telephone calls to the people he was pursuing telling them they were 'dead' or going to be 'steamrolled' or "at war". What kind of prosecutor does such things? Ultimately, the director through innuendo and editing, implies that there was a conspiracy to bring Spitzer down. He even uses pro Spitzer talking heads to imply that Spitzer would be the only "John" to be prosecuted under the Mann Act (I guess he never heard of heavyweight champion Jack Johnson) and then immediately quickly brushes past the fact that Spitzer, in fact, was NOT prosecuted. He then again uses a talking head to claim that the entire investigation was a set up simply to leak Spitzer's involvement with the Emperor's Club prostitution service to the NY Times. Huh? The most liberal newspaper in the country, which almost singlehandedly had made his career was now the demon of his destruction? What he completely ignores are the simple facts of the case. There was not a single notice of an illegal transaction noticed by the Feds, but many transactions designed to specifically skirt the federal law that requires ANY cash transaction of $10K or more to be reported (some reports said dozens of such transactions). Spitzer repeatedly made transactions of $5K at a time to pay his $10K/day hooker. The law that was designed primarily to ensnare money launderers as a result of the cocaine wars of the 1980's is what caught him.The size of the this ring, whose owners were sent to federal prison, is demonstrated by the fact that when they were arrested in their apartment, they had more than $1 Million in cash in a safe in their bedroom. This was no small time hooker service, but a major international escort service which included members of the royal family as clients - oh yeah, I guess since THAT came out, it wasn't really an attack just on Spitzer - another fact noted, and whitewashed by the director.Did Spitzer make enemies? Of course. But the idea that Hank Greenberg or Ken Langone brought him down is not only foolish, it's insulting. Were they the ones hiring the hookers? The director also compares Spitzer to fallen pols like Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich and others who engaged in extramarital affairs. As bad as they were, they were NOT committing crimes and certainly NOT at the same time they were specifically empowered to prosecute the very crimes they were committing.That Spitzer has any credibility is a sad reflection of the current state of the body politic.Spitzer is a brilliant individual with an extreme case of narcissistic personality disorder.Had the filmmaker used the forum to dissect the hubris that ultimately brings down so many of these types, he might have added to the conversation.Instead, this film looks like it was bankrolled, as Eliot's whole career was, by his father.

As I saw disgraced Governor Spitzer conduct a CNN program with Kathleen Parker, I thought: He must have very thick skin. Yes, he must have but I watched the program and couldn't help but being hit by his brilliance. Clarity, courage, directness. I couldn't wait to see "Client 9" Now, 24 hours later I feel a sense of loss. Spitzer could have been a great American president. The kind of leader that the world needs. One who won't shy away from confront corruption from any side of the aisle. What a terrible pit for all of us that a man like that could fall in such a common trap. His enemies, which by the way, they all look as if from the cast of The Sopranos used what HE gave them to destroy him. Damn shame! Sex, sex, sex. How many great men have fallen in the trap of their own needs. The documentary does a great job in allowing us to go into Spizer's personal and public jungle and come out with enormous amounts of food for thought. Sad, frustrating and very, very good