The documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney has long been interested in tales of unchecked power, from turning Enron’s collapse into an entertaining crime story to revealing, in the Academy Award-winning “Taxi to the Dark Side,” the U.S. policy on torture. So it wasn’t a surprise when a group of investors approached him about taking on Elon Musk. It was 2022.
But Gibney was wary: Wasn’t there already enough out there on the world’s richest man? At the time, Walter Isaacson was writing a book on him, the authorized biography “Elon Musk,” published in 2023. Films about the quest to make the electric car and the dangers of artificial intelligence had prominently featured Musk, chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX and a co-founder of OpenAI. But then a friend explained that this was Gibney’s chance to examine 21st-century power. What Gibney didn’t expect was that it would also be a chance to examine how tech power had become political power.
“They found the anomaly in the matrix, which in the American political system is money,” said Gibney, referring to the amount of political influence Silicon Valley has had on federal policy. “And they found a president who only cares about money and is the ultimate transactional president,” he continued, arguing that tech moguls became “friends and flatterers of this guy who can reward them by taking our tax dollars and giving it to them.”
Gibney was ready to deliver a two-hour movie to the fall film festivals in 2024, but then Musk started campaigning in support of Trump’s presidential bid, and executives at HBO suggested he continue following the story.
“We have found that giving directors like Alex the room to follow an evolving story can often deepen the film and ensure that it reflects current chapters in a story that is continuing to develop,” Lisa Heller and Nancy Abraham, HBO’s co-executive vice presidents of documentary and family programming, said in a statement.
What was once a two-hour examination of the trillionaire is now a nearly four-hour odyssey that traces Musk’s early days to his time in the federal government. Despite Gibney’s efforts, Musk did not participate in the film. In our conversation, Gibney discussed the tech giant and the 2024 presidential election, as well as controversies surrounding the release of the film, “Musk.” Here are edited excerpts:
There are two moments in the movie that stand out. One involves Musk’s ex-girlfriend Ashley St. Clair sharing texts between her and Musk on the night of the 2024 election where he says he knew hours before the race was called that Trump was going to win. Then you intimate that when DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, was going through the federal government, he had access to detailed data on American citizens. What do you think is happening here?
We don’t know exactly but it’s odd, isn’t it? I’m not an expert in election technology, but I know enough to know that you can’t just go in and flip votes. But there’s reporting that happens, district to district, precinct to precinct, and that stuff does get disseminated sometimes on the web or by a satellite. So perhaps he knew ahead of time?
I think it was underappreciated in the chaos that was DOGE, the fact that while these kids knew [almost nothing] about the agencies they went into, they knew a lot about data and IT, and that means our data now is in the hands of the DOGE boys.
Now, do we know that they sent it to SpaceX? We don’t, but we know it would have been as easy as dropping a computer file into a folder.
How hard did you try to get Musk to participate in the film?
Our producer Jessie Deeter knew him from two previous films. She had his cellphone number. She had an email address. So we reached out. She wrote sometimes folksy, sometimes detailed notes about how much we wanted his perspective. His response was writing “Gibney is a douche” on Twitter [now X].
And I approached a lot of friends of his and business colleagues, and a lot of them said, “I can’t talk to you because Elon won’t give you permission.”
At what point did you decide to create an Elon Musk avatar and why?
When I pretty much knew he wasn’t going to sit down, because then I had a problem. My main character wasn’t going to speak. I just could have done archive, and I’ve done that before, but I felt in this context there was a thematic and formal reason to embrace this because he was saying, “We’re living in a simulation.” OK, how about a simulated interview? That solution then leaned into some of the themes of unreality and reality.
[Representatives for Elon Musk did not respond to requests for comment.]
How did it work logistically?
We have this massive database of [his] real audio. We always use the real audio. Then the designers and visual effects people at MakeMake designed the set, designed his clothes, designed his look, which I think is pretty flattering. I wanted my movie star to look good! And then we used A.I. tools to sync the picture to the audio.
Are you concerned that the length of the film will limit your audience?
I was terrified going into Venice [the film festival in September], but the response was really good. Now we’re printing buttons that say “I Saw ‘Musk,’” but it’s a big story about a big subject, and it kind of demands that time.
Did Universal Pictures waver in setting up its international release plans?
Yes.
So it wasn’t about legal clearances?
You can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Are they now planning the release for early next year?
We just had a meeting with them, and we’re talking very concretely about a release plan.
So what happened?
Were they concerned that in this political environment, a film about the world’s richest man was problematic? Maybe, but you have to ask them.
[Universal declined to comment beyond what the company said in a previous statement: “We’ve always been committed to releasing this film, and our plans haven’t changed.”]
What happened when the U.S. distributor Bleecker Street tried to promote the “Musk” trailer on social media?
Our ads were denied on the grounds that they were political ads. Their A.I. bots were asking, “Who are you endorsing?” We aren’t endorsing anybody. It’s a documentary. We then appealed and our appeals were denied. Then a story comes out about it and suddenly, YouTube and Meta say, “Oh, it was a mistake.” So they’re now running ads.
Who was someone you were really happy to interview that was hard to get?
Justine Musk [Musk’s first wife]. She was rightly concerned about coming forward and I think she had mixed feelings. There was a period where she loved him very much. A lot of people were scared to come forward. Ashley St. Clair was a big get — also the materials that she had.
Your film is being released the same weekend as “The Social Reckoning,” the drama about Mark Zuckerberg and the “Facebook Files” investigation. Then “Artificial,” about Sam Altman and the rise of OpenAI, will open in December. What do you think all these films about today’s tech leaders say about where we are right now?
I think it’s warranted because this small group of people has tried to basically run a con on all of us. “We’re doing this out of the goodness of our own hearts. We’re making the world better.” No, you’re padding your bottom lines and all you care about is you. So it’s not surprising that all this is coming out now.
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