Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer from Bloomberg Radio. Well,
Speaker 1: we are definitely living in a world where we are
Speaker 1: talking a lot more about our well being, physical well being,
Speaker 1: our mental well being, and for many, the disruption of
Speaker 1: so called normal lives has created a new batch of
Speaker 1: stresses and really put our mental health to the test.
Speaker 1: With that in mind, there's a new HBO documentary that
Speaker 1: looks at the minds of a specific group that exists
Speaker 1: in our population. Basically asks what makes killers kill? Yep,
Speaker 1: you heard that right. Let's bring in Oscar winning filmmaker
Speaker 1: Alex Gibney. He's got a new documentary at It's called
Speaker 1: Crazy Not Insane. Alex, of course the filmmaker behind films
Speaker 1: familiar to our audience, including Enron, The Smartest Guys in
Speaker 1: the Room. He's done documentaries on Wiki Leaks, Elliot Spitzer.
Speaker 1: He is founder of Jigsaw Pictures, and Alex joins us
Speaker 1: on the Fund from New Jersey. Alex, Welcome to Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Great to have you here. Great to me there, Carol,
Speaker 1: So I don't know if it's there. Yeah, that's kind
Speaker 1: of how it works today. Totally get you. How are
Speaker 1: you first of all I'm fine. I'm good. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm fine. All good. Thank you for asking. Well.
Speaker 1: I'm doing well too, and glad to hear that on
Speaker 1: your end. Um, I want to ask you before we
Speaker 1: kind of get into crazy not insane. I mean, I
Speaker 1: do wonder though, how your world has been impacted by
Speaker 1: the pandemic. We've talked to a lot of content creators,
Speaker 1: film heads of film studios that were shut down because
Speaker 1: of the virus. You know, they're now finding their way
Speaker 1: back under some new protocols, uh and kind of filming
Speaker 1: with zones and so on and so forth. But I'm
Speaker 1: curious for a documentary filmmaker, you know, how, how is
Speaker 1: your world impacted or were you able to do a
Speaker 1: lot kind of business as usual? To some extent, it
Speaker 1: wasn't business as usual, but we were able to do
Speaker 1: a lot. I mean, we never really stopped shooting um
Speaker 1: and uh, and we found ways of editing remotely, and
Speaker 1: we even pioneered I mean, you know, myself and two
Speaker 1: colleagues just finished the film about the you know, federal
Speaker 1: response to covidull until really under control, and we pioneered
Speaker 1: a new kind of camera called the COVID cam which
Speaker 1: enabled people to actually get a camera on their doorstep
Speaker 1: and we can remotely monitor it via the via the web,
Speaker 1: and no human beings contact with each other. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: pretty wild. Is that that's not out yet? Is it?
Speaker 1: It is? It came up, It came up. It was
Speaker 1: on Hulu. Um, it still is on Hulu. Came up,
Speaker 1: but it it came out just before the election were
Speaker 1: on October fifteen. Alright, Sorry, I've been a little distracted
Speaker 1: because I going on my apologies, So tell me about
Speaker 1: your documentary Crazy not Insane. To be fair, I've seen
Speaker 1: a trailer, so, um, I've seen a little clip it
Speaker 1: of it, a clip of it. You know, you follow
Speaker 1: the work of a notable psychiatrist who has assessed a
Speaker 1: number of high profile killers like Ted Bundy, Mark David Chapman.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about her and how you
Speaker 1: came to kind of do this documentary. Her name is
Speaker 1: Dorothy Ought now Lewis, and I came to her as
Speaker 1: part of research for a scripted project I'm doing with
Speaker 1: Laura dern Uh and Laura came to me with a
Speaker 1: notion of of wanting to do something about psychiatrists whose
Speaker 1: job it is to examine UH inmates on death row
Speaker 1: and determine whether they are sane enough to be executed
Speaker 1: um and which is kind of a crazy idea uh
Speaker 1: in and of itself. And so in doing research for that,
Speaker 1: I I was looking for prototypes for this character and
Speaker 1: found Dorothy. And Dorothy had written a book about her experiences.
Speaker 1: But Um. She was a psychiatrist who, after studying juveniles
Speaker 1: for many, many years, stumbled into the world of testifying
Speaker 1: on behalf of usually defense attorneys, either in trials or
Speaker 1: for death penalty appeals and UH and pioneering a new
Speaker 1: kind of research into the minds of killers UH and
Speaker 1: trying to determine how and why, well not so much,
Speaker 1: how more why they kill UM and and so it
Speaker 1: became a kind of fascinating tour through UM through Dorothy's work,
Speaker 1: who was a kind of detective of the mind. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't want to give it all away because I
Speaker 1: want people to go watch it, But I mean, what
Speaker 1: was she like? I mean, this is this is kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. I mean, the subject matter is just fascinating,
Speaker 1: but I'm curious what she was like and and UM
Speaker 1: in terms of the process of her going about this.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is pretty growesome stuff. It is grewesome stuff.
Speaker 1: And and when you meet her, I mean, Dorothy is
Speaker 1: a sort of a bubbly lady. She's now over eighty,
Speaker 1: but she's still full of energy and vitality as a
Speaker 1: sort of mischievous glint in her eye. What was that
Speaker 1: There's a line of a novel. He was born with
Speaker 1: a gift for laughter in a sense that the world
Speaker 1: was mad. That's Dorothy Lewis. And uh and and so
Speaker 1: she has fun. She has these hairless but she's at
Speaker 1: her desk, which is a table in her living room.
Speaker 1: She's surrounded by an ocean of papers. Um. And she's
Speaker 1: just a you know, one of the most curious people
Speaker 1: I've ever met. But she's curious in this peculiar area
Speaker 1: of trying to understand human violence. And that led her
Speaker 1: certainly down some very dark paths, and indeed led her
Speaker 1: into some chambers of people like Ted Bundy, um you
Speaker 1: know alone, um, serial killers between her and the door,
Speaker 1: with only her persuasive powers as a psychiatrist to protect her. Right.
Speaker 1: You know, I do wonder, Alex and I want to
Speaker 1: go back to you mentioned your documentary on COVID Totally
Speaker 1: under Control, and I was just talking with um one
Speaker 1: of our news anchors, d Prisoner, and you know, we're
Speaker 1: talking about it's kind of staggering in the face of
Speaker 1: all the evidence, of scientific medical evidence that's out there
Speaker 1: about the virus. You know, I'm curious, in doing this
Speaker 1: documentary why you think that people are having such a
Speaker 1: hard time believing in the virus and even leading up
Speaker 1: to the election, and even after Donald Trump had the virus,
Speaker 1: he had a lot of supporters still and thinking he
Speaker 1: was doing a good job at it. Well, there are
Speaker 1: two separate things. I mean, one is he was he
Speaker 1: was trying very hard to convince his followers and you'd
Speaker 1: almost have to call him followers that the virus wasn't
Speaker 1: really that real or that dangerous, even though we now
Speaker 1: know he knew it was. UM. But the doing a
Speaker 1: good job, that's the part I have a harder time understanding.
Speaker 1: If anybody watches Totally under Control, you will see forensically
Speaker 1: exactly how bad a job he did. You couldn't between
Speaker 1: him and Jared Kushner. You couldn't imagine anybody doing the
Speaker 1: worst job if they had actually tried. UM. So that's
Speaker 1: just a matter of competence. I mean utterly incompetent. And
Speaker 1: as a result, you know, to what are we at?
Speaker 1: Are in thirty five thousand dead now? Um? And we compare,
Speaker 1: We compare the United States with South Korea, which discovered
Speaker 1: their first COVID positive patient on the same day January.
Speaker 1: But South Korea no very quickly to contain the virus,
Speaker 1: never had to shut down its economy. And it's a
Speaker 1: it's a country of fifty one million people. To date,
Speaker 1: less than five people have died. So you know, you
Speaker 1: can it can be done. You just have to be
Speaker 1: disciplined about it. You have to have a government that
Speaker 1: believes in science. You have to have a government that
Speaker 1: believes in taking steps to protect its people and to
Speaker 1: engage all its citizens, uh, in trying to fight the
Speaker 1: virus instead of trying to fight each other. You know, Alex,
Speaker 1: one thing I do wonder and I mentioned kind of
Speaker 1: coming in. You know, your latest documentary crazy not insane,
Speaker 1: and you're taking a look at serial killers. But you've
Speaker 1: done you know, documentaries on en Ron, You've done them
Speaker 1: on Wiki leagues, You've done them on the history of
Speaker 1: the rock group the Eagles. Uh, You've done them on
Speaker 1: a lot of different subjects. How do you decide what
Speaker 1: to work on? Is it just something you come across?
Speaker 1: Is it kind of random, like when Laura Dern, who
Speaker 1: we've talked to on our are two and you know,
Speaker 1: fascinating of these conversations and you can go a lot
Speaker 1: of different places. Is it just you kind of run
Speaker 1: into something accidentally or I don't know what's your approach.
Speaker 1: It's all the difference all the time. I mean, what
Speaker 1: do they say, luck is where opportunity means a prepared mind.
Speaker 1: So sometimes I just get lucky, um, but sometimes I
Speaker 1: go seeking something UM. In this case, you know, I
Speaker 1: wasn't intending necessarily to make a documentary, but I just
Speaker 1: became so interested in Dr Lewis and also Dr also Dorothy's.
Speaker 1: She had these videotapes of her examinations of a number
Speaker 1: of serial killers, uh, and those were pretty compelling, particularly
Speaker 1: because a number of them have UM, dissociative identity disorder
Speaker 1: what we used to call multiple personality disorder, and you
Speaker 1: can see people switch from personality and personality in the
Speaker 1: middle of the examination. So that was pretty interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: And and and so I realized, whow that's that could
Speaker 1: be a film there? And usually I have a number
Speaker 1: of films on the boil at any particular time, right,
Speaker 1: and we'll advance them a little bit to see if
Speaker 1: there's more to be done, and and if it seems
Speaker 1: like there is, then we'll push forward. I would imagine
Speaker 1: a lot of these documentaries like there are so many
Speaker 1: rabbit holes. Like this happens to me all the time.
Speaker 1: Somebody says something all of a sudden, I'm going down
Speaker 1: a rabbit hole, and I'm lost for a long time.
Speaker 1: But I would just think even coming across those films,
Speaker 1: right and watching her do your examinations, you could just
Speaker 1: kind of probably watch them for hours to some extent,
Speaker 1: because it's kind of fascinating and just you know, kind
Speaker 1: of understanding how she works and how she's trying to
Speaker 1: understand this, you know, group of people and what the
Speaker 1: commonalities are well, right, And what she ultimately ends up
Speaker 1: understanding is that a deep dive into serial killers or
Speaker 1: even just plain old murderers as she calls them, you know,
Speaker 1: actually takes us to a kind of a universal place,
Speaker 1: and that is childhood. Because you know, basically her unified
Speaker 1: field theory is you'll get an incredibly violent person if
Speaker 1: you have a mixture of frontal lobe damage. That is
Speaker 1: to say, she would say cutting the reins on the horse,
Speaker 1: so you know, not so much, um, you know, pull
Speaker 1: on the limbic system to keep uh, keep relentless urges
Speaker 1: from from acting on and then usually some kind of
Speaker 1: terrible physical or sexual abuse as a chot um and
Speaker 1: which which often is what leads to these multiple personalities.
Speaker 1: And if you have a combination of those two things,
Speaker 1: you usually get where you don't always get. But if
Speaker 1: you look at a murderer, you will almost always find
Speaker 1: a combination of those two things. Not everybody who has
Speaker 1: that combination ends up as a murderers. Flipping it around, right, right,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily check the boxes and it's you know
Speaker 1: the causality or you're gonna lead to that. Okay, one
Speaker 1: thing before we go. Um, we are often fascinated here
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg or just about kind of the financial aspect
Speaker 1: of making films. And I know we've talked with a
Speaker 1: lot of minorities. It's sometimes hard to get money. And
Speaker 1: I do wonder is it still hard for you or
Speaker 1: because you have one awards, you're noted, you're known, Um,
Speaker 1: you know you've done projects that people know of you've
Speaker 1: got a proven track record, you know. So when it
Speaker 1: comes to funding and support, is it easily there or
Speaker 1: does it take work? It always takes work. I mean
Speaker 1: it's easier, um and and and if you have a
Speaker 1: reputation of the body of work, it's easier. But I
Speaker 1: can tell you like five projects I've had turned down
Speaker 1: this year. Uh that I that I would have liked
Speaker 1: to have done, but but wasn't able to get the
Speaker 1: financing for. So it always takes hard work that never stops.
Speaker 1: And what about though, Okay, so you've gotta work on that.
Speaker 1: But I do also wonder is it easier to find
Speaker 1: places to distribute? You know? One of the major themes
Speaker 1: this year has been look at all the streaming service.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's just so much content in demand. Has
Speaker 1: that side of the the formula been a little bit easier?
Speaker 1: It is, I mean, um there and and particularly for documentaries,
Speaker 1: per se documentaries at least sort of independent documentaries. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, had a hard time being financed back in
Speaker 1: the day. Now there are many outlets for it. And
Speaker 1: the good news is that as opposed to the battle
Speaker 1: days of commercials, that there's some commercial networks you still
Speaker 1: work for but you know, generally you're you're selling a
Speaker 1: film to a viewer rather than renting a viewer with
Speaker 1: a film, you know, for on behalf of an advertisment.
Speaker 1: So that is far more satisfying and I think it's
Speaker 1: led to better and better films. Well, this was a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. Thank you so much. Good luck um
Speaker 1: with your latest documentary, Crazy Not Insane. We're talking with
Speaker 1: Alex Gibney. Alex, thank you so much. He's founder of
Speaker 1: Jigsaw Pictures, award winning director and as we mentioned, his
Speaker 1: new documentary Crazy Not Insane, making its debut on HBO.
Speaker 1: That's happening on Wednesday, November eighteenth, at nine pm Wall
Speaker 1: Street Time,