Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: from My Heart Radio. Alex Gibney is an old school
Speaker 1: truth teller. Watching one of his documentaries focused on strong characters,
Speaker 1: there's a propulsive set of facts that expose malfeasance or
Speaker 1: utter incompetence. Often the victim is the little guy or
Speaker 1: our highest ideals like democracy. No matter the topic, Gibney's
Speaker 1: films are always a fascinating, intense, and enlightening ride. Gibney's
Speaker 1: most recent film, The Crime of the Century, which he wrote, directed, produced,
Speaker 1: and narrated for HBO, tells the origin story about the
Speaker 1: heart of the opioid crisis poisoning our nation. Big Farmers
Speaker 1: celebrated its marketing muscle, using parties to lure doctors to
Speaker 1: write scripts. This was a new drug cartel. There were
Speaker 1: drug deal was wearing suits and lab coats. Basically, here's
Speaker 1: some moneys. Yes, I'm looking at this, and I'm gone,
Speaker 1: clearly we're breaking the law. Alex Gibney has made more
Speaker 1: than thirty films in the last twenty years. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, he won the Academy Award for Best
Speaker 1: Documentary Feature for Taxi to The Dark Side, his film
Speaker 1: on the CIA's use of torture, whether he's taking on
Speaker 1: scientology or Russian interference in our elections, or iconic figures
Speaker 1: like Steve Jobs, Lance Armstrong and Frank Sinatra, give Meey
Speaker 1: never flinches and his stories stand up. In fact, he
Speaker 1: can't think of a time when he wanted to reissue
Speaker 1: one of his docs to make a correction. I can't
Speaker 1: think of a time when it did happen. And I
Speaker 1: think about that a lot, because I try to find
Speaker 1: a moment in time where it feels like we're absolutely right,
Speaker 1: and sometimes, you know, I'm afraid that things may come
Speaker 1: out that would cause me to want to redo it.
Speaker 1: But I I sort of feel like the films represent
Speaker 1: a certain wisdom at a moment in time, and it's
Speaker 1: it's best to leave them. I am kind of following
Speaker 1: up in a film I did and doing another film
Speaker 1: to kind of dig a little bit deeper the film
Speaker 1: I did, a Taxi to the Dark Side. I'm doing
Speaker 1: a kind of follow up to it. But I've never
Speaker 1: been motivated to really go back in it's it seems
Speaker 1: like such a painful process. But I usually do think about,
Speaker 1: like if I'm going to end this film here? Why
Speaker 1: are we ending it here? And will it stand the
Speaker 1: test of time? When the film is over, do you
Speaker 1: ever privately follow up about certain aspects of it? Does
Speaker 1: you're caring? Does your curiosity? Does your concern end when
Speaker 1: the film is distributed? No, the ghosts of all my
Speaker 1: films tend to follow me, and I often keep in
Speaker 1: touch with sources and interview subjects, and in odd ways,
Speaker 1: they keep coming back two films I make henceforth, so
Speaker 1: they kind of reverberate. It's it's a little bit like
Speaker 1: that moment in in Ghostbusters where they say, don't cross
Speaker 1: the streams. My streams are constantly getting crossed. It seems
Speaker 1: like characters from one film are intruding into another. They
Speaker 1: all stay with me, which becomes a little bit vexing.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's hard to keep them straight. In your career,
Speaker 1: your fabulous career, You've made thirty films or so in
Speaker 1: the last twenty years, one an Oscar. But of course
Speaker 1: documentary films have become content for streamers and major major broadcasters.
Speaker 1: What are your observations about that change during your career.
Speaker 1: What was it like in the beginning, Well, in the
Speaker 1: beginning was terrible. My wife used to tell me, I
Speaker 1: want you to go out and get a job, and
Speaker 1: whatever you do, don't mention that you're interested in documentaries,
Speaker 1: because they'll kick you right out the door. So I
Speaker 1: had to be very cautious. And then there was that
Speaker 1: terrible era of cable television where every channel had to
Speaker 1: be branded, which meant if you were clicking through channels,
Speaker 1: as soon as you got to a channel, it had
Speaker 1: to look like it was the street channel or whatever,
Speaker 1: and which meant that as a creator, you were just
Speaker 1: cranking out sausages. It was the worst possible thing. But
Speaker 1: then I discovered, particularly for political documentaries, there was a
Speaker 1: moment where theatrical films could say things that we're pretty
Speaker 1: potent so long as you made them entertaining. And that
Speaker 1: was a huge revelation which changed everything. And because suddenly
Speaker 1: you weren't operating in a commercial environment where it was
Speaker 1: the least common denominator and basically we were trying to
Speaker 1: sell audiences to advertisers. People were buying the content, that
Speaker 1: is to say, they go to a movie because they
Speaker 1: wanted to see the movie, not because they wanted to
Speaker 1: buy soap. So that was great, and I think that's
Speaker 1: what helped to explode the moment that we're in now.
Speaker 1: My only concern about streaming environment is the extent to
Speaker 1: which some of the streamers began to start relying too
Speaker 1: much on their algorithms so that they come to you
Speaker 1: and say, well, our algorithm says that at you know,
Speaker 1: minute thirty two, you should really be changing the narrative
Speaker 1: to this so that we'll keep our viewers. We're hearing
Speaker 1: a little bit of that, and that to be a nightmarish.
Speaker 1: Is that a contractual thing for you? You're an Academy
Speaker 1: Award winning documentary filmmaker. Is it understood that you have
Speaker 1: final cut or is that all boiler plate in a contract? No?
Speaker 1: I mean I I, generally speaking have final cut. Their
Speaker 1: very few instances where I don't have final cut. But
Speaker 1: there are some and and particularly some of the films
Speaker 1: that I produce where I'm not directing them per se.
Speaker 1: That's where we're hearing a little bit more of these notes,
Speaker 1: because I mean, in addition to what I do, I
Speaker 1: have a company that does a lot of other stuff,
Speaker 1: and you get a lot of these notes that refer
Speaker 1: to to algorithms, and it becomes a scary process. I mean,
Speaker 1: even the studios trying to make it a science, but
Speaker 1: it's never been a science. It's always been they try
Speaker 1: to widgetize something creative, and that's that's impossible. Well, as
Speaker 1: I often say, all of their algorithms and all of
Speaker 1: their research and so forth is to achieve the lingering
Speaker 1: fantasy of the risk free entertainment product. And I often
Speaker 1: say to them, the pursuit of the risk free entertainment
Speaker 1: product is absurd. I mean, there's no such thing absurd.
Speaker 1: You know, we can only rely on our instincts and
Speaker 1: the instincts that got us where we are now. When
Speaker 1: you talk about your company and you talk about what
Speaker 1: you're producing and not producing, I want you to explain
Speaker 1: what's the difference between an executive producer and a producer.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of different types of producers. How do
Speaker 1: you function as a producer in your company's work. On
Speaker 1: the projects where I'm named as a producer or an
Speaker 1: executive producer, I generally have a creative role, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it has to do with raising the money, but often
Speaker 1: it has to do with having some say or guidance
Speaker 1: in terms of the overall creative direction. Though you know,
Speaker 1: we try very hard to empower our directors to do
Speaker 1: films the way they want to do them. But sometimes
Speaker 1: on a series in particular, where you're coalescing around something
Speaker 1: like I did a series for Netflix for a couple
Speaker 1: of years called Dirty Money, which I was very proud of.
Speaker 1: It's all about corporate malfeasance, and you know, we purposefully
Speaker 1: engaged directors to do things their own way. That said,
Speaker 1: you know, it came out of my experience on en Ron,
Speaker 1: which was one where you invest in the wild criminality
Speaker 1: of the purpose and it's a kind of colorful, kind
Speaker 1: of heist like vibe that you engage in. So as
Speaker 1: executive producer, I'm trying to encourage the directors to lean
Speaker 1: into that kind of thing without being overbearing about it.
Speaker 1: So sometimes I'm the beard and sometimes, uh, sometimes I
Speaker 1: come come out a little stronger than that. You now
Speaker 1: have what like a hundred or a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: people working at Jigsaw. So the company itself, that is
Speaker 1: to say, permanent employees as fairly small. It's like fourteen
Speaker 1: or fifteen people, but at times we can have as
Speaker 1: many as two hundred people working in the in the
Speaker 1: space on various projects. So that's where things get pretty daunting.
Speaker 1: Are you ever sitting in your office screaming into a
Speaker 1: cushion or you're gonna cry and you're telling your staff
Speaker 1: please don't bring me any more projects to do, because
Speaker 1: there's the fear you're gonna become the Jeff Coon's of
Speaker 1: documentary filmmaking, where like you're running from room to room
Speaker 1: and going yes, no, change this brightenness. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: really try. I mean, that would be the stereotype. And
Speaker 1: I do scream into my pillow, but usually not because
Speaker 1: of that. I mean, if if I can get projects
Speaker 1: made great, But I purposely tell you know, the other
Speaker 1: executives at the company, there are many projects here I
Speaker 1: don't want to be involved in, not because they're bad projects,
Speaker 1: but because it's important that they run themselves, because otherwise
Speaker 1: I get spread too thin, and who needs that. Then
Speaker 1: it becomes a kind of proxy system. The whole idea
Speaker 1: is to create a company that will run of itself
Speaker 1: and last long after I've left the field. Well, when
Speaker 1: you talked before about these streamers and their algorithms, what
Speaker 1: I found with some of the even in the podcast world,
Speaker 1: what they're basically saying is we need eight episodes because
Speaker 1: we don't get into the grave until episode six. Episodes
Speaker 1: one through five we break even six, seven and days
Speaker 1: when we make money, so we need eight episodes. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, I think I got six good ones,
Speaker 1: and they're like, we need eight episodes. Do you find
Speaker 1: that that's challenging for you in terms of when you
Speaker 1: make films sometimes? And we try, honestly to push back
Speaker 1: on that, because the last thing you know, you want
Speaker 1: is to do a story that feels like it's run
Speaker 1: out of gas and you just keep flogging it. So yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes we do get that, but then sometimes the algorithm changes,
Speaker 1: Like you know, some of the streamers are like, well
Speaker 1: that's the way we used to think, and now now
Speaker 1: it's back to five is the magic number or whatever?
Speaker 1: You know, haven't you heard? And yeah, exactly, you clearly didn't.
Speaker 1: The website you go to how many episodes this week?
Speaker 1: It's far dot com right, Yeah exactly. Now you have
Speaker 1: a great volume of work where you are developing material,
Speaker 1: making films and series and so forth limited series with
Speaker 1: some great, great writers, so great, I mean to just
Speaker 1: keep you alone and Larry right, who I worship because
Speaker 1: you worked with Larry before, and going clear Going Clear,
Speaker 1: or in my trip to Al Qaida, and and also
Speaker 1: obviously Looming Tower. So what was your first connection with Right?
Speaker 1: Somehow we were put together on my trip to al Qaida,
Speaker 1: which was a play that he had done about a
Speaker 1: one man play that he started about the writing of
Speaker 1: the Looming Tower. And we got together on that and
Speaker 1: I did a doc about it. It's part half of it,
Speaker 1: or a lot of it is the play itself. And
Speaker 1: then we cut in and out of the play to
Speaker 1: do various documentary thing and we got on really well,
Speaker 1: and so then we were determined to do other stuff together.
Speaker 1: You know, I have a kind of a shorthand I
Speaker 1: think with writers because my dad was a journalist, and
Speaker 1: that's the business I was supposed to go into. It
Speaker 1: was around me all my life. So in my films,
Speaker 1: well I make them consciously as films. They also they
Speaker 1: have what I would call journalistic baggage. That is to say,
Speaker 1: I'm really invested in in a journalistic aspect of them
Speaker 1: that tries to get the facts right. But with somebody
Speaker 1: like Larry Right, it's a similar process in terms of
Speaker 1: the storytelling aspect of it. You know, at greater lengthen
Speaker 1: the new Yorker pieces or in his books, which often
Speaker 1: come out of his New Yorker pieces. There is at
Speaker 1: once a kind of fact finding discipline and also a
Speaker 1: storytelling discipline where you're trying to engage an audience to
Speaker 1: come along this journey with you, and part of that
Speaker 1: is investing in the propulsion of the narrative, which is
Speaker 1: I mean, that's storytelling, right. So Larry and I got
Speaker 1: on really well because he's always talking about stuff like
Speaker 1: that and and devices that he uses in his writing
Speaker 1: and and so ongoing. Clear that was maybe the biggest
Speaker 1: collaboration we had in terms of impact. The Leoming Tower
Speaker 1: was also, you know, had pretty broad reach. When you
Speaker 1: do a Crime of the Century. When you do with
Speaker 1: something with HBO, the budgets pretty high, correct, it is,
Speaker 1: relatively speaking. Relatively speaking, though, and on this one it
Speaker 1: it got a lot higher than the original budget because
Speaker 1: our original deal with HBO said we were going to
Speaker 1: do a two hour film, and then when we showed
Speaker 1: them the material, they said, well, this is clearly you know,
Speaker 1: going over the bounds of the two hours, you've got
Speaker 1: much more material than that, and they let us expand
Speaker 1: it to a four hour and in the case of
Speaker 1: Crime of the Century. I mean, to be honest with you.
Speaker 1: We actually started out working with the Washington Post. There
Speaker 1: were some journalists There's Scott Higham and Lenny Bernstein and
Speaker 1: others who had first made me kind of aware of
Speaker 1: the breadth of this story. And along the way, you know,
Speaker 1: I decided they had were focusing mostly post Sackler, and
Speaker 1: I decided I really needed and wanted to tell the
Speaker 1: Sacular part of the story to get the breadth of it.
Speaker 1: And that's what led me to Patrick, And in fact,
Speaker 1: Patrick and I ended up teaming up on not only this,
Speaker 1: but also a scripted version of the Sackler story called
Speaker 1: pain Killer, which is going to start shooting later this fall.
Speaker 1: When you're working on the Sacular story as well as
Speaker 1: perhaps other stories, is there ever a fear of litigation?
Speaker 1: I mean, talk about a deep pockets opponent off you
Speaker 1: wind up getting litigated. Were you're afraid that they would
Speaker 1: suit you? Yes, And that's why the reporting has to
Speaker 1: be really good. And I give a lot of credit
Speaker 1: to HBO for being really rigorous about that. But once
Speaker 1: you have the facts right, being very brave, I mean
Speaker 1: I learned that on Going Clear. You know, there were
Speaker 1: a lot of lawyers attached to that film, but we
Speaker 1: were very good about getting our facts right. And it's
Speaker 1: not only the stuff that's in but the reporting that
Speaker 1: surrounds it. That's what gives you the foundation to put
Speaker 1: some of the stuff you put in the film. And
Speaker 1: so with Patrick, because we were working in different media,
Speaker 1: we were able to share things that we might not
Speaker 1: otherwise have shared. If he was, say, another filmmaker, and
Speaker 1: he would give me some documents, I would give him
Speaker 1: some documents. And also we could geek out with each other.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you're deep into a project like this,
Speaker 1: very few people, particularly significant others, want to hear from
Speaker 1: you about the arcana of the opioid crisis. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like okay, Han, that's enough. You know, we've got
Speaker 1: embedded in your wife's like honey, what's wrong? And like
Speaker 1: look at the molecular structure of this active ingredient. Look
Speaker 1: at this molecule. Have you ever seen a molecule? Now?
Speaker 1: But when you're doing these projects you talked about all
Speaker 1: the lawyers attached to Going Clear. We were talking before
Speaker 1: about how the early days for you because you work
Speaker 1: so much in unearthing truth and facts and there's a
Speaker 1: journalistic stripe to what you do that you've got a
Speaker 1: staff of people doing research and maybe you have a
Speaker 1: part time lawyer. I'm kind of joking here, and now
Speaker 1: your company, the difference is you've got a lot more
Speaker 1: people on the payroll doing research. You have ten lawyers
Speaker 1: on the payroll. You know what I mean? Like, do
Speaker 1: you need more of everything to get the facts clear?
Speaker 1: You know, we don't operate the company that way. And
Speaker 1: and actually while we started to veer in that direction,
Speaker 1: I think we're going back to baseline to be a
Speaker 1: little bit more entrepreneurial. What we do is try to
Speaker 1: set it up more as units, you know, try to
Speaker 1: function not as a machine or a factory, but more
Speaker 1: like a studio where each film or series has its
Speaker 1: own people and and it's a small but dedicated group,
Speaker 1: and attached to them are are sometimes lawyers we frequently
Speaker 1: work with, and sometimes journalists we frequently work with, but
Speaker 1: they're attached to that particular project. So each one is bespoke,
Speaker 1: it's has its own DNA, and that tends to work
Speaker 1: out better because sometimes these things take a long time,
Speaker 1: like Crime of the Century took close to three years
Speaker 1: to do with a small group that really gets intensively
Speaker 1: into the subject. That's what allows it to happen, rather
Speaker 1: than a kind of big machine which attempts to crank
Speaker 1: these things out. They can't be cranked out because the
Speaker 1: rhythm of them sometimes depends on when you get documents
Speaker 1: or when you get people to talk at the pace
Speaker 1: of their own. But I'm even talking about the creative
Speaker 1: DNA biology of the project to project. I'm just talking
Speaker 1: about resources in terms of when you're first starting out,
Speaker 1: you might not have everything you need. And as you
Speaker 1: become this phenomenally successful filmmaker, one thing it affords you
Speaker 1: to do is to have more people come on and
Speaker 1: do more research and deepen your research, and have more
Speaker 1: legal help to protect you. Now, you know, I was
Speaker 1: in Sundance. I saw you there. I went to the screening,
Speaker 1: and uh, I'm in that rarefied position where I'm friends
Speaker 1: with Tom. I mean he's he's a friend in terms
Speaker 1: of my career. You know, we don't see each other
Speaker 1: for long periods of time where we pick up where
Speaker 1: we left off. He had me come into a couple
Speaker 1: of smaller parts and two am I movies and so forth.
Speaker 1: And I've often speculated and I even wrote in my memoir,
Speaker 1: So I thought, what was it? What did he need
Speaker 1: this involvement in this organization, in this uh, in this faith,
Speaker 1: or whatever you want to call it. What did he
Speaker 1: need it for? I wasn't quite sure what its purpose was.
Speaker 1: You know, he has everything, you know, wealth and fame
Speaker 1: and legacy and the respect of the community. He has
Speaker 1: everything you could possibly imagine in a career as as
Speaker 1: as a movie star. So what did this add to
Speaker 1: his life? And I I speculated about that in my book.
Speaker 1: I came up with an answer. But when you were
Speaker 1: doing Going Clear, the scientology community, which is diverse, I
Speaker 1: mean there's different people. Was not all just Tom incorporated maybe,
Speaker 1: but all those people have been able to in some
Speaker 1: way chew away any real close examination. And when I
Speaker 1: watched your movie, I was mildly taken aback by how
Speaker 1: deep you got. Your film was among the first people
Speaker 1: from a major filmmaker to say that the the institution
Speaker 1: is guilty of certain abuses. I mean they abuse people.
Speaker 1: Their attitude to me was always like, hey, man, we're
Speaker 1: not hurting anybody. You know, we manipulate people, no more
Speaker 1: or no less than U S military recruitment companies, do
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, we have a certain kind of
Speaker 1: a thing we do to get people to want to
Speaker 1: join and sign up with us, but no one's being
Speaker 1: abused or hurt. And you and what was the genesis
Speaker 1: of that movie? Why did you decide you wanted to
Speaker 1: go further and look into that even further. You know
Speaker 1: what's interesting about that is that I had been offered
Speaker 1: to do that movie any number of times, and I
Speaker 1: had always turned it down because I always felt it
Speaker 1: was too fringed. There weren't that many scientologists in the
Speaker 1: world as opposed to say, the Roman Catholic Church. I
Speaker 1: did a film about the church. Coincidentally or not, two
Speaker 1: weeks after it premiered, the pope resigned. So um, you know,
Speaker 1: I was familiar with deep seated religious organizations and also
Speaker 1: you know the pushback you can get. But in the
Speaker 1: case of Going Clear, it was Larry who convinced me.
Speaker 1: Larry Wright who convinced me to take it on. There's
Speaker 1: a phrase in his you know, subhead of his book
Speaker 1: is the prison of belief, And that idea was really
Speaker 1: interesting to me because then it was a deep dive
Speaker 1: into scientology and indeed, the abuses of scientology. I mean
Speaker 1: that that's the reason to be concerned, is that the
Speaker 1: prison of belief leads to real human rights abuses. But
Speaker 1: the other reason I was interested in it is because
Speaker 1: people like to demonize scientologists as crazies, and the prison
Speaker 1: of belief allowed me to put scientologists in a mainstream
Speaker 1: tradition of how people invest or get lost in a
Speaker 1: prison of belief, whether it be religious belief or political belief,
Speaker 1: and can't get out even though the bars of the
Speaker 1: cell are open. So that's what really motivated me to
Speaker 1: get there. And then as we dug in, we took
Speaker 1: testimony and checked facts and found out stuff that other
Speaker 1: people hadn't found out before. And and I actually had
Speaker 1: a pretty big impact on the Scientology community itself. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of people who either left the church
Speaker 1: or who as ex members of Scientology, suddenly felt empowered
Speaker 1: to speak up in a way that they hadn't been
Speaker 1: able to do so before. Because because Scientology using its
Speaker 1: threat of litigation, because they had launched the maybe the
Speaker 1: most expensive lawsuit ever against the media company when they
Speaker 1: went after Time Warner, you know, people were afraid. And
Speaker 1: HBO was incredibly impressive in terms of its ability to
Speaker 1: back us up once we convinced them that we had
Speaker 1: the goods. Filmmaker Alex Gibney. One person who never sought
Speaker 1: risk free entertainment was Sheila Nevins. As the head of
Speaker 1: HBO documentary Films from nineteen seventy nine until her retirement
Speaker 1: in two thousand eighteen, Nevin's laid the groundwork for our
Speaker 1: current golden age of documentaries. However, when she started in
Speaker 1: the early eighties, HBO wouldn't even use the word documentary.
Speaker 1: When we did promos for films, we would call them docutainment.
Speaker 1: We invented this luetic word because we're afraid that if
Speaker 1: we said documentary, people would feel that it was for
Speaker 1: the elite and that it was about politics, and that
Speaker 1: it was not going to be about human stories. And
Speaker 1: so we we hid behind this word docutainment. And then
Speaker 1: slowly but surely it took a good years we began
Speaker 1: to say, well, maybe it's not such a dirty word,
Speaker 1: and reality programming sort of said real people can be
Speaker 1: interesting in a trivial way. So then somehow it went docutainment.
Speaker 1: Reality TV yea documentary, go for it, say that real people,
Speaker 1: people without celebrity, people who are trying to survive in
Speaker 1: a complicated world, saying their own words and say it
Speaker 1: in their own words. To hear more of my two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen conversation with Sheila Nevans, go to our archives
Speaker 1: and Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Alex
Speaker 1: Gibney talks about his first job out of film school,
Speaker 1: cutting trailers for exploitation films. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing. Alex Gibney has said he
Speaker 1: inherited some of his anti authoritarian ways from his family.
Speaker 1: His father was a journalist who specialized in the culture
Speaker 1: and policy of postwar Japan. His mother founded the health
Speaker 1: education department at Boston's Children's Hospital. His parents divorced when
Speaker 1: Alex was young, and when he was a teenager, his
Speaker 1: mother remarried a champion of civil disobedience. My mom in
Speaker 1: ninety eight fell in love with William Sloane Coffin Jr.
Speaker 1: He was at the time being tried for conspiracy with
Speaker 1: Dr Spott and Austin, and she had known him from before,
Speaker 1: and he was a very charming and charismatic guy, and
Speaker 1: he wooed her and they ended up getting married and
Speaker 1: we moved to New Haven when I was I think
Speaker 1: a junior in high school, and ultimately I did go
Speaker 1: to Yale from And was it filmmaking? I mean, what
Speaker 1: was the first time you picked up a camera as
Speaker 1: a child. Were you interested in filmmaking as a child.
Speaker 1: Were you a huge filmgoer. I was into it as
Speaker 1: a kid, and I was always into cinema. But the
Speaker 1: thing that I think really changed me or turned me
Speaker 1: around were these great film societies at Yale, and there
Speaker 1: was there was always an interesting film on every night.
Speaker 1: You know, this is pre video, so you you go
Speaker 1: to these film societies and sit and watch and and
Speaker 1: at the time, documentaries and fiction films were distinctions, weren't made.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like one was up and one was down.
Speaker 1: They were all interesting. And I can remember you know
Speaker 1: too in particular that really floored me. One was Gimme
Speaker 1: Shelter by the Mazel's Brothers, you know about the Rolling Stones,
Speaker 1: And the other was Exterminating Angel by Louis Bunuel, and
Speaker 1: I thought, wow, you know, the possibility for expression in
Speaker 1: this medium is so enormous. So that's when I started
Speaker 1: to veer away from what my dad had in mind.
Speaker 1: For me, which was to be a print journalist. Did
Speaker 1: you seriously? I did? I did. But he lived in
Speaker 1: Japan for a lot of his life, and I was
Speaker 1: studying Japanese literature at the time, which meant I was
Speaker 1: like head buried in these endless character dictionaries. I started
Speaker 1: to veer away and and found my own direction. But
Speaker 1: he really wanted me after college to go and take
Speaker 1: the interviews at Time Life Newsweek, you know, and and
Speaker 1: and go into family business, which is what he had done.
Speaker 1: What did you study of Yale Japanese literature? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'm impressed because of all the Japanese documentaries you've made.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. Well, I did study under Donald Ritchie, the
Speaker 1: great Japanese film critic who knew so much about court Sawa.
Speaker 1: And I'll give you one. I'll give you. I can
Speaker 1: do one film quote in Japanese, which is Chiotto's it.
Speaker 1: And that's uh, that's the end of your Jimbo. He says,
Speaker 1: I'll wait for you at the gates of hell. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, my god. Now when you know when you
Speaker 1: make it. So you're studying Japanese literature, and yeah, you're not.
Speaker 1: You're making films at the same time I did, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I was studying film with a famous documentary
Speaker 1: named Murray Learner. He did a lot of those docs
Speaker 1: about the Newport jazz and folk festivals and that in
Speaker 1: store from now teaches at Colombia, and so she was
Speaker 1: she was one of my advisors. I mean she was
Speaker 1: very young then, as as we all were. So I
Speaker 1: was studying film and and ultimately towards the end of
Speaker 1: my sojourn there, I was starting to to to move
Speaker 1: into that territory. And then I went to u c
Speaker 1: l A Film School. So so you go to graduate
Speaker 1: school and and how many years you were you in
Speaker 1: l A. Well, I ended up staying in l A
Speaker 1: for a good many years, like twelve thirteen years. But
Speaker 1: and I never actually finished u c l A. That
Speaker 1: they're happy to claim you cling me to their bosom now,
Speaker 1: But I loved it there. I just I got a
Speaker 1: job with the Samuel Goldwyn Company at the time, and
Speaker 1: I started doing things like cutting exploitation trailers. What exploitation
Speaker 1: trailers did you cut? Oh? There was one called my
Speaker 1: favorite was one called shock Waves. It was a film
Speaker 1: about mutant Nazis who come up from the ocean floor
Speaker 1: that's where they went to a secret cat underwater cavern.
Speaker 1: They manufactured a group of mutant Nazis that couldn't be killed,
Speaker 1: and their ships sank somewhere in the Caribbean, and then
Speaker 1: one day a fishing boat happened to dislodge it, and
Speaker 1: up they came out out from the water that I
Speaker 1: thought they were in Buenos Aires. Peter Cushing. Peter Cushing
Speaker 1: was in it. Peter Cushing was in it. Brooke Adams
Speaker 1: was in it. There's a there's a line that caused
Speaker 1: them as a TOTN call death call creatures, small horrible
Speaker 1: sent any you can imagine. Oh god. That was a
Speaker 1: documentary about that. Well. The other trailer I did was
Speaker 1: for it was for a TV trailer I think for
Speaker 1: the First Assault on Precinct thirteen. And there was one
Speaker 1: the Nicholas Meyer Rock called Invasion of the b Girls.
Speaker 1: These were women who were half human, half b and
Speaker 1: when they'd have sex with you, they'd sting you to death.
Speaker 1: I know that woman, I know her. Yeah. I went
Speaker 1: out with her a few times. Yeah I got I
Speaker 1: got out on stage, but she tried and tried her best.
Speaker 1: Now I had a small part in Looming Tower I
Speaker 1: was very grateful to come and work with you guys,
Speaker 1: and I understand you're doing more of that. Correct, You're
Speaker 1: gonna be doing more narrative work. Yes, with luck, that's
Speaker 1: gonna I'm doing a feature this coming year, and this
Speaker 1: is one that's a real passion project. It's a story
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about for a long time and it
Speaker 1: took a long time to get the script right. But
Speaker 1: I'm really looking forward to doing it. And a guy
Speaker 1: named Matt Cook he wrote a Patriots Day which was
Speaker 1: directed by Peteburgh, but interesting to me, he was a
Speaker 1: in the infantry in Iraq and this is ah, this
Speaker 1: is very much of a war story. It's actually Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: and it's what it's really about is how hard it
Speaker 1: is to be a hero. And with Looming Tower, what
Speaker 1: was your input into that? I mean, you know, Larry
Speaker 1: Danny Futterman and I were um, you know, co conspirators
Speaker 1: early on in terms of coming up with the kind
Speaker 1: of the overall concept because Looming Tower is a vast book,
Speaker 1: and so how to contain it and how to focus it,
Speaker 1: And we decided to focus it on this battle between
Speaker 1: the FBI and the CIA in the run up to
Speaker 1: nine eleven, and to focus on to Harraheem's character. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Ali Soufan is the guy in which he
Speaker 1: was based in and Jeff Daniels character John O'Neill, and
Speaker 1: obviously you know, I mean you played George Tennant, who
Speaker 1: was a critical character in this battle between the FBI
Speaker 1: and the CIA. In terms of the overall conceit, I
Speaker 1: had a lot of input. I think that it's fair
Speaker 1: to say that Danny and I had some creative differences
Speaker 1: on it, and I want some and lost others, but
Speaker 1: that's the way things go. Now. There was some talk
Speaker 1: about another season of that then that didn't happen. Did
Speaker 1: you realize that that was the right thing to come
Speaker 1: about or were you disappointed that there wasn't another season
Speaker 1: of that? I was hugely disappointed. I really think there
Speaker 1: could have been a great one. And in fact, out
Speaker 1: of that, I'm now doing a dock which tells part
Speaker 1: of that story that I really wanted to tell in
Speaker 1: season two, because you know, when we originally came up
Speaker 1: with the concept, we had a notion for season two
Speaker 1: and then season three, and for a lot of reason,
Speaker 1: seasons who didn't happen, So so I'm I'm just in
Speaker 1: the process of finishing because it's the twentieth anniversary of
Speaker 1: nine eleven, so I'm just in the process of finishing
Speaker 1: something that leans in to sort of the next chapter
Speaker 1: because Ali Soufan goes on and he ends up interrogating
Speaker 1: the first high value detainee as a member of the FBI.
Speaker 1: But that's that detainee ends up being the for the
Speaker 1: patient zero, the CIA's Torture Program filmmaker Alex Gibney. If
Speaker 1: you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure
Speaker 1: to follow Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we
Speaker 1: come back, Alex Gibney talks about what he learned early
Speaker 1: in his career from working on a series about the
Speaker 1: Blues with Martin Scorsese. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing. Alex Gibney is known for his
Speaker 1: films that challenge trenched power, but he also has a
Speaker 1: deep catalog of work featuring musicians from an early blues
Speaker 1: series with Martin Scorsese to Jimmy Hendricks, James Brown, The Eagles,
Speaker 1: The Rolling Stones, and Frank Sinatra. When Gibney is working
Speaker 1: with a subject as lionized as Sinatra, I wondered, is
Speaker 1: there an expectation he'll put a shine on their legacy?
Speaker 1: Trust me, as the Sinatra family will tell you about
Speaker 1: some of the conversations we had. They weren't always pretty.
Speaker 1: They were of the opinion that I didn't shine the
Speaker 1: statue enough, though I think I think Tina over time
Speaker 1: came to to become a much bigger believer in in
Speaker 1: in what we had done, even though she was that
Speaker 1: skeptic going in. So you know, I had editorial control
Speaker 1: so I could do what I wanted. I was focused
Speaker 1: in this film, though a little bit more on Sinatra
Speaker 1: the musician and as kind of Gatsps character who kind
Speaker 1: of represented both the American dream him in the American Nightmare.
Speaker 1: And that to me was was interesting because because I
Speaker 1: have to be honest, I mean, Frank Marshall was the
Speaker 1: one who who encouraged me to take this project on,
Speaker 1: and I was not a big Sinatra fan. I knew
Speaker 1: him as kind of the guy who you know, hung
Speaker 1: around with Spiro Agnew and I wasn't that interested, but
Speaker 1: I became, you know, in doing the film, which is
Speaker 1: one of the great things about doing docs. You become
Speaker 1: curious and you learn about a subject. I became a
Speaker 1: huge admirer of his in terms of his ability to
Speaker 1: tell stories in three minutes through his voice, but also
Speaker 1: the tension, the rough and tumble tension between where he
Speaker 1: came from and and where he was ending up. And
Speaker 1: you know, we could have we've gone deeper into the
Speaker 1: Mabvia's up probably, and but I think that there was
Speaker 1: enough there to give you a sense of what was
Speaker 1: going on, and that it wasn't like we skipped it.
Speaker 1: And I think also the other thing that was tricky
Speaker 1: about him was his romantic life, which I think we
Speaker 1: we did a pretty good job of dealing with. The
Speaker 1: one woman who completely flummoxed him. Um av A Gardner.
Speaker 1: So Ava Gardner, I mean, I'm a fool to want you?
Speaker 1: Is the one song Frank Sinatra wrote, Uh, maybe he
Speaker 1: wrote two, but that was the most famous one. And
Speaker 1: and she kicked his ass, Ava Gardner did. And and
Speaker 1: then he turns around and does this terrible thing to
Speaker 1: me a pharaoh, which we chronicle in the film, where
Speaker 1: he basically serves divorce papers honor or has his lawyer
Speaker 1: served divorce papers on her while she's on the set
Speaker 1: of Rosemary's Baby, and then she went on to point
Speaker 1: out that Rosemary's Baby out grossed his film that was
Speaker 1: released at the same time, that she made sure he
Speaker 1: knew that, so anyway, that that was a great experience though,
Speaker 1: and and a lot of people have come to me
Speaker 1: about that film, and it's become one of the films
Speaker 1: of mine that people like an awful lot. I loved it,
Speaker 1: loved it, and and only highlighted my point that him
Speaker 1: in this work that I've done, I mean, I did
Speaker 1: a podcast. We've done this for now nine or ten years,
Speaker 1: and I love doing this because of my just my curiosity.
Speaker 1: And if there's one person, I mean, I'd probably write
Speaker 1: him a check for a million dollars to sit down
Speaker 1: and do the show with me, it would have been Sinatra.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing that's always so agonizing about the
Speaker 1: world we live in now, where people are not not
Speaker 1: so much expected, but they're allowed in a way. People
Speaker 1: have much more of an expectation of you being more
Speaker 1: forthcoming about the challenges and the struggles of that kind
Speaker 1: of work. And I thought to myself, God, wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been great to get Sinatra on film and do a
Speaker 1: real interview that wasn't Larry King or some of that
Speaker 1: other crap, you know, to really make him sit down.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen I did you ever
Speaker 1: see an in depth interview with Sinatra where he really
Speaker 1: even touched on his pain, and I think he was
Speaker 1: a guy in a lot of pain. He was. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that we got that was so valuable.
Speaker 1: I mean, not only did we get this sixteen millimeter
Speaker 1: film of his first retirement concert in which we kind
Speaker 1: of used as a structure to tell the story of
Speaker 1: his life, but the more important thing we got were
Speaker 1: a couple of audio taped in reviews that were done
Speaker 1: at great length because part of the problem with most
Speaker 1: TV interviews, particularly back in the day, they were either
Speaker 1: rolling these huge video cameras where you're having to sit
Speaker 1: under these massive lights and everyone's sweating, or their film
Speaker 1: cameras and you're changing the magazine, you know, every twelve minutes.
Speaker 1: With audio, you could really have a conversation, which is what,
Speaker 1: of course I try to do when I'm doing my interviews,
Speaker 1: to just have a conversation rather than ask questions, and
Speaker 1: it was those interviews with Sinatra, the audio taped interviews,
Speaker 1: which I think he was doing to explore whether or
Speaker 1: not he might want to do, you know, an autobiography.
Speaker 1: Those are the gold for us because they were very candid,
Speaker 1: as well as a few sort of off the cuff
Speaker 1: kind of Q and A sessions he did, including one
Speaker 1: he did at Yale, which was wildly fun, you know
Speaker 1: because when you got him in a moment where he
Speaker 1: didn't feel he wasn't kind of prethinking his answers, he
Speaker 1: was gold and you could feel his pain, his ambition,
Speaker 1: his passions. It was. It was great and and he's
Speaker 1: his sort of profane reactions to everything around him. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to imagine, as silly as this is, that
Speaker 1: Alex Gibney is collaborating with Marty Scorsese and they're on
Speaker 1: the set together shooting something and Alex Gibney says, don't
Speaker 1: put the camera there, Marty, Why would you put the camera? How?
Speaker 1: What's that collaboration? Like? It was a producer on a
Speaker 1: series called The Blues, which he was the executive producer on,
Speaker 1: and that was Marty Show. So he's a genius, and
Speaker 1: so my job on that series was to lay out
Speaker 1: the bats and balls so that players could play. That
Speaker 1: was my job, and the glory of that was that
Speaker 1: it really started my career in a way because it
Speaker 1: was like watching men at work. Now in that case,
Speaker 1: they were all men. There were no women. But you know,
Speaker 1: between Marty who directed a film, Clint Eastwood of Invendor's
Speaker 1: Antoine Fuqua, Charles Burnett, I got an up close seat
Speaker 1: to watch them all work in this nonfiction arena, but
Speaker 1: nevertheless giving it a personal take, so that these were
Speaker 1: authored works in nonfiction. It changed my life and my career. Now,
Speaker 1: for you, do you tend to be with the same
Speaker 1: group of people shooting, you have a you have a
Speaker 1: crew that you prefer, or have you mixed it up
Speaker 1: with the people you've used for your cinematic crew. Well
Speaker 1: I mixed it up a lot. But there's one woman,
Speaker 1: Marie's Alberti, who shot. She shot the wrestler, she shot Creed,
Speaker 1: but she also shot Enron Taxi to the dark Side
Speaker 1: and others and Armstrong laws. She was a key collaborator
Speaker 1: for me early on because she took a weakness of mind,
Speaker 1: which was cinematography and visualizing the frame. I came up
Speaker 1: as an editor and really expanded my horizons in that area.
Speaker 1: She's an extraordinary talent because you bridged the worlds of
Speaker 1: documentary and fiction. So Marie's the key collaborator for me
Speaker 1: for a long period. She was also did a bunch
Speaker 1: of Going Clear as well. But then the editors have
Speaker 1: been I've been just blessed. I mean, and those people
Speaker 1: I tend to go back to over and over and
Speaker 1: over again, Alison Lwood, Andy Grieve, Sloan Clevin, Mikey Palmer.
Speaker 1: What about music score? Music score, I've used a bunch
Speaker 1: of different people, but I keep coming back to the
Speaker 1: same ones. And I kind of cast composers depending on
Speaker 1: the project. I've a guest and Robert Logan, you know,
Speaker 1: I used them on Taxi to the Dark Side, but
Speaker 1: also Robert has kind of Eastern European background, so on
Speaker 1: Citizen K this one about Russia, I used them and
Speaker 1: he was magnificent. And then Will Bates I've used quite
Speaker 1: a bit, who's really an extraordinary talent. And also Pete
Speaker 1: Michelle who did Client nine. So I do like using
Speaker 1: the same person, but it feels almost like casting for
Speaker 1: some of these films. I know composers all like to
Speaker 1: feel like they can do anything, and they're probably right,
Speaker 1: but you know, I kind of cast them depending on
Speaker 1: what the film is about. Will Bates did a magnificently
Speaker 1: creepy score with the theorem in that wonderful weird instrument
Speaker 1: for Going Clear, which I found tremendously useful. Now people
Speaker 1: view you, I mean, you're heading off, it seems like
Speaker 1: into a more dedicated period of making narrative films. But
Speaker 1: people view you as a great truth seeker. You know,
Speaker 1: you want to go out and I don't want to
Speaker 1: say catch the bad guy. I don't want to make
Speaker 1: it like as a prosecutorial, but exposing abuses of power
Speaker 1: seems to be a really in my mind, that obviously
Speaker 1: potent theme in the work you do. Does it have
Speaker 1: a fade or are you like you describing the chemical
Speaker 1: molochist or what right as you see? Are you still
Speaker 1: walking on the beach of vacation and you're looking at
Speaker 1: phone going God, damn it, I can't believe these people?
Speaker 1: Did you know? Is outrage and indignation follow you everywhere
Speaker 1: you go? I'm afraid so uh, and I wish it
Speaker 1: wouldn't And you outline my vacation. I'm about to go
Speaker 1: on a vacation for two and a half weeks, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'll be consumed with the issue of torture
Speaker 1: when I should just be keeping my lobster claw and butter. Right,
Speaker 1: give me three docks that you wish you made. You
Speaker 1: mentioned give me shelter, which I love. That's one when
Speaker 1: we were kings and waltz withold The sheer stories we
Speaker 1: tell would be another one. It's not really my style,
Speaker 1: but I love it, absolutely love it. I turned to
Speaker 1: some people from the Hampton's Film Festival and I said,
Speaker 1: let's show a doc I found out that Albert Mazls
Speaker 1: was visiting his daughter in sag Harbord that weekend, and
Speaker 1: I said, I want to screen a film in the
Speaker 1: dead of winter. And they said, no one's gonna want
Speaker 1: to come and watch a documentary film at Bay Street
Speaker 1: in February. I said, you watched. I said, everybody's looking
Speaker 1: for an excuse to get the f out of their house.
Speaker 1: We showed gimme shelter. Brian Cosgrove, my friend who's a
Speaker 1: DJ out here at the local radio station, Big Rock
Speaker 1: and Roll of the Nut Uh, and we contact Mazel's
Speaker 1: and he comes and does the Q and a afterward,
Speaker 1: we packed the whole place. Two people came and we
Speaker 1: showed this movie, and people literally got a contact high
Speaker 1: watching Altamont, and it was like, what a great vibe,
Speaker 1: so fantastic. And two things I always stunned me when
Speaker 1: I watched the film. First of all, it's a cinema
Speaker 1: verite murder mystery, and one of the directors is less heralded,
Speaker 1: Charlotte's Wearing, who's the editor, and she put the structure
Speaker 1: together magnificently, so it plays like a murder mystery. The
Speaker 1: other thing that's interesting is a lot of that film
Speaker 1: is about listening and watching, and you wouldn't think that
Speaker 1: that would be important, but that scene where they're all
Speaker 1: listening to wild horses is just an exquisite scene. And
Speaker 1: then the scenes where they're watching the footage at altamount
Speaker 1: and realizing their complicity and the violence, those are magnificent scenes,
Speaker 1: and you they're just so counterintuitive and and testify to
Speaker 1: the kind of poetry that the Mazal's brothers and in
Speaker 1: this case Charlotte's Wearing, we're really into, and that that
Speaker 1: film just deserves to be seen over and over and over.
Speaker 1: I love that moment where like you said, they're listening
Speaker 1: to Wild Horses, and they're listening to their radio show.
Speaker 1: And Charlie Watts says, after Sonny Barger is yapping about
Speaker 1: the angels and their mantle and what they need to do,
Speaker 1: and Charlie, Charlie watsays, right on, Sonny, you know they're
Speaker 1: all they're all just so overwhelmed wondering how much how
Speaker 1: much gas did they throw on the fire. Well, let
Speaker 1: me just say this. I mean, I'm obviously a boundless
Speaker 1: admirer of yours. You're one of the great filmmakers of
Speaker 1: the last fifty years. You've made so many great, great,
Speaker 1: fascinating and significant and important and entertaining documentary films. So
Speaker 1: I hope when you go on your trip you'll put
Speaker 1: the phone in a drawer and and but take it
Speaker 1: out for the last couple of days, because I want
Speaker 1: you to be tortured and haunted for just the last
Speaker 1: couple of days of the of the trip. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I want to get you back in the zone. I'm
Speaker 1: with you, and and there's a woman who's very much
Speaker 1: on your side who would agree. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: do the very best I can to to hide the
Speaker 1: phone under a rock for at least part of the trip. Yes, definitely,
Speaker 1: my very best to you on all things. I loved
Speaker 1: Crime of the Century. It was the idea that you
Speaker 1: could see how much the government is for sale, is
Speaker 1: to watch these people change laws and change legislation to
Speaker 1: suit the purposes of these people in this industry. It
Speaker 1: was absolutely numbing to me. That's one of the most
Speaker 1: numbing parts of the film. Thank you, Alex. A great
Speaker 1: pleasure talking to you, Alex Gibney. His latest film, The
Speaker 1: Crime of the Century, about the opioid epidemic, is available
Speaker 1: on HBO Max h I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing
Speaker 1: is brought to you by My Heart Radio. We're produced
Speaker 1: by Kathleen Russo, Carrie Donny Hue and Zach McNeice. Our
Speaker 1: engineer is Frank Imperial.