{"id":632625,"date":"2026-10-16T17:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T17:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/632625\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T17:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T17:38:09","slug":"alex-gibneys-musk-asks-why-we-gave-elon-musk-so-much-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/632625\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Gibney\u2019s “Musk” asks why we gave Elon Musk so much power"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the moment Alex Gibney<\/a> announced he was working on \u201cMusk\u201d in 2023, it became one of the most anticipated documentaries around \u2013 and a source of trepidation for its titular subject, tech mogul Elon Musk<\/a>. But we may have underestimated how far the world\u2019s wealthiest man and his ilk would go to prevent audiences from seeing it.<\/p>\n

Weeks before \u201cMusk\u201d hit theaters, its distributor, Bleecker Street, couldn\u2019t buy ads on TikTok, YouTube, Mark Zuckerberg<\/a>\u2019s Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram or, here\u2019s a shocker, Musk\u2019s own X. A Hollywood Reporter<\/a> story published on Sept. 25 made YouTube and Meta reverse course \u2013 a rare case of two media giants shamed into living up to their free-speech claims.<\/p>\n

But this attempted media suppression shows \u201cMusk\u201d has struck a nerve, despite its namesake dismissing it as a \u201chit piece that misses.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was not lost on Gibney that at the same time that was happening, Zuckerberg, Musk and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos<\/a> were dining with Donald Trump and China\u2019s Xi Jinping at the White House<\/a>. He\u2019s confronted gravely perilous corruption and dangerous figures in previous, fearless documentaries such as\u00a0 2019\u2019s \u201cCitizen K<\/a>,\u201d about a Russian oligarch who was crushed by Vladimir Putin<\/a>, and 2015\u2019s \u201cGoing Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happened to Bleecker Street, then, is both familiar to Gibney and extraordinarily alarming. \u201cYou can see how a few platforms coalescing around the endorsement of what these tech viziers are doing decide that a criticism of tech power is somehow political and can\u2019t be allowed in terms of open discourse on their platforms,\u201d Gibney told Salon. \u201cSo that was really disconcerting.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s shaping up to be a dark autumn for Silicon Valley\u2019s villains. In early December, Luca Guadagnino<\/a>\u2019s \u201cArtificial\u201d turns our attention to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman<\/a>, played by Andrew Garfield<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, \u201cMusk\u201d was recently joined in theaters by Aaron Sorkin<\/a>\u2019s \u201cThe Social Reckoning,\u201d in which Jeremy Strong<\/a> portrays Zuckerberg as a soulless ghoul prioritizing clicks over user safety. In \u201cYou Can See Everything<\/a>,\u201d notorious prankster Nathan Fielder<\/a> shadows notorious (for different reasons) Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes<\/a> in the days before she went to prison.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gibney also profiled Holmes in his 2019 work \u201cThe Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley<\/a>,\u201d which adds another layer of coincidental symmetry: Fielder\u2019s film hits theaters on Oct. 16, the same day \u201cMusk\u201d opens nationwide.<\/p>\n

But \u201cMusk\u201d is unquestionably a tougher watch, and given its subject\u2019s extensive integration into the second Trump administration, it can\u2019t help but be political.<\/p>\n

Of course, \u201cMusk\u201d isn\u2019t campaigning for anything except our need to confront the existential threat posed by one man exercising significant control over our media and our military.<\/p>\n

A chorus of testimony from people who were once closest to Musk builds a profile of a megalomaniacal con artist. Two of Musk\u2019s most incisive critics, his ex-wife Justine Musk<\/a> and former right-wing influencer Ashley St. Clair<\/a>, describe him as a gaslighter and a nuke, respectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But perhaps the most damning testimonial comes from Musk himself \u2013 or rather, existing audio recordings of Musk delivered by an AI version of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, since he refused to participate.<\/p>\n

All of it boils down to simple questions Gibney poses at the film\u2019s outset: How could Musk assume so much power, and why have we given it to him? I discussed those questions with Gibney, and what they taught him about Musk and our penchant for enabling men like him, in a wide-ranging conversation transcribed below.<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

Salon: You\u2019ve done a documentary on Putin. You did one on Scientology, a famously litigious organization. You have a vast filmography featuring subjects who might have taken issue, or have taken issue, with what was said in your documentaries. Where does this rank in terms of threat level, legal or otherwise?<\/p>\n

Gibney: Well, high. I mean, when just before \u201cGoing Clear\u201d was released, the Church of Scientology took out full-page ads in the New York Times and the L.A. Times with a big picture of me, sort of denouncing me. And there were people, you know, who would pop up in dark parking lots, you know, sort of accosting me, trying to kind of destabilize me psychologically. But I think in this case, he\u2019s the richest man in the world. He has a lot of resources\u2026 And he has this platform, Twitter, which has become a kind of Thunderdome of hate and vitriol, and that activates, you know, unpredictable characters who sometimes act on their own\u2026<\/p>\n

That said, I don\u2019t want to exaggerate what\u2019s happened to me so far. Other people put themselves at greater risk than I, in the sense that they came forward and appeared on camera.<\/p>\n

One of the things that you said in other interviews, and I think you actually said this in the documentary as well, is that you used to be a fan of Elon Musk\u2019s products.<\/p>\n

I mean, I looked at him from afar. I have some history on this whole electric car thing because I was brought in long ago to help with the editing of a doc called \u201cWho Killed the Electric Car,\u201d which is about GM\u2019s first foray into the world of electric cars. A woman I met on that film, Jessie Deeter, later produced a film called \u201cRevenge of the Electric Car,\u201d and Elon Musk is in that.\u00a0 And Jessie, when she worked with him on that, was a big fan. [Deeter is also a producer on \u201cMusk.\u201d]<\/p>\n

\"\"( Gregg Segal)<\/p>\n

So, you know, I had a certain connection to him. And I\u2019m a big electric car guy. I own one \u2014 not a Tesla\u2014 but I own one, and I had a Tesla Powerwall in my house. I also sort of liked the kind of mumbling charisma that he had for a while, because he seemed like very much a regular guy. He was joking with people around on Twitter and stuff like that.<\/p>\n

That said, he could also do unpredictable, chaotic and sometimes offensive things. But largely speaking, my view of him was positive. But I was interested in the fact that he accumulated so much power, and so that was the basis on which I dug in back in 2022.<\/p>\n

Do you think that his ability to amass this much power is related to the fact that he is doing it in the American capitalist system, or do you think he could have done it in any other place in the world?<\/p>\n

Well, I mean, there are a lot of intersections of opportunities for Elon Musk, and I also think he discovered, to use a phrase of his, the anomaly in the matrix for the American system. And that is money. He discovered that not only can you get a lot of money from the federal government, but if you have a lot of money, you can use it to influence sometimes how much money you get from the federal government or state governments. So I think there was that.<\/p>\n

The other big thing is that in America we also have a kind of grudging admiration for the P.T. Barnum-like qualities of certain larger-than-life entrepreneurs, you know, and you see that a lot in Silicon Valley . . . That is a kind of cultural trope in this society for which I think we have a weakness. We sort of like to see them trick us all, though we also do like to see them go down after they\u2019ve tricked us. So I think for all those reasons that maybe Elon was able to succeed here in a way that really exploited some of the flaws in our system and our psyche.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a propensity in our culture to believe in some superhuman aspect of genius, which I think your documentary gets at very well.<\/p>\n

Yeah, it\u2019s also that our weakness for money, or the power of money, in this culture also causes us somehow to think that if you\u2019re wealthy, you\u2019re also wise rather than just ruthless, right?<\/p>\n

I often think of that famous line from \u201cCitizen Kane,\u201d where Orson Welles is joking with somebody, you know, having been very successful playing this William Randolph Hearst character, who said, \u201cIt\u2019s no trick making a lot of money if all you want to do is make a lot of money.\u201d Meaning,\u00a0 if you\u2019re ruthless and determined, you can make a lot of money. Doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re a genius, and it doesn\u2019t mean that you\u2019re a tech genius either.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I also think Elon Musk, having seen the ascent of Steve Jobs, was sort of defining himself in that way too \u2013 or going back to Thomas Edison, who had his own P.T. Barnum-like qualities in terms of inventing a character for himself to play. It\u2019s not just the investor; it\u2019s the inventor.<\/p>\n

\u201cMusk\u201d runs for almost four hours. Did you always know it would be that long?<\/p>\n

No. In fact, I had a cut of the film in the spring of 2024 that was under two hours. We were moving to release that and put it into the fall festivals. Then, in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump is nearly assassinated, and Musk hitches his wagon to the Trump train. And my friends at HBO said, \u201cYou\u2019re not done. You have to follow this story because it could go to places that you don\u2019t expect, and having spent as much time as you have, you have to follow it to at least a moment of greater conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

So I did, and that ended up being the reason that it\u2019s at such a length. You see patterns from the first film that then repeat themselves, but on a much larger scale, in the second film. Suddenly economic power meets political power, economic and technological power meets political power, and that is the making of an epic story.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(Ken Cedenoupi\/ UPI Alamy News) Elon Musk<\/p>\n

In addition, it just so happened that as he embarked on his political project, a lot of people that I was talking to in the background, trying to persuade them to come forward, did come forward because they saw some of the more problematic aspects of Musk wielding power as part of MAGA world. That gave the story a kind of human dimension as well.<\/p>\n

Weirdly, you know, I was having trouble kind of putting it all together, and I didn\u2019t really get a sense of how to shape it until I watched Guillermo del Toro\u2019s \u201cFrankenstein,\u201d which in itself was a kind of take on the tech bros. That helped me kind of find a way forward in terms of what became a kind of epic narrative.<\/p>\n

How so?<\/p>\n

Well, you know, you start with a scientist who wants to do something big and important. And there\u2019s even a sense of idealism about his ambition. But then he literally creates a monster, and the whole enterprise becomes utterly reckless and irresponsible and all about his own sort of grandiosity. Rather than a mission that might help people, it becomes about him.<\/p>\n

What are you hoping this documentary will do in terms of making people a little bit more aware of who Elon Musk is and getting at the man behind the curtain, so to speak?<\/p>\n

Well, I mean, it is an agent provocateur. I don\u2019t provide a solution, but I do provide, I think, a pretty compelling story, which asks the kind of fundamental question I posed at the beginning, which is, how did this guy get so much power, and why did we give it to him? Because it\u2019s both about him and it\u2019s about us, and it asks some discomforting questions about how literally existential power rests in the hands of one man who is increasingly chaotic, unhinged, and seemingly pursuing power without reason. There\u2019s a chilling moment at the end of the film where somebody asks him, \u201cWhy have you accreted so much power?\u201d And he literally can\u2019t answer the question\u2026<\/p>\n

He\u2019s a very peculiar character who\u2019s a chaos agent. But we\u2019ve allowed him to become normalized in a way.<\/p>\n

I remember writing about him being on \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d and people shrugging it off, like, \u201cOh, it\u2019s not that big of a deal.\u201d But it was a very big deal. Those kinds of things make him into a character when the reality is he has massive access to power.<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s saying things, even on \u201cSaturday Night Live,\u201d that were patently untrue\u2026 Even when he says, \u201cDid you think I was going to be a chill, normal dude?\u201d Well, there\u2019s a funny hidden message there, which is kind of discomforting if you really think about it. Like, if you want to drive a Tesla, be prepared to endure a lot of performative cruelty from me, including cruelty that may end up killing people. . .\u00a0 That\u2019s a pretty brutal message, honestly, for \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d But it was a joke, right? And that\u2019s the genius, in a way, of Elon Musk: he\u2019s constantly saying stuff that is deadly serious and a joke at the same time.<\/p>\n

Speaking of that, the images and the joke, let\u2019s talk about using the AI avatar. I remember when the news first broke about that, someone said, \u201cWell, I wonder if that\u2019s Alex kind of trolling Musk back.\u201d<\/p>\n

I mean, it\u2019s kind of a troll-back, yeah. In a way, it\u2019s kind of investing in him, playing in his sandbox, because he didn\u2019t agree to appear.<\/p>\n

And I should make it clear, as I tried to do in the film, that what we hear from him are actual audio recordings of him. In other words, they\u2019re not AI-confected answers. We didn\u2019t ask AI what Elon would say. We\u2019re taking real audio recordings, but how to couch that visually? And we took our cue, having done all this research into stuff that Elon said, from something he kept going over again: This idea that we\u2019re likely living in a simulation. So I thought, OK, how about a simulated interview?<\/p>\n

And yes, he\u2019s famous for trolling people. He\u2019s famous for creating memes. What was it he said in 2020 on Twitter? He said, you know, parodying \u201cDune,\u201d he said, \u201cHe who controls the memes, controls the universe,\u201d right? OK, well, here\u2019s a meme for you, Elon, of you.<\/p>\n

Want more from culture than just the latest trend? The Swell highlights art made to last.
Sign up here<\/a> <\/p>\n

What, if anything, about this documentary may help illuminate a few things for people, regardless of their political leanings, as we approach the midterms?<\/p>\n

I mean, this should be our concern, whether you\u2019re from the left or the right, is giving people unaccountable power. Also, this whole idea that our politics and, indeed, our Department of Justice and our Department of Defense can be utterly transactional.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not getting the best that money can buy. We\u2019re getting what money can buy. Period. In other words, the military stuff that you\u2019re seeing is a third-rate frontier AI technology being fully integrated into our Department of Defense. And why is the worst technology being integrated? Because Elon Musk is literally paying for political advantage. So it\u2019s a payback system, and we should all be outraged about that, left, right, or otherwise.<\/p>\n

And now you\u2019re seeing him trying to buy the midterms. He\u2019s spending way more now than he did for the presidential campaign in 2024, and in part that\u2019s to get more money for himself in the form of military contracts. But also, he knows that a reckoning is coming for him if the Democrats take over the House and the Senate, and there\u2019s going to be a lot of investigations into him for corruption and abuse of power, taking our information, particularly possibly relating to DOGE, and doing God knows what with it.<\/p>\n

Our whole system is built on a system of checks and balances, and the idea that the government is our instrument for making a better world, rather than, you know, making a few people rich\u2026<\/p>\n

But I think that what\u2019s changed now with Trump is that the Department of Justice has become a protection racket for those who flatter and ally themselves with the president, and an instrument of revenge for those who oppose the president. You can\u2019t depend on it as a kind of law-enforcing mechanism, and that may be the scariest thing of all. . . What we\u2019re talking about is Putin\u2019s Russia here, right? And if people want to avoid that, then I would strongly urge them to go out to the polls. Because this is a rogue administration that goes beyond any kind of sense of party affiliation. It\u2019s a rogue administration that\u2019s literally destroying our democracy.<\/p>\n

\u201cMusk\u201d is playing in theaters nationwide.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/p>\n

about other worthwhile documentaries<\/p>\n

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