1. Alex Gibney Enron
2. Alex Gibney Wiki

'How We Torture: Alex Gibney in conversation with Williams Cole' The Brooklyn Rail (Feb 2008) Appearances on C-SPAN. C-SPAN Q&A interview with Gibney about Casino Jack and the United States of Money, June 13, 2010. Nov 12, 2012 In Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream, Alex Gibney presents his examination of how the gap between rich and poor Americans has become so stark.

WHAT do Eliot Spitzer, Ken Kesey, Lance Armstrong, sumo wrestling, Al Qaeda and the imprisoned lobbyist have in common? They’re all subjects of films being released in 2010.

This might prompt some to call Mr. Gibney, the Oscar-winning director of a workaholic. Those who know him better might prefer to describe him as fiercely intelligent. Independent. A filmmaking pit bull without the sentimentality. You might even hear arrogant and a title pirate, but only if you’re asking George Hickenlooper.

Mr. Gibney and Mr. Hickenlooper, whose films include and were both, for a time, working on films called Mr. Hickenlooper’s dramatic feature is scheduled for release on Oct. 1, and stars Kevin Spacey as Mr. Abramoff; Mr. Gibney’s documentary (“Casino Jack and the United States of Money”), comes out on May 7 and features Bob Ney, a former Republican congressman from Ohio; his chief of staff Neil Volz; and others connected to the Indian casino bribery and corruption scandal that led to the indictments of Mr. Ney, Mr. Volz and several White House officials and lobbyists. (A close Abramoff associate, the former House majority leader Tom DeLay, was indicted on other charges.)

Both directors chose Mr. Abramoff’s oft-used moniker as the title of his movie, and neither was inclined to back down. While no legal action was taken, lawyerly letters were exchanged and bad feelings aroused.

“I think he’s got a bit of arrogance about him,” Mr. Hickenlooper said recently. “It’s as if he came up with the title himself, when it was Jack Abramoff’s well-known nickname. It’s not like I’m calling my film ‘Gone With the Wind.’ ” (If he had, said Eric Schwartz, a longtime Washington copyright lawyer and film preservationist, there would be a case: A title with commercial viability has trademark-law protection; proper names and nicknames like “Casino Jack” can’t be copyrighted.)

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For his part Mr. Gibney said it was simply not collegial for a fellow filmmaker to seize on a title that he had established as his own. “And there was some arrogance there,” he said, “because I think his view was: ‘You’ve made the little documentary, I’ve made the big movie.’ That was the tenor of his remarks: ‘Tag along with me, Alex. Maybe you should sell your documentary to the distributor who picks up my film. It’ll be good for you.’ I’m sure typhoid would be good for me too.”

Mr. Hickenlooper blinked. While he looks for another title for his film, Mr. Gibney prepares to add to a filmography that suggests a director-producer with resolve. From his collaboration with Eugene Jarecki on (2002) to the Oscar-nominated (2005) to “Taxi to the Dark Side” (2007), about the “enhanced interrogation techniques” of President George W. Bush’s administration, Mr. Gibney has made provocative films and is not ambivalent about their worth. When the now-defunct distributor ThinkFilm gave “Taxi to the Dark Side” what Mr. Gibney felt was inadequate post-Oscar promotion, he sued.

While he has yet to do commercials, the bread and butter of many documentary makers, Mr. Gibney has taken on softer subjects as works for hire, as he did with the Kesey film (“The Magic Bus”) and the Lance Armstrong bio. But his true subject is power and corruption, and the Abramoff affair delivered both.

“His corruption goes to the heart of legalized bribery in Washington and the ‘money disease’ that has infected us,” Mr. Gibney said. “We allow ourselves to believe the bottom line is the only value. Last, I think he is a flamboyant scapegoat.” And whenever he sees a scapegoat, Mr. Gibney said, he knows a much bigger crime lurks behind it.

“It’s about who’s paying whom,” said Diane Weyermann, executive vice president for documentaries at Participant Media, which teamed up with the distributor Magnolia Pictures to produce “Casino Jack.” “Alex isn’t afraid to follow the money.” Mr. Gibney’s journalistic rigor, she added, is matched by his tenacity: “Once Alex dives in, he’s fearless and relentless.”

He can also seduce subjects into talking even when their best interests might lie in being silent. Mr. Volz, who admits involvement in the corruption, having worked for both Mr. Ney and Mr. Abramoff, tells all in “Casino Jack,” to the point of self-flagellation. Still, he calls Mr. Gibney “part Ken Burns and part Upton Sinclair,” and says the making of the film was therapeutic.

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“Without a doubt,” Mr. Volz said. “In the end this was very personal for me. Alex and I had long-running debates on Supreme Court decisions on campaign financing and other issues. He has depth, and that’s what I liked. He has to tell a story and market a story, but depth is important to him. I believe these guys were looking for the bigger story beyond the headlines.” The person Mr. Gibney couldn’t get to talk, not on camera at least, was Mr. Abramoff, even after multiple visits to the federal prison in Cumberland, Md., where he will be until December.

“You’re not even allowed to take in a pencil,” Mr. Gibney said. “You can’t take notes. No tape recorders.”

And although Mr. Abramoff agreed at first to go on camera, Mr. Gibney said, “when we asked for official permission to film him, the prison said no.” (Mr. Hickenlooper said he visited Mr. Abramoff five times, the fifth with Mr. Spacey.)

Over lunch near his headquarters on the West Side of Manhattan, Mr. Gibney sighed visibly, like a deer hunter watching a healthy eight-point buck bounce off into the forest. “It doesn’t always work out properly,” he said. “We were ready to finish that film a year and a half ago, but I really wanted to get Jack. We came really close.” But such are the pitfalls of making nonfiction, to which Mr. Gibney, a graduate of Yale and the son of the scholar and writer Frank Bray Gibney and stepson of the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, is devoted.

Alex Gibney Enron

“Sometimes reality is stranger and more interesting than fiction,” said Mr. Gibney, 56, who lives in New Jersey with his wife, Anne DeBovoise, and has three children, one out of college, one in and one 14. “That’s the case I make for docs at their best: It’s not like kindergarten and high school, docs and features. There are some stories that are so outrageous, why would you want to fictionalize them? And if you do, sometimes they’re unbelievable. You can’t imagine people did this stuff. I would argue that while Kevin Spacey is a magnificent actor, he’s no Jack Abramoff.”

Alex Gibney Wiki

Mr. Gibney is in regular contact with Mr. Abramoff.

“He’s going to get out soon,” Mr. Gibney said. “I was going to tell him that, like my movie or hate my movie, he should use my movie. Go out with it. He’s become a born-again anti-lobbyist. He’s convinced now that lobbying is horrible thing. And it would be the greatest to hear from Jack Abramoff exactly how it’s done. I’d buy tickets to that.”