Alex Gibney Archives - Award-Winning Writer and Graphic Designer

Hacking, Spying, Malware and Cyberwarfare in Alex Gibney’s ‘Zero Days’

dorriolds — Sun, 17 Jul 2016 14:56:47 +0000

In Zero Days, Oscar winner Alex Gibney travels to the dark side once again. This time his due diligence and perfectionist work ethics were aimed at digging beneath the rock of secrecy within the CIA and the U.S. military. Gibney and his team of computer experts, including Symantec Security Technology and Response Group’s Liam O’Murchu and Eric Chien, researched the computer worm Stuxnet. This malware was developed by a team-up between America and Israel. The self-replicating malicious software was aimed at destroying Iran’s nuclear program.
While uncovering top-secret secrets, Gibney learned about an even bigger threat: Stuxnet was only a small piece of a larger cyber operation against Iran, code-named “Nitro Zeus.” Zero Days is the most detailed reveal of a clandestine mission that sounds like a spy thriller. But the truth in this documentary is the potentially apocalyptic consequences of cyberwarfare.
Watch the trailer:

Gibney’s award-winning films include Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks. One of my personal favorites is Magic Trip, about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and their search for a “Kool” place. Author Tom Wolfe immortalized that LSD-fueled adventure in his bestseller, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (which, by the way, I read four times).
Prolific Gibney is responsible for over 30 films and many focus how much people lie—to themselves and the world. Learn more by visiting his production company, Jigsaw Productions. Zero Days premiered at the 66th annual Berlin International Festival earlier this year. It was picked up by Magnolia Pictures and is now in theaters and available for home viewing.
Next up for Gibney is directing his first feature film, The Action. It is based on the 2014 book, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI by former Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger. A fascinating tale of eight daring protesters who broke into a Philadelphia FBI office to steal files that proved the U.S. government was illegal spying on its civilians.
Watch excerpts from my interview with Gibney:

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Filmmaker Alex Gibney Examines Adulation of Steve Jobs in New Doc

dorriolds — Sun, 20 Sep 2015 08:35:33 +0000

Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney answered questions after an intimate press-only screening of his new doc, “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine.” The film is an exploration into the odd phenomenon of the public’s adulation of Jobs.
Four years ago, the Apple co-founder’s death launched worldwide public weeping during which mourners brought flowers and held each other as if they’d lost John Lennon. Gibney wanted to know why. What was it about this man that defied logic?
Gibney films include his Academy Award-winner “Taxi to the Dark Side” about the Bush Administration’s policy on torture, “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief,” the Oscar-nominated “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” “The Armstrong Lie,” “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,” “Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place” and the list goes on.
This time, Gibney turns his investigative lens on Jobs, the cutthroat businessman who thought nothing of stealing thousands from close friends, raging, bullying and wearing employees down to their breaking point. He drove a plate-less Mercedes, parked in handicapped spots and called philanthropy a waste of time. Worst of all, he vehemently denied responsibility for his first child, Lisa. Oddly, despite his insistence that Lisa wasn’t his, Jobs christened one of Apple’s first personal computers with her name.
Jobs had to be court-ordered to take a DNA test, which proved his paternity. While he was raking in the mega-bucks, Lisa’s mother, Jobs’ former girlfriend Chrisann Brennan, struggled as a single parent waiting tables, house cleaning and turning to welfare. When the court ruled that he send money, Brennan received a piddly $500 a month. Jobs, at that time, had a personal net worth of $225 million.
What was it about this guy that made people revere him? Simple: It was the machines. Jobs changed our world when he made computers personal. He plugged us in by inventing our most prized possessions. A boy in the film landed a huge laugh when he exclaimed, “He invented the iPod. He invented the iPhone. He invented the iPad. He invented everything!”
One of the film’s most revealing testimonials of Jobs came from Bob Belleville, the former director of engineering at Apple. He speaks as if he’d been under Jobs’ spell, telling Gibney that working for Jobs cost him everything that mattered, including his wife and kids.
Watch this clip:
Because this film comes right after Gibney’s Scientology doc, the comparison was unavoidable. The director was asked if he saw a parallel between that religious cult and the Apple culture and worship of Jobs.
“Yes. There is a cult of Mac, and there are certain parallels with the church of Scientology,” he replied. “I’m not aware, though, of Apple technician’s showing up on doorsteps with GoPros on their foreheads trying to intimidate you. Nevertheless, there is this feeling like there is a passion for the person and the products that is so deep that any criticism cannot be tolerated. That I do find interesting. I think, ‘Why should that be?’ Is it not possible that we can just discuss how pitifully paid are the workers in China and how badly treated is the environment there, even as we may admire some of the technological aspects of the Apple products? There seems to be a need to deify … in a way that broke all criticism, and that does verge on the religious.”

Director Alex Gibney (photo by Dorri Olds)

GIBNEY’S BEST QUOTES OF THE EVENING:

“I was conscious of the fact that a lot had been done, a lot had been written about Steve Jobs, much of which I also read. I wanted to find a way to focus that, so it didn’t just piggy-back on that material. It ended up being not just about Steve Jobs, but also about us.”
“I think there were a lot of people who knew Jobs, and were close to Jobs that had very good things to say about him. A couple of them are in the movie. I think that to the people he was interested in, he could be not only a very charismatic figure, but a very engaging, inspiring, and transformative figure.”
“Over and over and over again, Steve Jobs keeps talking about the values of Apple. If I had an opportunity to ask Steve Jobs one question, it would’ve been, ‘What are your values? Please express your values.’ That I would’ve liked to have learned from him, in an honest and straight-forward way, if he had been willing to do it, which people like Steve Jobs rarely are when you’re a filmmaker or a person in the press and trying to get them to speak honestly of themselves.”
“He said, not in effect, he said it straightforward, ‘Giving away money is a waste of time.’ It’s hard for me to understand that. That he felt his focus was to make great products, but it was the focus of a monk without the empathy. His job was to make great products. Fuck everything else.”
As we walked out of the screening room side-by-side, I asked Gibney if he thought that Jobs’ obsessive nature bordered on insanity. He turned to look at me and said, “Yes, I think people who are that creative, that obsessive and that successful, yeah, there’s always a bit of crazy.”
“Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine” opens in theaters and
becomes available on VOD platforms on Friday, Sept. 4.
CNN Films will premiere the film on TV in early 2016.
Documentary. Rated R. 127 min.
Watch the trailer:
Dorri Olds is a contributing journalist for TheBlot Magazine.

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Break On Through To The Other Side — Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters

dorriolds — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 10:25:08 +0000

In 1964, Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and thirteen “Merry Pranksters” painted a bus in frenzied Day-Glo, named it “Furthur” and took off on an LSD-fueled road trip.

Now ten years after Kesey’s death, filmmakers Alison Ellwood and Alex Gibney have captured the four-decades-ago excursion in a new movie, Magic Trip, opening in theaters August 12.

It was the time of Mad Men-ish executives in suits who sipped martinis and saved for houses in the suburbs. Then along came Kesey and his Pranksters, tripping on acid, speeding through America, and filming the whole thing. Author Tom Wolfe immortalized the adventure in his bestseller Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (which, by the way, I read four times while chronically lamenting being born too late).

Kesey looked like an All-American football player and was said to have charisma coming out of his ears. He was the trip leader and master of ceremonies. Furthur’s bus route was from California to the “World of Tomorrow,” i.e., the 1964 New York World’s Fair (which I had attended as a baby). The fair had been touted as the vista to the future. What Kesey didn’t know then was that the bus trip itself was going to far eclipse the NY fair as a flash towards the Woodstock generation.

On a plane to Sundance six years ago, Ellwood and Gibney came across an article in The New Yorker. It was written by Kesey’s friend, Robert Stone. The essay listed the passengers on the bus, including the Beat Generation’s Neal Cassady, who was the inspiration for Jack Kerouac’s character, Dean Moriarty, in On the Road. Cassady, nicknamed Speed Limit, was the driver. Amphetamine-amped, he talked constantly, like a radio, jawing fifty words per sentence. Stone said, “Cassady was the world’s greatest driver—he could roll a joint while backing a 1937 Packard onto the lip of the Grand Canyon.”

Magic Trip is much more than a documentary, it’s what Ellwood and Gibney call, “Archival Cinema Verité.” The aged sound files were in such disrepair the filmmakers had to hire lip readers to translate, and the forty hours of unsynched film was a near-hopeless mess. After a year of dedication, restoration, and creativity, they built a vicarious ride through the changing of the guard—from the Beatnik era of Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsburg into what we now know as the psychedelic 60s.

Ellwood said, “After reading that article, Alex and I looked at each other and knew we wanted to do this. The footage we found was amazing, immersive, and so experiential that it made me feel like I was there.”

If you’ve never taken acid, watching Magic Trip is pretty darn close, and for those of you who have tripped, you’ll definitely enjoy the flashbacks.

“Kesey was paid to test LSD,” Ellwood said. “He was told it was being tested to treat schizophrenics. The truth was that the CIA was testing LSD for its potential use as mind control in interrogations.”

To me, that sounded like drug-induced paranoia, so I googled it. What I found was that LSD was legal at the time, but using human guinea pigs was not. The CIA’s covert experiments really existed and were code-named MK-ULTRA. Scary stuff. But the movie is a joy ride with Kesey, and the Pranksters who had nicknames like Mal Function, Gretchen Fetchen, and Generally Famished.