Ira Glass and Alex Gibney - Summer Staff Picks

Our Here’s the Thing Summer Staff Picks series continues, featuring our favorite episodes from the archives. This week, we revisit Alec’s interviews with two great American storytellers, Ira Glass and Alex Gibney.  Ira Glass has been the host and creative force of WBEZ’s This American Life since 1995. The public radio personality revolutionized nonfiction storytelling by using a voice that's personable, modest, and emotionally engaged. Alec sat down with Ira Glass in 2014 to compare notes on interviewing, the afterlife, and finding one’s vocal style.  Alex Gibney is one of the most respected and prolific documentary filmmakers in history. His stories feature strong characters and propulsive narratives that often expose malfeasance or incompetency. In this 2021 conversation, Alex Gibney speaks with Alec about going up against powerful organizations, shifting from Japanese literature to film and the collaborators that have helped him grow.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi. I'm Maureen Hoban, one of the producers with Here's
the Thing. We're in the middle of our summer staff
picks where those of us that Here's the Thing presents
some of our favorite episodes from the archives. This week,
I want to share with you two interviews from incredible
American storytellers, host and producer Ira Glass and director producer
Alex Gibney. As someone who has worked in media and

(00:23):
documentary for some time now, I've always been bowled over
by the unmatched abilities of Ira Glass. Before Everyone and
their Brother had a podcast, and even before Alec, Ira
Glass has been weaving incredible stories on public radio as
producer and host of This American Life since. With his
unmistakable voice and natural, winsome delivery, Ira Glass makes it

(00:47):
look easy as he presents tales that can make you
giggle as they break your heart, that prove the truth
is indeed stranger than fiction, and that just might teach
you something along the way. Here's Alex two thousand fourteen
cover station with Ira Glass. Ira Glass caused a revolution

(01:07):
in public radio, and he is now its primary kingmaker.
Glass wasn't the first to share well crafted stories about
so called ordinary people, but his show This American Life
connected with a younger generation of public radio listeners, and
they became fiercely loyal. Ira Glass has become so popular
that the winner of this year's Halloween contest in Fort Green,

(01:30):
Brooklyn was a dog, the small, white, fluffy type, dressed
as Ira. This is a level of fame I didn't
quite know existed. Is this what you bargain for? No?
Has this happened to you? I've never won the Fort
Queen Pupster Halloween custom event. You've got me there. I mean,
I'm I'm I'm a little jealous. Yeah, yeah, I'm not

(01:51):
sure jealousy is exactly the right word, but it's something.
It's a weird thing to have happened. Um, how do
you feel about? I mean, I listened to Fred Armison
do the episode with you where he's doing you, and
I try to do you all the time because you
fit into a category all those yours works. Yours is
yours is of a style of announcer, host, journalists, broadcaster,

(02:13):
or whatever you want to call it. I mean, I
hear so many people now on the radio who are
the opposite of what I grew up with, and I
think it comes down to, like, what do you think
authority comes from? And back when we were kids, authority
came from enunciation, precision, delivery, and a kind of gravitas

(02:33):
that you are bringing to the character you're playing. And
I think that you know, not just me, but a
whole generation of people feel like, well, that character is
obviously a phony pretending to be this like cartoon, sort
of like the newscaster on The Simpsons with a deep voice,
having gravitas, And so I think a lot of us
just went in the other direction. And for me, I
felt like, you know, any story hits you harder if

(02:56):
the person delivering it doesn't sound like some news robot,
but it sounds like a real person having the reactions
a real person would have and be surprised and amazed
and amused the very thing I'm talking about you were
aware of when you were doing your show and conscious of,
you know. And I mean I started off at MPR
when I was nineteen, at MPRE and Washington doing what
First it was an intern, and then I worked on
a documentary series where I learned a lot of things.

(03:17):
By the time I was I was I was a
production assistant, and all things considered does that mean I've
been between college basically, go to project to come back.
I went to Northwestern for two years and then switched
to Brown. Graduated from Brown in semiotics, which is a
field of sort of pretentious literary theory, but actually is
all about how to structure a narrative. So it's enormously

(03:38):
practical training. And there are things that I learned in
school that I use every day to this day. But anyway,
then we go back and forth between college and working
at MPR. And at first when I tried to be
on the radio like most people like, I tried to
be the official thing, and then at some point I
trained myself out of it because I thought it's not
as effective. Ut yeah, yeah, exactly, And are obviously has

(04:00):
like a tradition of people going back to the seventies
who talked not like normal announcers, but like people. Susan
Stanberg was the host of All Things Considered, which I
think people today might not even remember. This lady who
really set a tone where she she just seemed like
some Upper west Side New York lady, like leaning into
the microphone mentally talking to you over the radio. Did
you just say mentually the adverb mentally, you don't get it.

(04:21):
You don't get that doesn't get that's that's that's an
advert that's only on the oper But I got she
was mentally leading into the microphone yes and talking like
a person. So there were other people doing it. I
heard people doing it. I was just like, that's the
direction I gotta go in. I mean, when I think
about your show, I wonder what it's like for you
editorially in terms of do you sit there and you

(04:41):
consciously try to take out of any political point of view?
I mean, the kinds of stories we're doing, I think,
you know, when we take on something that's in the news,
you know, what we're working for is a story with
characters and scenes and emotion and and looking for a
way to to show something new that people don't know. So,

(05:03):
for example, when we did an hour in Guantanamo, like,
we didn't go into it advocating Guantanamo should be shut
down or it shouldn't be shut down, you know, like
we don't. We don't have an agenda that way. Like
when we did an hour on it, we did an
hour because it had been a couple of years into
Guantanamo existing, and we read that I can't remember the
number of people, the number of detainees, like a couple
of hundred detainees had been released. We had discovered, like

(05:25):
you know, the US did determined like you guys aren't
enemy combatants. You guys, you know, go back to Pakistan
or wherever. And we had noticed that nobody in America
interviewed them just to ask like the normal things, you
know that like you want to know, like how were
you treated? Do you want to kill us? All on?
And then so like you go into that, like you
the question of like what our stand politically on Guantanamo is.
It doesn't know. I appreciate that, but I'm warning to

(05:45):
people sometimes view you as being liberal. Of course they
do because we're because our public radio, which is seen
as liberal. Though though when you look at the studies
of like what actually gets covered on the news programs
in the way it's covered, I feel like the numbers
bear out the fact that it is not more liberal
than other news sources. That said, there's a tone in
the way certain things are covered that conservatives here, and

(06:08):
from talking to conservatives, like I know like that, I
think that's a real thing. Um, I think at one
point there was a show that we did on one
of the elections, and it was about how people voted
them why they voted the way they voted. And I
had a long series of discussions with these people who
are like swing voters, because I was fascinated with it, Like, Alec,
you just think about like an election of like Carry

(06:29):
versus Bush, and you're coming down to like the last
three weeks before the election. Who are the people who
haven't decided? Like how can you like like whatever you say,
like those are two very different Yeah, Like what do
you have to know? Like you know them both really well?
Like what exactly? Especially people who are following the news,
like like what is there to wonder about at that point?
And I think in that show I came out and said, look,
I'm a Democrat, just said to the audience, because I

(06:50):
felt like there was a point in the discussion. In
my interviews people were identifying as Republican or Democrats, and
I felt like, why pretend anything but this like usually
about democratic that said, like many Democrats, I find them
to be the most annoying party and so not representing

(07:10):
what I believe on so many issues, and so lacking
in so many ways, and so not doing what I
would have them do. So even saying that I usually
about democrat, I feel it doesn't even get near what
my actual politics are. But if I have to pick,
I make that choice reluctantly. It's the same thing as
like we've done so many stories about God. At some
point I've went on the air and said, like, look,
I don't believe in God. Like, I'm just going to

(07:31):
put that out in front, So take everything you're about
to hear with the grain of salt that you should. Right,
it's just truth and packaging. And I think that it's
different for me as somebody who's on once a week,
you know, doing a documentary show that's coming like a
bunch of different stuff. It's different for me than it
is for like the hosts of All Things Considered, or
Brian Williams or you know what I mean. Like, it's
just my role is different, and so I think I

(07:52):
have that freedom. When did you realize you don't believe
in God? How old were you a teenager? Did you
grow up in a religious household? Up? It's weird. My parents,
we were Jews in the suburbs. So I went to
I went to Hebrew School and then went to the
high school version of that, Like I continued past my environmentsvah,
and at some point I realized I didn't It just
didn't add up from it, like you know, you're in

(08:13):
love or you're not in love. Like it's just like
there's another explanation for everything around me, which makes more
sense than there's a big dad who created this all
you know, and just you know, universe have been here.
There was like some sort of something happened, Yeah, something
like you know, people climbed up on the shores of Yeah. Actually,
when I was thirteen and fourteen, Like one of the

(08:35):
things that was a huge influence on me was you
remember remember these books Eric van Daniken was the author
Chariots of the Gods. Oh my God, I love this,
And I remember being in Hebrew College, bottom of Hebrew
College and arguing with the teachers. They are these old
rabbis about like, but this passage in like Exodus or Genesis,
wouldn't this be better explained by these paintings on the ground,

(08:56):
you know, like that we were actually visited by the
whole theory of a For people who don't know what
this is. It was like this series of books and
there was TV specials and stuff that if you actually
looked at it, it seems like what they're trying to
tell us is people visited us from outer space and
that's that's what they witnessed. Scientology really is closer to
what we've been exactly. Scientology has a good point on
to it. I remember arguing that in Hebrew College with

(09:19):
my professors there, and they were not They did not
buy it. Are you an atheist? No, I believe. I
don't know what I believe in terms of the specific.
I had a Catholic priest once say to me, listen,
I believe in a piece of many religions. The Jews
have something to say, and the Muslims have something to say,
and the Buddhists have something to say, the Hindus have

(09:41):
something to say. He says. Sometimes I think I'm a
Catholic because they just own the nicest real estate and
have the nicest places to hang out in. And I mean,
this is a priest that said that to me. He says,
you know, and I'm I believe in a god. I
believe in. I mean, I believe something had to be
responsible for this, and I also believe, oddly enough, as
a result of some stories I've heard on your show,
you know, you know, life itself and stories that come

(10:03):
to me make me believe there must be some God
behind this is my belief on a fact. Obviously, my
atheist message is not coming through the Subliminally you fail,
failing hard for one thing. You fail exactly. Are there
some shows? Having said that, I have to say, like
we do a lot of shows and religion. We do
a lot of shows on faith because I think it's

(10:24):
it's not covered very well, like if it's it's a
sort of an area of opportunity if you're if you're
a reporter or documentary producer, like in America, it's one
thing that's actually the media do is a terrible job
with and it's gotten better over the last fifteen years,
but still like not so great of covering people of
faith and covering them in terms that are that actually
document people's relationship with their faith, like generally in the media.

(10:46):
Like there's a whole phase of our show where where
this was like a big thing we were doing a
lot of because my feeling like looking at the way
people who were religious were covered, there would be these
cartoon characters, right like there you know, you see them
like these right wing inflexible like Doctrineaire and their beliefs.
And when I compared that to the actual Christians who
were in my life, they were super thoughtful and way

(11:08):
more compassionate and way more just just the way they
lived their religion was so radically different, even though they
were very devout, radically different from what I was seeing.
I was like, we need to document this because this
is a whole territory of stuff. And so we did
a whole set of stuff where I went out with
kids on their mission trip and we did this thing
about this minister named Carlton Pearson, and just we did
a lot of stuff because it seemed like an uncovered

(11:29):
territory and obviously like doing that without and he I
wasn't trying to bring anybody over to my side. That
would be boring. I wasn't interested. And I had a
friend of mine who was an actor who I worked
with once. He was very devout, very observant jew me
and his wife, and I once said to him what
does it mean to you? And like, what what is
Judaism to you? And he said to me, it's the
study of how we as human beings distinguished ourselves from

(11:52):
the animals. And when he said that it has leveled me.
I'll take that. I take all these little pieces and
I say to myself, my dad died and I just
had this such an incredible emotional connection to my father.
The President of the United States were shot in nineteen
sixty three. Their energy was such a force in my life,
in the in the world at large. Where did they go?

(12:12):
Does that energy that is the human soul and the
human essence just dissipate? And is it, you know, like
the light switch, like when you think when you die,
it just over. It's over. And I do think that,
though I'm always given pause by this. A Billy Collins
poem called it the Afterlife, where the thesis of the
poem is that each one of us goes to the
afterlife that he believes in. And I'm always scared of like,

(12:35):
oh no, if I believe that that's what I'm going
to get. It's funny I thought the same thing. Someone
said to me, what do you think is the afterlife?
And do you believe in that idea? Maybe they based
it off this poem. They said that when you die,
it's as soul in your imagination, and they said, what
do you think happen in the afterlife? I said, mine's
pretty mundane, mine's pretty sad. He said why. I said,
when you go into a room and it's a screening

(12:56):
room and God is there. We sit down and it
gets you some iced tea and of a sandwich, and
he's like, so, what do you want to know? And
you look at me and you know where he knows
he's got and you're like, you know, He's like, okay,
Larry roll the film and they showed me what really
happened in Kennedy's assassination. I want them to start to
tell me the truth. One can you also in that
version of it, be like okay, So on this date

(13:17):
in the year, my wife and I got into an argument.
I swear she said this, and then I said this,
and then she said this. She swears mine is very cinematic,
and I say, they say, okay, show me the movie.
Who was the girl that really loved me the most?
Rolling see, you get your answers, you find out, you
get your answers. You want your answers, You want your answers.

(13:38):
What a shame you don't get to do anything with
that information. You know, like as a film, Like if
this were to be a film, the thing you're describing
it needs a third act. Observing that my Afterlife of
Fantasy requires a third act comes instinctively to Ira. He
can't help but think about a conversation as if he's
the editor, marking these structural strengths and weaknesses of each anecdote.

(14:04):
More of my conversation with Ira Glass coming up. This
is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
In January of two thousand twelve, This American Life Friend
excerpts of performer Mike Daisy solo show The Agony and

(14:24):
the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. The episode featured segments from
Daisy's Peace, in which he visited a factory in China
that made iPhones. Two months after Daisy's Peace aired, a
reporter discovered discrepancies in his story. Mike Daisy had made
things up. This American Life retracted the story, and Ira
and his team had to ask themselves, how did this happen?

(14:46):
We were pretty good fact checkers, I thought before Mcdaisy
and and uh, you know, I worked at MPR News
and we were at the level whether we were at
an MPR News wake. We looked into it as well
as we could. We talked to over a dozen people
who had either been those factories or human rights groups
that monitored those factories, and you know, people confirmed everything
that he said in the story as things that really

(15:06):
happened in these plants, with one exception. He said that
he met a fifteen year old going into work at
a factory making apple products, and all the human rights
workers everybody we talked to said like, actually apples like
super great about that, and like would be very hard
for a subcontractor to have underage workers, and has been
a leader in this so if that happened, it was
a fluke. And in the original show we did with him,

(15:29):
I confronted with that and he's like, oh, yeah, I
don't know what to tell you. Anyone to know, show
me a picture of the person, which isn't really telling,
but he said, you know they you know, they gave
me proof, and we sort of put it all of
that out there. Did that make you angry? Well, then
we found out like the one thing that we didn't
do is we didn't talk to his translator, and he said, look,
I got this phone number, but when I call it
it doesn't you know. It's some lady in China I

(15:50):
met at the hotel and like, and so we you know,
we we we gave up, you know, we didn't do that,
which at that point we should not have put the
thing on the radio. After we broadcast, another reporter found
that translator and she said basically, she was with him
his whole time, and all these things that he says
happened did not happen. And so did that make you angry?

(16:11):
People trust you, they admire you, and no one, no
one falls you for that obviously, And I don't know,
you're not gonna say this. This is me say this.
Mike Daisy may be gifted, but he's full of shit.
But the thing is, when that happened, did that piss
you off? Did that make you angry? I wish him,
I mean maybe at some level. Like honestly, like my
first reaction was not being mad at him. Um is

(16:33):
an atheist thing. No, yeah, we've just given up on life,
alec no um. I mean, I mean honestly, like the
main thing I thought is like I just wondered if
we were all going to keep our jobs, you know
what I mean? Like I really wondered, like, is this
it is the radio show over? Like that was the

(16:54):
main thing. I thought, I don't know, I just I
just it was a mix of things. Mad was in
there somewhere about definitely was not the biggest part. Other
people in my staff were definitely like, way matter at
him and we're mad. But I had worked with him
so closely and adapting the thing for the radio I
felt very close to him actually, and I just felt like, like, like,
your friend did something. I mean, what you know, I

(17:15):
just made him do you had a bit of a relationship.
With that relation, I said like, oh no, like what
have you done? And that was a way bigger part
of it. But but you were asking like they have
things changed around the radio show since then? And the
answer is is yes. And now, in addition to doing
like all the stuff we did back when I worked
on Morning Edition and all things considered to like, see
the stories are true, we have professional fact checkers like
the New York or something, and so every script has

(17:36):
gone through by fact checkers who we hire, and they
go back to all the sources in the story and
they go back to everything and it's just like it's
a huge it's a lot of work, but I have
to say it's been glad Way, it's been awesome. What
does Ira Glass do in his private time? I mean
when you're not working, when you have downtime, When I

(17:58):
have downtime. Honestly, I don't have a huge amount of
downtime like usually on the sliver of it you have, Um,
I walk my dog, try to spend a little time
with my wife. What She helps run a website for
teenage girls with Tommy Givenson. This now, I think she
just turned eighteen year old girl who's starting on Broadway,
but has this website called Rookie mag dot com. And

(18:20):
basically Tavy decided that there should when she was fifteen
years old and in high school. She thought, as a
teenage girl, there was all this culture being marketed to her,
and none of it accurately sort of described the world
that she saw it or seemed to capture the things
that were most interesting to her. And so she decided
she would make that herself and organized kind of an
army of young women to do it. It's three posts

(18:42):
a day. It's really funny writing and just like it's
it's wonderful. And so my wife helps her, helps her.
I find it incredible that even with the slightest prompting,
you can give me the bio or the story. You
can tell everyone's story about your own. You can tell
everyone can tell my story. You only gave us the
dog walking, and you said, and I love that. I
spent time with my wife. What other what do you
watch news? Do you watch TV to like films? Music?

(19:05):
I mean, honestly, like, I have seen so little of
anything in the last probably a year, just because um,
we have the radio show we started the second show.
I've been touring with a dance show all over the
country and so on the weekends and either going and
making a speech to earn enough money to live in
New York City because I still work at a public
radio salary and live in New York City, or I

(19:28):
go out with this dance show where I tour with
this professional dance troupe where I tell stories and they
dance in this way. Whose idea was that? That was
me and the choreographer. It was the choreographer of the
dance company. We were trying to figure out a way
to work together. She's like, well, let's do a thing
where we combine our things, and I was like, yes,
you're the speaking. Yes, you must be dancing very fast

(19:50):
choreography sometimes sometimes yeah, must be flying through the air.
As a matter of fact. Yes, when you say trying
to make a living on a public radio salary, I
mean you you could pay yourself. I'm not saying this
to embarrass you, but you could pay yourself X and
you don't you fold it all back into the show, correct? Yes,
I mean you decided to do that because I go
on the radio and ask people for money, and I

(20:12):
thought that it's unseemly to be making a crazy amount
of money. If you had more time, what would you do?
I think I would just consume more culture. I would
I would go to more movies and read more. Like
I still have never seen, you know, half the TV
shows that I hear about, and I know that I'll like,
but I haven't seen like in a few months ago.
I watched all of Game of Thrones at some point,

(20:34):
you know, a year ago. Yeah. I liked it a lot. Yeah.
And are you saying that in the tone of like, no,
you did not like it? No, no, no, no, no,
I never cast any judgment or what people like it entertainment? Yeah, no,
And I watched all of Louis, you know, like I
hadn't caught up on the light. I can watch old
episodes of the match game on the Game show Network.
I mean that's where that's my comfort zone when I

(20:54):
was a kid growing up. Love it. But anyway, so
so no, I do no watching of anything. Like basically
I'm working. I'll see a friend maybe for food, see
my wife walk the dog, and then that's that's it.
It's midnight, and then I'll go to the gym. It's
not so super glam and if I had more time,
I would just basically, you're working, consume more culture. I
feel like, if anything, it's it's a problem the way

(21:15):
I'm doing this because I'm not consuming enough. Do you
think it's gonna last forever? I don't know. I don't
have another plan besides this like this. I like this
so like I like making stuff. I like editing, I
like writeing to share in people. Yeah, I like like
people love the show and and it's secure, like it
just feels like, oh my god, it's it's there are
enough people who like it that it's a totally solid business.

(21:37):
And then also it does well enough that we can experiment.
I put on a movie with Mike Barbiglia, you know,
a couple of years ago, and we can um, you know,
and we do these events where we do them on
stage and beam them into movie theaters around the country.
And we did a show at BAM where we had
you know, somebody wrote a musical for it and opera
and all this stuff built out of real stories about
journalism turned into like a Broadway musical with real Broadway

(21:58):
you know, performers, you know, and so like it's big
enough that we can kind of do anything we want
with that, and that's just you know, it's just lovely,
Like I don't know what else the person could want.
Do people when when you do the show, do people
only the people in the house they pitched the ideas,
or do people outside pitch you ideas? Oh my goodness. Yeah.
I mean there was a period where I mean people

(22:19):
right into our website and there's a place, you know,
where you can pitch a story, and then there's a
person or two on staff who go through that looking
for the stories that might work. And there are faces
where there's something on the show every week or every
other week from that list. Like it's not unusual that
people will pitch us and those stories will end up
on the show. So yeah, I mean the opening of
the show that we did at BAM was the story

(22:40):
of this girl woman who accidentally locked herself into a closet.
She was an opera singer, but she makes her living
partly reading books on tape. And she was in a
hotel room and she's like, I got to record this
book on tape on a deadline. So she goes into
the closet and puts you know, like pillows all around
to like cushion the sound. And her computer is sitting
in the hotel room and she pulls the microphone because
the computer out of worrying sound, and she pulls the

(23:01):
microphone into the closet, closes the door. She starts to record,
and then she I messed that up and she's going
to go out and started over again. Let's started to
file and she goes to open the door, and the
doors locked, like there's something wrong with the mechanics. You
can't get out of the closet, But the thing is
still recording. You hear her all the steps she goes
through and trying to get out of this closet, including
yelling to people down the hall, some German tourists go by,

(23:22):
and so that was just somebody she wrote us, you know,
like that that's the opening of the show. That that
she told us that story. And at some point in
the interview I was like, okay, so if you you're
an opera singer, if you were to stage this as
an opera, what would it be? And She's like, I
think it would be a minimalist opera, like you know,
just this repetitive music. And I was just saying help, help, help,
over and over, and I was like, you know, I
have the hook up for that. My cousin is Philip Glass.
So we had him right. We commissioned that as an

(23:48):
opera that we performed on stage at the brook On
Academy of Music. Alright, gofred. Ira Glass has a natural

(24:22):
talent for creating compelling radio. I wanted to follow up
with him and find out why is his show so successful?
We have him? You have me, Hello, I have you?
Send it way? Weren't errantic than I met? You have me?
Um Hi, this is Ira Glass Glass, They're life. I

(24:44):
can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do
it because I can't do it. When you try because
to do it, it's like it's like a state of mind.
You know, it's like a state of plan but you
But you know what's funny is you are someone when
I made that comment to you about the announcer thing
and people who are front type of radio broadcaster, but

(25:04):
you are someone who does not have uh. You know,
you've got a good delivery, and you're a great radio
broadcaster and everything and the speed of it and the
velocity of it is obviously a signature of yours. But
what kills me is your mastery of what you say,
Like do you go back sometimes you have to record

(25:24):
it again and again, or do you just zip through
that thing like you're just shooting down a a louse ride.
I wish I could. I wish I could do that.
When we record my parts of the show, I'll do
more than one take, for sure, but not a lot
of takes. No too. Can I say it took me

(25:45):
a long time to learn how to perform on the radio,
Like I was so bad at the beginning. I was awful.
Like sometimes I play for students, how I sounded not
in my first year of my second year, but in
year seven, and I could play for you on your
podcast if you want to in your show like like
I'm awful, like I had not mastered it. I had
to consciously set it as a project for myself. I'm

(26:07):
going to try to perform on the air of the
way I talk. We would you so you wanted to
stop doing what I sounded like somebody imitating an MPR
reporter but failing. So again, this is not your one year,
two year, three year, four year, five year, six This
is years since you last week? Yeah, exactly, this is
last weekend. Right. It's not such a long way from

(26:32):
the local grocery store to the international debate over whether
sorghum and meat production are causing corn to decline in
Latin America. Okay, first of all, that makes no sense,
but let's keep going. It's a general air of prosperity here,
partly thanks to Mexican imports of US grains, which helped
boost our farm economy. I just want to say, if
you're going to be an announcer, just don't emphasize every

(26:54):
other word random. But what kills me is you are
doing exactly what like you know cent of all the
NPR radio host too, is hitting that you know, one
of the things we realize about the downturn in the
stock market today is the revel of the bit and
they're doing exactly what you're doing. It's before I understood
that to sound okay on the radio, you should just

(27:15):
talk like a person, talks like a human being, talks
like you're playing a character, and the character as a
human being. Mexico is now one of our biggest grain customers,
playing a half billion to a billion dollars worth every year,
including corn defeat its people and sorghum defeat its livestock.
This helps cut our own trade deficit and benefits everyone

(27:36):
in the US economy. But in Mexico this policy has
led to fewer tortillas for the poor and on appetizing
tortillas for everyone else. I would just note also that
but this makes no sense at all. Like the writing
is awful. It's not just that the performance is awful,
like literally, like you can't tell what the story is.
It's a style. I mean that was you, you were

(27:57):
working it out. I mean, it is funny. You do
make Kai Wisdal sound like Lenny Bruce. But it's incredible.
I mean, I think there must be an acting version
of this because I think when people become reporters, they
want to sound like the real deal, you know what
I mean, And so you want to sound I wanted
to sound like a reporter, and so this is what
I thought the equivalent in in in the businesses. I
was did a TV show years ago, and in the

(28:18):
show there was a woman who was the matriarch of
a town and I had the scene with her where
I'm kind of shaming her, like well, you know, how
could you do this and turn your back? And we
did take one and I was like, you know, how
could you do this? And like the tears are rolling
down my face. Take two, and finally like take through.
The director goes, what are you doing? And I'm sorry, goes,

(28:38):
what do you what? Why are you charging it with
so much emotional Like you're playing the whole episode in
the swan scene, You're putting every beat of the entire
He's like, well, you don't got to calm down. We're
gonna get there. When you're a young actor, you emote
and you kind of imbue things with that unnecessarily and
inappropriately just to do it. You think that's that you

(28:59):
do too much? I think that's acting. It's in interviewed
Billy Collins, who was the poet laureate who's writing I
really love and so idiosyncratic, like he so sounds like himself.
And I asked him, like, did you always write like this?
He's like, no, At first I wrote like I thought
it was a beat poet, you know, like, and I
tried to write like that. I think it's common that
people try to do like the official deal that they
think it is before they realized like, no, I'm gonna

(29:21):
do a version of me in this is the show
reflective of who you are. I mean, this show reflects
my taste, but also I have to say the taste
of my coworkers, you know, like it's not just mine
at this point, like it's something that we all share,
and I happened to be the frontman, which in that
way it's different than than it was from the beginning,

(29:41):
Like I am the frontman for this thing that we
make together. Like somebody who's in a band that's been
playing for a long time. What tips do you have
for people that are interviewers? Oh? Wow, um, what tips
do you have from me? Quite frankly, I think, I
mean I've I've heard tons of your shows, and I
really like your show. I think you're a very skilled interviewer. Um.

(30:03):
And one of the things that you do an interview
as a party, and you're the host of the party,
and the interviewee will do what you do, what you
model is what they do too. Like it's just human nature.
And so if you tell a lot of funny stories,
they will tell you funny stories back. And if you
tell personal stories, they'll tell personal stories back. And I
feel like there was a phase in your show where

(30:23):
for whatever reason, you had on a series of people
and it was like her Balbert and uh, I don't
get a predict to have it was like this, but
her Baber was definitely like this, where people who went
through their lives and we're hugely successful and then had
their hearts broken or had failed and then had to
call their way back. Where in those interviews you talked

(30:45):
about yourself in this way that made them talk about
themselves more. It's not exactly an interviewing trick, but in interviews,
you know, I will talk about myself with the interviewees
because I know that if I talk about myself in
a way that's real. First of all, they feel safer
because I'm also talking about myself, and we'll open up
more and then they talk about themselves, and so it's
like a fair swath. And the other thing I try

(31:07):
to do is like with Outbert is a perfect example
of the first question I asked myself as what are
they used to? Herb Albert and his partner Jerry Moss
sold A and M records for like hundreds and hundreds
of millions of dollars back then. And this is a
guy that had artistic success as a musician. He was
very admired as an instrumentalist. He had as many hits
as like the Beatles, and then and then he has

(31:31):
his career as a record producer with all these legendary acts.
And then they walk in the room and so many
people in the room might go, I don't know who
that is, but you have to sit there and go,
this person was big time once they were big, you know,
and you got to treat them like they're big. Oh,
that's so interesting at one time. You have to treat
them with the respect that they once commanded the phrase
I always uses what are they used to? And I

(31:53):
give it that is so interesting. I never interview anybody
that famous like I don't interview anybody who's big. I
sort of took myself out of that game because it
made me so nervous. And also I think that that's
a different kind of interview then I'm especially good at.
Like I feel like interviewing somebody who's famous, you're constantly
battling against the fact that they've been interviewed so many
times and had to tell their stories so many times,

(32:15):
and so you constantly are having to struggle for an
angle in on them that will seem alive to them
and and no knock against them, Like it's hard to
be interviewed over and over and over about your own
life and how many stories do any of us have,
and how many anecdotes do we have? They're even worth
telling other people, especially a group of strangers. And then
the thing that I think Terry Gross does really beautifully,

(32:36):
and the thing that I hear you do, is like
it's almost like an empathetic act of like, like what
is the world to them? And how am I going
to angle something in that will get them to say something.
I remember one of my favorite questions I ever heard
Terry Gross ask she she she was interviewing Ricky Jay,
you know that's right, the magician and um and sort
of scholar of magic but also an incredible card magician

(32:57):
and m and super smart on Jesus anyway, So so
she's interviewing him, and yeah, she says to him. At
some point in the interview of this thing which requires
like so going inside his head, she says to him, Um, sometimes,
are there ever any magic tricks that you do where
the thing that we don't see, that you know is happening,
is actually more interesting than the thing that we see.

(33:19):
And he totally got excited. He's like, yes, yes, absolutely,
And she says, well, can you tell me about that?
And he's like, oh, no, of course you child. Yeah,
but for even get to that question means so imagining
her way into his life. And I feel like when
interviewing goes well, like somebody's just has good taste about
doing that, you know, Ira a Glass. Having worked in

(33:44):
the documentary genre for many years, I've never seen a
filmmaker with the reach and prolific output of director and
producer Alex Gidney. I've encountered many friends with an interesting,
dark idea that needs to be made only to realize well,
Alex Gibney is already making that documentary, called the most
Important documentary of our Time by Esquire Magazine. The Oscar

(34:08):
Emmy and Peabody winning Gibney directed the film's Enron, The
Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side,
and Going Clear, among many many others. His films wrestled
with tales of power and corruption, cults and corporate greed,
in the public interest and in search of the truth.
He's not afraid to ask the hard questions and help

(34:28):
shed light on the most complex topics of our time
in a way that truly no one else can. Here's
Alex conversation with Alex Gibney from two thousand twenty one.
Gibney's most recent film, The Crime of the Century, which
he wrote, directed, produced, and narrated for HBO, tells the
origin story at the heart of the opioid crisis poisoning

(34:52):
our nation. Big Farmas celebrated its marketing muscle, using parties
to lure doctors to write scripts. This was a new
drug cartel. They were drug dealers wearing suits and lab coats. Basically,
here's some money, write scripts. Yes, I'm looking at this
and I'm gone. Clearly, we're breaking the Law Up. Alex

(35:15):
Gibney has made more than thirty films in the last
twenty years. In two thousand and eight, he won the
Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Taxi to the
Dark Side, his film on the CIA's use of torture.
Whether he's taking on scientology or Russian interference in our elections,
or iconic figures like Steve Jobs, Lance Armstrong and Frank Sinatra,

(35:40):
Gibney never flinches and his stories stand up. In fact,
he can't think of a time when he wanted to
reissue one of his docks to make a correction. I
can't think of a time when it did happen. And
I think about that a lot, because I try to
find a moment in time where it feels like we're
absolutely right. And sometimes, you know, I'm afraid that things

(36:03):
may come out that would cause me to want to
redo it. But I I sort of feel like the
films represent a certain wisdom at a moment in time,
and it's it's best to leave them. I am kind
of following up in a film I did and doing
another film to kind of dig a little bit deeper.
The film I did, A Taxi to the dark Side.
I'm doing a kind of follow up to it, but

(36:25):
I've never been motivated to really go back in it's
it seems like such a painful process. But I usually
do think about, like, if I'm going to end this
film here, why are we ending it here? And will
it stand the test of time? When the film is over?
Do you ever privately follow up about certain aspects of it?
Does you're caring? Does your curiosity? Does your concern end

(36:46):
when the film is distributed? No, the ghosts of all
my films tend to follow me, and I often keep
in touch with sources and interview subjects, and in odd ways,
they keep coming back two films I make henceforth, so
they kind of reverberate. It's it's a little bit like
that moment in in Ghostbusters where they say don't cross

(37:08):
the streams. Well, my streams are constantly getting crossed. It
seems like characters from one film are intruding into another.
They all stay with me, which becomes a little bit vexing.
Sometimes it's hard to keep them straight. In your career,
your fabulous career, You've made thirty films or so in
the last twenty years. One an Oscar but of course

(37:30):
documentary films have become content for streamers and major major broadcasters.
What are your observations about that change during your career, Alma,
Was it like in the beginning, Well, in the beginning
it was terrible. My wife used to tell me, I
want you to go out and get a job, and
whatever you do, don't mention that you're interested in documentaries,
because they'll kick you right out the door. So I
had to be very cautious. And then there was that

(37:52):
terrible era of cable television where every channel had to
be branded, which meant if you were clicking through chan nals,
as soon as you got to a channel, it had
to look like it was the History Channel or whatever,
and which meant that as a creator, you were just
cranking out sausages. It was the worst possible thing. But

(38:13):
then I discovered, particularly for political documentaries, there was a
moment where theatrical films could say things that we're pretty
potent so long as you made them entertaining. And that
was a huge revelation which changed everything. And because suddenly
you weren't operating in a commercial environment where it was
the least common denominator and basically we were trying to

(38:33):
sell audiences to advertisers. People were buying the content, that
is to say, they go to a movie because they
wanted to see the movie, not because they wanted to
buy soap. So that was great, and I think that's
what helped to explode the moment that we're in now.
My only concern about streaming environment is the extent to
which some of the streamers begin to start relying too

(38:54):
much on their algorithms so that they come to you
and say, well, our algorithms says that a you know,
minute thirty two, you should really be changing the narrative
to this so that we'll keep our viewers. We're hearing
a little bit of that, and that to be a nightmarish. Now,
when you talk about your company and you talk about
what you're producing and not producing, and I want you

(39:16):
to explain, what's the difference between an executive producer and
a producer. There's a couple of different types of producers.
How do you function as a producer in your company's work.
On the projects where I'm named as a producer or
an executive producer, I generally have a creative role and
sometimes it has to do with raising the money but
often it has to do with having some say or
guidance in terms of the overall creative direction. Though you know,

(39:40):
we try very hard to empower our directors to do
films the way they want to do them. But sometimes
on a series in particular, where you're coalescing around something
like I did a series for Netflix for a couple
of years called Dirty Money, which I was very proud of.
It's all about corporate malfeasance, and you know, we purposefully
engaged directors to do things their own way. That said.

(40:03):
You know, it came out of my experience on en Ron,
which was one where you invest in the wild criminality
of the purpose and it's a kind of colorful, kind
of heist like vibe that you engage in. So as
executive producer, I'm trying to encourage the directors to lean
into that kind of thing without being overbearing about it.
So sometimes I'm the beard and sometimes, uh, sometimes I

(40:26):
come come out a little stronger than that. You now
have what like a hundred or a hundred and twenty
people working at Jigsaw, So the company itself, that is
to say, permanent employees, as fairly small. It's like fourteen
or fifteen people, but at times we can have as
many as two hundred people working in the in the
space on various projects. So that's where things get pretty daunting.
Are you ever sitting in your office screaming into a

(40:48):
cushion or you're gonna cry and you're telling your staff
please don't bring me any more projects to do, because
there's the fear you're gonna become the Jeff Coon's of
documentary filmmaking, where like you're running from room to room
and going, yes, no, change this brightenness. Yeah. Yeah, well
I really try. I mean, that would be the stereotype.
And I do scream into my pillow, but usually not

(41:08):
because of that. I mean, if if I can get
projects made, great, But I purposely tell you know, the
other executives at the company, there are many projects here
I don't want to be involved in, not because they're
bad projects, but because it's important that they run themselves,
because otherwise I get spread too thin, and who needs that.

(41:30):
Then it becomes a kind of proxy system. The whole
idea is to create a company that will run of
itself and last long after I've left the field. Now
you have a great volume of work where you are
developing material, making films and series and so forth limited
series with some great, great writers. So great, I mean,
just keep you alone and Larry Right, who I worship

(41:52):
because you worked with Larry before and Going Clear, Going
Clear in My Trip to al Qaeda, and and also
obviously Looming Tower. So what was your first connection with Right? Somehow?
We were put together on My Trip to Al Qaida,
which was a play that he had done about a
one man play that he started about the writing of
the Looming Tower. And we got together on that and

(42:15):
I did a doc about it. It's part half of
it or a lot of it is the play itself,
and then we cut in and out of the play
to do various documentary thing and we got on really well,
and so then we were determined to do other stuff together.
You know, I have a kind of a shorthand I
think with writers because my dad was a journalist, and
that's the business I was supposed to go into. It

(42:37):
was around me all my life. So in my films,
while I make them consciously as films, they also they
have what I would call journalistic baggage. That is to say,
I'm really invested in in a journalistic aspect of them
that tries to get the facts right. But with somebody
like Larry Right, it's a similar process in terms of
the storytelling aspect of it, you know, at greater length

(43:00):
and the New Yorker pieces or in his books which
often come out of his New Yorker pieces. There is
at once a kind of fact finding discipline and also
a storytelling discipline where you're trying to engage an audience
to come along this journey with you, and part of
that is investing in the propulsion of the narrative, which
is I mean, that's storytelling, right. So Larry and I

(43:21):
got on really well because he's always talking about stuff
like that and and devices that he uses in his
writing and and so ongoing clear that was maybe the
biggest collaboration we had in terms of impact. The Looming
Tower was also you know, had pretty broad reach. When
you do a Crime of the Century, when you do
with something with HBO, the budgets pretty high, correct it is,

(43:44):
relatively speaking. Relatively speaking, though, and on this one it
it got a lot higher than the original budget because
our original deal with HBO said we were going to
do a two hour film, and then when we showed
them the material. They said, well, this is clearly, you know,
going over the bounds of the two hours. We've got
much more material than that, and they let us expand
it to a four hour And in the case of

(44:05):
Crime of the Century, I mean to be honest with you,
we actually started out working with the Washington Post. There
were some journalists there, Scott Higham and Lenny Bernstein and
others who had first made me kind of aware of
the breadth of this story. And along the way, you know,
I decided they had were focusing mostly post Sackler, and

(44:27):
I decided I really needed and wanted to tell the
sacular part of the story to get the breadth of it.
And that's what led me to Patrick, And in fact
Patrick and I ended up teaming up on not only
this but also a scripted version of the Sackler story
called pain Killer, which is going to start shooting later
this fall. When you're working on the Sacler story as

(44:49):
well as perhaps other stories, is there ever a fear
of litigation? I mean talk about a deep pockets opponent
ofview wound up getting litigated. Were you were afraid that
they would sue you? Yes, And that's why the reporting
has to be really good, and I give a lot
of credit to HBO for being really rigorous about that.
But once you have the facts right, being very brave.

(45:11):
I mean I learned that on Going Clear. You know,
there were a lot of lawyers attached to that film,
but we were very good about getting our facts right.
And it's not only the stuff that's in but the
reporting that surrounds it. That's what gives you the foundation
to put some of the stuff you put in the film.
And so with Patrick, because we were working in different media,

(45:31):
we were able to share things that we might not
otherwise have shared. If he was, say another filmmaker, and
he would give me some documents, I would give him
some documents. And also we could geek out with each other.
I mean, when you're deep into a project like this,
very few people, particularly significant others, want to hear from
you about the arcana of the opioid crisis. You know,

(45:52):
it's like, okay, Han, that's enough. You know, we got
your what's wrong? And like, look at the molecular structure
of this active ingredient. Look at this molecule. Have you
ever seen a molecule? Now, But when you're doing these projects,
you talked about all the lawyers attached to going clear.
We were talking before about how the early days for
you because you work so much in unearthing truth and facts,

(46:15):
and there's a journalistic stripe to what you do that
you've got a staff of people doing research and maybe
you have a part time lawyer. I'm kind of joking here,
and now your company, the difference is you've got a
lot more people on the payroll doing research. You have
ten lawyers on the payroll, you know, I mean, like,
do you need more of everything to get the facts clear?
You know, we don't operate the company that way. And
and actually, while we started to veer in that direction,

(46:38):
I think we're going back to baseline to be a
little bit more entrepreneurial. What we do is try to
set it up more as units, you know, try to
function not as a machine or a factory, but more
like a studio where each film or series has its
own people and and it's a small but dedicated group,
and attached to them are are sometimes lawyers we've freakingly

(47:00):
work with, and sometimes journalists we frequently work with, but
they're attached to that particular project, so each one is
bespoke it's has its own d n A, and that
that tends to work out better because sometimes these things
take a long time, like Crime of the Century took
close to three years to do. With a small group
that really gets intensively into the subject, that's what allows

(47:21):
it to happen, rather than a kind of big machine
which attempts to crank these things out. They can't be
cranked out because the rhythm of them sometimes depends on
when you get documents or when you get people to
talk at the pace of their own. But I'm even
talking about the creative DNA or biology of the project
to project. I'm just talking about resources in terms of

(47:43):
when you're first starting out, you might not have everything
you need, and as you become this phenomenally successful filmmaker,
one thing it affords you to do is to have
more people come on and do more research and deepen
your research, and have more legal help to protect you.
You know, I was in Sundance. I saw you there.
I went to the screening and uh, I'm in that
rarefied position where I'm friends with Tom. I mean, he's

(48:04):
he's a friend in terms of my career. You know,
we don't see each other for long periods of time
where we pick up where we left off. He had
me come into a couple of smaller parts and two
am I movies and so forth. And I've often speculated,
and I even wrote in my memoir, so I thought,
what was it? What did he need this involvement in
this organization and this uh in this faith or whatever

(48:26):
you want to call it. What did he need it for?
I wasn't quite sure what its purpose was. You know,
he has everything, you know, wealth and fame and legacy
and the respect of the community. He has everything you
could possibly imagine in a career as as as a
movie star. So what did this add to his life?
And I I speculated about that in my book. I
came up with an answer. But when you were doing

(48:48):
Going Clear, the scientology community, which is diverse, I mean
the different people is not all just Tom incorporated maybe,
but all those people have been able to in some
way chew away any real close examination. And when I
watched your movie, I was mildly taken aback by how
deep you got. Your film was among the first people

(49:10):
from a major filmmaker to say that the the institution
is guilty of certain abuses. I mean they abuse people.
Their attitude to me was always like, hey man, we're
not hurting anybody. You know, we manipulate people no more
or no less than U S military recruitment companies, do
you know. I mean, we have a certain kind of
thing we do to get people to want to join
and sign up with us, But no one's being abused

(49:31):
or hurt. And you and what was the genesis of
that movie? Why did you decide you wanted to go
further and look into that even further. You know what's
interesting about that is that I had been offered to
do that movie any number of times, and I had
always turned it down because I always felt it was
too fringed. There weren't that many scientologists in the world
as opposed to say, the Roman Catholic Church. I did.

(49:52):
I did a film about the church, and coincidentally or not,
two weeks after it premiered, the Pope resigned. So, um,
you know, I was familiar with deep seated religious organizations
and also you know the pushback you can get. But
in the case of Going Clear, it was Larry who
convinced me. Larry Wright who convinced me to take it on.
There's a phrase in his you know, subhead of his

(50:16):
book is the Prison of Belief, And that idea was
really interesting to me because then it was a deep
dive into scientology and indeed the abuses of scientology. I
mean that that's the reason to be concerned, is that
the prison of belief leads to real human rights abuses.

(50:37):
But the other reason I was interested in it is
because people like to demonize scientologists as crazies, and the
prison of Belief allowed me to put scientologists in a
mainstream tradition of how people invest or get lost in
a prison of belief, whether it be religious belief or

(50:58):
political belief, and can get out even though the bars
of the cell are open. So that's what really motivated
me to get there. And then as we dug in,
we took testimony and checked facts and found out stuff
that other people hadn't found out before. And and I
actually had a pretty big impact on the scientology community itself.
There are a lot of people who either left the

(51:18):
church or who as ex members of Scientology, suddenly felt
empowered to speak up in a way that they hadn't
been able to do so before because because Scientology using
its threat of litigation, because they had launched the maybe
the most expensive lawsuit ever against the media company when
they went after Time Warner. You know, people were afraid,

(51:40):
and HBO was incredibly impressive in terms of its ability
to back us up once we convinced them that we
had the goods. What was the first time you picked
up a camera as a child? Were interested in filmmaking
as a child. We're a huge filmgoer. I was into
it as a kid, and I was always into cinema.

(52:01):
But the thing that I think really changed me or
turned me around, were these great film societies at Yale,
and there was there was always an interesting film on
every night. You know, this is pre video, so you
you go to these film societies and sit and watch
and and at the time, documentaries and fiction films were distinctions,

(52:22):
weren't made. It wasn't like one was up and one
was down. They were all interesting. And I can remember
you know too in particular that really floored me. One
was Gimme Shelter by the Mazel's Brothers, you know about
the Rolling Stones, and the other was Exterminating Angel by
Louis Bunuel, and I thought, wow, you know, the possibility
for expression in this medium is so enormous. So that's

(52:43):
when I started to veer away from what my dad
had in mind for me, which was to be a
print journalist. Did you seriously I did. I did. But
he lived in Japan for a lot of his life,
and I was studying Japanese literature at the time, which
meant I was like head buried in these endless character dictionaries.
I start to veer away and and found my own direction.

(53:05):
But he really wanted me after college to go and
take the interviews at Time Life Newsweek, you know, and
and and go into the family business, which is what
he had done. Where did you study of Yale Japanese literature? Yeah,
and I'm impressed because of all the Japanese documentaries you've made,
it's incredible. Well, I did study under Donald Ritchie, the

(53:27):
great Japanese film critic who knew so much about Core Sawa.
And I'll give you one. I'll give you. I can
do one film quote in Japanese, which is Chigo Mateo's it.
And that's uh, that's the end of your Jimbo. He says,
I'll wait for you at the gates of hell. Oh
my god, my god. Now when you know when you

(53:47):
make it. So you're studying Japanese literature Yale, You're not,
You're making films at the same time I did, uh,
you know, I was studying film with a famous documentary
named Murray Learner. He did a lot of those docs
about the New or jazz and folk festivals and that
in store from now teaches at Columbia, and so she
was she was one of my advisors. I mean she

(54:07):
was very young then, as as we all were. So
I was studying film, and ultimately, towards the end of
my sojourn there, I was starting to to to move
into that territory. And then I went to u c
l A Film School. So so you go to graduate
school and and how many years you were you in
l A. Well, I ended up staying in l A
for a good many years, like twelve thirteen years. But

(54:31):
and I never actually finished U c l A. That
they're happy to claim you cling me to their bosom now,
But I loved it there. I just I got a
job with the Samuel Goldwyn Company at the time, and
I started doing things like cutting exploitation trailers. What exploitation
trailers did you cut? Oh? There was one called my

(54:52):
favorite was one called shock Waves. It was a film
about mutant Nazis who come up from the ocean floor.
That's where they went to a secret cat underwater cavern.
They manufactured a group of mutant Nazis that couldn't be killed,
and their ships sank somewhere in the Caribbean, and then

(55:12):
one day a fishing boat happened to dislodge it, and
up they came out out from the water that I
thought they were in Buenos Aires. Peter Cushing. Peter Cushing
was in it. Peter Cushing was in it. Brook Adams
was in it. Oh God, that was a documentary about that. Well.
The other trailer I did was for it was for
a TV trailer I think for the First Assault on

(55:34):
Precinct thirteen. And there was one the Nicholas Meyer Rock
called Invasion of the b Girls. These were women who
were half human, half b and when they'd have sex
with you, they'd sting you to death. I know that woman,
I know her. Yeah, I went out with her from
times I got I got out on stage, but she
tried and tried her best. Now I had a small

(55:55):
part in Looming Tower. I was very grateful to come
and work with you. Guys, and I understand you're doing
more of that. You're gonna be doing more narrative work. Yes,
with luck, that's gonna I'm doing a feature this coming year,
and this is one that's a real passion project. It's
a story I've been thinking about for a long time
and it took a long time to get the script right.
But I'm really looking forward to doing it. And a

(56:15):
guy named Matt Cook he wrote a Patriots Day which
was directed by Peteburgh, but interesting to me, he was
a in the infantry in Iraq and this is ah,
this is very much of a war story. It's actually
Vietnam War, and it's what it's really about is how
hard it is to be a hero. And with Looming Tower,
what was your input into that? I mean, you know,

(56:35):
Larry Danny Futterman and I were, um, you know, co
conspirators early on in terms of coming up with the
kind of the overall concept because Looming Tower is a
vast book, and so how to contain it and how
to focus it And we decided to focus it on
this battle between the FBI and the CIA in the
run up to nine eleven, and to focus on to

(56:57):
Harraheem's character. Uh, you know, Ali Soufan is the guy
in which he was based in and Jeff Daniels character
John O'Neill, and obviously you know I mean you played
George Tennant, who is a critical character in this battle
between the FBI and the CIA. In terms of the
overall conceit, I had a lot of input. I think

(57:18):
that it's fair to say that Danny and I had
some creative differences on it, and I want some and
lost others. But that's the way things go. We'll have
more of Alex conversation with director Alex Gibney after the break.

(57:41):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Alex Gibney is known for his films that challenged entrenched power,
but he also has a deep catalog of work featuring musicians,
from an early blues series with Martin Scorsese to Jimmy Hendricks,
James Brown, The Ths, The Rolling Stones and Frank Sinatra.

(58:04):
When Gibney is working with a subject as lionized as Sinatra,
I wondered, is there an expectation he'll put a shine
on their legacy? Trust me? As the Sinatra family will
tell you about some of the conversations we had. They
weren't always pretty. They were of the opinion that I
didn't shine the statue enough, though I think I think

(58:25):
Tina over time came to to become a much bigger
believer in in what we had done, even though she
was the skeptic going in. So you know, I had
editorial control, so I could do what I wanted. I
was focused in this film, though a little bit more
on Sinatra the musician and as kind of gats b
s character who kind of represented both the American dream

(58:48):
in the American nightmare, and that to me was was
interesting because because I have to be honest, I mean,
Frank Marshall was the one who who encouraged me to
take this project on, and I was not a big
Sinatra fan. I knew him as kind of the guy
who you know, hung around with Spiro Agnew and I
wasn't that interested. But I became, you know, in doing
the film, which is one of the great things about

(59:10):
doing docs. You become curious and you learn about a subject.
I became a huge admirer of his in terms of
his ability to tell stories in three minutes through his voice,
but also the tension, the rough and tumble tension between
where he came from and and where he was ending up.
And you know, we could have we've gone deeper into

(59:31):
the obvious up probably, and but I think that there
was enough there to give you a sense of what
was going on, and that it wasn't like we skipped it.
And one of the things that we got that was
so valuable. I mean, not only did we get this
sixteen millimeter film of his first retirement concert in which
we kind of used as a structure to tell the

(59:52):
story of his life, but the more important thing we
got were a couple of audio taped interviews that were
done at great length because of the problem with most
TV interviews, particularly back in the day, they were either
rolling these huge video cameras where you're having to sit
under these massive lights and everyone's sweating, or their film

(01:00:13):
cameras and you're changing the magazine, you know, every twelve minutes.
With audio, you could really have a conversation, which is what,
of course I try to do when I'm doing my interviews,
to just have a conversation rather than ask questions. And
it was those interviews with Sinatra, the audiotaped interviews, which
I think he was doing to explore whether or not
he might want to do, you know, an autobiography. Those

(01:00:35):
are the gold for us because they were very candid,
as well as a few sort of off the cuff
kind of Q and A sessions he did, including one
he did at Yale, which was wildly fun, you know,
because when you got him in a moment where he
didn't feel he wasn't kind of prethinking his answers, it
was gold. You could feel his pain, his ambitions, his passions.

(01:00:58):
It was It was great and and he's his sort
of profane reactions to everything around him. Now, for you,
do you tend to be with the same group of
people shooting, you have a you have a crew that
you prefer, or have you mixed it up with the
people you've used for your cinematic crew? Well I mixed
it up a lot. But there's one woman, Marie's Alberti,

(01:01:19):
who shot She shot the wrestler, she shot Creed, but
she also shot Enron Taxi to the dark Side and
others and armstrong laws. She was a key collaborator for
me early on because she took a weakness of mine,
which was cinematography and visualizing the frame. I came up
as an editor and really expanded my horizons in that area.
She's an extraordinary talent because you bridged the worlds of

(01:01:40):
documentary and and fiction. So Marie's the key collaborator for
me for a long period. She was also did a
bunch of Going Clear as well. But then the editors
have been I've been just blessed. I mean, and those
people I tend to go back to over and over
and over again, Alison Elwood and he Grieve, Sloan Clevin,
Mikey Palmer. Now people view you, I mean, you're heading off,

(01:02:03):
it seems like into a more dedicated period of making
narrative films. People view you as a great truth seeker.
You know, you want to go out and I don't
want to say catch the bad guy. I don't want
to make it like as a prosecutorial. But exposing abuses
of power seems to be a really in my mind,
that obviously potent theme in the work you do. Does

(01:02:24):
it have a fade or are you like you describing
the chemical molecist You're right as you see are you
still walking over the beach of vacation and you're looking
at your phone going God damn it, I can't believe
these people. Did you know is outrage and indignation follow
you everywhere you go? I'm afraid so, and I wish
it wouldn't. And you outline my vacation. I'm about to

(01:02:47):
go on a vacation for two and a half weeks,
and I'm sure I'll be consumed with the issue of
torture when I should just be dipping my lobster claw
and butter. Thanks for listening to this week's Summer staff Pick.
Here's the Thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeice, and myself Maureen Hoban.

(01:03:11):
Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
Danielle Gingrich. Alec Balden will be back next week.