Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney’s documentary Musk opened in select theaters, ahead of a nationwide release. The film examines Elon Musk’s business ventures, his political ascent alongside Donald Trump, and his use of government data, while relying on archival material and a simulated AI avatar after Musk declined to participate.
Alex Gibney’s Four-Hour Documentary and the Decision to Simulate Elon Musk
Director Alex Gibney spent years examining the business arc and political rise of the world’s richest man for his documentary Musk. The project began in 2022 and was ostensibly finished by spring 2024, but evolved as political events shifted. Because Musk declined to be interviewed, the production team compiled a massive database of his public statements, podcast appearances, and public records.
To recreate the impression of an interview, the filmmakers designed an uncanny-valley avatar of Musk synchronized with his actual recorded voice. Gibney connected this stylistic choice to Musk’s own frequent references to reality as a simulation or video game, stating that the device reflects broader themes surrounding artificial intelligence.
Musk claims to be a “free speech absolutist.” It appears that he is more interested in FEE speech. https://t.co/lPtkgzVviL
Gibney has a history of investigating powerful and controversial figures, with previous documentary works including Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief,
and the Oscar-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side.
Regarding the subject of his latest project, Gibney noted that the billionaire is a particularly slippery subject who has generated a vast trove of litigation files and X posts.
Musk called Gibney a douche
and labeled the documentary a hit piece,
remarks that the filmmaker integrated directly into the production.
We collected a massive database of stuff that Elon had actually said, and those recordings are the recordings that we actually use in the film. We’re putting an avatar in the movie, but then playing these recordings.
Alex Gibney, Director
Corporate Expansion and Government Contracts at Tesla and SpaceX
Gibney highlights how early federal subsidies and carbon credits aided Tesla, while SpaceX secured billions of dollars in government contracts.
Before his time at Tesla, Musk co-founded a company called Zip2, which essentially put the Yellow Pages on the internet. Programmers reportedly had to rewrite some of his code during that early venture because it was so difficult to unravel that it created what was described as a hairball. At X.com, conceived as a precursor to PayPal, Musk collaborated with Peter Thiel.
On the political front, SpaceX secured over $8 billion in U.S. military contracts in this year alone. Meanwhile, reports indicated he spent $366 million to help Republicans in the midterms.
Ashley St. Clair’s Revelations and the Department of Government Efficiency
The film explores Musk’s personal life and his alliance with Donald Trump during the second administration. St. Clair discussed a child-support agreement coordinated through Musk’s fixer Jared Birchall, which included different levels of payments depending on cooperation.
St. Clair also revealed that shortly before Election Day in 2024, Musk told her he was feeling optimistic because they were going to unleash the anomaly in the matrix tomorrow. When asked what he meant, Musk pointed to space lasers, stating that he had over 10,000 lasers in space right now.
The documentary also examines Musk’s tenure leading the task force known as DOGE, alongside former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Trump donor and weapons entrepreneur Palmer Luckey. The agency relied on a team of young men who capped out at around age 25 to streamline federal systems and combat waste, fraud, and abuse. Gibney noted that the sudden shutdown of USAID might result in lives lost.
Legal Pushback and Upcoming Screenings
Ahead of the film’s theatrical rollout, legal friction emerged due to Musk’s wealth and willingness to sue, which made individuals in his orbit afraid to speak on camera. Even Musk’s father, Errol Musk, made a strange and uncomfortable appearance in the documentary after Gibney struggled to persuade people connected to the tech mogul to talk.
Fielder’s film hits theaters on October 16, exactly the same day Musk
opened nationwide.
Worth a look