Esquire profile: Alex Gibney “is becoming the most important documentarian of our time”
“We are a fallen and dark-hearted species, and so Alex Gibney will never want for work. But immersion in some pretty fetid swamps — telling the stories of the spectacular thieves at Enron (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, nominated for an Academy Award), American torturers in the war on terrorism (Taxi to the Dark Side, winner of the Academy Award), and perhaps the biggest crook of the Bush era, Jack Abramoff (the subject of his latest documentary, Casino Jack, out May 7) — has worn on him. He slumps in his chair, a look of exhaustion and deep contemplation on his face. He looks out the window of his office — an old warehouse in Manhattan that he’s converted into Jigsaw Productions — scratches his hairy chin, yawns. Are these people bad guys? Yes, without a doubt. Are they unalterably, irredeemably bad? No, of course not…” Read More > Esquire profile: Alex Gibney “is becoming the most important documentarian of our time”
New York Times on Tribeca: “the year of Alex Gibney”
The 9th Tribeca Film Festival opens this week and it seems that Jigsaw films are the highlight. The New York Times yesterday featured a piece about the festival with a brief rundown of the interesting films, and it seemed evident to them which film most impresses: “My Trip to Al-Qaeda,” which exemplifies the loftiest ambitions of the Tribeca Film Festival … is an utterly compelling (dare I say entertaining?) personal history lesson, filled with insights that come as little jolts. … [A]mong the two dozen Tribeca films I’ve sampled, none is as revelatory as “My Trip to Al-Qaeda,” a cinematically illustrated Spalding Gray-style monologue by Mr. Wright, which begins with his description of his personal connection to 9/11. As it so happens, My Trip to Al-Qaeda isn’t the only Jigsaw film at Tribeca this year. The festival will see the premiere of Freakonomics, a documentary based on the best-selling book of the same name, which includes a segment by Alex Gibney on corruption in sumo wrestling. Also at the festival, in unfinished form, is our as-yet untitled film about Eliot Spitzer, before and during the scandal that removed him from power.