Only one person agreed to be Alex Gibney’s new Elon Musk documentary immediately: Musk’s father. “We had Errol Musk at ‘hello,’” Gibney says.
\n\nEventually, the director would speak with scores of Musk’s associates for his film. His first wife, Justine Musk, appears, as does his ex-girlfriend Ashley St. Claire. Journalist Kara Swisher, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, myself, and WIRED global editorial director Katie Drummond also spoke to Gibney for Musk, which hits theaters nationwide on Friday. But landing Errol Musk, with whom the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has a complicated relationship, was a watershed.
\n\n“Everybody else took a lot of persuasion,” Gibney says. “It was very difficult to get people to appear because the risk profile for talking about Musk in a way that was honest was high.”
\n\nOnce Gibney interviewed all of his subjects, he had enough material to make a documentary that runs nearly four hours, including a 10-minute intermission. It’s a damning portrait of the trillionaire CEO, detailing how much of his genius is based on his formidable ability to promote his own mythology—and the stock price of his public companies.
\n\nMusk never agreed to an interview with Gibney. Instead, the director’s team researched every public comment…
Original source: https://www.wired.com/