Alex Gibney
Alex Gibney
Philip Alexander "Alex" Gibneyis an American documentary film director and producer. In 2010, Esquire magazine said Gibney "is becoming the most important documentarian of our time"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth23 October 1953
CountryUnited States of America
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When I was a kid, I played sports a lot. My mom and dad were divorced, but I hung out in the neighborhood a lot, and it was all about sports. I would be out all day on the sand lot or on the hockey rink. My dad would take me to baseball games, but he worked so hard, and he would always fall asleep.
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Many people have this memory of traditional TV documentary-making that aims to portray pure reality, and I just don't see that as the only option.
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The whole macho thing has to be reexamined. Because in my view, the Bush administration was weak, not strong. To engage in a policy of torture is a weak policy. Because ultimately, it encourages the terrorists. It undermines our own values. It corrupts our system. And it doesn't get good intelligence.
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We live in a world where everyone thinks they do the right thing, so they are entitled to do the wrong thing. So ends can justify the means.
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'Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream' is an intentionally angry film. How could it not be when the chance of an infant dying is five times greater on the Bronx Park Avenue than on Manhattan's Park Avenue just across the Harlem River?
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I think of my films as not necessarily political but more moral. Between my father, my stepfather, and my mother - they all felt pretty passionately about the importance of standing up and doing the right thing, and none of them were suck-ups. What motivates me is usually abuse of power.
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It might kill you to say it, because the film really takes on the Catholic Church, but I do think there is a sort of affection for certain rituals, and an authenticity to the presentation of those rituals, in 'Mea Maxima Culpa.'
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I think myself and a lot of other documentary directors owe a debt to fiction filmmaking. The key was to follow the characters and let the narrative be your guide, without getting distracted by other things. By structuring 'Enron' like a heist film, it enables people to understand enough of the complexity without getting bogged down by it.
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In the U.S., hospitals are rewarded for keeping hospital beds full. That's the market at work. The question is: should we work for the market, or should the market work for us?