Corruption Watch: John Boehner's Abramoff Connection
The Speaker's recent hire of Brett Loper shows where his real priorities lie More »
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Alex Gibney is a documentary filmmaker who made Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. He has won an Emmy, a Peabody, the duPont Columbia Award, and a Grammy. More
Alex Gibney is the writer, director and producer of the 2008 Oscar-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, the Oscar-nominated film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, narrated by Johnny Depp. In post-production on My Trip to Al Qaeda, based on the play by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Lawrence Wright, Gibney is also filming a documentary on Lance Armstrong. Gibney served as executive producer for No End in Sight, which was also nominated for an Oscar; a producer for Herbie Hancock: Possibilities, a film about the jazz legend's collaboration with musical talents such as Santana, Sting, and Christina Aguilera; and consulting producer on Who Killed the Electric Car. Gibney's producing credits also include the classic concert film Lightning in a Bottle, directed by Antoine Fuqua; The Blues, an Emmy-nominated series of seven films in association with executive producer Martin Scorsese; and The Trials of Henry Kissinger. Gibney is the recipient of many awards including the Emmy, the Peabody, the duPont Columbia Award, and the Grammy.
The Speaker's recent hire of Brett Loper shows where his real priorities lie More »
Remembering the Abramoff connection to Ralph Hall, the new chairman of the House science committee More »
Roger Stone has been hired to embarrass the former New York State governor, and the media has been eating up his lies More »
The Eliot Spitzer documentary is released on demand and on iTunes before it hits theaters. Is this a good strategy? More »
The former head of the Christian Coalition engaged in spiritual fraud, telling his supporters he opposed gambling when it, in fact, was making him rich More »
Why was Colombian journalist Hollman Morris denied a visa? More »
Bumping into Donald Rumsfeld at the White House Correspondents' Dinner More »
For my new film, "CASINO JACK and the United States of Money," we interviewed Bob Ney about many things relating to the Abramoff scandal. Bob also talked candidly about his time in prison. Here's a moment where Bob, Lil Troy and Alberto Gonzales all come together. More »
The new ad for the KFC's "Double Down" -- a "sandwich" of two pieces of fried chicken flanking bacon, cheese and thousand island dressing -- ends with the slogan "UNTHINK!" Goldman Sachs couldn't have said it any better. Thinking about slimming down the power of the financial sector? UNTHINK! Thinking about trying to prevent another global economic heart attack? UNTHINK!On a day when President Obama is trying to encourage the investment banks to "join us" on… More »
Dr. Donald Berwick has helped doctors make health care more effective in the private sector. Now he can do the same in the public sector. More »
I am wending my way back home from the Sundance Film Festival, sleep deprived, blood full of hemoglobin from the altitude and ready to leave Utah's 3.2 beer. As Bob Dylan sang, "I'm going back to New York CIty. I do believe I've had enough." Still, I had a good time premiering my film, "CASINO JACK and the United States of Money" about former uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Audiences seemed to respond well, particularly in the wake of the recent Supreme Court… More »
Remember the phrase "welfare moms?" It was a phrase designed to attack the very idea of government programs by suggesting that taxpayers all over the country were subsidizing people who were too lazy to work. Well, in the current debate about health care reform, it may be time to coin a new phrase: Welfare Dons. They are the lazy, shiftless recipients of corporate welfare who have made America's health care system the most expensive and inefficient in the world.… More »
My Apologies to those who have been wondering where my blog has been.Fact is: I was filming the Tour de France for a documentary on Lance Armstrong I am directing for Sony Pictures. Yet, early in the morning on every stage, when I was supposed to be blogging, I was working on the editing of two other films I have been working on, "My Trip to Al Qaeda," based on a play by Lawrence Wright, and "Casino Jack (and the United States of Money)" about Jack Abramoff and… More »
Today I am in Barcelona, following Lance Armstrong's return to the Tour de France for a documentary I am doing for Sony Pictures. I am not a cycling expert, so do not expect unusual insights into the minutiae of strategy. However, in the course of doing the film I have come to love the sport and this extraordinary event in particular. Of the 21 stages in this event, today's will be critical. It is the first climb of the race from Barcelona to Andorra, a… More »
I just read the blog of fellow Atlantic correspondent Lane Wallace, in which she raised important issues about photographs and quibbled with my digs at semioticians in a blog I wrote about photos of detainee abuse. She notes that photographs will be interpreted differently by different people.As it happens, I agree. But that does not mean that we should allow our government to withhold the release of the photos. We can't interpret photos if we can't see… More »
I recently produced a film, called "Money-Driven Medicine," based on the book of the same name by Maggie Mahar, which looks at the way that our business model for medicine has badly damaged the patient doctor relationship. "What's that?" you may say. I thought that it was those damn government bureaucrats that were trying to get in between me and my doctor. Well, the director of this film, Andy Fredericks, followed doctors all over the country who are deeply… More »
Yesterday, Antonio Taguba described some of the Abu Ghraib photos of detainee abuse that President Obama is refusing to release as a way for arguing for Obama's point of view. Do images of rape and sexual abuse from Abu Ghraib really help a further understanding of anything?I hold Gen. Taguba - who conducted the most thorough investigation to date into Abu Ghraib - in the highest regard. But I am mystified by his remarks. The fact is that these photos are not… More »
In recent days, members of Congress have been "shocked, shocked," to use the words and cynical meaning of Claude Rains in "Casablanca," to learn that Barack Obama might consider bringing some of "the worst of the worst" from the SuperMax cells of Guantanamo to the mainland United States (for some reason no one has mentioned Hawaii). These prisoners fall into two camps - those who are completely or mostly innocent (but really angry now because they've been held… More »
What's with the ongoing "wussification" name-calling by cable chit-chat provocateurs like Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity? While Hannity and others have offered to be waterboarded - a sign they hope will convey just how mild the process is - Coulter has compared CIA interrogation techniques to the sexual highjinks of disgraced politicians. (In her fondness for an easy mix of sex and violence, Coulter may have been right at home at Abu Ghraib.) While I regard… More »
Flying back from Italy, I'm finding it hard to continue to reckon with the ongoing debate about torture. There is an inexorable psychological undertow pulling me away from a reckoning with something so painful. Can't we just move on? Yet every time I give in to the idea of going with the flow, I'm interrupted by something more upsetting: ongoing attempts to bury the past or to make light of it. Last week, President Obama announced that he would… More »
