Alex Gibney Quotes & Sayings

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. — Alex Gibney

Suicides aren't heroic in my opinion. And I don't think anybody ever really knows why somebody commits suicide. — Alex Gibney

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. — Alex Gibney

Steve Jobs did not start started Apple as a scam. But he understood early on the power of marketing. The idea of the computer as a bicycle for the human mind - I think that was something he believed. He believed in making people comfortable with these machines, which is why he spent so much time thinking about how to design them a certain way, how to make them so user-friendly and interactive, and why he spent so much time studying the Zeitgeist. — Alex Gibney

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.' — Alex Gibney

Even with a villain, you don't want him just to be some pockmarked punchbag. — Alex Gibney

When we go to war, our politicians will be guided by our popular will. And if we believe that torture 'got' bin Laden, then we will be more prone to accept the view that a good 'end' can justify brutal 'means.' — Alex Gibney

Jesus Christ never preached there should be celibate priests. The only reason the church has this is because it's a mechanism of power and control. You can control priests who are celibate. — Alex Gibney

What a terrible world it would be if we only did films that were poster boards for political causes. — Alex Gibney

Whether or not he came to believe it - so many people, when they have a mission, come to believe something in a way that may have started out as a slogan. You know, L. Ron Hubbard, not to make a random comparison, started Scientology as a scam. — Alex Gibney

When the producers of 'Why Poverty?' came to me to do a film about poverty in the United States, I asked if I could do a film about wealth instead. I tend to make films about perpetrators, rather than victims. — Alex Gibney

It's easy to get armchair analysts to talk, but to get people on the inside to talk is very, very hard. — Alex Gibney

One of the things about Steve Jobs is that he gives us an opportunity to look at the disjuncture between that world and the world he claimed that Apple represented, the "Think different" world of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and Gandhi. — Alex Gibney

You have to assume once you go online, anything you put there can be made public. Yet while you're online, you feel like it's a private, sacred space. But you're really broadcasting to the world. — Alex Gibney

You can't expect the institution to learn, if it doesn't accept any sense of justice. — Alex Gibney

The Church must be all-powerful. You discover these horrors within institutions because predators find ways of hiding in plain sight. — Alex Gibney

Dialogue between people of differing views is critical for fostering understanding in a democracy. — Alex Gibney

Here's where the insurance companies really fail us. They over-pay hospitals, specialists and drug companies and then raise premiums to cover the costs. Further, when they pay hospitals 115% of what it should cost to care for a patient, they are paying for inefficiency that can be dangerous. — Alex Gibney

I think the future of journalism is going to be a battle between caution and recklessness. And I think a little bit of recklessness is a good thing, as some of the WikiLeaks cables proved. — Alex Gibney

It's difficult for one filmmaker to criticize another. That's a job best left to critics. — Alex Gibney

Wikileaks in its essence is a publisher, pure and simple. They were very much in the same position as 'The New York Times' and 'The Guardian.' — Alex Gibney

To get discounts on some drugs, private insurers are willing to pay top prices for blockbuster pharmaceuticals like Vioxx, despite the fact that Vioxx was rumored to cause fatal strokes and heart attacks. — Alex Gibney

The internet connects us all and provides this fabulous fact-checking mechanism, and yet at the same time, the power of lies is conveyed much more efficiently now because they're accepted so fast. — Alex Gibney

I come from a filmmaking tradition and a storytelling background. So somehow I've emerged like a mutant who can straddle both worlds. — Alex Gibney

In the case of 'Zero Dark Thirty,' about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, an issue that is central to the film - torture - is so important that I feel I must say something. Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow have been irresponsible and inaccurate in the way they have treated this issue in their film. — Alex Gibney

I am furious at the way that we have allowed money to subvert our democracy. I am appalled at the way that the U.S., a very wealthy nation, permits and even encourages a level of poverty that other wealthy nations would not even consider. — Alex Gibney

'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? — Alex Gibney

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. — Alex Gibney

The funny thing about being Catholic, and I was raised Catholic, is that you identify with the Church, just as part of your character. Nevermind what you believe, it's just who you are. — Alex Gibney

There's something magical about a home run. It almost violates the space of the stadium. It's a game of the imagination in some ways. Baseball. — Alex Gibney

When it comes to governments and corporations, we should demand that less is secret. That's where corruption flowers. — Alex Gibney

I remember when I did my Enron film, my executive producers at the time felt very strongly that I should mock the Enron executives more viciously because everybody wanted that moment. — Alex Gibney

I'm not sure why, but I seem to be drawn to stories about abuses of power. But I'm also drawn, not so much to victims' stories, as stories that tend to show how power works. Because if you don't understand the criminals, you can't figure out how to stop the crimes. — Alex Gibney

Insurance companies pay big bucks for procedures but next to nothing for patient consultations and preventive medicine, which is what most medicine is. — Alex Gibney

Jobs would have ever have asserted that Bill Gates was not serious about technology. He was a huge pioneer in that world, albeit doing something quite different in approach from what Steve did. He was dismissive of Gates' foundation work as something he did to make himself feel better. — Alex Gibney

The message films that try to be message films always fail. Likewise with documentaries. The documentaries that work best are the ones that eschew a simple message for an odd angle. I found that one of the most spectacular films about the Middle East was 'Waltz With Bashir,' or 'The Gatekeepers,' or '5 Broken Cameras.' — Alex Gibney

There are many people, including me, who admire the original mission of WikiLeaks. — Alex Gibney

Fundamental problem in American democracy is that we are allowing congressmen and senators to be bought and sold like sneakers. — Alex Gibney

Now, unfortunately, some prissy card-carrying members of the U.S. Constitution have made us all look bad by pointing out that many of the Gitmo detainees weren't guilty of anything. Whoops! — Alex Gibney

I thought it was a classic David and Goliath story, and I was fully onboard Team WikiLeaks. I was very pro the leaks, barring the redaction issue. But I see WikiLeaks as a publisher. — Alex Gibney

Critics can say what they like about the films, but very often, there's a certain expectation of documentaries that they're supposed to be like PowerPoint presentations. I see documentaries as movies. So when I see some critics writing that we could have done without the recreations altogether - well, perhaps. — Alex Gibney

Documentaries can embrace contradictions in a way that journalism can't. — Alex Gibney

'24' glamorizes torture. I don't think there's any other way of putting it. — Alex Gibney

I don't think Steve [Jobs] started Apple as a scam. But he understood early on the power of marketing. The idea of the computer as a bicycle for the human mind - I think that was something he believed. — Alex Gibney

There are all sorts of inventive ways to get your film out there: sometimes via the Internet, sometimes via viral screenings in people's living rooms across the country. — Alex Gibney

The Bush administration will go down in history as the Torture Team. — Alex Gibney

When we were working on 'Taxi to the Dark Side,' we would purposefully not show it to certain people in the cutting room, because we would include a lot of horrible material and would need a fresh pespective. They would look at us and say, 'Are you out of your minds? You can't include that!' — Alex Gibney

With every project I start out on, there's no footage. It's always a big slog to find the footage. — Alex Gibney

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. — Alex Gibney

The sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church is the result of what police call "noble cause corruption," the belief that because you are dedicated to doing good, you can do no wrong. — Alex Gibney

If you go in thinking that you're smarter than everyone else, you want in a learning very much. If you go in thinking, "I'd sure like to understand this better," you end up doing precisely that. — Alex Gibney

Sports are the ultimate secular religion. Instead of being worried about whether your kids will be okay or how your job is going, you have your team, and you can focus all of your angst and your hopes and dreams on your team. I am in no way saying it always relieves any of this! — Alex Gibney

For years, the Bush Administration eviscerated all the military and legal structures that were designed to separate the innocent from the guilty in the 'Global War on Terror.' — Alex Gibney

It's hard to make a living doing documentaries. Frankly, if it takes you five years to do a film, and that's the only film you're doing, you're in trouble. — Alex Gibney

I feel that Julian Assange came to be both paranoid and self-regarding in ways that ultimately undermined his own mission. And so, the transparency radical became a secret-keeper instead of a secret-leaker. And that, I think, is a big problem. — Alex Gibney

Bill Gates, who is the classic computer nerd, as opposed to Steve who is, like the coolest guy in the world. And who is really doing things to make the world a better place? — Alex Gibney

Oscar always opens up doors, especially the night of the Oscars. On that night, you hold that gold man, and it's like having Gandalf's staff. You can go anywhere and do anything. It's a talisman of such power. — Alex Gibney

I'm a good learner. I can dig in. I knew nothing about mark-to-market accounting when I started the 'Enron' film. — Alex Gibney

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? — Alex Gibney

I don't consider myself a very good talker or writer but a pretty good filmmaker. — Alex Gibney

Every film may not be appropriate for a theatrical release, and the theatrical business is not a very good business for anybody except the distributor. — Alex Gibney

The job of a journalist is to find out stuff. The job of the government - sometimes - is to keep stuff secret. There's a natural tension there. — Alex Gibney

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. — Alex Gibney

In a busy world, even as information is moving so rapidly, we have to learn who to trust in that regard even as we ourselves have to become more critical of the people who we want to trust. It's a weird situation. — Alex Gibney

I think many articles in the New Yorker have a strong point of view, but they are so rigorously fact-checked. I wouldn't call them objective, but they feel fair. — Alex Gibney

I'm a sports junkie, and I am interested in athletic will - how you exceed the expectations of your own performance when it counts to deliver something beyond yourself so that you can win. — Alex Gibney

The stuff about film being a collaborative medium is no joke. — Alex Gibney

What's great about the Sundance Film Festival is the festival takes over that town as it's intended to do. But, it's very focused on a lot of other filmmakers and distributors so it almost feels like, while they're a lot of so-called civilians there, it's an opportunity that you have to see, to show your stuff to the other folks, your peers really, and to get that reaction. — Alex Gibney

In the case of the Catholic Church, it's hard to understand how they so willfully sacrifice the children. — Alex Gibney

In many ways, I'm a big admirer still of Julian Assange. He had balls to do what he did and his motivations in terms of holding the powerful to account are tremendously inspiring to me. — Alex Gibney

I would tell filmmakers: 'Don't just be seduced by the same old, same old. There are interesting things you can explore that may get your film out there to audiences better than the traditional distribution mechanisms.' — Alex Gibney

No one likes documentaries. — Alex Gibney

Why do we even need WikiLeaks? They're not the only organization that publishes leaks. And they don't have some special technology that allows them to post on the Internet with mirrored sites. The idea of WikiLeaks lives on, but as an organization, it's become increasingly irrelevant. — Alex Gibney

Every film is faced with the enemy of time. Only so much story can fit into the 90-150 minutes of time that moviegoers are willing to stay in their seats. Naturally, compression is necessary. So are the exclusion and amalgamation of characters so that the viewer does not become bewildered. — Alex Gibney

It would be hard to go to your neighbor and say the things people say on the Internet without getting punched out or having your tires slashed. — Alex Gibney

People who lie, particularly those who lie really big, can't do it effectively unless they feel that there's a righteous power behind what they're doing. You're entitled to lie because the end justifies the means. — Alex Gibney