Alex Gibney
speaker
375 appearances
4 recordings
3 series
first heard Sep 2024
last heard 27 Mar
Alex Gibney’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 1.
Appearances
No, I mean, I think they think, let's do stuff that's entertaining. And they hire executives who've been in the business before. But over time, tendencies emerge.
And the tendencies are, let's do the thing that worked the last time.
Yes, I think that's right. And you're looking over into the distance for... that swell that's going to be different. And I think it'll come, because it's always been like that. You know, you go back to the 20s and the 30s and the 40s. Think about what radio producers must have thought with the advent of television. It's over for us.
There was something I heard the other night. I went to a benefit for this small little outfit up in Maine, which is a place called the Carpenter's Boat Shop, where people who have found themselves betwixt and between spend time at a place where they learn how to build boats. Okay. Cool.
But this guy who's been doing that or who founded it and has been running that place for 45 years talked about his life. He said, I feel like My life is a rowboat. You know, I'm always looking backwards but moving forwards. And I was like, you know, it's not unlike this moment for creators. You know, you got to know what's happened behind.
But you keep going.
Because, you know, there's always a place, you know, you can't stay still, right? Yeah.
That's right, yeah. What is it? Art is born of constraint and dies of freedom. Because I can remember there was a period in docs where it was like, I'm not going to do a film for under, you know, $2 million or $3 million. That's just the way it is. And then I remembered, like, There was supposedly a conversation between Louis Bunuel and Nicolas Rey in Spain at some point.
And Bunuel, who had sort of learned how to save money by being a producer, was notorious for being very cheap and very efficient in his shooting. They used to call him Mr. Clapstick because, you know, to edit his movies, all you do is you cut out the clapsticks. And then you'd send it to the lab, right? But he was telling—
Ray, who was very frustrated after he'd done King of Kings, he says, I just can't get my own movies made. He said, well, you know, maybe if you reduce your budgets by like 50%, you'd get them made. And Nicholas Ray said, nobody would ever respect me, you know, in the industry if I did that. It was kind of a deeply sad moment.
And they both walked away from the dinner like not understanding what the other person was thinking about or saying. And it's hard because, you know, for documentaries, at a certain moment, instead of being... the person who had to pretend that they weren't really interested in documentaries in order to get hired, me, right?
You know, suddenly you could walk around and actually you could buy a house. You could think about sending your kids to college. You know, there was a business, there was an industry that could support people without you having to do some other job in order to do the job you wanted. On the other hand, you know, there comes a moment when if you really love what you're doing,
You figure out a way to make it work.
And screw the suits.
Yes. America is in decline because the country's been ignoring all of the contradictions that have been gnawing at it. for years and years and just pretending that they don't exist. And now they're catching everybody. Where do you think it goes? Look backwards and row forwards.
Showing 361–375 of 375 · page 19 of 19
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