AI Summary
5 min readIn 2022, filmmaker Alex Gibney was ready to finish a documentary about Elon Musk as a two-hour film focused on 21st-century economic power. Then Donald Trump was nearly assassinated, and Musk hitched his wagon to the former president. HBO told Gibney not to finish it—expand it. The story had gotten bigger. The result is Musk, a four-hour documentary that attempts to connect the dots between Musk’s personal history, his business empire, and his political transformation. Gibney and Musk’s first wife, Justine Musk, who speaks publicly for the first time in years, joined Kara Swisher to discuss what the film reveals about power, storytelling, and the man at the center of it all.
The Personal as Political: Gaslighting and Control
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of Pivot
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (00:05) **Episode Introduction** - Kara Swisher introduces a special Sunday episode from "On with Kara Swisher" featuring filmmaker Alex Gibney and Justine Musk discussing the new documentary "Musk."
- 2 (04:43) **Why Make the Film Now?** - Gibney explains the documentary's evolution from a two-hour film about economic power to a four-hour epic after Musk hitched his wagon to Trump.
- 3 (06:10) **Justine Musk on Speaking Out** - Justine explains her decision to participate after years of silence, driven by her daughter Jenna and a desire to put her experience on the public record.
- 4 (10:22) **Gaslighting as a Core Pattern** - Justine reveals she "first learned about gaslighting from Elon," connecting his personal behavior to his public manipulation of reality.
- 5 (15:10) **Fear and Speaking Truth to Power** - Both guests discuss the real risks of criticizing the most powerful man on the planet, and why they chose to speak anyway.
- 6 (23:34) **The Simulated Elon Interview** - Gibney explains his creative decision to create a computer-generated avatar of Musk using only his own recorded words and voice.
- 7 (28:53) **Distribution Headwinds and Media Consolidation** - Gibney details the challenges getting the film released, including Universal's reported cold feet and fears about the Warner Bros. merger with Larry Ellison.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
You get an extra, and you get an extra! Today, we're dropping On with Kara Swisher into the feed.
In his new documentary, ‘Musk,’ filmmaker Alex Gibney set out to answer two big questions about the world’s first trillionaire: How has Elon Musk assumed so much power, and why have we given it to him so willingly? Over nearly four hours, the film connects the dots between Musk’s various ventures — SpaceX, Tesla, Starlink, X, xAI, and Neurolink — to tell a bigger story of the unique threat he poses to democracy. The film also includes revealing interviews from people who know Musk personally, including his first wife, the writer Justine Musk, who hasn’t spoken publicly in years.
Kara sits down with Alex and Justine to talk about making the film, Musk’s obsession with being seen as an “engineer,” and Alex’s use of a computer-generated Elon as a stand-in for an interview with him (Musk declined to participate in Gibney’s film and declined to comment on this interview). They also talk about Musk’s hard shift toward right-wing politics and what it means for the midterms and future U.S. elections.
Questions? Comments? Email the On with Kara Swisher team at [email protected] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
More from this podcast
Pivot →