Alex Gibney Quotes

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Alex Gibney

Profession : Director

Birth : October 23, 1953

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alex Gibney

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

Alex Gibney

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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