alexgibney
Latest
HBO documentary on Theranos' rise and fall premieres March 18th
You may be familiar with the gist of Theranos' rapid rise and equally rapid decline, but HBO is betting that you don't know the whole story. The broadcaster is premiering a documentary on the former medical technology darling, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, on March 18th. It's directed by Going Clear's Alex Gibney and aims to shine a new light on Elizabeth Holmes' company using "insider footage" as well as interviews with people directly involved in the saga, including whistleblower employees and the Wall Street Journal reporter who uncovered the scandal.
Alex Gibney on Stuxnet and why we need to talk about cyberwar
It's been six years since we discovered Stuxnet, the worm that infected Windows PCs worldwide and was eventually traced to the United States and Israel as a way to attack Iran's nuclear program. It was the first time a cyberweapon was used to attack a physical location (it disabled uranium enriching centrifuges by causing them to spin out of control), and it sparked the use of cyberattacks from governments all over the world, including Russia, Iran and North Korea. Alex Gibney, the acclaimed documentarian behind films like Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and the recent Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, decided to dive into Stuxnet's legacy with his latest film, Zero Days. I sat down to chat with him about the film, together with Symantec researchers Eric Chien and Liam O'Murchu.
New Steve Jobs doc examines the myth of the man who made Apple
Director Alex Gibney wraps up his latest documentary, Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, with an apt encapsulation of the Apple co-founder's conflicting persona: "He had the focus of a monk, without the empathy." Jobs, who passed away in 2011 of pancreatic cancer, was the genius who transformed Apple into a pioneer of the PC era; and was then kicked out of his own company before returning to revolutionize the way we listen to music and use phones. But he was also a man who, in the pursuit of fortune, infamously ran away from his responsibility as a father, and is generally known for being a tyrant. So how do you reconcile these two extremes? Gibney's doc (available today on iTunes and other streaming services) doesn't settle on an answer, but throughout its two-hour runtime, he explores what made Jobs tick, and what made millions of consumers admire him. And while The Man in the Machine covers plenty of familiar territory -- how many times do we need to see the Apple origin story, really? -- Gibney still manages to give us fresh insight into Jobs through newly unearthed footage and interviews.
