MUSK Documentary Maker: Elon’s "Psychologically Unhinged"

Alex Gibney (0:00)

One of the scariest things is that he seems to be a person who's psychologically unhinged, and I think he grew into that, with an enormous power, enormous power.

John Johnston (0:14)

Hi everyone, JJ here. Welcome back to The Lounge. We'll have more on the Musk documentary, which opens in theaters this week. The filmmaker Alex Gibney has the lowdown here, and he's sort of trolling Elon here on X when he says, Dear Elon Musk, You have called my film a hit piece without seeing a frame. Why don't you come see it? It opens on October 9 in LA and New York. If you give me some notice, I'll save you a seat. Best Alex.

And as a follow up to that, somebody answers, Hey Alex, take note of how few views your posts get on X. And he does have a screenshot here, implying that it's being suppressed. And Alex Gibney does agree with that. It's pretty obvious. That's how it works on X. Elon doesn't like something like this, that he will suppress it. Supposedly being a free speech absolutist, but not so much. In this other profile, Musk Film Facts, we tried to promote a post quoting Elon's own words on free speech.

X deemed it unacceptable content. The tag designed for flagging hate speech and abuse now halted our post. We appealed. X declined our appeal immediately. First, they suppressed the trailer. Now, they hit the facts. Musk opens Friday in select theaters. So yes, suppressing the trailer. I did a video about that where there were various platforms that wouldn't allow the trailer to be advertised and then that got overturned. This is a Hollywood Reporter article. I did do a video about that whole saga as it's been playing out and it continues to play out, but it's finally opening. And this interview here that Kara Swisher has, well, this is a teaser to the longer interview that she did with Alex Gibney and Justine Musk, Elon's first wife, so it should be really interesting. But I've just picked out a little bit here. This is quite far into it where they're talking about how Elon is psychologically unhinged, but also enormously powerful, really dangerous combination, right? So let's get into it.

Kara Swisher (2:29)

One of the things you do well in the film, Alex, is you connect all these dots, AI with space, with cars, with government power, government ties and Starlink. Another I remember when you discussed that idea for the first time, great idea, great big idea kind of thing.

That data of course is routed through SpaceX, Tesla's cameras and microphones can be used to collect data. What do you think it's all adding up to each of you at this point where we are in the game?

Alex first.

Alex Gibney (2:59)

Well, one of the scariest things is that he seems to be a person who is psychologically unhinged, and I think he grew into that, with an enormous power, enormous power, but power that he doesn't really know what to do with. There's a kind of chilling moment toward the end of the film, where one person says, well, why is it so important, Elon, for you to accrete all this power with the satellites, the space and everything else into one sort of global business?

There's like a two-minute silence. He can't answer that. It's like Ted Kennedy being asked, are you running for president? He has enormous power, but no idea what to do with it, which is maybe the most chilling thing of all, because the hardest thing to do in this film was to at once communicate the deadly seriousness of this massive accretion of power. And at the same time, understand that there is fundamentally something so un-serious about him, you know, in terms of his perspective or his ability to see the world in some kind of holistic fashion.

John Johnston (4:15)

Okay, so this is his first wife, Justine, who does have some insight into this, obviously, having kids with him, having lived with him.

Alex Gibney (4:23)

Justine.

Justine Musk (4:23)

I once described him, this was many, many years ago, but this is what comes to mind. I once described him as somebody who can like jump off the edge of a cliff and, you know, invent a parachute on the way down. Like he, I think he thrives on chaos. I think, you know, a lot of it, when you read about PTSD, when you get to know, you know, more about how that reshapes the brain, I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me, because if you, you know, listen to the language that he uses and, you know, like even taking into account that a lot of it is a pitch, it's performative, but, you know, everything is, it's very, very urgent, you know, we're going to die, the world is going to, you know, be destroyed.