Latest news with #Gibney
Los Angeles Times
16 hours ago
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
For these documentary directors, HBO is the anti-'Predictable Content Channel'
When Oscar winner Alex Gibney sent HBO Documentary Films executives an early cut of his new movie, 'Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos,' he was blindsided by the feedback he received. 'God bless HBO, they said, 'This is so good — make it longer.' I rarely get that note.' In the streaming world, documentaries have exploded, with newcomers like Netflix and Hulu chasing the next binge-worthy sensation. But HBO Documentary Films, which started in a nascent form in the late 1970s, remains a distinguished player, regarded as an especially prestigious and director-driven home for nonfiction fare. To understand why, it helps to talk to filmmakers who have recently worked with HBO — including Gibney, whose two-part documentary chronicles both Chase and his groundbreaking series across a sweeping canvas. 'I have a hard time making short docs,' jokes Gibney, whose 2023 MGM+ documentary 'In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon' stretched 3½ hours. ('Wise Guy,' initially two hours, is now roughly that length.) 'But [HBO] said, 'You've got all this great stuff. You should lean into this and that.'' Many directors echo this appreciation for the freedom HBO affords them to do what they want in a commercial space often dictated by algorithms and house styles. For Matt Wolf, the man behind 'Pee-wee as Himself,' about Paul Reubens and his alter ego Pee-wee Herman, it was important to craft a nuanced portrait. 'We had a lot of autonomy and made the film very independently,' Wolf says, 'until we were at the postproduction stage, when HBO became vital partners,' alluding to Reubens' shocking 2023 death, which revealed that the performer had privately been battling cancer. 'Some partners might've said, 'Paul's passed away, this is newsworthy — we need a film in a few months,'' Wolf says. 'But HBO was amazing in seeing that this is an evergreen story and that it wasn't a rush. It was more about doing something with gravitas that could be profound and emotional. That takes time, and they gave me that time.' Still, HBO offers its filmmakers plenty of notes — and has from the start. In 1979, Sheila Nevins was hired to run the channel's burgeoning documentary programming, eventually becoming president of HBO Documentary Films. 'Back then, HBO was a haven to make these really cool films,' recalls Oscar-nominated director Nanette Burstein, who first worked with Nevins as a co-writer and editor on 1995's 'Before You Go: A Daughter's Diary.' 'Sheila was the queen, and she was great at it. She gave pointed notes: 'This is what I think should happen.'' In 2019, Nevins left HBO for MTV Documentary Films, but Burstein, whose HBO documentary 'Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes' recontextualizes the Hollywood legend through a never-before-heard interview, credits current heads Nancy Abraham and Lisa Heller, along with Senior Vice President Sara Rodriguez, with continuing Nevins' championing of the director's voice. That said, Burstein adds, the present regime is 'very much respectful of a filmmaker and less — what's the diplomatic term?' She chuckles. 'Sheila had a very strong opinion. [Now] it's more of a discussion.' 'Sheila Nevins deserves enormous credit, not only for documentaries at HBO but documentaries, period,' agrees Gibney. 'She showed that they can be wildly entertaining, even when they're not about celebrities. She had a sense that they have to be viscerally powerful — they can't be like spinach.' But like Burstein, he acknowledges Nevins' firm point of view: 'I had some difficult conversations with her [about my films]. I would argue with her. Sometimes I accepted [her notes], sometimes I didn't.' Lance Oppenheim, director of 'Ren Faire,' a juicy soap opera about a battle for control of the Texas Renaissance Festival, was grateful HBO doesn't impose a mandate for how its movies look and feel. 'That's really admirable in this day and age when other buyers and streamers algorithmically make stuff,' he says. 'You can see it in some of the things that feel like they're being spoon-fed to us. They were always so open to the stylization [of 'Ren Faire'] that maybe other places would be a little bit intimidated by — or would've asked me to tell the story a little straighter.' No one expects a straightforward documentary from Eric Goode, director of Netflix's 2020 hit 'Tiger King.' His follow-up, 'Chimp Crazy,' is similarly outlandish, following a former nurse, Tonia Haddix, who's obsessed with collecting chimpanzees — even as PETA wisely tries to stop her. Goode's unconventional techniques, including hiring a proxy director to get close to Haddix so she was unaware of Goode's involvement, provoked criticism from documentary purists. But he argues that it's all in the name of promoting animal rights. 'If you want to make a difference, you can't just preach to the converted,' says Goode. 'You have to make a big bang. So many [advocacy] films feel like you're in school. You want to preach to people that don't know the issues. And the only way to do that is to do things that are entertainment, that are going to make people scratch their head and say, 'Wait a minute, I just watched this whole thing and there's something disturbing about this.'' When asked if HBO had qualms about his methods, Goode replies, 'It may have come up but not with me directly.' Executives' hands-off approach worked: 'Chimp Crazy' was the most popular HBO documentary in years. These five projects — a combination of celebrity portraits, true-crime thrillers and oddball sagas — suggest the breadth of HBO Documentary Films' strategy for an art form that has blossomed on the small screen. Balancing compulsive watchability with a touch of class, the company is still trying to break the mold while simultaneously catering to the masses. 'It feels very fresh,' Gibney says of the company's broad slate. 'It feels like a film festival — as opposed to 'Here comes the Predictable Content Channel.''
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Have I said too much?' David Chase and Alex Gibney on revisiting ‘The Sopranos' for ‘Wise Guy' doc — and, yes, that finale
It's been 25 years since The Sopranos debuted, and arguably no drama has had more of a lasting impact on how modern series are made. It's that legacy that Oscar- and Emmy-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney sought to unpack in his two-part Max documentary Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos, which is contending in the upcoming Emmy Awards. Gibney brings his famously well-honed interview and research skills to exploring the show as well as the man behind it, creator-writer-director — and 'Master Cylinder,' as we learn the cast referred to him — David Chase. 'To be able to look back, it was kind of past as prologue,' Gibney tells Gold Derby. 'I learned some things about the making of the show that I just didn't know. ... That's what you go into this for. That's why I do what I do.' More from GoldDerby Post-Cannes, here are 5 international films to watch out for at the 2026 Oscars Jennifer Lopez sets Vegas residency, Richard Linklater's 'Nouvelle Vague' lands at Netflix, and more of today's top stories How designer Marg Horwell transforms Sarah Snook in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' through quick costume changes (exclusive images) The first part of the documentary explores the show's origin story, while part two dives deeper into the relationship between Chase, series star James Gandolfini, and the character at the center of it all, Tony Soprano. 'It's not like Jim is Tony or Tony is Jim or Tony is David — his is a creative work of art, and that's the goal,' says Gibney. 'But to dig into inevitably over time how those relationships inform the show, that was really interesting. … It's not predictable.' Here, Gibney and Chase open up about how they truly felt about playing therapist and patient, why our 'gangster president' makes it more relevant than ever, and why (sound familiar?) it all cut to black at the end. Alex, why did you want to take on the subject? Alex Gibney: To be honest, I wasn't sure I did at the beginning. HBO asked me if I'd be interested in doing a doc on The Sopranos. And, of course, I love the show. But I wasn't sure whether I wanted to do a doc about it until I met David. I found David so engaging, so fascinating, and also, I found the origin story of the making of it so interesting. And that such a hugely successful series had come from such a personal place. So for all those reasons, I thought it would be a great thing to do. So I leaned in. And, thankfully, David was cooperative. David, what was your reaction when you were approached with the idea? David Chase: I was surprised. Well, to begin with, I was surprised that HBO wanted to do it. It had been a long time since the show was on. None of those studios like to spend money. And I was really surprised that Alex was interested in it, that we were getting someone who has made such great important documentaries. I said, 'Well, this is not important.' It's important in pop culture. Chase: But is pop culture important? Alex, I'll let you answer that question. Gibney: Honestly, I think it's important. I think it's a great creative work. And when you have [the opportunity] to figure out how it happened, and to dig into what it means and what its value is, I think it's important. You know, we live in a time when art itself is being devalued on purpose for political reasons. It's important for all of us to remember and understand how it elevates us and how it digs deep into issues. I would argue now that The Sopranos actually has always had an enduring value, but never more so than now when essentially, we have a gangster president. Given that there's been so much written about the series, Alex, what were some of the questions you wanted to explore? Gibney: Because I was interested in David and the origin story, I really wanted to dig into that. I think David was a little surprised when he walked on the set that we had constructed [a recreation of therapist Dr. Melfi's office], which I thought would be fun for all sorts of reasons. I don't want to take it too far, but there's something of the therapeutic endeavor in terms of talking to somebody — it's like the original idea of Freud as the talking cure. You talk yourself out, and inevitably something interesting emerges. I think David was surprised initially when I was asking him all these questions about his background and his upbringing, his relationship to his mother. 'Is this about me or The Sopranos,' which is something David kept asking throughout. I said, "I can't really decide which one it is, to be honest with you." When David wanted to get The Sopranos made, it was at a time when entertainment had become purposefully routinized because it was a mechanism by which you were renting viewers to sell to advertisers. That was essentially the model. And so you wanted to produce the most predictable, least offensive programming, which didn't lead to great art. But in this case, it was HBO that allowed the artist to speak directly to the audience, which is what changed everything. David, what was your reaction when you walked on to that set? We do see some of it in the film. Chase: I was just amused, really. It was fun, but it also brought out a level of concern, which he already alluded to, which is what was it really going to be about? Am I going to get psychoanalyzed? Which, believe me, I could go on for days talking about myself. Years. I have done that. So I was worried about that. And how did you feel about the final result? Chase: I think Alex did a really, really good job. I can see why people are entertained by it. They're more engaged than I thought they would be. This is going to sound silly, but it seems that people really look at it, like, as clues about the making of a piece of art, and they debate it. They debate things that are said in the documentary. But, you know, I've been working in television for so long that to me I'm not going to say that Sopranos is just a TV show. I know it's more than that. And I know that's what he was talking about, the commodification of entertainment. But still, it's a TV show. And I was amazed that people were looking that deeply into it. I'm glad they are. That's what I hoped would happen. Alex, you've tackled some tough subjects over the course of your career. How does David rank among them? Gibney: Except for the moment when he became uncomfortable with what we were doing, which was uncomfortable for me — we had built a big set, I didn't want David to walk. But at the same time, David is a delight to talk to because his interests are so wide and deep. That's what you hope for. I don't think of myself really as even doing interviews. I hope that when I sit down with somebody, it's really more like a conversation. To have a conversation with David is just a joy because you never know where it's going to go, which is always the best kind of conversation. David, from your perspective, how did it feel being interviewed by Alex or having a conversation with Alex as he says? Chase: I just enjoyed the conversation, and that made it easy. And that's why I was able to talk a lot. Because we have similar interests, a similar sense of what we think is stupid and absurd, that made it pleasant. And hearing gossip about people he had interviewed, that was great. Gibney: It was a quirky thing to do because a lot of people wondered, well, why didn't you interview so-and-so. And those are good questions. But it was never meant to be a Wikipedia documentary, like everything you always wanted to know about The Sopranos. I started out thinking maybe I would only interview David. And it was only when other people came up organically that it seemed to make sense. Like I didn't interview Matt Weiner, who's an extraordinarily talented guy, not because he didn't have an enormous contribution on the show, but because he was more in the later seasons, and I was focusing more on the origin story. There was a period where I thought, well, I'm only going to show clips from Episode 1 and the last episode because those are also the two that David directed, which is something I didn't really realize when I got into it. Because Sopranos, in addition to the great writing and the great acting, changed TV a lot in terms of its willingness to engage in a different kind of shooting for a TV show instead of the more predictable three sizes — wide shot, medium, close-up — traditional coverage, which is what allows writers to rewrite in post, but it's very cinematically uninteresting. Sopranos did something different. Inevitably, stuff came up, and I just reacted intuitively. The funny thing about making a doc is that it's just like writing a feature film script, except you write the script at the end instead of the beginning. Was it always intended to be a two-part series? Gibney: Well, that was a funny story where normally, the network tells you to cut it down. And I said, well, I'd like to get in the notes I kept getting — we want you to go deeper into the casting process, we want you to look at this more. I said, 'Well, I know, but I've only got so much time.' They said, 'Well, take more time.' How often do you get that note? Gibney: I don't get that note very often. But with HBO, you do. Chase: I have to say, I don't think they get enough credit. They really don't. You never hear that from other people. Take more time. Go deeper. That's just anathema. But given that this project started with HBO, did they place any restrictions on you? Chase: As far as HBO at the beginning, here's what [then-HBO head] Chris Albrecht said: 'Let's not do things just because we can do them. Let's not do things that are outrageous or attention-getting just because we can now do them. Let's not use language just because of that. Let's not have nudity because, 'Oh, look. We can capitalize on all that.'' I thought, 'Boy, that's really smart. It's artistic, and it's tasteful.' Most people, they'd be terrified of showing nudity. But if they got a chance to do it, it was a big deal. Like, is he gonna f--k the shrink or not? That was a big question all the time. You know how it would have been in a network show. Of course, they would have slept together. Gibney: There were no constraints put on [the documentary]. There's a couple of moments of tension, talking about how HBO treated the final two seasons in terms of splitting them in two so they might not have to pay bumps that they would otherwise have to pay and so forth. But I didn't get any interference on any of that stuff. It was really good. There's been a lot of conversation lately with documentaries about who has final cut. Assume you had final cut on this? Gibney: I did. HBO still retains that DNA, that idea that they're investing not in the channel, they're investing in the creator. And they assume that because they have confidence in the creator and they invest in that person, that'll ultimately redound at the success of the channel. It should be so simple, but not many networks operate that way. Chase: No. They don't. Even still, they do not. They hire people and they don't trust them in the end. What did you learn from the experience of making and watching the doc? Gibney: Some of the things that I discovered came out of stuff we literally discovered in in the vaults of HBO and David. One of those things were the casting tapes. After years of seeing The Sopranos and watching it over and over again, of course, these are naturally the people who should have been cast. Well, when you're starting, you don't know who's going to be cast. The universe is infinite. None of the people with the exception of Lorraine Bracco had any real star power in terms of recognizability. So to see the choices that were presented, that was really revelatory, Jim Gandolfini literally walked out, like he was disgusted with his own performance. And then David had to bring him back. But then when you see Nancy Marchand do it the first time in her audition tape, you think, "Wow." Chase: That was an incredible moment because we had been through many, many actresses and were all over the place and not good. All were similar in a way, 'I'm gonna do the crazy Italian lady.' [With Marchand,] it was like my mother had been reincarnated. David, what about you? What did you learn? Chase: I learned who my enemies are. (Laughs.) I learned I had no idea that a documentary could be that attractive to people, or that so many people would be interested in any documentary — even though the film school I went to was a documentary film school. And what I'm saying is ridiculous because I know people have loved Gimme Shelter and a lot of other documentaries. I was surprised at actually how much non-documentary creativity Alex put into it. It wasn't just straight shot after shot after shot. There was so much more going on. Gibney: I think that that ultimately is the fun part of the process. I started out as a scripted film editor. So to some extent, I'm always wearing two hats when I'm making a doc. But one of the things we talk about in the cutting room is the old Chekhov line — if there's a gun in on the mantle in the first act, it better go off in the third act. But very often, you're retrofitting. You realize the gun has gone off, but now you have to search for the guns on the mantles earlier on. That's part of the editing process. It's to make sure that everything kind of deepens everything else. Chase: Because, you know, film is such so plastic. Sometimes you really don't know what the movie is about. When Chekhov said that, he probably was talking about writing. If you put a gun in there, better write a gun in the third act. Given all of the debate about the series finale, Alex, how did you come up with your approach to it? Gibney: I didn't know. Of course I knew I was going to talk about it. And then we got to a solution at the end that seemed just obvious, particularly when David said the immortal words, 'The truth is…' That seemed like the ultimate kicker for all sorts of reasons. What is the truth? I didn't know how I was going to approach it, but I think we came up with the right solution. David, do you agree? Chase: I do. Although I've been blamed for it. They'll say, 'That a--hole ended [the doc] the same way.' I didn't do it. They'll talk about what a great documentary, and they'll blame me for the ending. Gibney: That you can lay that on us. I mean, I was hired by David, but you can lay that one on me. Chase: I don't use this word too much, but it was fun in a way, that ending. Gibney: That was the idea — how to do something that's fun and deep at the same time. There were little bits and pieces I stumbled onto along the way, like David's enormous love for the Meadowlands. Chase: It's the largest urban wildlife area in the world. It's wildlife in the middle of an urban sprawl. Gibney: So there's a sense of mystery and contradiction in it that that all you can do is show it, and you get the sense, you get the feeling — did you just trip over Hoffa's body? But the idea of having fun and also digging deep, that was the intent. Andy Grieve, who's my editor, he was the one who started leaning into the idea of the rapid-fire biography that we do at the beginning where David's talking about where he grew up and how he's made it and his mother. Every line is tripping over itself. We push it even further because it's a send-up of the traditional documentary at the same time as it's an acceleration of the talk everything out idea, which then ends with David wondering, 'Wait a minute, have I said too much?' This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 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Irish Independent
15-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
Dublin TD Sinead Gibney replaced as Social Democrats Foreign Affairs spokesperson
The TD has been replaced by Senator Patricia Stephenson. Ms Gibney confirmed this morning that she is no longer the party's spokesperson on Foreign Affairs. She was appointed the party spokesperson for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation; Enterprise, Tourism and Employment; Foreign Affairs and Trade; and Defence after the general election. However, she is now no longer the spokesperson for the brief. Party sources said TDs were reshuffled spokesperson positions as they were assigned committee roles in recent days. Asked at Leinster House today if it was true she was no longer Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Ms Gibney confirmed: "Yes, and there will be a statement from the party." She would not answer questions on whether she is leaving the party. Social Democrats stand-in leader Cian O'Callaghan said today: "I'm not aware that she's cheesed off, or anything." He said Ms Gibney would have three other roles as spokesperson for the party, on Enterprise, Trade and Employment; Arts, Media, Communications and Culture; and on Defence. Asked if there was any reason she had been reshuffled out of Foreign Affairs, he said: "No. She has been excellent in the role." "We are readjusting our senior roles," Mr O'Callaghan said. Senator Patricia Stephenson was taking over the role and joining the Dáil Foreign Affairs committee "because of her background in peace-building." Gibney has been vocal on Gaza and last week would not rule out resigning form the party if Eoin Hayes was readmitted. Mr Hayes was suspended from the party pending an internal review, after it emerged he sold his shares in a US software company that supplies technology to the Israeli military following his election as a councillor last year. An internal review in February, which examined both the suspension of Mr Hayes and the party's candidate selection process, decided to uphold the indefinite suspension of the Dublin Bay South TD.
NZ Herald
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
Rebecca Gibney talks Happiness, turning 60 and her career challenges with Paula Bennett
" I feel very fortunate in that I'm now at a stage in my career that I can just look at what's out there and go for different challenges. 'I wanna keep reinventing myself. Another thing has come up recently that may or may not happen, but it's in a totally different field for me, going down a totally different path. And I normally would've said, 'No' – but this year, for some reason, I keep going, 'Sure, I'll have a look at that. Yeah, why not?' 'I just don't wanna stagnate. I don't want to head into my third act and just be boring. So I don't wanna retire, I don't wanna garden, I wanna do stuff.' Gibney's latest project is Three's musical comedy Happiness, where she plays Gaye Summers, the president of an amateur theatre company in Tauranga. She said the show has 'magic written all over it', and that role came along at the perfect time for the challenge she was looking for. " I got to do warmups. I got to get in a studio and sing with real singers. We got to have choreography. It was just really fun and again, it just brought out the young child and me, the one that did used to love dancing when I was young and did love singing. 'So to be given that opportunity was just such a gift.' It's just the latest in a long list of TV roles. Gibney's career is so beloved that last year she was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the Logie Awards, the biggest night in Australian television. To accept the honour, Gibney said, she had to convince herself she deserved it. 'Initially, when they rang and suggested that it might happen, you know, we all have that imposter syndrome thing and so my first reaction was, 'I don't deserve it', and there's a little voice going, 'does this mean it's all over?' Because then it's totally overwhelming. 'But then to get to the night and have all these wonderful people say such lovely things, and then my son [Zac] to present me with the award, it's definitely up there with my top 10 experiences ever in my life.' Despite her concerns, her career definitely is not showing any sign of slowing down. Gibney is due to take part in the Australian version of Dancing with the Stars in a few weeks and will follow that up with her first theatre production in more than 20 years. She told Bennett she had turned down Dancing with the Stars several times before, but this time wanted the challenge. Yet she found herself dealing with feelings of self-doubt, to the point that she had to speak to a therapist to find out why she was taking the show so seriously. Advertise with NZME. " And as the therapist said, it is because it's tapping into other sides of me. It's tapping into other things that I probably need to look at. So I thought it was just a dance show, but it brought up all this other stuff, which is good, because I think you have to keep learning and changing and dealing with issues when they come up." Gibney said she spent much of her early career feeling like an impostor, and did not start off acting with a huge amount of confidence. But after years of hard work and learning and getting wiser, she's at a point now where she feels she's got it. 'My kind of motto over particularly the last 12 months since turning 60 has been, I just wanna look after all the younger versions of myself that I treated so badly when I was young. 'I judged myself so harshly, as we always do as a 15-year-old. I was like, 'I'm too fat, my skin's terrible' – so I wanna go back and look after all those versions of myself.'
Fox News
17-04-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
What HBO's 'The Dark Money Game' won't tell you about the left
"The Dark Money Game" – two new feature-length documentaries from Alex Gibney that debuted this week on HBO make it sound like the network's initials stand for Helping Bernie on Oligarchy. Some leftist journalists and filmmakers have suggested Donald Trump represents the end of American democracy, but the bitterest socialists suggest democracy was ended by the Supreme Court in the 2010 Citizens United decision. To paraphrase a famous bank commercial, it's apparently the worst decision in the history of decisions. Radical documentarian Gibney – dyspeptic enough that he told the Daily Beast in 2013 that Pope Benedict XVI was a "criminal" – made two films under the heading "The Dark Money Case." They debuted this week on HBO. In the two documentaries, he uncorked a large conspiracy theory, that religious conservatives and rapacious corporate capitalists have overthrown democracy since 2010. This conspiracy was realized with the help of those evil conservatives at the Federalist Society. The first of the two Gibney documentaries, "Ohio Confidential," is about a bribery scheme within the Republican Party, but to Gibney the "corruption" in Ohio included the passage of a pro-life bill. "Flush with campaign cash from dark money donors, the anti-abortion side was all smiles, like a team that plays the game knowing the fix is in." All the journalism exposing dark money from George Soros or Reid Hoffman or Arabella Advisors or Act Blue is never going to get a minute on HBO. Ohio's scandal is presented as a national scandal for the GOP. But, any local scandal for the Democrats is never national. Gibney was inspired by leftist New Yorker writer Jane Mayer and her 2017 book "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right." She echoed the thought that a pro-life bill in Ohio represented "private interests" taking over politics. When the Left loses, the "public interest" loses. Journalists should expose bribery when it happens in politics, of course, but Gibney and HBO proceed as if one side of the democracy is corrupt, and that "dark money" is somehow something that is never scandalous when employed on behalf of the Left. So, all the journalism exposing George Soros or Reid Hoffman or Arabella Advisors or Act Blue is never going to get a minute on HBO. Ohio's scandal is presented as a national scandal for the GOP. But any local scandal for the Democrats is never national. The second Gibney documentary, "Wealth of the Wicked," focuses on the origin of the Citizens United case, how the McCain-Feingold "campaign reform" bill made it illegal for the group Citizens United to air ads for its film "Hillary: The Movie" within 60 days of an election. "Campaign reform" was designed to prevent conservatives from going around the liberal media elite with critical films about Democrats. Now they try to suppress that information as a "misinformation" offense. Mayer complained that in 90% of races, the candidate spending the most money is the winner. "And if you have so much more money than the other side has, you can completely drown out the other side." The problem with an argument like this is that many House and Senate races are not competitive. According to Ballotpedia, in 2024, 43 House and Senate candidates won an election by five percentage points or fewer, representing 9% of all congressional elections. Eighty candidates won an election by ten percentage points or fewer, representing 17% of all congressional elections. Candidates who aren't expected to have a chance won't get funded. Then there's the umbrage about "completely drowning out the other side." This is unintentionally hilarious, because these Gibney films for HBO always drown out the other side. In this case, Gibney offered "conservatives" like former pro-lifer Rob Schenck, who is now in favor of abortion. Hence, they are no longer conservatives. Schenck underlined the Gibney thesis: "We have a little aphorism built on a Bible verse: 'The wealth of the wicked is laid up for the righteous.' So, yeah, let's baptize the billionaires' money. We can do that and it eventually brought together this alliance." The leftist critique of big money in politics, and their demands to somehow remove it, is utopian wishful thinking. Trying to take money out of politics is like trying to take the bark out of dogs. It can't be done. It's especially near-sighted because it doesn't acknowledge the centrality of TV advertising and the news media in campaigns. The Left complains that speech is money, but leftist journalists can propagandize on HBO and that somehow doesn't count as "money in politics," which it certainly is. What's the advertising equivalent of that kind of airtime? The Left doesn't see it that way, because dominating the national discussion is what they define as democracy. "Non-commercial" non-capitalist media outlets like PBS and NPR promote a lot of leftist messaging and drown out conservatives, which represents Gibney's radical goal of "taking the money out." But they're taking the money out of conservative pockets and using it to smear them. That's somehow the antonym of "oligarchy." Documentaries like these imply the political system is unfair when conservatives win anything.
