Newsmaker

Every Friday, we choose an alum who has been making headlines—for better or for worse.
Ico print Print | Ico email Email | Facebook | | RSS

Alex Gibney ’77

This week finds documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney ’77 with three—count ’em—three movies in the Tribeca Film Festival, prompting a Tribeca cofounder to joke that it should be renamed the Alex Gibney Film Festival. One, My Trip to Al Qaeda, is a Vanity Fair pick for the fest. Another is an unfinished take on disgraced ex-governor Eliot Spitzer of New York, and the third is a collaboration with five other directors to bring the best-selling book Freakonomics to the screen.

Gibney’s run in the spotlight continues next week, when his Casino Jack and the United States of Money opens on May 7. His documentary on the jailed ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff is not to be confused with a feature film opening later this year, directed by George Hickenlooper ’86 and starring Kevin Spacey as Abramoff. (The two Elis squared off last fall over who would get to use the title Casino Jack; Hickenlooper went back to the drawing board.)

Gibney’s past subjects include Enron and US military torture, and perhaps it’s not surprising that a theme of social justice runs through his work: he is a stepson of the late antiwar, pro-civil-rights activist and Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr. ’49, ’56BDiv. But Gibney delves into pop-culture figures as well: still to come from the Gibney factory in 2010 are documentaries about Ken Kesey and Lance Armstrong.

Filed under movies, film
The comment period has expired.