By Terry Keefe(Currently appearing in this month's Venice Magazine. This is my fourth interview with the ever-engaging Gibney.)
Over the past decade, and particularly during the last five years, Alex Gibney has become one of the most important non-fiction filmmakers in the world, in addition to being arguably the most prolific. His Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, released in 2005, dissects that highly complicated corporate scandal in a manner which is easy to follow for the layman, a challenging task which the mainstream news media never seemed to accomplish. (For proof of that, go ahead and ask the person next to you what happened at Enron.) His Taxi to the Dark Side, released in 2007, was one of the most effective of the slew of documentaries which have been made on the intersection between the War on Terror and torture of prisoners of war, largely because Gibney focused his primary story on an innocent Afghan taxi driver who was wrongly imprisoned and tortured to death, and then was able to spin off into more diverse threads of his investigation because he had a solid narrative structure at his film’s core. Gibney is gifted at taking highly complex subjects and elucidating them, without dumbing those subjects down. His films are also highly entertaining, while never drifting into Michael Moore-style stunts to make his points.
(Filmmaker Alex Gibney, above.)
The topic of institutions and how easily they can become institutionally corrupted is a common theme in the past work of Gibney, and it is once again front and center in his newest feature documentary, Casino Jack and the United States of Money, which chronicles the career of disgraced super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, along with the trajectories of many in his orbit, some of which are household names. The institution under Gibney’s microscope this time is a bit broader than Enron, or the U.S. military, as the story of the rise and fall of Jack Abramoff is also essentially the story of Washington itself during the past decade.
Jack Abramoff first came to prominence as a young rising star and conservative ideologue in the College Republicans, where he first met the equally young Ralph Reed, who would become a close ally. After a career in Hollywood producing low-budget action films such as the Dolph Lundgren-starrer Red Scorpion, Abramoff went on to be one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington. In 2004 and 2005, Abramoff was called to testify before the Senate, who were investigating the large sums of money his lobbying firm took from Native American casino clients. Abramoff’s Senate appearance (he took the 5th) was only the opening note in a much bigger scandal which would soon break, as the extent to which Abramoff had funneled donations from wealthy clients directly to the campaigns of numerous Congressmen, was revealed. In January of 2006, Abramoff received a five year, ten month prison sentence (which was later mitigated to four years) when he pled guilty to conspiracy to bribe public officials, amongst other charges. Another very high-profile casualty in the scandal was the career of Tom DeLay, once the mighty House Majority Leader, who resigned in 2006 as his numerous connections to Abramoff and his clients came under scrutiny.
(Jack Abramoff, above.)
Abramoff, as well as many in his circle such as DeLay and Ralph Reed, believed strongly in capitalism totally unfettered of government regulation, or at least most government regulation. Gibney focuses much of Casino Jack on where this philosophy has led today, to the essential purchasing of power in Washington by corporate interests, as, without regulation, our government is literally for sale. Gibney also examines the moral cost of unregulated capitalism as practiced by Abramoff and his crowd, partially through the story of the Northern Marianas Islands, a commonwealth of the U.S. in the Pacific Ocean, where Abramoff had a number of clients in the clothing manufacturing business. Companies in the Marianas could put a “Made in USA” tag on their clothing, but without having to follow U.S. labor laws, a loophole which Abramoff pushed his Congressional friends to pass. What resulted in many of those factories in the Marianas, propped up by lax laws and lobbying money, could be called slavery. Made in the USA.
At the recent Tribeca Film Festival, Gibney debuted his new, still untitled documentary on Eliot Spitzer, to great acclaim. Some of his upcoming projects include Magic Bus, a film about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, and a film about Lance Armstrong for Sony.
Although you don’t interview him directly in the film, you visited Jack Abramoff while he was in jail. How did you find him personally?
Alex Gibney: I actually liked him. It’s one of the things that I’ve learned over the last few years, and the last few films…when people do bad things, they’re not necessarily utterly odious people. I found him to be charming. He was chastened by what he had done. He was very funny. A good storyteller. In a way, that shouldn’t have surprised me, because what a lobbyist does is to convince people of things, and he’s very convincing.
It was a four-year prison term Abramoff was given. He’s getting out soon then, I assume?
Yeah, he’s going to a half-way house in June, I think it is.
Did he let on to what he might be doing after that?
He didn’t really. I’m not sure he knows exactly. I actually hinted, and encouraged him to go on the road and talk to people about corruption in Washington. I offered him my film as an audio-visual aide if he wants to use it. I don’t know if he’ll take me up on my offer, but I hope he does.
How difficult was it getting some of the other principals from the scandal to speak on camera, particularly Tom DeLay?
Well, Tom DeLay was going on a book tour. In that context, it was just part of the tour. And, as you can probably tell by his appearance on “Dancing with the Stars,” he’s not shy.
Shameless, one might say.
Right. And, also what I found interesting about him, is that he’s so utterly unapologetic about the role money plays in our political system. I mean, he thinks there’s not nearly enough money in our political system. Which was terrifying to hear, but refreshing in its candor [laughs].
You know where you stand with him at least, I guess. To what degree have things changed in Washington since the scandal? Has Abramoff just been replaced by a new breed of lobbyist?
In some ways, I think it’s gotten worse. I think some reforms were passed having to do with things like dinners, and whether you could sit down or stand up at a meal, but I think they were rather insignificant changes, because the big thing that hasn’t been adjusted is the amount of money. I think the “revolving door” [Editor’s Note: in which Washington staffers jump to high-paying jobs at private firms] is still there, big time. Just recently, you had Barney Frank come out very upset that one of his key staffers had just hopped over to a financial firm. You have the tremendous amount of money that corporations can bring to bear, for or against a candidate. It just holds so much sway over the process. Particularly now, with the recent Supreme Court ruling. (Editor’s Note: The January 21st ruling in which corporations were granted the same free-speech rights as individuals.)
So, in a way, some of the bizarre tricks…that Jack would use…are no longer necessary. Now, it’s pay to play.
You spent some time in the film establishing how Jack was very conservative as a young man and an ideologue. As his story progresses, he doesn’t seem that driven by ideology, at least not outwardly. How much do you think that he was in fact driven by ideology as he became more successful, and how much more of his drive was fueled by greed and ambition?
Well, I think ambition and greed certainly drove him, especially later on. But, one of the reasons we spent so much time looking at that College Republican period, was to show the development of his period as a campus radical…but a radical from the right. That’s where I think all that stuff comes from [with Abramoff]…he believes strongly in radically reducing the size of government; in increasing the power of money; and going after, at least in the old days, the Soviet Union - that was an obsession so extreme that they would forgive any number of wildly bloodthirsty dictators . Of course, as he got closer to Washington, he becomes more of a player, and the good life, and the money, and the power…all become bigger and bigger motivators.
The story of what happened in the Marianas Islands was shocking.
To me, it’s the most shocking. I told Jack that. The fact is…it’s legal what he did. I don’t think it’s legal what DeLay’s people did. What they did to fix an election, I think, was illegal, and I’m surprised that no charges have ever been brought. What Jack did lobbying for them was perfectly legal, but for me, it was the worst thing that he did, because basically he was…selling slavery as freedom. You don’t get much worse than that.
These are smart people. They had to know what was really going on [in the Marianas Islands], or am I wrong about that?
I think it’s called willful disbelief. Or, that stuff, for them, was hiding in plain sight. And this is where I get to the whole idea of zealotry…because they decided free enterprise was so important, and getting government off the people’s backs was so important…they just imagined that what was going on in the Marianas was a good thing. And, as long as you talk to [prominent Marianas factory owner] Willie Tan, and the other businessmen, it was. Because for them, it was freedom. It just didn’t happen to be freedom for the people who were locked to their sewing machines.
I’m rephrasing a point you make in the film here, but it really resonates that that period in the Marianas Islands is what pure, totally unregulated capitalism looks like. There’s prostitution, indentured servitude, and it’s sort of a version of hell.
That’s why I called it Casino Jack and the United States of Money. When one finally decides that the only value is money…that’s where you go. You know the Golden Rule? Throw it out. Any sense of real morality? You’ve got to toss it overboard. There is no sense of right or wrong, except what money tells you is right or wrong. Money will go and do what it wants, but it is not a moral system. In fact, it’s an amoral system. It’s deeply disturbing that we have sold our moral values down the river for cash.
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