Challenges of Creating Content During the Pandemic

in our population. Basically asks what makes killers kill? Yep, you heard that right. Let's bring in Oscar winning filmmaker Alex Gibney. He's got a new documentary at It's called Crazy Not Insane. Alex, of course the filmmaker behind films familiar to our audience, including Enron, The Smartest Guys in the Room. He's done documentaries on Wiki Leaks, Elliot Spitzer. He is founder of Jigsaw Pictures, and Alex joins us on the Fund from New Jersey. Alex, Welcome to Bloomberg Radio.

Great to have you here. Great to me there, Carol, So I don't know if it's there. Yeah, that's kind of how it works today. Totally get you. How are you first of all I'm fine. I'm good. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm fine. All good. Thank you for asking. Well. I'm doing well too, and glad to hear that on your end. Um, I want to ask you before we kind of get into crazy not insane. I mean, I do wonder though, how your world has been impacted by

the pandemic. We've talked to a lot of content creators, film heads of film studios that were shut down because of the virus. You know, they're now finding their way back under some new protocols, uh and kind of filming with zones and so on and so forth. But I'm curious for a documentary filmmaker, you know, how, how is your world impacted or were you able to do a lot kind of business as usual? To some extent, it wasn't business as usual, but we were able to do

a lot. I mean, we never really stopped shooting um and uh, and we found ways of editing remotely, and we even pioneered I mean, you know, myself and two colleagues just finished the film about the you know, federal response to covidull until really under control, and we pioneered a new kind of camera called the COVID cam which enabled people to actually get a camera on their doorstep and we can remotely monitor it via the via the web, and no human beings contact with each other. Yeah, that's

pretty wild. Is that that's not out yet? Is it? It is? It came up, It came up. It was on Hulu. Um, it still is on Hulu. Came up, but it it came out just before the election were on October fifteen. Alright, Sorry, I've been a little distracted because I going on my apologies, So tell me about your documentary Crazy not Insane. To be fair, I've seen a trailer, so, um, I've seen a little clip it

of it, a clip of it. You know, you follow the work of a notable psychiatrist who has assessed a number of high profile killers like Ted Bundy, Mark David Chapman. Tell us a little bit about her and how you

came to kind of do this documentary. Her name is Dorothy Ought now Lewis, and I came to her as part of research for a scripted project I'm doing with Laura dern Uh and Laura came to me with a notion of of wanting to do something about psychiatrists whose job it is to examine UH inmates on death row and determine whether they are sane enough to be executed um and which is kind of a crazy idea uh

in and of itself. And so in doing research for that, I I was looking for prototypes for this character and found Dorothy. And Dorothy had written a book about her experiences.

But Um. She was a psychiatrist who, after studying juveniles for many, many years, stumbled into the world of testifying on behalf of usually defense attorneys, either in trials or for death penalty appeals and UH and pioneering a new kind of research into the minds of killers UH and trying to determine how and why, well not so much, how more why they kill UM and and so it became a kind of fascinating tour through UM through Dorothy's work,

who was a kind of detective of the mind. I mean, I don't want to give it all away because I want people to go watch it, But I mean, what was she like? I mean, this is this is kind of interesting. I mean, the subject matter is just fascinating, but I'm curious what she was like and and UM in terms of the process of her going about this. I mean, this is pretty growesome stuff. It is grewesome stuff. And and when you meet her, I mean, Dorothy is

a sort of a bubbly lady. She's now over eighty, but she's still full of energy and vitality as a sort of mischievous glint in her eye. What was that There's a line of a novel. He was born with a gift for laughter in a sense that the world was mad. That's Dorothy Lewis. And uh and and so she has fun. She has these hairless but she's at her desk, which is a table in her living room. She's surrounded by an ocean of papers. Um. And she's just a you know, one of the most curious people

I've ever met. But she's curious in this peculiar area of trying to understand human violence. And that led her certainly down some very dark paths, and indeed led her into some chambers of people like Ted Bundy, um you know alone, um, serial killers between her and the door, with only her persuasive powers as a psychiatrist to protect her. Right.

You know, I do wonder, Alex and I want to go back to you mentioned your documentary on COVID Totally under Control, and I was just talking with um one of our news anchors, d Prisoner, and you know, we're talking about it's kind of staggering in the face of all the evidence, of scientific medical evidence that's out there

about the virus. You know, I'm curious, in doing this documentary why you think that people are having such a hard time believing in the virus and even leading up to the election, and even after Donald Trump had the virus, he had a lot of supporters still and thinking he was doing a good job at it. Well, there are

two separate things. I mean, one is he was he was trying very hard to convince his followers and you'd almost have to call him followers that the virus wasn't really that real or that dangerous, even though we now know he knew it was. UM. But the doing a good job, that's the part I have a harder time understanding. If anybody watches Totally under Control, you will see forensically exactly how bad a job he did. You couldn't between him and Jared Kushner. You couldn't imagine anybody doing the

worst job if they had actually tried. UM. So that's just a matter of competence. I mean utterly incompetent. And as a result, you know, to what are we at? Are in thirty five thousand dead now? Um? And we compare, We compare the United States with South Korea, which discovered their first COVID positive patient on the same day January. But South Korea no very quickly to contain the virus, never had to shut down its economy. And it's a it's a country of fifty one million people. To date,

less than five people have died. So you know, you can it can be done. You just have to be disciplined about it. You have to have a government that believes in science. You have to have a government that believes in taking steps to protect its people and to engage all its citizens, uh, in trying to fight the virus instead of trying to fight each other. You know, Alex, one thing I do wonder and I mentioned kind of coming in. You know, your latest documentary crazy not insane,

and you're taking a look at serial killers. But you've done you know, documentaries on en Ron, You've done them on Wiki leagues, You've done them on the history of the rock group the Eagles. Uh, You've done them on a lot of different subjects. How do you decide what to work on? Is it just something you come across? Is it kind of random, like when Laura Dern, who we've talked to on our are two and you know, fascinating of these conversations and you can go a lot

of different places. Is it just you kind of run into something accidentally or I don't know what's your approach. It's all the difference all the time. I mean, what do they say, luck is where opportunity means a prepared mind. So sometimes I just get lucky, um, but sometimes I go seeking something UM. In this case, you know, I wasn't intending necessarily to make a documentary, but I just became so interested in Dr Lewis and also Dr also Dorothy's.

She had these videotapes of her examinations of a number of serial killers, uh, and those were pretty compelling, particularly because a number of them have UM, dissociative identity disorder what we used to call multiple personality disorder, and you can see people switch from personality and personality in the middle of the examination. So that was pretty interesting stuff. And and and so I realized, whow that's that could

be a film there? And usually I have a number of films on the boil at any particular time, right, and we'll advance them a little bit to see if there's more to be done, and and if it seems like there is, then we'll push forward. I would imagine a lot of these documentaries like there are so many rabbit holes. Like this happens to me all the time. Somebody says something all of a sudden, I'm going down a rabbit hole, and I'm lost for a long time.

But I would just think even coming across those films, right and watching her do your examinations, you could just kind of probably watch them for hours to some extent, because it's kind of fascinating and just you know, kind of understanding how she works and how she's trying to understand this, you know, group of people and what the commonalities are well, right, And what she ultimately ends up understanding is that a deep dive into serial killers or

even just plain old murderers as she calls them, you know, actually takes us to a kind of a universal place, and that is childhood. Because you know, basically her unified field theory is you'll get an incredibly violent person if

you have a mixture of frontal lobe damage. That is to say, she would say cutting the reins on the horse, so you know, not so much, um, you know, pull on the limbic system to keep uh, keep relentless urges from from acting on and then usually some kind of terrible physical or sexual abuse as a chot um and which which often is what leads to these multiple personalities. And if you have a combination of those two things,

you usually get where you don't always get. But if you look at a murderer, you will almost always find a combination of those two things. Not everybody who has that combination ends up as a murderers. Flipping it around, right, right, it's not necessarily check the boxes and it's you know the causality or you're gonna lead to that. Okay, one thing before we go. Um, we are often fascinated here at Bloomberg or just about kind of the financial aspect of making films. And I know we've talked with a

lot of minorities. It's sometimes hard to get money. And I do wonder is it still hard for you or because you have one awards, you're noted, you're known, Um, you know you've done projects that people know of you've got a proven track record, you know. So when it comes to funding and support, is it easily there or does it take work? It always takes work. I mean it's easier, um and and and if you have a

reputation of the body of work, it's easier. But I can tell you like five projects I've had turned down this year. Uh that I that I would have liked to have done, but but wasn't able to get the financing for. So it always takes hard work that never stops. And what about though, Okay, so you've gotta work on that. But I do also wonder is it easier to find places to distribute? You know? One of the major themes this year has been look at all the streaming service.

I mean, there's just so much content in demand. Has that side of the the formula been a little bit easier? It is, I mean, um there and and particularly for documentaries, per se documentaries at least sort of independent documentaries. Um. You know, had a hard time being financed back in

the day. Now there are many outlets for it. And the good news is that as opposed to the battle days of commercials, that there's some commercial networks you still work for but you know, generally you're you're selling a film to a viewer rather than renting a viewer with a film, you know, for on behalf of an advertisment. So that is far more satisfying and I think it's led to better and better films. Well, this was a lot of fun. Thank you so much. Good luck um

with your latest documentary, Crazy Not Insane. We're talking with Alex Gibney. Alex, thank you so much. He's founder of Jigsaw Pictures, award winning director and as we mentioned, his new documentary Crazy Not Insane, making its debut on HBO. That's happening on Wednesday, November eighteenth, at nine pm Wall Street Time,