Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard remembers having dinner with Elon Musk in the early 2000s, when the billionaire became a key investor in the fledgling electric car company. Musk uttered words that Eberhard would never forget: "One thing that nobody can take away from you is that you're the founder of Tesla." It left a real mark on Eberhard's mind, since Musk would later take unconditional credit for Tesla's runaway success and anoint himself its sole founder, setting off litigation and an eventual settlement that allowed Eberhard and Musk, along with three others, to all claim the title of co-founders of Tesla Motors. Director Alex Gibney believes those remarks provide a glimpse into who Musk really is: A confidence man who will deceive, gaslight and fabricate to get what he wants.
Eberhard is one of many people who fell in and out of Musk's world who are featured in Gibney's new documentary, Musk, which never drags despite its three hour and 45 minute runtime (which includes a 10-minute intermission). It opens in theaters on October 16. The film traces Musk's path from his early days as a dot-com-era entrepreneur in Silicon Valley to the present, as one of the world's wealthiest people, exerting extraordinary influence over politics and culture around the world.
While many people may be familiar with the general outlines of Musk's story, Gibney taps pivotal characters at crucial moments for the tech mogul to infuse this biography with new life. Along the way, the Oscar-winning filmmaker, whose past documentaries have taken on corporate greed and government malfeasance, explores Musk's many bitter feuds and contradictions. Gibney attempts to explain how Musk is seen as both a once-in-generational business genius and an impulsive and deranged chaos agent.
I've covered Musk for years, and have been the target of his attacks, so I was initially interested in whether Gibney would dredge up any new revelations, or connect the dots in ways obscured by the steady stream of news about Musk and his many ventures. While there were very few nuggets of new information, the sheer breadth of the film makes for a stunningly comprehensive accounting of a man Gibney considers a danger to society. We hear from Musk's father, Errol, reflecting on how his son was bullied as a child, there are interviews with Musk's scorned exes, including his first wife, Justine Musk, prying journalists and former business associates who once occupied his orbit.
Early in the film, a far younger Musk is seen on a television program declaring his three animating principles as developing the internet, transitioning the economy to sustainable energy and exploring space. That trio of objectives has remained remarkably consistent for someone whose views and business goals seem to be in a perpetual state of flux. Gibney first began the project in 2023, thinking it would be a tighter and more focused look at the tech titan.
But then Musk barreled his way into Donald Trump's sphere during the 2024 campaign and soon entered the White House, taking a wrecking ball to swaths of the federal government through his cost-cutting effort, DOGE. It led to some observers describing Musk as the "shadow vice president." So Gibney retooled the film as a more ambitious and much longer project to convey just how many facets of modern life are being influenced by one man. "Particuarly in this bewildering world of inputs that we all live in," Gibney said at a news conference at the Venice Film Festival, where the documentary premiered on Tuesday, "a lot of incidents happen, and there are so many trees, but sometimes it's useful to stitch together a narrative that shows the forest." Gibney saw parallels between Musk and his past film subjects, including his documentary on the Enron scandal, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and the downfall of the Silicon Valley blood-testing startup executive Elizabeth Holmes in The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.
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