Category: Q&A

Q&A

Gibney going "Gonzo," part two

Editor’s note: This is the 2nd of two installments of Cathleen Rountree’s interview with Alex Gibney about Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, which closes the San Francisco International Film Festival Thursday.

SF360.org: Do you think Thompson has a lasting legacy? I mean in the sense that there aren’t many people practicing his art form now.

Gibney: The thing for any writer is that you have to find your own voice. So people imitate Hunter Thompson at their peril, because that was Hunter’s voice, not Writer X’s voice. You know, there’s a little bit of Hunter Thompson in someone like Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone. But there’s a legacy to Hunter Thompson, or to me the legacy should be: what’s wrong with breaking the rules? We need a few more people who break the rules, but to break them carefully. What did Bob Dylan say: "To live outside the law you must be honest." Because sometimes the people in power don’t play within the rules and, worse, they manipulate the rules against those who are trying to speak truth to power.

topics: authors, awards, bay area, directors, san francisco international film festival

Q&A

Alex Gibney, going "Gonzo"

It’s a good time to be Alex Gibney.

We met this year over egg rolls at a small upstairs bistro on Main Street in Park City during the Sundance Film Festival, where Gibney’s bio-doc Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson premiered. It was Tuesday, in late-January. That morning Gibney, whose Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (SFIFF 2005) earned an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary in 2006, had learned that Taxi to the Darkside, his documentary murder mystery that examines the death of an Afghan taxi driver at Bagram Air Base, had been nominated for an Academy Award. (It eventually won.) Another documentary he’d executive produced, No End in Sight, directed by Charles Ferguson, had also been nominated for Best Doc.

topics: authors, awards, bay area, directors, documentary, q&a