Insurance companies pay big bucks for procedures but next to nothing for patient consultations and preventive medicine, which is what most medicine is. – Alex Gibney
When we go to war, our politicians will be guided by our popular will. And if we believe that torture ‘got’ bin Laden, then we will be more prone to accept the view that a good ‘end’ can justify brutal ‘means.’ – Alex Gibney
It would be hard to go to your neighbor and say the things people say on the Internet without getting punched out or having your tires slashed. – Alex Gibney
In the case of ‘Zero Dark Thirty,’ about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, an issue that is central to the film – torture – is so important that I feel I must say something. Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow have been irresponsible and inaccurate in the way they have treated this issue in their film. – Alex Gibney
Now, unfortunately, some prissy card-carrying members of the U.S. Constitution have made us all look bad by pointing out that many of the Gitmo detainees weren’t guilty of anything. Whoops! – Alex Gibney
For years, the Bush Administration eviscerated all the military and legal structures that were designed to separate the innocent from the guilty in the ‘Global War on Terror.’ – Alex Gibney
Every film is faced with the enemy of time. Only so much story can fit into the 90-150 minutes of time that moviegoers are willing to stay in their seats. Naturally, compression is necessary. So are the exclusion and amalgamation of characters so that the viewer does not become bewildered. – Alex Gibney
There’s something magical about a home run. It almost violates the space of the stadium. It’s a game of the imagination in some ways. Baseball. – Alex Gibney
When the producers of ‘Why Poverty?’ came to me to do a film about poverty in the United States, I asked if I could do a film about wealth instead. I tend to make films about perpetrators, rather than victims. – Alex Gibney
In the U.S., hospitals are rewarded for keeping hospital beds full. That’s the market at work. The question is: should we work for the market, or should the market work for us? – Alex Gibney
It’s hard to make a living doing documentaries. Frankly, if it takes you five years to do a film, and that’s the only film you’re doing, you’re in trouble. – Alex Gibney
We live in a world where everyone thinks they do the right thing, so they are entitled to do the wrong thing. So ends can justify the means. – Alex Gibney
‘Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream’ is an intentionally angry film. How could it not be when the chance of an infant dying is five times greater on the Bronx Park Avenue than on Manhattan’s Park Avenue just across the Harlem River? – Alex Gibney
People who lie, particularly those who lie really big, can’t do it effectively unless they feel that there’s a righteous power behind what they’re doing. You’re entitled to lie because the end justifies the means. – Alex Gibney
I’m a sports junkie, and I am interested in athletic will – how you exceed the expectations of your own performance when it counts to deliver something beyond yourself so that you can win. – Alex Gibney
It’s difficult for one filmmaker to criticize another. That’s a job best left to critics. – Alex Gibney
To get discounts on some drugs, private insurers are willing to pay top prices for blockbuster pharmaceuticals like Vioxx, despite the fact that Vioxx was rumored to cause fatal strokes and heart attacks. – Alex Gibney
Here’s where the insurance companies really fail us. They over-pay hospitals, specialists and drug companies and then raise premiums to cover the costs. Further, when they pay hospitals 115% of what it should cost to care for a patient, they are paying for inefficiency that can be dangerous. – Alex Gibney
I thought it was a classic David and Goliath story, and I was fully onboard Team WikiLeaks. I was very pro the leaks, barring the redaction issue. But I see WikiLeaks as a publisher. – Alex Gibney
I think of my films as not necessarily political but more moral. Between my father, my stepfather, and my mother – they all felt pretty passionately about the importance of standing up and doing the right thing, and none of them were suck-ups. What motivates me is usually abuse of power. – Alex Gibney
I’m a good learner. I can dig in. I knew nothing about mark-to-market accounting when I started the ‘Enron’ film. – Alex Gibney
