> A YouTube spokesperson said the ad should be appearing soon, though as of late Saturday morning Bleecker Street has not yet been informed of any change.
> The Meta reversal is especially notable as the company had previously rejected an appeal by Bleecker Street, leaving it with few options to run ads on Instagram and Facebook.
> TikTok and X have remained quiet and continue not to run the ad.
I'm looking at the Theater list right now and it's not looking great maybe they're still ironing out the details. We are still a few weeks away. Social media companies can block all they want, but there are tons of art house theaters across the country that can play this thing, and they're not(so far). It's really annoying that the first run is only on these enthusiast-led theaters. It's a bad omen its as if the distributors don't have a lot of confidence in this film.
I would like to see an accurate representation of what it is that is p with Elon Musk, but I doubt there will be an objective analysis possible until the impact of the analysis is purely one of historical record.
Even then history isn't terribly objective, it just tends to be better than what is said when those who say things can gain or lose advantage based upon what they say.
Accuracy. It doesn't seem like an unreasonable request.
Musk appears different to different people. An insight into what, if any, represents the real person, and in what contexts Musk presents a persona, and why?
Perhaps I was harsh on historians, they do strive for accuracy, but they themselves will tell you how much perspectives of the day colour the representations. In many respects, it is similar to science. The answers that history give us are not the guaranteed truth, they are just the best answers that we have a consensus on at the moment.
> An insight into what, if any, represents the real person, and in what contexts Musk presents a persona, and why?
I don't think we can have the Ken Burns series until Musk is dead. He's remade himself too fully since Covid, and that means we can't really predict what the man today will do based on what he was before.
Thousands of hours of video about the companies and their products, hundreds of hours of interviews with Musk, thousands of tweets by Musk, financial filings of Tesla and SpaceX, you can test drive a Tesla for free in most parts of the world, you can use Starlink in most parts of the world, you can ride a Cybercab in Austin, you can watch a rocket launch livestream or in person, you can watch videos about people who had their lives changed from Neuralink, etc.
I can't think of another person of similar prominence who has been as accessible as Musk. Partly due to the internet, but also due to his choices. I don't see Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates or the Google founders sharing their views & debating them with adversarial reporters on a regular basis. Perhaps Palmer Luckey is on track for becoming somewhat akin to Musk.
Honestly, documentaries can be done extremely well even when events are occuring..or they can just be two hours of people who already didn't like the character and that you know didn't like the character sit there and talk to you on the big screen about how much they don't like the character.
Knock Down the House(AOC Documentary) was done really well and it actually followed the subjects as they were making history. You obviously watch it looking back but it takes place during the events that it describes.
Fahrenheit 11/9 is not hiding its political leaning but asks a question at the beginning ("How in the hell did this happen?!" (Donald Trump being elected)) then presents the story as a series of multiple sub-plots that are completely disconnected from each other but then become connected into an underlying finale as the story progresses. It takes you on a journey that is as captivating as a non documentary but also enables you to have a light bulb moment about the point the author is really talking about. Thats the point of a movie. You have the undivided attention of a person for two hours. How often does anyone be able to do that? Not even Trump can muster that too often. If you don't manage to capture their imagination in those two hours, you have wasted their time.
I agree about the possibility of existence of these, the issue is that when the subject is more and more visible the ratio of quality work to self-serving work drops off precipitously. Sometimes it is not easy to tell which is which. Everybody is prone to being manipulated by good production values, and an air of informed authority to some degree.
I remember a friend watching a Tony Blair speech coming up to Iraq saying "I disagree with everything he's saying, but the language and sense of authority is strong enough that it feels like it is convincing me anyway"
HBO owns the rights, and it is intended to end up on HBO/HBOMax as a four part series. Interestingly, HBO's parent company is merging with Paramount, owned by David Ellison. Ellison is asking Musk for money to invest in this new company. So, Musk might end up owning it in the end...
In the trailer, there's this line: "When Musk says that the future of humanity is to colonize Mars, he is selling us dreams. That's not happening."
That irritates me a lot. Everything extremely difficult (or thought to be impossible) is a dream until someone (or some company) works hard on it and invests in it for a long time. Those that would criticize Musk & SpaceX for chipping away at this seem to be effectively saying "do not try."
They are chipping away but their real motive is not mars colonization; that is a story designed to serve the venture capital needs of here and now.
That's the truth and that is what is being said here; it is not a denial that the chipping away is happening, it is a characterization of the why and how.
There are, I think, two things that the documentary is trying to do with this statement. The first is to remind people that even visionaries selling their actions on a noble cause must still be evaluated for the negative consequences of their actions. In this case, Musk is known to be the cause of quite a few deaths in the world thanks to things like eliminating USAID [1]. People like him need to be fairly evaluated not just on the good they might potentially unlock in the future, but the evil they are unlocking today.
The second thing is to point out that Musk may not be entirely honest about trying to colonize Mars, just as some politicians may campaign on a promise to make a country great again while robbing blind the rubes who vote for them.
[1] Although I think Mark Zuckerberg still beats him in the deadliest tech CEO race, given the role that Facebook plays in the Rohingya genocide.
He's not trying to colonize mars, he's trying to get power and wealth and for you to like him. Nothing irks this man more than someone who doubts he is a saviour. It is reasonable to demand we fix the planet we currently inhabit, rather than believe a ketamine-addict that the better solution is to just let it go to hell and move on.
If he wants power, wealth and fans then he could retire already because that would be mission accomplished. It seems that there is some other motivation.
>Peak extinctionist talk is to pretend we can go see what's beyond the mountains, especially without solving all our cave problems first, as we can only ever launch such a lofty expedition from the cave.
>Also, going past the mountains is a pipe dream for people that know more about children's tales than _actually_ going from the cave to the nearby shore.
I think the problem is more that people doubt Musk's sincerity. And I wonder, to be honest, how it’s possible not to. Musk is no Wright and no Bell. He should be placed in the same category as people like Bernie Madoff, Charles Ponzi, and Gregor MacGregor. But your perspective contains another flaw: In hindsight, we see the big, daring projects that were successful. What we don’t see are the countless projects that failed. That skews the cost-benefit analysis a bit. Especially since large projects have far-reaching, often negative side effects. You can admire Hannibal for his crossing of the Alps, but no sane person would want to be one of the many soldiers who froze to death in the process.
I get annoyed by this type of comment because Musk is obviously an over the top hype man, he sees this as his job. And he has a long history of crazy predictions that didn't come true. Any other CEO spouts some obvious marketing bs and people are appropriately cynical but Musk's defenders just really want to believe.
What are some of the most egregious examples from his long history of crazy predictions?
Most of the examples I've ever seen tend to be purposeful misunderstanding, his timing being off (clearly a flaw, but common to most ambitious projects), vibes, or just factually incorrect.
He clearly has flaws, but his critics always seem to be far more flawed.
There is a weird immature escapism involved in such sci fi story-telling. Most adults are capable of seeing that the biggest problems are internal. Inside ourselves, within families, and more broadly, on earth, itself. Hunger, injustice, the rise of dictators and those who have successfully subverted democracy, slavery and human trafficking. If he was supposedly as capable as his self-mythologizing claims ("Chess is an easy game; I won all games that I played"), he'd pick a much more earth-bound goal. Maybe reconcile with his estranged son-turned-daughter. How about that for starters? Or not get divorced for once? Is that possible for our self-confessed genius?
Musk's plan for the survival of the species, as far as I can tell, is to personally make as many (white) babies as possible. His talk of colonizing Mars is a pipe dream, a lure for gullible investors.
In 2008 Musk was selling a prototype Tesla Roadster with solar panels on the roof and promised a fully solar production vehicle would be available soon. They took deposits for it. I think people still have deposits on the Roadster in 2026.
You seem to be getting different cars mixed up, so what you're saying is factually wrong. Musk never promoted that, and Tesla did complete all of the orders for the original Roadster.
Even if you were correct on the facts, the right thing to do in the face of changing circumstances can of course be to change the plan. In an alternate reality where they had sold preorders for a solar car, making it right to the customers combined with not going out of business is the better plan.
I'm not trying to insult anyone. It's only an observation of repeated patterns. Please share the solar powered Roadster deliveries. I'm not going to try to source ~20 year old marketing from Musk / Tesla. I can tell you: I thought it was awesome, I was skeptical of the solar powered promise, and it never was delivered. (or maybe it was if you can share some evidence.)
Only by modern standards. If you're King David and you're not even the richest person in the region, you could have many concubines mass-producing kids for you.
I just don't understand why this trailer starts with Musk accusing Gibney of this being a hit piece, then a snarky response from Gibney...and then a full trailer that sounds like a hit piece.
Maybe it's warranted maybe it isn't but it sure seems like Musk was right to be concerned.
I... just don't understand your confusion? Of course it's a "hit piece". There's a market for hit pieces because there are people willing to pay to see content aimed at their favorite targets. And the trailer starts with Musk sniping to substantiate what it's about and clarify who its for.
Maybe it's that you think "hit piece" means "illigitimate?". Documentary cinema is absolutely allowed to have perspective. Musk's own communication is hardly unbiased or coolly considered, and he's been known to engage in some "creative advocacy" of his own. Would you apply the same logic there?
My own opinion is that he's a complicated guy and a seemingly textbook bipolar case with a lot of good technical instincts and a really destructive egomaniacal streak. He could do with some hit pieces, honestly.
That bit was wrong. He was wrong about lots of other stuff too.
But Tesla's product design and market fit was right on the whole. SpaceX was almost all right and not wrong. Starlink was almost 100% right. PayPal was a lot more right than wrong. Obviously you can nitpick about anything, but when you make that many great bets on things that other people tried and failed at, I think you need to at least nod that maybe his instincts were... good. Which is what I said.
Paypal was invented at Confinity which was part owned by Thiel and had nothing to do with Musk. Thiel bought Musk's x.com in a merger deal that also made Musk ceo of the new company for 6 months before he was fired for incompetence. Beyond the windows server transition he also insisted on rebranding paypal to x.com, the everything app. I don't know where he was mostly right at paypal?
It’s obviously got a point of view but most of what’s in it has been reported elsewhere. The value is mostly putting it together in an engaging package, plus some interviews with a couple of ex partners. And some interesting archival footage of a younger Musk I’ve never seen (though also never looked)
Overall an OK movie despite few bizarre directorial choices: letting interviewees speculate about things that are almost certainly not true in a few places, and “interviewing” an AI generated Musk on camera. Also it’s 4 hours long.
> but it sure seems like Musk was right to be concerned
You might want to consider if you are out of the loop. I don't think Musk is "concerned". If anything, I wouldn't doubt this is partially his idea. It's just the latest iteration of "reality TV".
It's been over a decade that we've had this style of marketing popularized by Trump. It works very well. There's even an Elizabeth Holmes one coming out soon (You Can See Everything)! I'm actually very excited to see Nathan Fielder's take on this genre of unhinged drama.
As someone who woke up early to see Starship today, I promise I would love to believe that he's actually playing a crazy person. I don't think we can reject the notion entirely. But there is zero evidence for it and a lot against. (He also doesn't need to be personally writing anything to constantly be on social media.)
The entire magic trick is that you believe celebrities act as completely independent individuals with immense power.
It works beautifully on so many different types of ego. If you have power fantasies, you can either choose to live vicariously through the celebrity or immediately find your equally toxic anti-fan group. Everyone else at least just finds it entertaining to watch all kinds of people make asses of themselves.
Meanwhile, nobody ever really questions the basis for all of this. The public side of celebrity is a brand that is indeed as carefully planned out as any other ad campaign.
Sure. I don't maintain a non-pseudonymous internet presence because I don't think I could be unconcerned about folks shitting on me online–I got upset when my cat insisted on ghosting me for an hour after I got back from holiday. That's a journey of maturation I haven't yet completed. I suspect neither has Musk (if he recognizes it as a shortcoming).
I saw it and though the filmmaker clearly has a point of view, I really doubt anything in it libelous. The "worst" things it says about Musk are simply true and have been reported elsewhere. If anything, I was surprised how much time it spent talking about how cool and innovative SpaceX rockets are.
We have AI now, can't someone magic up a database that can be sorted by "unnecessary deaths" or "level of cringe" or "severity of crime" with links to sources rather than force us to sit through a 4 hour movie?
103 comments
[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 72.8 ms ] threadI feel like we're all required to declare fealty to a billionaire warlord and latch to their propaganda.
The selective outrage from posters is funny to me.
facepalm.
"The Major Social Media Platforms Are All Rejecting Paid Ads for Alex Gibney’s ‘Musk’"
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/elon-musk...
> A YouTube spokesperson said the ad should be appearing soon, though as of late Saturday morning Bleecker Street has not yet been informed of any change.
> The Meta reversal is especially notable as the company had previously rejected an appeal by Bleecker Street, leaving it with few options to run ads on Instagram and Facebook.
> TikTok and X have remained quiet and continue not to run the ad.
I can think of 1000 things more worrying that ad money for a documentary not being accepted for whatever reason on private platoforms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY_8SyndC10
Even then history isn't terribly objective, it just tends to be better than what is said when those who say things can gain or lose advantage based upon what they say.
Musk appears different to different people. An insight into what, if any, represents the real person, and in what contexts Musk presents a persona, and why?
Perhaps I was harsh on historians, they do strive for accuracy, but they themselves will tell you how much perspectives of the day colour the representations. In many respects, it is similar to science. The answers that history give us are not the guaranteed truth, they are just the best answers that we have a consensus on at the moment.
I don't think we can have the Ken Burns series until Musk is dead. He's remade himself too fully since Covid, and that means we can't really predict what the man today will do based on what he was before.
Thousands of hours of video about the companies and their products, hundreds of hours of interviews with Musk, thousands of tweets by Musk, financial filings of Tesla and SpaceX, you can test drive a Tesla for free in most parts of the world, you can use Starlink in most parts of the world, you can ride a Cybercab in Austin, you can watch a rocket launch livestream or in person, you can watch videos about people who had their lives changed from Neuralink, etc.
I can't think of another person of similar prominence who has been as accessible as Musk. Partly due to the internet, but also due to his choices. I don't see Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates or the Google founders sharing their views & debating them with adversarial reporters on a regular basis. Perhaps Palmer Luckey is on track for becoming somewhat akin to Musk.
(1) Test drives are free everywhere. WTF?
(2) Tesla sells cars in about 40 or so countries; Toyota sells in more than 170.
(Fanbois need to learn that the best, most successful car company in the world is Toyota.)
Knock Down the House(AOC Documentary) was done really well and it actually followed the subjects as they were making history. You obviously watch it looking back but it takes place during the events that it describes.
Fahrenheit 11/9 is not hiding its political leaning but asks a question at the beginning ("How in the hell did this happen?!" (Donald Trump being elected)) then presents the story as a series of multiple sub-plots that are completely disconnected from each other but then become connected into an underlying finale as the story progresses. It takes you on a journey that is as captivating as a non documentary but also enables you to have a light bulb moment about the point the author is really talking about. Thats the point of a movie. You have the undivided attention of a person for two hours. How often does anyone be able to do that? Not even Trump can muster that too often. If you don't manage to capture their imagination in those two hours, you have wasted their time.
I remember a friend watching a Tony Blair speech coming up to Iraq saying "I disagree with everything he's saying, but the language and sense of authority is strong enough that it feels like it is convincing me anyway"
oh god oh no
That irritates me a lot. Everything extremely difficult (or thought to be impossible) is a dream until someone (or some company) works hard on it and invests in it for a long time. Those that would criticize Musk & SpaceX for chipping away at this seem to be effectively saying "do not try."
That's the truth and that is what is being said here; it is not a denial that the chipping away is happening, it is a characterization of the why and how.
The second thing is to point out that Musk may not be entirely honest about trying to colonize Mars, just as some politicians may campaign on a promise to make a country great again while robbing blind the rubes who vote for them.
[1] Although I think Mark Zuckerberg still beats him in the deadliest tech CEO race, given the role that Facebook plays in the Rohingya genocide.
Also, Mars is a pipe dream of people who know more about Star Trek than space exploration.
>Also, going past the mountains is a pipe dream for people that know more about children's tales than _actually_ going from the cave to the nearby shore.
It’s all bullshit to provide air cover for his sociopathic behavior and ambition.
Most of the examples I've ever seen tend to be purposeful misunderstanding, his timing being off (clearly a flaw, but common to most ambitious projects), vibes, or just factually incorrect.
He clearly has flaws, but his critics always seem to be far more flawed.
18 mile hyperloop between downtown Chicago and O’Hare Airport
Humans on Mars by 2024
SpaceX would be flying private citizens around the Moon by 2018.
March 2020: "probably close to zero new cases" of covid-19 "by the end of April."
Summon an autonomous Tesla from New York to LA by 2018
Saying Tesla Autonomous by "next year" over and over for a decade https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufbxvRo2rnY
A Tesla with 1,000-Kilometer range by 2017
You are the sucker.
Even if you were correct on the facts, the right thing to do in the face of changing circumstances can of course be to change the plan. In an alternate reality where they had sold preorders for a solar car, making it right to the customers combined with not going out of business is the better plan.
Maybe it's warranted maybe it isn't but it sure seems like Musk was right to be concerned.
Maybe it's that you think "hit piece" means "illigitimate?". Documentary cinema is absolutely allowed to have perspective. Musk's own communication is hardly unbiased or coolly considered, and he's been known to engage in some "creative advocacy" of his own. Would you apply the same logic there?
My own opinion is that he's a complicated guy and a seemingly textbook bipolar case with a lot of good technical instincts and a really destructive egomaniacal streak. He could do with some hit pieces, honestly.
Yes, "presenting false or biased information in a way that appears objective and truthful" is an essential part of being a hit piece [1].
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hit_piece
Sure. Which is why it's nonsense to prematurely conclude that "of course it's a 'hit piece'."
"Biased" is a weasel word when used in arguments like this. I really doubt anything in this film is actually materially false.
Like when he wanted to abandon UNIX for Windows NT at PayPal? [1]
[1] https://archive.is/L3ue8
That bit was wrong. He was wrong about lots of other stuff too.
But Tesla's product design and market fit was right on the whole. SpaceX was almost all right and not wrong. Starlink was almost 100% right. PayPal was a lot more right than wrong. Obviously you can nitpick about anything, but when you make that many great bets on things that other people tried and failed at, I think you need to at least nod that maybe his instincts were... good. Which is what I said.
The company he invested in, then sued to be declared "Founder" and now parades as his own, personal invention?
>SpaceX was almost all right and not wrong
Except about the things Elon opines on. Because he doesn't know shit about rocketry
>PayPal was a lot more right than wrong
He was kicked out of Paypal for all his stupid ideas
Overall an OK movie despite few bizarre directorial choices: letting interviewees speculate about things that are almost certainly not true in a few places, and “interviewing” an AI generated Musk on camera. Also it’s 4 hours long.
You might want to consider if you are out of the loop. I don't think Musk is "concerned". If anything, I wouldn't doubt this is partially his idea. It's just the latest iteration of "reality TV".
It's been over a decade that we've had this style of marketing popularized by Trump. It works very well. There's even an Elizabeth Holmes one coming out soon (You Can See Everything)! I'm actually very excited to see Nathan Fielder's take on this genre of unhinged drama.
Unpetty men aren’t constantly on social media.
It works beautifully on so many different types of ego. If you have power fantasies, you can either choose to live vicariously through the celebrity or immediately find your equally toxic anti-fan group. Everyone else at least just finds it entertaining to watch all kinds of people make asses of themselves.
Meanwhile, nobody ever really questions the basis for all of this. The public side of celebrity is a brand that is indeed as carefully planned out as any other ad campaign.
> karma: 191021
Anything that doesn't make Musk look awesome and support his PR goals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk_filmography
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/54065/did-elon-...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42903336