Alpha Males and Black Socks: Alex Gibney on Client 9
- Posted: 2nd Mar 2011
- Category: Articles
- Tags: alex gibney, eliot spitzer, politics, usa, feature documentary
by Olivia Humphreys
Client 9 takes an in-depth look at the rapid rise and dramatic fall of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. As New York's Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer prosecuted crimes by America’s largest financial institutions and some of the most powerful executives in the country. After his election as Governor, many believed he was on his way to becoming the President. Then The New York Times revealed that Spitzer had been caught seeing prostitutes, and the “Sheriff of Wall Street” fell quickly from grace.
The story was pored over obsessively in the States, but Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room) turns to the more interesting question of how sex scandals are used as part of the political process, and of who really lost out when Spitzer resigned, given that possibly one of the best qualified politicians to deal with the financial crisis was languishing in the political wilderness when it hit.
OH: When the Spitzer scandal first broke, did you feel right away that this would make a good story for a documentary?
AG: I was actually asked to make the film, and I wasn’t quite sure I was going do it at first; but then every conversation seemed to be centering around the scandal. It became a litmus test for everyone to talk about infidelity – was it better to see a prostitute than to have an affair? What was he thinking? Should his wife divorce him? What was she doing standing up there with him when he resigned, why didn’t she just let him stand up there by his own damn self? The story seemed to have struck a very particular chord in terms of politics, because Spitzer goes down just as the financial market started to go down, and he was one of the few guys who seemed to be holding everything in check. So for all these reasons it seemed like a pretty good story, but unusually for me, it was not a story with any particular thesis; you can’t come out of it and say ‘this film means this’. It raises more questions than it answers but – I hope – in a provocative way.
OH: Did interviewing an experienced politician, with a polished public persona, call for a different approach?
AG: The key thing in this case was time – because when you talk to a politician normally, you’re very constrained with time, and that’s when you’re only going to get soundbites. Spitzer was willing to give me time; it looks like there’s only one interview with Spitzer in the film, but actually we sat down on five separate occasions. My view is that, if you’re able to get somebody to sit down for long enough, you’ll get some kind of revelatory information. And because he was a disgraced politician, and he was completely out of the public eye, it allowed for us to have a more honest exchange – even though there’s a reticence about talking about certain stuff, which is just part of his character.
OH: I was amazed at how comfortable and relaxed Spitzer appears in the interviews…
AG: Well I would say he wasn’t always comfortable, particularly when I was asking him questions about his fall – but at least he was willing to endure it. I think that’s the virtue of film: even if you don’t get quite the answer that you might hope for, sometimes you see in the expression on the face, in the darting eyes, maybe the moisture in the eyes, something you don’t get out of a transcript of a conversation.
OH: You put forward the idea of Spitzer as a tragic figure in the film – but although he does have a fatal flaw that precipitates a fall from grace, post-scandal Spitzer as we see him in the film is hardly the broken man you would expect to find at the end of a tragedy…
AG: Yeah, although I saw him some months after his breakdown; I’m told by those who were close to him he was certainly not fine after he had to resign, he was very emotionally broken at that time, he’d completely lost his self-confidence.
OH: That makes it especially amazing to see Spitzer in the film – watching him now, there doesn’t seem to be a dent.
AG: Spitzer’s good at there ‘not being a dent’; he’s the classic alpha male, you don’t see much vulnerability there. I think there are a few times where you just see traces of anger or traces of uncertainty and regret, but very few. And, let’s face it, this is a film full of high-powered men who are used to having their way. And it’s interesting that almost all of them seem to be in total control but really can’t help themselves in all sorts of ways… Ken Langone [former director of the New York Stock Exchange who, it seems pretty clear, had Spitzer privately investigated] can’t help but crow over the idea that a friend of his happened to be behind Eliot Spitzer in the post office: it’s clear Langone was having him followed, and any rational man would stay away from that but he can’t help himself.
OH: When the scandal first broke, Ashley Dupre became known as ‘Spitzer’s girl’, and even though it has since emerged she spent only one night with Spitzer, she has forged a media career out of the affair. Ashley chose not to be interviewed for the film – in retrospect, do you feel there is much she could have added?
AG: It’s so funny because when I started the film, I was determined that Ashley was key to what was going on. And now at the end I’m not sure she was so key at all, except in so far as we see her public persona; she was going to use this every way she could. So Ashley performed a role that was unexpected in the film; I thought she was going to reveal something intimate and it turns out, she did just the opposite, she revealed something far more craven and professional.
I think I would have felt differently if I hadn’t found Angelina [the prostitute who Spitzer really did see regularly]: she’s far more interesting to me and far more interesting for the story.
OH: Angelina agreed to be interviewed for the film, but wanted her identity to be concealed, and you chose to use an actress who performs a transcription of the interview. How did you go about casting that particular actress?
AG: It wasn’t a lookalike thing, because of course part of the goal is not to reveal what she looked like, but still I wanted to convey the real Angelina’s character. That’s why I decided to have an actress play her, because to have done it the more conventional way, to hide her face and alter her voice – it robs the viewer of any kind of affect. In a sense then they become a kind of information machine, because there’s no humanity which you can attach yourself to, there’s no eyes, no voice, no personality. And that’s what this woman was all about, was saying it’s not just about the sex.
Also, you see ‘Angelina’ two or three times before it’s revealed she’s an actress. I think if we’d revealed it from the start there would have been a lot more focus on ‘there’s the actress again’, whereas you kind of come to trust her testimony before you see that she’s an actress. And by then, thanks to the magic of cinema, you’re involved with her already as a viewer.
OH: You include some of the lurid details focused on by the tabloids, such as the persistent rumour that Spitzer always wore knee high black socks in bed. Did you worry this might undermine one of the main points the film makes, which is about the ultimate irrelevance of these sorts of details?
AG: I thought about that long and hard; but the reason I thought it was important to go there is because it’s those lurid details that are so often put to great use by political operatives, and that’s precisely what happened here. Roger Stone [a Republican ‘political consultant’ who appears to have tipped off the FBI about Spitzer], I’m fairly certain, made up the socks detail and it was perfect, because the idea of a starched white collar guy, the kind of uptight guy who’d wear knee high socks to bed, it so fitted Spitzer’s character; and it was funny, so people writing about the scandal couldn’t resist it. So if you’re a political operative and one of your goals is to embarrass and ridicule that politician, you’re going to want to keep that black socks thing out there as much as possible. And it’s effective, because if you google ‘Spitzer’ and ‘black socks’, it’s amazing how many hits you get, often from very respectable publications. They can’t resist. Maybe I fell in to the same trap too, except I felt it was legitimate to go there because part of what the film is about is how sex scandals get used for political purposes.
OH: Spitzer says himself that he doesn’t ‘do introspection’; was that a concern for you, that your main character wasn’t keen on examining his own motives and actions?
AG: Of course - but I think the trick is to try to push a little bit further and force him to do introspection, at least a little bit. But what you see mostly with Spitzer when he is being introspective, is not some kind of Oprah Winfrey gushing emotion, it’s a gear that hasn’t been very well oiled, it’s creaky.