Alex Gibney's Documentary About Elon Musk Drew a Defamation Threat Before Release
Alex Gibney's latest feature, Musk, has stirred up plenty even before its release, drawing the ire of its subject, Elon Musk, and threats of a defamation lawsuit, Ars Technica reports. Gibney is an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker who has never been one to shy away from controversy. A threatened defamation suit ahead of a release does something a critical drubbing cannot: it moves the argument about a film onto legal ground, where the question becomes what can be shown rather than what the film claims.
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A defamation threat before a release is also a communications move. It turns a documentary into a legal story, and legal stories get covered differently than films do.
Or it's just a subject who is angry about a film made about him. A threat isn't a ruling, and it doesn't tell us whether the film gets anything right.