Doc Talk Podcast: Alex Gibney On His Emmy-Contending Paul Simon Doc, Plus Elon Musk’s Angry Response To Hearing He’s Focus Of Gibney’s Next Film

Alex Gibney has Frank Sinatra to thank for his most recent documentary  – the two-part Emmy-contending film In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon.

Simon, one of America’s greatest singer-songwriters, saw Gibney’s 2015 documentary Sinatra: All or Nothing at All, and liked it so much he approached the Oscar-winning filmmaker about doing a potential film about his music career. Then, Simon sweetened the deal by inviting Gibney to his home in Texas to see him work on a new album, Seven Psalms.

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Gibney joins Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast to discuss what he learned about Simon’s songwriting process and how the artist, now 82, dealt with the loss of hearing in one ear that occurred as Simon was making Seven Psalms.

“It was destabilizing, I think, at first for him,” Gibney observes. The director also shares how a rerecording of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” in the 1960s proved pivotal to the duo’s career and how a drum solo recorded in an elevator shaft became crucial to one of Simon & Garfunkel’s biggest hits.

Gibney also updates us on the status of one of his upcoming projects, an anticipated documentary about Elon Musk. He tells us about Musk’s irritated reaction to news of the project and the nasty term Musk hurled at Gibney online (the filmmaker also tells us about his response to Musk – an all-time classic clapback).

RELATED: Elon Musk Documentary In The Works From Alex Gibney

That’s on the new episode of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, co-hosted by Oscar winner John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Shirley), and Matt Carey, Deadline’s Documentary Editor. Doc Talk, a 2024 Webby Awards honoree, is a production of Deadline and Ridley’s Nō Studios, presented with support from National Geographic Documentary Films.

Listen to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including Spotify, iHeart and Apple.

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