What to Know About the New Elon Musk Documentary
New York Times · LC · trust 54/100
A supersized portrait of the world’s richest man reveals new details and resurfaces troubling incidents from a headline-making life.
Share full article Elon Musk, as seen in the Alex Gibney documentary “Musk.” Credit... Bleeker Street By Matthew Huff
The Oscar-winning filmmaker, whose previous subjects include Enron and Scientology , spends nearly four hours answering that question in “Musk,” tracing the rise of the Tesla chairman and chief executive from his childhood in South Africa to the I.P.O. of SpaceX in June , which made Musk the world’s first trillionaire. (The movie, in theaters, has a 10-minute intermission baked in.)
When news of Gibney’s project broke back in 2023, Musk took to Twitter (now X) to preemptively call it a “hit piece.” Combining interviews with ex-wives and former colleagues and clips from Musk’s 30-plus years in the spotlight with commentary from an A.I. version of Musk constructed from an archive of his own words, the film follows his rise from Silicon Valley start-ups to his brief tenure as the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“Musk” paints a harrowing portrait of Elon’s youth in apartheid-era South Africa. In one interview, his wealthy businessman father, Errol Musk , claims to have shot and killed three intruders, covering the floor of their home in a “swimming pool” of blood. In another, he describes Elon riding in a car alongside the body of a family friend who had just “dropped dead.” After Elon’s mother, Maye Musk , separated from Errol, claiming physical and mental abuse (charges her former husband has denied), Elon continued to live with his father. When Elon was bullied so badly at school that he was hospitalized for a week, his father, he later said, sided with his attackers.
Gibney suggests that Elon Musk’s business blunders have been as lucrative as his successes. After a failed bid to become the chief executive of his first start-up, Zip2, Musk was pushed out of the company but earned a $22 million buyout. Only a few years later, the entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel pushed Musk out of PayPal with a $250 million parting gif t.
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