Inside 'Musk': Power, Family and the Making of a Tech Demagogue

It is on.

Alex and Justine, thank you for coming on On.

I really appreciate it.

Great to be here.

Thank you for having me.

First of all, amazing movie.

Uh, an astonishing documentary.

Uh, very long, obviously.

[laughs]

And I will say, Justine, I find you to be at the center of it.

I thought you're, what you're, what you were saying was really important for people to understand, especially in the context of this very long story.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

So let's begin.

Uh, Alex, you started work on this film in 2022, a little after Elon Musk first became the richest man in the world, before he got involved with Trump.

Uh, I'll also say, when I was speaking to him.

Um, why did you wanna make a film at the outset? And talk about the changing nature of it when you were making it.

Obviously, the big question for a lot of people that ask me is, why does it need to be four hours?

[laughs] Well, it became a, a much, much bigger story.

I mean, to be honest, we were ready in early 2024 to finish the film as a, as a less than two-hour film.

And, you know, that film was about, um, 21st century power, but it's mostly economic power, not necessarily political power.

And, um, and then when Trump was nearly assassinated, and, uh, Elon Musk hitched his wagon to Trump, the story changed.

And HBO, actually, were the ones who Came to me and said, "Don't finish it.

Expand it, because the story has gotten a lot bigger." So we expanded it, and obviously, the political dimension was huge, even though I didn't really appreciate or understand that his political shift had really taken place in 2022.

I just hadn't seen it or, or, or didn't know about it yet.