By turning down the alleged payday, St. Clair was able to sit for an interview in Musk, a new documentary from Alex Gibney that seeks to make sense of the controversial billionaire who has outsized influence on the world in which we live.

Set Example for My Kids

St. Clair participated in the docu to “set the example for my kids that we should never take being materially comfortable that we’re speaking the truth,” she said at the press conference on Tuesday.

St. Clair gained prominence as a right-wing commentator who advocated for conservative and anti-trans politics.

She is now expressing her regret for platforming those beliefs, which she chalked up to her youth and confidants at the time.

Gibney, an Oscar-winning documentarian, has investigated corrupt corporations (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”), sexual abuse coverups in the Catholic Church (“Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God”), Scientology (“Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Disbelief”) and alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election (“Agents of Chaos”).

Gibney began working on a film about the tech titan and world’s richest man, with an estimated net worth of $900 billion through ventures including SpaceX and Tesla, back in 2023.

“Musk,” which premieres at the festival on Tuesday, is nearly four hours long — and Gibney joked he didn’t set out to make such a long movie.

“We intended to make a shorter film before Musk became wrapped in the career of Donald Trump and the United States,” Gibney said, adding the first thing he did was reach out to Musk, who declined to be interviewed.

“Musk” promises to reframe all we know about him, “revealing that the so-called ‘visionary genius’ is little more than the 21st-century reincarnation of a confidence man,” according to the synopsis. Musk himself has said that perceived reality may be nothing more than a simulation, and Gibney argues “even his most heralded accomplishments are rife with illusion and misdirection.” Musk’s recent ventures include buying Twitter (and renaming the social media platform X) and starting xAI and its chatbot Grok. Although Musk didn’t participate in Gibney’s doc, he long ago called the film a “hit piece.”

Gibney described Musk as a “megalomaniac” and a “very dangerous” man, with the filmmaker expressing a deep worry about Musk’s unwillingness to show concern about others.

“I would say he has a very difficult time with empathy, especially cognitive empathy, which is putting himself in the shoes of others,” Gibney said. “He seems incapable of doing that.”

Added St. Clair, “He makes a conscious choice to not put himself in other people’s shoes. It is a deliberate rejection of empathy.”