SAN RAFAEL, Calif.— It’s easy to find people with bad things to say about tech magnate Elon Musk, and plenty of those people show up in “Musk,” a new documentary about his rise to political and corporate power.
What’s more surprising in the film are the unflattering statements by some of his own employees, including ones who still work for him.Some of the harshest scenes in the film, which opens Friday in Los Angeles and New York, are ones in which Musk’s lieutenants were recorded on video or in audio as they wielded power on his behalf or discussed what they had already done for him.Warning: This article includes spoilers for the documentary “Musk.”There are clips of Ashok Elluswamy, a high-ranking Tesla engineer, acknowledging in a videotaped deposition that an infamous hype video he helped put together in 2016 about the company’s self-driving capabilities was not an accurate representation of Tesla’s technology at the time.There are also audio snippets from Jared Birchall, who handles Musk’s personal matters.He is heard on a recording of a phone call with online influencer Ashley St.
Clair, shortly after she had given birth to a child she and Musk conceived, in which he plays hardball on child support arrangements.Both incidents were documented in the media: Reuters reported in 2023 on the transcript of Elluswamy’s deposition, and The Wall Street Journal reported last year on Birchall’s phone call with St.Clair.But the video and the audio appear to be newly public, giving the documentary a mix of voices beyond the usual critics and creating moments of surprise even for a viewer who is familiar with the ins and outs of Musk’s complicated story.Filmmaker Alex Gibney says in the documentary that he and his team spent more than three years researching Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, pulling together not only archival interviews and hard-to-find footage but also a database of quotes from Musk that are peppered throughout the film.Musk...