How ‘the greatest liar of all time’ took the world for a ride
Documentary-maker Alex Gibney tells Jim White about filming disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong
NORMALLY when I leave the cinema what I want is a pizza. Or if it is a particularly draining comedy involving Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone, a stiff drink. After watching Alex Gibney’s brilliant new documentary The Armstrong Lie, however, I felt in need of something I had never before associated with the movies: a shower. Knowing what we know now, watching Lance Armstrong in all his calculating, self-righteous mendacity on the big screen puts you in urgent search of the soap.
“I’ve never met a better liar, and I’ve met a bunch,” says Gibney, the director who has made acclaimed documentaries about the Roman Catholic Church, Enron and Julian Assange. “He’s good, he’s real good — the best.”
Gibney experienced the Armstrong fibbing technique firsthand, witnessed it at close quarters as it poured down his lens. Indeed, the lie came close to undermining his reputation as a documentary-maker. In 2009, he had been invited by Armstrong to film the inside story of his comeback to the Tour de France. After the most fleeting of retirements, the seven-time winner was remounting his bike, back pounding up Alps, threading through the fields of sunflowers, rattling over the cobbles. And he wanted a record for posterity to mark his place in the pantheon. So he sought out this renowned, fiercely forensic documentary-maker to shoot him in action.
“I went along for the ride,” says Gibney now of that summer. “I thought I was filming a tale of wholesome redemption.”
At the time, there was many a sceptic who could have put him right, insisting that the Texan’s incredible achievements were chemically propelled and that this was nothing more than a mobile pharmacy pedalling through Provence. One of those, Greg Lemond, a former Tour champion, was so incensed by what he saw as Gibney’s collusion that he commissioned another filmmaker to record what he called “the anti-Gibney” account of Armstrong on the same Tour. Lemond’s rival camera crew is forever appearing in Gibney’s frame in his movie, a neat visual reminder of the division the rider caused.
For most of us, though, including the nine million people around the world who wore one of those yellow Livestrong charity wrist bands that celebrated his incredible victory over testicular cancer, the guy was an unimpeachable hero. Hard to admit it now, but many of us were rooting for him in his comeback in 2009, hoping to see the ultimate restorative sporting tale.
When Armstrong failed to mark his return with anything more than third place, however, Gibney’s original documentary was quietly forgotten. Given the subsequent revelations about doping, the tsunami of evidence that led to the confession Armstrong made to Oprah Winfrey that he used chemical assistance to achieve all seven his Tour wins, and that he was the mastermind of systematic drug cheating in his sport on an industrial scale, Gibney shudders when he thinks of the effect a supportive film would have wrought on his credibility.
“I was lucky,” he says, happy in the understatement. “Hey, all journalists are lied to every day of the week. But I’m pissed off that I was used as a prop. He’d got this guy Don Catlin, the leading anti-doping campaigner, who was going to test him every day to prove he wasn’t doping. I was like the cinematic equivalent of Don Catlin. It was all part of the Armstrong nar- rative: How can I be cheating? I’ve got Alex Gibney on board.”
Early last year, when the extent of Armstrong’s fabrications became clear, Gibney contacted the rider and told him he was owed an interview of explanation. And he got one. It is not as emotional as the one he gave to Oprah, but perhaps more chilling in its cold, hard, matter-offact tone.
With the interview as his film’s centrepiece, Gibney then revisited the footage he had shot in 2009, using it to shed light on the Armstrong methodology: the way he had kept one step ahead of detection for so long.
The result is a film that neatly counterbalances the reality we now know with the fantasy the rider steadfastly maintained. At the heart of the complex, so-
He’s very like Julian Assange. I’m now convinced we’re hard-wired for moral mediocrity
phisticated lie Armstrong constructed was his own ability to fib to camera. Time and again during that 2009 Tour he looks into Gibney’s lens and tells him he has never, will never and could never embrace performance-enhancing assistance. At the time, Gibney says, he believed him. To watch now, knowing what we do, Armstrong’s lying is breathtaking in its scale, its skill, its audacity.
“The lie was way bigger than it needed to be,” says Gibney. “The fact is he could have gone through his career and kept his head down, just saying ‘I’d never been tested positive’. That would have been the truth — well not quite, but almost. Instead, he constructs this spectacular lie in line with this spectacular story he has of the cancer survivor coming back from near death to win the Tour.
“As part of the Armstrong myth, he embraced this idea that you cannot only recover, you can come back better than you were. It was something everyone wanted to believe; it was a fairy tale. And he became intoxicated by it. The better he got at it, the more he used it. He became adept at swatting away those who doubted, no matter the evidence. He did it with such force, such glamour, such charisma that people backed away from challenging it. It was a work of genius.”
Gibney calls Armstrong a master storyteller, a constructor of his own narrative. His was, moreover, a hugely lucrative yarn.
“People were buying bikes, clothes, sunglasses because that story was enormously powerful. Oakley, Nike, Trek — everyone made money on it. In the US, Lance’s story was bigger than his sport.
“What’s more, he can use the story as his defence. That was the most astounding thing, when he looks down the lens he uses the fantastic nature of the
Lance Armstrong was simply the greatest liar of all time. And eventually that brought him down
lie to buttress it: How can I possibly be telling a lie, because if I cheated I would put all this at risk?”
For Gibney, the unmasking of Armstrong made him instantly a more fascinating subject. He is, he reckons, on a par with the Australian with whom he spectacularly fell out during the filming of his acclaimed doc- umentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks.
“He’s very like Assange,” he says. “Both are afflicted with this thing I’m obsessed by: noble cause corruption. For a long time I used to perceive it as ironic if good people did bad things. Actually, I’m now convinced we’re hard-wired for moral mediocrity. The more you see someone with a grand cause, the more you can almost expect there will be something about them at the other end of the spectrum.”
Indeed, sportsman he may be, but Gibney feels Armstrong fits neatly into the pattern of his documentary subjects. From Enron to Assange, what fascinates him is power.
“A lot of what this film is about is the abuse of power,” he says. “I was really aware of his cruelty. He could be savage in his attacks on those who crossed him, using his power to create silence. But I was also interested in it.
“I have a theory about athletes that some of the best are exceedingly cruel. Michael Jordan was a bastard. Serena Williams. Tiger Woods. Look at these champions at their peak. They crush people. That is their job. They can’t have any empathy.”
Certainly, Gibney was not expecting much empathy when he told Armstrong the title of the film. And when he invited him to a screening, Armstrong did not attend, sending a representative instead. Gibney has not yet heard what he thought of it.
“He still has people, he still has a lot of money,” says Gibney, “although that is clearly in jeopardy in the outstanding court cases. If he loses them, he is looking down the wrong end of $100-million (about R1.1billion).”
Even as he says the figure, Gibney does not sound as though he has much time for sympathy. A restless New Yorker, the son of an investigative journalist, Gibney is serious, articulate, considered in his responses — a crusading filmmaker whose work is driven by the urge to uncover wrongdoing. Although still receiving threats from Assange sympathisers, he says he has yet to receive a single negative communication about Armstrong, not even from those who benefited from his cancer charity.
“Will this film kill off Livestrong? I don’t know. We’ll have to see. The name is so associated with him and he’s now so tarnished that it’s hard to know if it can have any future.”
So what’s next for him? After such spectacular subjects, does he worry that the world’s reservoir of intrigue has been drained?
“There’s always something,” he says. “The great thing about documentary: the drama of real life is astounding. Wherever you go, you find stories. The thing I worry about all the time is getting it wrong. And God knows I came close to getting it wrong on this one.”
So much so that his sigh of relief almost soundtracks the film. “Right,” he admits. “But there is this sense with all these people I’ve filmed that they are undone by their arrogance. The very thing that makes them great takes them down. Armstrong was simply the greatest liar of all time. And eventually that brought him down.”
Which leads to the most fundamental question about the disgraced athlete: Has the mendacity stopped? With Armstrong, will anyone — in court or outside — ever be able to believe a word he says again?
“Honesty is an elusive concept,” says the director. “I think there are times in the film he is telling the truth and times when you can’t depend on what he says. You just can’t trust him any more.”
Indeed, this is the ultimate point of the film. The cyclist wanted to use Gibney to seal his place in sporting legend; Gibney has done just that. After watching the film you realise what the true Armstrong legacy entails: he has tarnished the relationship between every sports star and their plausibility.
We watch incredible acts, superhuman performance, staggering achievement — and in the wake of The Armstrong Lie we now doubt them all. We have to consider the possibility that every one of our heroes might be powered by dope. It is not a bad position for the cynic, perhaps. But it is a hopeless one for the sporting romantic. — © The