‘Client’ director Alex Gibney gives opinion on Eliot Spitzer’s future in politics

Documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney has a wide range of interests – his next two films are on cyclist Lance Armstrong and Ken Kesey’s 1964 bus trip – but what really gets him going is greed and/in politics.

He directed and produced “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. He won the Best Documentary Oscar for “Taxi to the Darkside,” about U.S torture practices, and has also made films on jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff (“Casino Jack and the United States of Money”) and now “Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer.”

Spitzer, you may recall, was a rising star in the Democratic party, a tough, former prosecutor who went after Wall Street (before that was fashionable) and became governor of New York, only to be brought down in a prostitution scandal.

In “Client 9,” Spitzer, who was interviewed for the film, often comes across as the tightly-wound, pompous, to-the-manor-born jerk whose attitude rankled so many fellow politicians, but he’s undeniably gifted at understanding the extreme complexity of today’s economy and able to make the most hard-to-understand concepts comprehendable to average citizens. He’s also a fighter willing to fight for the poor and middle class against big money interests.

Does Spitzer have a future again in politics? The answer will depend on whether the voters to whom his politics would appeal will be willing to overlook his flaws and concentrate on his strengths and whether his fall from grace will bring him some humility.

The Daily News spoke with the opinionated Gibney at the Toronto International Film Festival, where “Client 9″ played in September and then followed up with him earlier this week.

Q: Since “Client 9″ premiered, what kind of feedback have you gotten and do you think the film has been good or bad for Spitzer?

A:

The feedback I’ve gotten has generally been pretty good with the exception of a rather predictable slam from the New York Post.

What’s been interesting to me is that a lot of people who were relatively hostile to Spitzer actually come out of the film with their minds far more open, if not changed.

So I think it’s been positive for Spitzer.

Q: What do you think of his new CNN show?

A:

He wants back into public life and this is one way for him to talk about issues. I’m interested in it because I’m interested when he talks about issues, but I think that the format of the show does not always take best advantage of his strengths.

Q: We seem a relatively forgiving country. How would you gauge his chance for a comeback?

A:

I think we are, but it all depends on the job and the timing. Even if people acknowledge that he has good ideas, and he could be a very powerful figure, he has to find a way to convince people that they can trust him. Most particularly it was his supporters who were dismayed at his lack of judgment – they were counting on him and he let them down. He may be able to convince people that he’s learned from this experience and that he’s a new and improved Eliot Spitzer.

Q: In the recent election, David Vitter was re-elected to the Senate from Louisiana and he did the same thing as Spitzer . . .

A:

Hello. Everyone talks about Spitzer’s hypocrisy and I don’t find it any more hypocritical than what David Vitter did and David Vitter did it on our time. He was ordering prostitutes during roll call votes. And he was a family values Republican. So I think that if there’s a future for David Vitter in the Senate, I certainly think there should be a political future for Eliot Spitzer.

Q: With the recent political debate so issues-avoidant, is it possible that Spitzer is just too issues-oriented to be a candidate at this time? Will people on the campaign trail really listen to the wonkish policy he’s good at?

A:

A lot of people don’t. But at the same time if you go back and look at what swept him into Albany after his long period in the attorney general’s office, what swept him in was that a lot of middle-class people thought he was acting as their protector. He was tough enough to go after the bad guys who were ripping them off, whether it was people who were making bad drugs or people who were polluting their air or people who were inside trading to their detriment. Politics is pretty emotional. It’s not always as issues-based as Eliot Spitzer might like, but in time, that ability to go after powerful people and say I’m standing up for you is a powerful emotional argument which he used before and he might be able to use again. . . . The question is will his fall be able to mollify his one trait that people didn’t like, which was his sort of high-handed arrogance.

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