-By Daniel Eagan

The center of a lobbying scandal that stretched from sweatshops on the Marianas Islands to casinos in Texas, Jack Abramoff became for many the face of corruption in American politics when he was indicted in 2005 for fraud and conspiracy. Director Alex Gibney explores his influence and background in Casino Jack and the United States of Money, a Magnolia Pictures release. A wide-ranging and freewheeling documentary, Casino Jack portrays a political system that may be irrevocably broken, from campaign financing to special-interest legislation. Throw in a Mob-related hit, “Dancing with the Stars” and Dolph Lundgren action movies, and you have a sense of the breadth of Abramoff's story.

Currently serving a four-year sentence in a federal penitentiary, Abramoff helped control the equivalent of an international extortion scheme, one that ultimately resulted in the resignation of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and the conviction of Congressman Bob Ney. Gibney originally set out to make a film about the reporters who broke the story, but in untangling Abramoff's empire he became fascinated by a character who was both outrageous and at the same time representative of Washington politics.

"At the end of the day, Abramoff thought he was doing the Lord's work," says Gibney from his office on Manhattan's West Side. "He believed he was doing something good. He was a family man, religious, gave millions to charity. But he was also on a mission to destroy the government—and not incidentally fund the Republican Party."

On the other hand, making Casino Jack helped alter Gibney's opinion of Abramoff. "One thing I've learned over time is that it's never so simple as to think this person is the bad person and that person is the good one. It's not just a question of a black hat or a white hat. What I discovered about Abramoff is that he'd done bad things, but you couldn't say he was a thoroughly bad guy. Jack kind of took the fall for the sins of a lot of his brethren. He became a very convenient scapegoat."

Casino Jack is filled with eye-opening archival footage of Abramoff working with the College Republicans, producing the Dolph Lundgren vehicle Red Scorpion, and attending a "Freedom Fighters" summit in Angola with a machine-gun-toting Jonas Savimbi. Because Abramoff is a film buff, Gibney felt it would be fun to include clips from Red Scorpion as well as from classics like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. "I didn't want to pitch this to someone who subscribes to Politico," he says. "I'm trying to reach people who want to be entertained and engaged. The idea is that they see it as a story, and along the way learn a little something about government."

Lean and impassioned, Gibney speaks in bursts, fingering his sandy moustache while considering answers. He explains how the structure and focus of the film changed as he and his staff uncovered material. "Bit by bit you keep pushing and looking for stuff. Sometimes you find it in unexpected directions, and sometimes you get stuff in one area that you don't get in another. You can stay with your original story, and do a good, dutiful job. But why not go where it's interesting?"

It's a process that can be unnerving at times, similar to what he went through making Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side. "We didn't get the audio tapes of the Enron traders, or Dilawar's autopsy papers [confirming the torture death of the Afghan cab driver in Taxi], until very late in the filming. One of the reasons Casino Jack took a long time was that we were waiting for people to get out of prison. Like Bob Ney, for example, and [Abramoff business partner] Adam Kidan."

For some, the most startling footage in the film will be the interviews, especially those with Ney and DeLay. (Gibney spoke with Abramoff, but couldn't get him to appear on camera. "A Department of Justice issue," as he puts it.) Ney talks about how the quest for campaign funds compromised his ability to govern, but DeLay startlingly calls for more money to be injected into the process.

Did Gibney worry that his film might be seen as endorsing DeLay's opinions? "We don't generally do ‘60 Minutes’ 'gotcha' interviews," he answers. "We ask questions and follow-up questions, but the idea is to get your subjects to say what they want to say. And my job is in the cutting room, where you show whether what they said measures up to the truth. So you include people, and allow them to speak without jumping on them, let them have their say. If the filmmaker's good, and knows that a subject is lying in some fundamental way, or is not really representing a world view that's accurate, then the audience should know it by the end as well."

Gibney won't label Casino Jack as pro-Democrat or pro-Republican. He is more interested in building a relationship of trust with viewers. He cites the fact that Taxi to the Dark Side is required viewing at the Army JAG School as proof that his films present rather than argue issues. He's curious about how the conservative press will respond to Casino Jack, which gives a lot of screen time to some of the heroes of the Republican Party. "There's some things here I expect they'll hate," he says. "But will Fox News want to stand up and defend corruption? Let's see if they do."

Gibney admits he agonized over how much information to include in the film. "At one point we had a three-hour cut that was pretty unwieldy. We got it way down, and then had to integrate Ney and Kidan and [journalist Thomas] Frank, which dramatically shifted the structure. We took about ten minutes out since we screened it at Sundance. It came to a point where there was a level of detail that people couldn't absorb. This is a movie, not a book, and you're in it for the duration. There's a rhythm you have to get right. You need rests, you need to be goosed, but you can reach a limit where the audience says, 'Tilt.'"

Casino Jack is the first of six films Gibney is unveiling this year. Three of them will be screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in April. Along with Casino Jack, Gibney is showing a "work in progress" about Eliot Spitzer, made with the cooperation of the former Governor of New York, and My Trip to Al-Qaeda, a film of Lawrence Wright's one-man play. Gibney was one of several filmmakers to contribute a segment to Freakonomics, based on the best-selling book by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.

Waiting in the wings: a documentary on bicyclist Lance Armstrong, and Magic Bus, about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. For the latter, Gibney incorporates restored 16mm sound footage shot by Kesey and his followers during their famous 1964 cross-country bus tour. Gibney notes ruefully, "They had the right machines but they had no clue how to operate them. You can see the microphone in any number of shots, but nobody ever…not once, mind you, throughout that whole trip across the country and back, did anybody ever use a slate or even clap their hands together. So there's no sync point for any of the sound."

The logjam of releases came about "partly by design and partly by pure, horrible accident," according to Gibney. Film restoration delayed the Kesey project. Casino Jack was held up a year to include additional interviews. Still, the pace is grueling, especially considering Gibney's additional producing credits. Should he keep up the work load, "I'll die," he says laughing. "I'll be dead."

When Abramoff is released from prison later this year, Gibney hopes he will tour with the film. "He can denounce the film if he wants to," the director says, "but why not go around the country and lecture people about corruption and government? Who knows more about it than Jack Abramoff?" (Ney took questions from the audience after the Sundance screening.)
"We're moving into more and more of a polarized universe where everything just becomes automatic," Gibney warns. "We just keep getting prodded, like Pavlov's dogs. I'm trying to reach out to people and asking them to grapple with tough issues. Unless we wake up, we're doomed as a democracy. What's at stake is our ability to have a voice."