WikiLeaks film shifts focus after Julian Assange won't share info [View all]

Documentary director Alex Gibney initially wanted to tell the advocate's story in 'We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,' but when the website founder wouldn't cooperate, the director decided to work on a profile of Bradley Manning, the Army private who allegedly leaked classified U.S. documents to the website.

By Rebecca Keegan
May 18, 2013, 9:28 a.m.

... "I thought this film was about a leaking machine, this new technology, and I thought it was about this silver surfer character Julian Assange, who had this great David and Goliath story," Gibney said over coffee last month. "But in some ways it's a reflection of how important it is to constantly be examining what is true and what is not" ...

Gibney penetrated the dense circle of agents, lawyers and journalists who surrounded Assange with the help of one of his film's executive producers, activist Jemima Khan, who had posted some of Assange's bail in a case involving allegations of sexual abuse by two Swedish women.

After months of discussions about Assange's possible participation in his film, Gibney flew to England, where his subject was living under house arrest in a country estate, for a six-hour meeting. According to Gibney, at that meeting Assange told him the going rate for an interview was $1 million. When Gibney said he didn't pay for interviews, Assange asked if instead the director would tell him what others interviewed in the documentary were saying ...

Assange declined to cooperate with Gibney, which led the director to mine other sources, including footage an Australian journalist shot of Assange before he was famous, and to find another story — Manning's ...

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-wikileaks-julian-assange-movie-20130519,0,7991309.story