I am a sports atheist, and my parents are the opposite. They are interested in any and every sporting event so of course my mom watched Le Tour de France. She even owned and rode a bike off and on for most of my life, which I only began to despise when she leaned it against wooden furniture, and the bike ruined the finish of multiple items in my house—some were gifts from mom! The minute that I was old enough to opt out of sporting culture, I did. If asked about Lance Armstrong, I would sneer that he left his wife for Sheryl Crow, but otherwise have no other opinion about him.
So why would I watch The Armstrong Lie? I love Alex Gibney’s documentaries: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Casino Jack and the United States of Money, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown, Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief, Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine and Zero Days, which should be required viewing for all human beings with any level of brain activity to understand the political landscape of the world. Even if I criticize aspects of his documentaries, Gibney’s documentaries generally address subject matters that are a microcosm of larger issues that affect all aspects of society. His documentaries are always entertaining while slipping in information that leaves viewers more educated than before they were watching the documentary without exuding that vegetable vibe that repels most people from watching documentaries. Also his documentaries have a broad appeal. My mom and I have completely different viewing tastes, but we find common ground with Gibney’s films even if we are attracted to his films for different reasons. This time, mom was interested because of Armstrong.
I am interested in the ability to spot a lie as early as possible so I don’t waste my time. All human beings lie, but you don’t have to be preternaturally good at reading body language or good with people. A lot of it is trusting your instinctual reaction to a statement and recognizing when you have an instinctual reaction instead of reasoning it away or ignoring it. It is like The Gift of Fear, but on a lower stakes scale. The best part of this technique is that you should not beat yourself up for being tricked because falling for a lie provides just as valuable information as not falling for a lie. You can dissect the situation and understand why you believe certain things and be on special guard during those situations or recognize your bias to certain offers of proof. If you think of iconic liars, you may think of Presidon’t or on a far lesser scale Mr. “I Didn’t Have Sexual Relations With That Woman,” but you can spot their lies a mile away unless you are willfully so in the bag for them that you don’t care. There is usually a discernable pattern regarding when people will lie, and more importantly, if they are conscious or unconscious liars.
If anyone other than those people who went on the record accusing Armstrong of lying says that they knew that Armstrong was a liar, they are lying to themselves. You didn’t know, and all those rubber yellow, “Livestrong” bracelets indicate otherwise. The Armstrong Lie offers me the benefit of knowing the story going in, and I left impressed with Armstrong’s ability to lie. I don’t care what any of you would claim, but I’ll admit that he would have fooled me and probably still could fool me. I would have completely bought his lies because he had clear drug test results to back up his lie and his level of aggrieved outrage at being tested so often seemed sincere, reasonable and not evasive given the results and the entire industry’s infrastructure to support his lie. If an entire institution is committed to providing cover to a lie, I don’t think that many of us have a natural defense against that other than becoming suspicious of anyone with accusations leveled against him, which is the opposite of innocent until proven guilty. I thought that I was fairly cynical, but clearly I need to work on leveling up (Justice Anthony Kennedy).
The Armstrong Lie is unprecedented because it is a rare time when Gibney becomes a subject in his own documentary. If this film is not at the same level of his other films, I’m going to happily sign a waiver because it is technically the second time that he is making this film. It originally was edited completely differently and called “The Road Back,” but after Armstrong’s lies finally caught up with him, Gibney had to recut it. I think that once he was forced to become a subject in his film as one in a long line of accusers, the movie became a product of processing a complex mixture of emotions instead of his usual analytical, dispassionate and comprehensive layout of an issue or a profile that he is accustomed to making. Gibney starts the movie with the Oprah interviews. I usually despise using the “How We Got Here” trope, but it is the real beginning of this film, so it is the best use of it since it reframes everything that came before.
I love that The Armstrong Lie gave screen time to the Armstrong truthers, and a special award for never letting it go should be given to Betsy Andreu, who seems angrier than her husband at how Armstrong could ruin or resurrect her husband’s career on a whim. I have just one question: the people that owe him money for “falsely” accusing him of cheating–do they still have to pay him money or did those decisions get reversed? Can you imagine how salty you would be if you still had to pay him for being right and perceptive? We needed more updates on David Walsh, a journalist who lost a libel suit to Armstrong. Does Walsh just do Grace’s Told You So dance from Will & Grace all day? I would, and I have for just suspecting wrongdoing—ahem, John Edwards.
I definitely think that The Armstrong Lie left room for another filmmaker to make a more objective analysis of the man and the sporting infrastructure around him because this documentary does not have the same perspicacious, objective and cool comprehensive overview customary of a Gibney movie. I also think that is what makes this two hour 4 minute documentary so riveting. It is an emotional roller coaster that made me appreciate Armstrong’s amoral accomplishments, commitment and drive. I’m not endorsing him, but I have a begrudging respect for someone so flinty and merciless in his approach to himself and others. It is a perverse type of excellence that people such as Maria Sharapova could not touch the hem of his shorts. I finally could understand and empathize with people who are constantly falling for liars; therefore I have a touchstone as a new line of defense against deception. I’m just not sure how long it will take before I can effectively wield it.