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Sony Classics Releases Trailer For THE ARMSTRONG LIE

By Melissa Thompson | October 4, 2013

“I didn’t live a lot of lies. But I lived one big one. You know, it’s different I guess. Maybe it’s not. But yeah, it’s… And what I said in there with just how this story is all over the place and there are these two… you know, these just complete opposite narratives. You know… The only person that can actually start to let people understand what the true narrative is, is me. And you should know that better than anybody else to the get into the… the real nature and the real detail of the story. Because we haven’t heard it yet is the truth.”

— Lance Armstrong; January 14, 2013

In 2008, Academy Award® winning filmmaker Alex Gibney set out to make a documentary about Lance Armstrong’s comeback to the world of competitive cycling. Widely regarded as one of the most prominent figures in the history of sports, Armstrong had brought global attention to cycling as the man who had triumphed over cancer and went on to win bicycling’s greatest race, the Tour de France, a record seven consecutive times.

In NY and LA theaters November 8th, watch the trailer for THE ARMSTRONG LIE.

Charting Armstrong’s life-story (and given unprecedented access to both the Tour and the man), Gibney began filming what he initially envisioned as the ultimate comeback story – Armstrong’s return from his 2005 retirement and his attempt to win his eighth Tour. Indeed, more than just an athlete, Armstrong, through his inspiring personal narrative and charitable works, had come to embody nothing short of the possibilities of the human spirit itself. An unprecedented scandal, however, would rewrite both the Armstrong legend and Gibney’s film.

By early 2013, Lance Armstrong had admitted to using performance enhancing drugs following a federal criminal investigation and an investigation by the US Anti-Doping Agency (in 2012 the USADA, in conjunction with the International Cycling Union, effectively stripped Armstrong of all seven of his previous titles and banned him from all sport for life). Setting out to chronicle a comeback, Alex Gibney’s The ARMSTRONG Lie instead emerges as a riveting insider’s view, chronicling the collapse of one of the greatest legends of our time. As Lance Armstrong tells Gibney’s camera: “I didn’t live a lot of lies, but I lived one big one.”

Academy Award® winning filmmaker, Alex Gibney (We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks; Taxi to the Dark Side; Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) directs THE ARMSTRONG LIE, a documentary chronicling sports legend Lance Armstrong’s improbable rise and ultimate fall from grace.

The film is produced by: Alex Gibney for Jigsaw Productions; five-time Oscar® nominee, Frank Marshall (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Seabiscuit; The Sixth Sense; The Color Purple; Raiders of the Lost Ark) for The Kennedy/Marshall company and Matt Tolmach (The Amazing Spider-Man; The Amazing Spider-Man 2) for Matt Tolmach Productions.

The production crew features several frequent Alex Gibney collaborators including: the French-born cinematographer, Maryse Alberti, who previously worked with Gibney on Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Taxi to the Dark Side (amongst others) and whose feature film credits include The Wrester (for Darren Aronofsky; 2008) and Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine (1998); veteran cameraman and director Richard Pearce (Food, Inc.), who provided additional cinematography; Ben Bloodwell, assistant camera/second camera, who previous work with Gibney includes We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks and trusted soundman David Hocs (Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer). On Gibney’s editing team is Andy Grieve (We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks), with additional editing work by Lindy Jankura (Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson) and two-time Oscar® nominee, Tim Squyres (Life of Pi; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).

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