Oscar winner and the Eliot scandal

The Eliot Spitzer hooker scandal is getting the documentary treatment. And from an Oscar winner, no less. Filmmaker Alex Gibney, who won a 2007 Academy Award for Taxi to the Dark Side, is talking to distributors and financiers about his planned documentary on Spitzer, the ex-New York governor forced to resign in disgrace after being identified as a patron ("Client #9") of a prostitution ring under investigation by the feds.

Gibney, who's in France at the mipdoc festival - an industry showcase for documentaries - is shopping what's described as a "feature-length" documentary about "a recent, high-profile sex scandal." According to c21media.net, which broke the story, the "high-profile sex scandal" is believed to be the Spitzer saga. It's unknown, at this point, who Gibney has corralled for the documentary, or what, if any, cooperation he'll get from the primary players in the sordid tale.

Gibney's production company, Jigsaw Productions, is based in Manhattan. He received an Oscar nomination for his 2005 documentary, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and he's also done docs on Henry Kissinger and Jimi Hendrix. Taxi to the Dark Side told the story of a cab driver in Afghanistan, and his controversial death at the hands of US soldiers while being held in detention.

Gibney has so far declined to comment.