Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

Iron Man
production office, Downey asked that Favreau be sure to place a
Tesla Roadster in Tony Stark’s workshop. On a superficial level, this would symbolize that Stark was so
cool and connected that he could get a Roadster before it even went on sale. On a deeper level, the car
was to be placed as the nearest object to Stark’s desk so that it formed something of a bond between the
actor, the character, and Musk. “After meeting Elon and making him real to me, I felt like having his
presence in the workshop,” Downey said. “They became contemporaries. Elon was someone Tony
probably hung out with and partied with or more likely they went on some weird jungle trek together to
drink concoctions with the shamans.”
After 
Iron Man
came out, Favreau began talking up Musk’s role as the inspiration for Downey’s
interpretation of Tony Stark. It was a stretch on many levels. Musk is not exactly the type of guy who
downs scotch in the back of a Humvee while part of a military convoy in Afghanistan. But the press
lapped up the comparison, and Musk started to become more of a public figure. People who sort of knew
him as “that PayPal guy” began to think of him as the rich, eccentric businessman behind SpaceX and

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Tesla.
Musk enjoyed his rising profile. It fed his ego and provided some fun. He and Justine bought a house
in Bel Air. Their neighbor to one side was Quincy Jones, the music producer, and their other neighbor
was Joe Francis, the infamous creator of the 
Girls Gone Wild
videos. Musk and some former PayPal
executives, having settled their differences, produced 
Thank You for Smoking
and used Musk’s jet in the
movie. While not a hard-drinking carouser, Musk took part in the Hollywood nightlife and its social
scene. “There were just a lot of parties to go to,” said Bill Lee, Musk’s close friend. “Elon was neighbors
with two quasi-celebrities. Our friends were making movies and through this confluence of our networks,
there was something to go out and do every night.” In one interview, Musk calculated that his life had
become 10 percent playboy and 90 percent engineer.
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 “We had a domestic staff of five; during the day
our home transformed into a workplace,” Justine wrote in magazine article. “We went to black-tie
fundraisers and got the best tables at elite Hollywood nightclubs, with Paris Hilton and Leonardo
DiCaprio partying next to us. When Google cofounder Larry Page got married on Richard Branson’s
private Caribbean island, we were there, hanging out in a villa with John Cusack and watching Bono pose
with swarms of adoring women outside the reception tent.”
Justine appeared to relish their status even more than Musk. A writer of fantasy fiction novels, she
kept a blog detailing the couple’s family life and their adventures on the town. In one entry, Justine had
Musk saying that he’d prefer to sleep with Veronica than Betty from the 
Archie
comics and that he’d like
to visit a Chuck E. Cheese sometime. In another entry, she wrote about meeting Leonardo DiCaprio at a
club and having him beg for a free Tesla Roadster, only to be turned down. Justine handed out nicknames
to oft-occurring characters in the blog, so Bill Lee became “Bill the Hotel Guy” because he owns a hotel
in the Dominican Republic, and Joe Francis appeared as “Notorious Neighbor.” It’s hard to imagine
Musk, who keeps to himself, hanging out with someone as ostentatious as Francis, but the men got along
well. When Francis took over an amusement park for his birthday, Musk attended and then ended up
partying at Francis’s house. Justine wrote, “E was there for a bit but admitted he also found it ‘kind of
lame’—he’s been to a couple of parties at NN’s house now and ends up feeling self-conscious, ‘because
it just seems like there are always these skeevy guys wandering around the house trolling for girls. I don’t
want to be seen as one of those guys.’” When Francis got ready to buy a Roadster, he stopped by the
Musks’ house and handed over a yellow envelope with $100,000 in cash.
For a while, the blog provided a rare, welcome glimpse into the life of an unconventional CEO. Musk
seemed charming. The public learned that he bought Justine a nineteenth-century edition of