Topline
Directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim revealed their documentary “You Can See Everything” about disgraced entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes on Sunday night, shocking the film world with the secretly filmed documentary featuring interviews with the ex-Theranos founder right before she went to prison.
Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes and her now-husband Billy Evans leave a hearing on March 17, 2023 in San Jose, California.
Getty Images
Key Facts
“You Can See Everything” made its debut at the Telluride Film Festival in Telluride, Colorado, on Sunday, surprising audiences at the film festival, who didn’t know what would be shown at the festival’s marquee screening.
The film festival screening marked the first public announcement of the film, which will debut in movie theaters in October, according to studio A24.
“You Can See Everything” focuses on Holmes, who was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for fraud after Theranos concealed that its signature blood testing technology didn’t actually work as it claimed.
Fielder and Oppenheim filmed Holmes in the month before she reported to prison in 2023, with the film’s official description teasing, “What begins as an intimate portrait of an enigmatic felon becomes a mind-bending three-year journey into the abyss.”
Production company A24 released a minute-long teaser trailer for the film Sunday night, in which Holmes, shown in an intense close-up, tells Fielder she doesn’t “have anything to deceive you on” and insists, “I’m always being real.”
Fielder said after Sunday night’s screening that Holmes and her husband Billy Evans have not yet seen the documentary themselves, according to Vanity Fair, but her X account—which has remained active even during her prison sentence—shared the trailer Sunday night, commenting, “I’m always being real.”
What to Watch for
No specific date for the film’s theatrical release has yet been announced, beyond that it will come out in October.
What Is ‘You Can See Everything’ About?
According to reviews of the film, “You Can See Everything” features significant footage of Holmes and Evans starting approximately 35 days before she reports to prison. Filmmakers interviewed her about Theranos and even sat down with her to watch “The Dropout,” the 2022 television dramatization of Theranos’ downfall, in which actress Amanda Seyfried portrays Holmes. Throughout this, Holmes continues to defend herself and Theranos’ technology, according to Variety’s review, and suggests she is still trying to pitch the company to investors. While footage of Holmes ends after she reports to prison, according to Variety, the film continues, with Fielder digging deeper into her story and her husband Evans—who comes from a prominent family in the hospitality industry—taking a larger role.
What Was The Reaction To The Film’s Screening?
Critics and attendees at Sunday’s Telluride screening expressed strong praise for the documentary, with film professionals describing it on social media as “gripping,” “jaw-dropping,” and “endlessly thought-provoking,” and some noting it’s now among their favorite documentaries of all time. “‘You Can See Everything’ is just about the furthest thing from a ‘pure’ documentary you’ve ever seen,” Variety critic Owen Gleiberman wrote, describing it as a “one-of-a-kind reality-TV-as-hangout-movie psychodrama circus.” Another critic, Deadline’s Pete Hammond, argued the film “didn’t disappoint for any of the 174 minutes of its running time” and said the documentary was “unlike any I have ever seen” in terms of Fielder and Oppenheim’s access to Holmes.
What Did Nathan Fielder Say About The Film?
In a post-screening talkback about the documentary, Fielder—best known for his television show “Nathan For You”—told the Telluride audience he was still “struggling to this day to understand exactly what I experienced” in terms of his interactions with Holmes, as quoted by Vanity Fair. Fielder said he was “genuinely excited” for the film to come out so that people could “help me understand what I experienced,” adding, “Truly, to this day, I don’t quite know what I went through,” Fielder added. The filmmaker explained he, Oppenheimer and the film’s crew often couldn’t “reach a consensus” about “what we thought happened or what we thought these moments meant” as they were interviewing Holmes. “And that’s when we really realized, ‘Oh, this is really interesting to follow this.’” He also said the filmmakers had struggled to get people to participate in the film who knew or worked with Holmes, telling the audience, “Liz is toxic to people … People did not want to appear in this or people from the past were just sort of done with her.” While filmmakers worked with Holmes’ husband Evans on the film even after Holmes reported to prison, Fielder also explained the filmmakers’ communication “[broke] down” with him as the film neared completion. “Near the end of the process, Billy was trying to exert, we felt, a lot of control over the process,” Fielder said, according to Vanity Fair.
Forbes Valuation
Forbes estimates Holmes’ net worth at $0, after previously valuing her as the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire in 2014. Forbes revised its net worth estimate to $0 in 2016, as Theranos came under investigation and media reports revealed the issues with the company’s technology. She was indicted two years later, in June 2018.
Further Reading
Nathan Fielder’s Elizabeth Holmes Doc Met With Shock and Awe at Secret Screening (Vanity Fair)
What happened inside Telluride’s secret screening of Nathan Fielder’s new Elizabeth Holmes documentary (Los Angeles Times)
Leave a comment