Elizabeth Holmes Doc ‘You Can See Everything’ Reaction In Telluride

Telluride chief Julie Huntsinger took a significant risk programming a documentary as the festival’s sneak premiere this year, given that nonfiction can’t claim the broad appeal of fiction. Indeed, just as she prepared to reveal the chosen film someone in the Werner Herzog Theater shouted Digger!, apparently hoping it would be the Tom Cruise-starring feature from director Alejandro Iñárritu. That person may have been disappointed, but judging from reaction, the selection of the documentary You Can See Everything has turned into a triumph.

More than 24 hours after the premiere of the Nathan Fielder–Lance Oppenheim film, everyone in Telluride is still talking about it (well, everyone still in town; plenty headed to the airport Monday). One festival regular told me he’d got a message from someone in Lake Charles, LA wanting to know if he’d been one of the lucky few to get into the screening. The news has spread fast and far.

Walking near Colorado Avenue Monday afternoon, I spotted a publicist who had advance knowledge that You Can See Everything would be the super-secret special film. We proceeded to get into a 10-minute discussion of the film’s two principal characters – the enigmatic and unblinking Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the notorious Silicon Valley blood-testing startup Theranos, and her romantic partner, Billy Evans, father of her two young children. Is he out of his mind (as one important figure in the film exclaims)? Is she on the level or a preternaturally gifted manipulator trying to pull a Jedi mind trick on Fielder? Those kinds of vigorous debates have been going on from the moment the crowd spilled out of the Herzog into the Telluride night air.

READ: ‘You Can See Everything’ Review: Shocking Elizabeth Holmes Documentary With Nathan Fielder Is Like No Other You Have Ever Seen – Telluride Film Festival

At an afterparty at La Marmotte (French for marmot, a stout ground-dwelling squirrel. I mention this because that’s the kind of weird detail I think Fielder would seize on), the directors held court as enthusiast after enthusiast heaped praise on them in between slurps of cocktails and bites of molten mushroom croquettes and seared tuna cubes. I spoke with Fielder and he seemed a bit dazed by the ardent reception for his film. He’s been working in intense secrecy on the project since before Holmes began her prison term in 2023 after her conviction for defrauding investors (and her acquittal, she repeats several times in the film, of defrauding patients). To emerge from that edit cave into the spotlight of public reaction must be disorienting. Fielder didn’t even know where the film would play next – whether distributor A24 would take it to another festival or proceed straight to theatrical release next month.

Two-time Oscar winner Emma Stone hung out at the afterparty too (can we say she Marmotted? Is that a verb?). She moderated the Q&A after the world premiere and acquitted herself admirably (as people were leaving the theater a veteran journalist went up to Emma and congratulated her on her performance as moderator, helpfully noting that actors typically don’t excel at that).

The nearly three-hour long film drew continuous laughter, frequently triggered by hilarious reaction shots of Fielder, the Canadian comedian and co-director, who is seen on camera throughout attempting to process what Holmes and Evans are pushing. “Liz,” as she goes by in the film, suffered catastrophic reputational damage from the implosion of Theranos, not to mention a skewering she received in Alex Gibney’s documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley and the devastating portrayal by actress Amanda Seyfried in the fictionalized Hulu series The Dropout. Aware of that and wishing to revive Theranos in a new form, the couple invited Fielder to observe their every move for the 30-some days before she had to report to federal prison in Texas.

In the glory days of Theranos, Holmes — her big blue eyes and blond hair set to advantage in black turtleneck sweaters — had reeled in powerful backers like Larry Ellison, Rupert Murdoch, Henry Kissinger, and George Shultz. Shedding the turtleneck in favor of a cozier sweater and rumpled coiffure for the documentary, she locks eyes with Fielder perhaps thinking she could work her magic on him. But he proves resistant, relentlessly probing whether Holmes knew she had oversold what her blood testing machines could do.

Evans emerges as a troubling presence who may be exerting undue control over Holmes, in a possible recapitulation of her relationship with Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the Svengali-like president of Theranos and Holmes’s then romantic partner (he’s serving a federal prison term as well, of 12 years). Billy boy is eager to have the film crew record him pumping iron, and later, while showering at home – clearly aware a camera was on him – he proudly displays his, uh, manhood. Well into the film he gets into a discussion with the film team where he proclaims his prowess at love-making. And they call Donald Trump a narcissist. He admits to taking over Holmes’s X/Twitter feed and tweeting as her, and he works out a deal for A24 to pay he and Holmes to appear in the film, possibly without her knowledge (he ultimately abandoned that effort to score a payday).

The motives of Holmes and Evans remain resolutely opaque; during the Q&A the directors said the film crew would often debate what they had witnessed of the couple after a day’s shooting, but no one could agree on a common interpretation. You Can See Everything, then, qualifies an arch title. What does it serve to “see everything” when you’re mired in muck?

(In the teaser below, you can see one of those delicious reaction shots of Fielder as Holmes assures him of her utter honesty).