We watched the 3hr Elizabeth Holmes doc so you don’t have to

All right. So, this is going to be a movie discussion about the new Nathan Fielder, Elizabeth Holmes documentary called You Can See Everything. This is full of spoilers. So, if you haven't seen the movie, if you don't want spoilers, don't watch this.

This is for people who have seen it and want to react with other people to the thing. Except for Sam hasn't seen it. And I gave him an out. I said, "You don't have to get spoiled, but you want to get spoiled."

I want to be spoiled. I'm a grown man. I cannot stand when people say, "I don't want." It's like, "Dude, just tell me everything that happens. Please."

Well, Nathan Fielder himself, I was reading an interview and he said he read some study. They had two groups of people, one that were spoiled and one that was unspoiled, and they watched the movie, and the enjoyment of the movie was higher amongst the spoiled group than the unspoiled group. So, he's like, maybe there's something to it where people actually like it more when they kind of know what's coming.

So, what's the premise here? All I know is that Nathan Fielder is like a Sacha Baron Cohen-like character where he's silly and satirical. He had a show where he would prank people, but this seems serious.

Well, we should lay the groundwork. So Sam hasn't seen the movie. Me and Diego went and saw it last night, but we didn't talk to each other afterwards. We got out at midnight, went home. And then Ben, I think you're more of a Nathan Fielder fan. Like you've watched... Have you, Ben, have you watched like Nathan for You and The Rehearsal like fully or partially or what?

All right. So Sam, your question is what's the premise of the movie? So the premise of the movie is 34 days before Elizabeth Holmes was going to go into prison. So it's post all the scandal, after she was already convicted. Now 34 days away from going into jail, and she's got two little kids, and she's got her... not husband technically, I think fiance. They're not married because she owes hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution. So, they didn't want to get married and combine their finances, but they have two kids. And so he calls her his wife, even though it's fiance. All right. So, she's 34 days away from going in, and they contact A24 about doing a movie together documenting her beforehand. Nothing comes of it. Nathan Fielder finds out about this, jumps on the opportunity, moves in with her in her house, tiny tiny house on the beach in Del Mar, and lives with her for 34 days, and then for the next 3 years continues to like pursue the story in complete secrecy until it debuted at a random film at the Telluride Film Festival a few months ago and surprised everybody. It was unbelievable. The reviews coming out of it were unbelievable. Now the movie is the top like the top rated movie I think on...

Letterboxd.

Letterboxd, Rotten Tomatoes, and like moviecritic.com or whatever, like some other services, has the highest rating across all three of any movie. It's the first documentary that's favored to win Best Picture, and I think it had like a blowout like, you know, box office opening weekend basically like...

I saw someone say that Nathan, they're like, I don't know if this is possible for a documentary, but Nathan deserves Best Actor.

Okay, that's what... that's what Nathan would do. You say something to him and he just goes...

Okay, I don't...

And I also saw, I think it was, what's the director, Nolan? What's his... um...

Oppenheimer.

But what's his... what's his full name? Um...

Christopher.

And he, I think, I think it was him, and this was on stage at a conference years ago, and he was talking about how Nathan Fielder is amazing and that his technique for telling the story is amazing. The way that he uses angles, like he was complimenting him as a director when everyone thought of him as a gag guy. And then someone reposted this and they're like, he was not joking. He was being serious. And if you see the new movie, you see exactly what he's talking about because it appears as though... was there like some ways that the camera was working that helped tell the story?

Yeah. I mean, most of the movie is shot like, Sam, move your face all the way up to the camera. Most of the movie is that close. Yes, is that close. Which kind of goes into the idea of you can see everything. I mean, and also she has this intense eye contact. Like she doesn't blink. And you know, they say like, you know, the eyes are the window to the soul. And so here you are. You're that close with her. You see her eyes that wide open, and yet you walk away having, for me at least, no idea how to feel about her. It's like I saw everything and I know less than I knew at the beginning. I don't... I don't know what to think.

So tell me, I have questions about the voice. I have questions about if you think she did it, but where do you want to start?

30-second summary of the movie. So he moves in when they're, you know, when she's getting ready to go to jail. And first he's literally like kind of almost like a director. He's wearing his headphones. He's behind the corner. He's like trying to stay out of the shot. So first he's just like fly on the wall trying to observe them, and then by the middle and end he's now like one of the main characters in the thing because it's like he's a part... he becomes sucked into it. So the way the movie works is it shows her before she goes to jail, and he's trying to figure out like, is she a good person or a huge manipulator? Like is she misunderstood or is she a master manipulator? That's a good way of putting it. Then it shows... okay, so that's like the first kind of like half of the movie. It's like her, them together beforehand, and he's trying to figure out who she is. He's trying to figure out, did she... it's not really did she do it, but he's trying to understand like her... her POV. Like, do you think you did something wrong? Why do you think you're going to jail? And she's like, I don't know.

What did she go to jail for? And what are the... the accusations are that she lied? What did she lie about?

I think the best way to become successful is to see how other people did it, whether you're going to copy them or just use it as inspiration, because then now you know what's possible. So starting at the age of 24, I did this relentlessly and I was very methodical about it, and I created a spreadsheet where I tracked roughly 50 people who were uber successful, and I looked at the year that they were born, the year that they started their apprenticeship, and then the year that they started the first thing that made them successful, finally the year that they broke through. And I aggregated all this data along with the stories of what they did to be an apprentice and what they did to finally break through, and I put it together in a database. And HubSpot went and found this thing that I frankly even forgot about, but it did change my life, and they resurfaced it. They made it even better and they put it into a thing that you can download for free right now. So, if you click the link in the description or click the QR code right here, you can see this database that I made when I was 24 and it changed my life. And so, if you're looking to become successful or you're already successful and just want some more inspiration, check it out.

So, she's going to jail for defrauding investors, not for...

Because she raised billions of dollars. Uh, not billion, I don't know, she's like 500 million.

Okay. She raised $500 million on this premise that she can create a blood test that uses barely any blood and it's revolutionary and you can go to CVS and get for $5 and it tells you on the spot or... or...

Prick of blood. So, a drop of blood basically would go into her magic machine called the Edison. And she was this great inventor of this machine that would revolutionize the way medicine's done because you could run this huge battery of tests, like hundreds of tests or whatever, on just a tiny bit of blood instead of going and getting huge blood draws. And if people could do that with just a tiny bit of blood, they would get tests more often. We would find, you know, problems before they, you know, got too far, and we would be able to test for way more things. And like somehow that was supposed to be really good. Now, if you've watched the TV show and other things like that, you've read the book Bad Blood, you know, basically what happened was the Edison machine pretty much didn't work. I think it could only do like 12 or 13 tests out of the like hundred it claimed. And that they would take the blood and they would try to go... they would be like, "Oh, the blood... the machine's not working. So today you got to go get more blood drawn." And they would go run it to a real machine that like was, you know, older machine, get the test and pass it off as their own. And she basically was telling investors that this worked. She was telling the public that this worked. She was telling partners like CVS or Walgreens that this worked, but it didn't really work.

And she denies this. But what's the denial? Is the denial the machine could have worked if you'd given me more time?

So there's a key scene in the thing where it's like he's like reading her quote. He's like, "You said the fact is that we invented a machine that can do any test on blood and that's amazing." And then she's like, "Yeah." And he's like, "But that wasn't a fact. The machine couldn't do that." She's like, "It could." And he's like, "Well, like in the future it could." And she's like, "The way the machine works is you put some blood in a cartridge, it goes in the machine, it goes to the cloud, the cloud will ask what test you want, and it can do any test that you want. Now, the machine would be able to run that test." And then he's like, "But it couldn't do all the tests." He's like, "Well, we had to do the chemistry for each of those individual tests." He's like, "Ah, so like you were kind of saying it's capable of running all these tests, but it couldn't do it now." And she kind of avoids the question. He's like, "I believe what I said. That's what I..."

She doesn't admit any wrong.

And he's like, "But you see how that's confusing, right? Like when you say it can, people think that it can do it right now." And you're saying that it can. She's like, "It can." And she looks at him like kind of crazy. And then, you know, and they're... and also they're restarting Theranos while she's going to jail. They're like pitching investors and recruiting a team to like do it better now that they have AI. They're like trying to do it again. And she's like... So, okay, that's one whole part of it. Second part of it is...

But for the record, she has never admitted to doing anything wrong.

She's confused as to why she's going to jail."

Okay.

Like, I don't know. And he's like, "Did you ever... have you like, you know, you lie? Hey, did you lie?" She's like, "I've never lied." He's like, "You've never lied? You never been to a party and said, I've been like, I'm not feeling good, can't come?" But first, she's first... the first... first he's like, "You haven't lied?" She's like, "I don't believe I have. I've always tried to tell the truth. Maybe when I was a kid." He's like, "So since the age of 18, you've never lied?" She's like, "I thought you meant like the types of things I'm accused of." And then like cuts, right? So, like one weird thing is it's... he's not actually trying to get to the bottom of the thing. It's not like he's... he's not trying to litigate the case. He's trying to figure out who is this person and was she... is she what we think she is? Is she misunderstood? And then the way the movie plays out, the best way I could describe it is I would say you leave more confused as to what the truth is, I think. Is that fair, Ben? Would you agree with that or no?

But what are you confused about then?

Well, all right, there's two... two ways to look at this. One is, did she just do the Silicon Valley kind of fake it till you make it thing, except for she got kind of caught before she could make it, and it... it was healthcare, so it was higher risk. So she kind of did the entrepreneurial thing like Elon does when he says, "Hey, this is going to be self-driving. We'll be self-driving coast to coast by next year." But we don't look at him as this fraudster. It's just sort of this optimistic entrepreneur who's trying to build the future and pitching it. Okay, that's like the very, very favorable... favorable version. Then you have this other version which is like, no, she willingly, knowingly defrauded investors and patients, and that was really, you know, that's a messed up thing to do, and she deserves to go to jail. But like, was she the mastermind or not? And that's where the... the second important part of the movie is. A lot of it is about Billy, her... whatever he is, her husband or whatever. Ben or Diego, describe kind of who is this Billy guy and what's your... what did you know about him coming in versus now?

He's an... to Holmes or to everyone else?

They're having a conversation and it just shows Billy keeps looking out of the corner of his eye to how she's whisking the eggs. But they're talking about something very important about what happened at their... us. He keeps looking and then he can't resist. He just grabs it. He starts doing it. And then Nathan's like... he stops the conversation. He's like... doesn't keep going on the serious topic. He's like, "What was... what was wrong with the way she was doing it?" And he's like, "Oh, nothing was wrong. I just, you know, I wanted to help her." And then Nathan just sits there in the silence. And then Elizabeth's like, "He thinks I don't do... he thinks I wasn't doing a good job of it." He's like, "What? What do you mean?"

So, who's that? Who's the alpha in the relationship?

Well, that's kind of the way this comes. So the... so one of the arguments that she made in her defense and that the... kind of the movie tries to make is she's this innocent idealist and she was taken advantage of at Theranos by this Sunny Balwani, the guy she was romantically dating, this like older Indian dude who she was dating for like a decade. And there's one... one kind of one out for her is if he was the guy who was pulling the strings. Okay. Now, they don't talk about that, but they draw this huge parallel by showing her relationship with Billy now, where he's clearly the guy pulling the strings, meaning it's his idea to do the... the documentary. He's kind of the one interfacing with them. There's a big part where he goes behind her back in a way, like he... they... they reenact this scene before they started filming where they go to their house to meet and they're talking about what this movie would be, how it would work. And she reads this like excerpt from her book that's like flowery poetry that she's writing about like her experience, and they're like, "Cool writing, you like, nice." And then she's like... the baby starts crying, she has to go upstairs, and then Billy, now that she's gone, he's like, "All right, I want to talk about one thing, which is we want a piece of the action. We want... we want a piece of the upside here." And then Nathan's like, "That's not typical in a documentary. It's not a good idea," um, because it sort of like blurs the ethical line of like, are you just going to be doing this for profit or do you really want your story told? In fact, isn't that one of the main things you're trying to argue is that no, she didn't defraud these people to... to self-enrich. She doesn't care about money, and yet you're going to ask for money out of this, and then people will question, did you do this for money, just like that, right? You see why that's problematic? He's like, "Harry and Meghan got a hundred million for their documentary, so just saying we want our fair share." And so they... and then they're like, "Well, we didn't have much leverage, so we agreed to it." And so the whole thing is... And then she doesn't know that he did that, or she claims to not know. We think, but we don't know. How could she not know? They're so close. They have this like crazy like trauma bond love.

Did she address the voice?

They didn't talk. So they didn't talk about the voice. They didn't talk about a lot of things. This is kind of the criticism I would have with the movie, which is like, you know, for example, under oath she testified, she admitted that she added like the... like the Pfizer logo to some documents when she presented to Walgreens that made it look like they had signed off on her tests, but they hadn't, and that was completely misleading, and that was illegal. And she admitted that, which kind of like breaks the whole premise of she doesn't really know, she doesn't lie. Like she admitted to that under oath, and he doesn't bring that type of stuff up.

Dude, and I think... I think that like two things aren't being mentioned, and tell me if they were mentioned. I didn't follow... I didn't read the book, but uh I think that one of our employees killed himself because he had to testify or something like that, and he thought he was totally innocent, and the pressure was like getting to him. He's like, I can't believe I got dragged in this. I think he... I think a guy committed suicide. And then I also think that there was both... now this is... I'm not sure about this, but tell me if it's right, that some cancer patients were told they didn't have cancer and vice versa. Is that right?

I don't know those two things, so I haven't looked into that much to know. But also you did learn what's she like.

Yeah.

What's he like? What's she like? Which is the thing you didn't know, right? Like the case has already been litigated with all the evidence that existed. If you wanted to see it, you could go see that. What you didn't know is what is she really like? And I would say you kind of got the Elizabeth Holmes experience where you're like in her weird reality distortion field, and you walk away not... not fully knowing what's... what to believe and what not to believe. Ben, you didn't give... what did you think about the movie by the way?

I think she's incredibly persuasive. I think she's very engaging. It's very easy to believe her. You know, it's... they paint Billy in a specific way, but she doesn't see him in that way. So, I would say, I mean, overall, I just thought the movie was unbelievably good. Like, probably the best... maybe the best movie I've ever seen in terms of entertainment. It was so good.

Let me ask you guys this. So Sean, do you know who Roy Cohn is?

No.

Okay. So Roy Cohn was a very popular lawyer in New York City in the 70s and 80s, and a lot of people regarded him as like a fairly evil guy because he would... um, he sued the government tons of times, and he... but he was known as a pit bull. He was vicious. And at one point he met this young developer who he thought was very promising, and he was like, "I'm going to take you under my wing and show you how to get things done, um, in this city." And that young guy was Donald Trump. And according to a couple books that I've read about him, a lot of people say Donald Trump sort of changed after hanging out with Roy Cohn because he learned the rules of power. And one of his... uh, Roy Cohn's biographer made a list of six rules that they noticed, um, Roy went through. And I don't know if Roy actually wrote these down, but they were, um, some of the rules. And the first rule was never apologize or admit wrongdoing ever. Always counterattack, and always with greater force than you received. Use the legal system as a weapon, not as, uh, not as a thing for justice. Manipulate the media ruthlessly. Use fear both as a shield and a sword. And the last one was build a fortress of loyalty around yourself. And the biography was like, these are like six rules that we have noticed repeatedly Roy Cohn, um, uh, used. And he's kind of an interesting guy to study because he came from nothing and became very powerful, and Trump worked with him. Um, and so my question to you is, do you... did you notice anything about like the laws of human nature where you're like, this is interesting, like not that you're going to replicate it, but like, was this... is interesting, she is using this rule to manipulate and take control.

See, when you... when you say that, that makes perfect sense, and that lines up with, you know, Trump and... and whatnot. And actually even Ben, when you were saying she's very persuasive. The crazy thing about the movie is that I expected her to be this kind of charismatic, maybe like kind of egomaniac, maybe very charming, maybe very compelling, maybe very persuasive, but you got to have your... your guard up because she's so... she's going to kind of hit you with such, you know, oh, I could see why people fell for her. She's completely disarming is her style. So, she doesn't try to convince you of anything. She doesn't like turn it on. She's not the center of attention. She's the opposite. It's like the whole thing is like she's just like, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. I don't know. But then you're like, wait, is this some nine-dimensional chess where she's so disarming that I am disarmed, and that like then the subtle thing works because she was so seemingly uninterested in charming you or presenting anything. Like she doesn't wear makeup. The movie is called You Can See Everything. Like, you know what I mean?

So... so kind of the genius of the movie is, um, you know, her argument is I've been portrayed as this monster, that's not me, and then other people say no, you are a monster, and then, you know, one other argument is that maybe... so... so, you know, they're kind of saying the media is a bit of a monster, they... they because they made me look like a monster, which is not true, the media tells these untruths, and then another defense is like, well, maybe she wasn't the monster, maybe Sunny was the monster, Billy's the monster, and then... and another is no, she's the ultimate monster because of all that. And the way the movie works is he kind of shows that it's all true. Everybody's guilty. So, it's like Billy definitely manipulative, comes across like a complete... you know, he's... he's the biggest kind of loser in, I would say, in the film. At the same time, one of the things he does halfway through, so she goes to jail. So, it's like, how are you going to do this documentary? Because she's in jail now. You can't even see her on camera, can't hear her audio, nothing. Well, one of the things that Nathan Fielder is famous for is recreating sets, reenactments, hyperrealistic reenactments. For example, like one of his shows, this guy's going to have a difficult conversation like breaking up with his girlfriend. So, he recreates... he builds to the inch the same bar that... that guy's going to go to, hires paid actors who have studied the patrons of that bar just so he can go in and feel what it's going to be like to have that awkward conversation. It's like just like over the top. He did this thing where he's like he studied pilots and how if you go listen to the black box footage, which he spent years doing, he learned that the... the number one like root cause of crash... plane crashes is that there's this weird social dynamic between the captain and the co-pilot, and that the co-pilot might notice something is wrong, that the captain's doing something wrong, but they're afraid to mention it. They mention it too late, and when they mention it, the captain slaps them down, and then they don't say anything, literally flying to their death. And he's like, that's so crazy, so I want to understand the social dynamic, but he can't, you know, go where the pilots go in airport, so he recreates the Denver airport to the T, like with the TSA, and he walks through and he's observing how the pilots sit in the lounge beforehand, and he's watching them. It's like this absurd methodology he has. Okay, so in this movie he goes and he... he brings it halfway through the movie when she goes to jail, he brings the actress who played her in the movie. Suddenly she's in this... in this... in this movie who played her in the Hulu series.

Amanda, uh, whatever...

Seyfried or something, something like that. I don't know what her last name is. So he brings her in and he shows her the footage that we've been seeing in the first half of the movie. She watches it, has the same reaction we just had. So now it's like Inception. And then basically you see that in a way she's kind of guilty too. She's extremely judgmental, quick to judge her. And then she sees Elizabeth's reaction to watching the series for the first time and how she's portrayed and how painful that was to watch. And then she feels really guilty, but she's like, "No, like..."

Everybody knows this is TV. Like, it's fiction."

He's like, "Well, that's a lie, right? Fiction is a lie." So, it's like, "You're mad at her for being a lie, but you... you know, you're obviously telling fiction, and it has a pretty big impact on the way the world sees her and her." And then she gets really defensive about it, but he's not... he's not attacking her either. He just... he lets it all unfold as the movie goes on. And so you see that like, yeah, I guess they're kind of guilty too for the way they did it. The New York Times reporting where it was like she says this thing where she says like, "That's not me. That's a character I created." And she's like, "I didn't say that." And the New York Times like, "Well, we don't have record that you said it, but we stand by our journalist."

It's like, well, that was pretty important that you know that... that thing. So the whole thing is kind of... and then... and the kind of the cherry on top is that like Nathan himself, by the end of the movie, the actress calls into question, well, Nathan, like, are you also like kind of... have you fallen under her spell? Like, are you not telling me everything because maybe at some level you are trying to protect her too?

And he's like, why would you say that I'm doing that?

And then there's like this like key scene in the whole thing that won't make sense to unpack, but it's the scene of them in the ocean together that like was a callback to the beginning of the movie that's like, ah, kind of damning. And then you're like, what? God damn it! I walked out of this thing... we all got... we all got duped by everybody.

What were her parents like? What was she like as a kid?

Well, they show them. Her parents showed up. Her mom didn't say too much. That there was a hilarious part where it's the morning where she's going to go to jail, and it's her, Billy's there, kids are there, her parents are there, and Nathan comes in and he gives her a gift like before she goes to jail, and it's kind of a gag gift. And what he ends up gifting her, like something to like change her hair color and sunglasses, like in case you want to make a run for it this morning, like, uh, I gave you everything that you can. Parents are there. He's like, I realize now in this situation it might be a bad taste, but it's... it's... it's a wig and hair coloring, glasses and hair color in case you want to flee, but I... I understand that that might not be appropriate right now. Um, I'm going to go to my car for a little. He goes sit in his car. Did... um... uh... that's it.

Would make me feel sad for the kids too, like because they're showing her kids and it would manipulate.

Heartbreaking where she's right before she's going to jail, she's like...

She tells Billy, she's like, 'I left milk in the fridge,' and then she just starts crying, right? Because she's not going to be able to, you know, breastfeed her kid, who they showed her doing that many times now, and she's going to jail for an unknown period of time.

Crazy. What, when does she get out?

10 years. It's a 10-year sentence, I think. She's supposed to get out in four or something, right?

She's getting out this year, I think, like right in the next year. And what does it say what she was like in prison?

Uh, well, they don't know. They don't say, and you can't—they can't show it. So, you know, they talk about how like she gets like two minutes of phone time, and they talk about some of the difficulties of life there.

There's this funny scene where they're in the kitchen, and remember how Billy made like an AI recreation of Elizabeth Holmes like right before she went to prison? They did this whole—they went somewhere, did like a photo shoot, and they were able to create like an AI version of Elizabeth Holmes, and basically it got to the point where like he could make her say anything.

Yeah. So they show Billy being like this kind of super controlling. He loves her, but he's controlling, and it might not be in her best interest, but she loves him so devotionally that she's okay with it. And like maybe that's how she was at Theranos with Sunny, and maybe that's why. So basically he's sitting there at his dinner table. There's the AI giant monitor of her just sitting there fake next to him.

Oh my god.

A three-foot-long Komodo dragon on the table, which I guess is his like pet dragon. Once she went to jail, he's got this like crazy pet dragon. And he's talking about how he has power of attorney. So they're like, 'How is she tweeting?' And he's like, 'Well, you know, she has internet access, but it's only email.' And they're like, 'So how is she tweeting?' It's like, 'Well, you know, it's me physically typing it, but she sends it to me.' It's like, so she tells you like, 'Tweet this.' It's like, 'Well, no, she doesn't have to tell me. I know her. So we're like this, we're one.' And they're like, 'Well, that's pretty messed up. You're posing as her. People don't know that's you saying it, not her.' He's like, 'Well, I know what she would want to say.'

And they're like, 'You see how that's like messed up, right?' And he's treating like stuff and what?

Holmes DM'd me once. Someone was Bill. Well, I didn't know who it was. Read it. I can't—so the background of this is like there was like a controversy where people were like giving me, and I replied and I'm like, 'No, this is not true. Here's the truth.' And he replied and he goes, 'You handled that exceedingly well.' And I said—I don't like reading that. I say, 'lol, makes me sound like a little girl.' But I said, 'lol, thank you, but I can't decide if I want you to think that I handled that well.'

But thank you.

Yeah, dude. You got to read your words. This is the core of the movie. All right. Then it's crying laughing. All right, I'll read it. Crying laughing emoji. Back to you.

And then you say, 'I'm being serious.' And then your response was perfect. Passion and humility. And then that's it. I didn't—

What's at the bottom there? There's something at the bottom there. Something you maybe didn't want us to see, but you can see everything, Knight.

No, that was it, just said thank you. That was it. That was the end of the conversation. And then I said, 'Is this really Elizabeth Holmes? Who is this?' And no one replied.