JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The new documentary about Elizabeth Holmes sold out over 2,000 showtimes in the U.S. last weekend, though calling it a documentary might be kind of a stretch. The filmmaker and comedian Nathan Fielder is known for blending fact and fiction, and he does that here, too, with the disgraced tech entrepreneur in the days before she went to prison a few years ago.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING")
ELIZABETH HOLMES: Why would I deceive you? There's no reason for me to do that.
SUMMERS: The film is called "You Can See Everything," and we're going to talk to two people who have seen it and know all about the backstory. NPR tech correspondent Bobby Allyn is here with us, and he was in court for Elizabeth Holmes' trial and covered her company Theranos. Hey there.
BOBBY ALLYN, BYLINE: Hey.
SUMMERS: And NPR pop culture critic Linda Holmes is also with us. She's covered all the various portrayals of Elizabeth Holmes in pop culture in recent years. Hi there.
LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: Hello.
SUMMERS: All right, from the jump, let's just go into reactions, Linda, you go first. Did you enjoy this movie?
L HOLMES: I did enjoy it. I think I enjoyed it more as a self-contained piece of art than I did as a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. There's a lot of information. I'm kind of a Theranos completist. I've sort of...
SUMMERS: (Laughter).
L HOLMES: ...Read and listened to as much as I could. And there's a lot of information that's kind of ignored in order to support this idea that truth is so subjective, that you can't really tell whether she's dishonest or whether she did anything wrong or not, which seems to be the movie's thesis and which I don't really believe. What about you, Bob?
ALLYN: Yeah, you know, I did, but I had a pretty specific perspective. As you mentioned, I was someone who, you know, covered Holmes' fraud trial, you know - what? - four years ago now. So I was really glued to this documentary with, honestly, a lot of envy. I mean, to get this kind of up-close access to Elizabeth Holmes and her family with basically no limitations is, like, every reporter's dream, right? So I mean, during the trial, Juaana, I mean, none of the reporters were able to speak to...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
ALLYN: ...Holmes, only her lawyers. So to just get, you know, this level of intimacy and to get really personal with her in a very unfiltered way, it was really, really compelling to watch that. But, you know, as we learn, the movie turns out to have more layers the longer you watch.
SUMMERS: OK, this is one I haven't seen yet but really want to see, so I'm going to ask that you guys maybe not spoil it for me, but I have heard that it takes a big turn halfway through. Can you just explain to me why people are calling this so trippy?
L HOLMES: Yeah, I think when people talk about the movie as trippy or mind-bending, they're talking about both this idea that Fielder is exploring about the fundamental nature of truth but also some of the techniques that he uses. Without getting into details, he's well-known in some of his other work for his use of reenactments and his use of really elaborate and strange methods of staging scenarios that support whatever ideas he's trying to get across. I think a lot of it is that he wants you to feel like you can't tell what's real and what's not real. And if you respond to the movie that way and you have that feeling, I think that strikes folks as trippy, so to speak.
SUMMERS: Another thing I'm really curious about is how this movie contends with Holmes' guilt. A jury convicted her of defrauding investors. She's lost every appeal her lawyers have filed, and now she's serving a federal prison sentence. And through all of this, Holmes has maintained her innocence. So what is Nathan Fielder looking to get out of her?
ALLYN: Yeah, you know, Fielder, I think, is more interested in exploring whether Elizabeth Holmes has, you know, any moral compass. He's, you know, really trying to find a window into who she really is, trying to shed light on her character. He's not so interested in sort of relitigating the fraudulent Theranos blood-testing device or reexamining the evidence that came out during the trial. For instance, Fielder has this scene where he sits Holmes down and plays for her a famous Abbott and Castello skit - Who's On First? - to see if she gets it or to see what her reaction is at all, you know? So he's kind of more focused on getting a reaction from her on something like that than he is, you know, trying to understand exactly how Theranos collapsed.
L HOLMES: Yeah, I think that's true. And as I said, having followed this for a long time, though not the same way Bobby has, I struggled a little bit with this idea of, you know, we're going to explore who she is as a person because probably everybody who commits fraud or any crime has a history and a life and people who love them. But it's always interesting to see which convicted criminals get this sort of deep dive into what makes them tick. I'm not convinced she's as complex as the movie makes her out to be. But again, it's gonna depend on how you interpret what you see. You know, I don't know whether other people who - you know, the people who planned the Fyre Festival or whatever...
SUMMERS: Oh, boy.
L HOLMES: ...Necessarily intended to commit fraud from the beginning. And I don't necessarily care personally.
SUMMERS: We can't have this conversation without talking about Billy Evans, who is her partner, and I understand he plays a pretty significant role here. How does his presence add to what we know about Elizabeth?
ALLYN: Yeah, he plays, as you say, a really dominant role in this film, and it really cuts to the heart of one of the central dynamics of the movie, which is, who has control over Elizabeth Holmes' decisions, right? I mean, the film just raises these questions about whether it's him or it's Holmes, what things he's doing and whether he's doing them with Holmes' consent or not. And this becomes a - I know I'm being vague here, but it becomes a really, really fascinating and sort of crazy tension point of the film.
L HOLMES: Yeah, I think their relationship is certainly one of the things that's very interesting about the movie. Of course, you can have a partner who is controlling and perhaps unlikable and still be responsible for your own actions, and it's very difficult to know. So does it change what I think about her? Not really. But is it something that's interesting to watch in the movie? I would say, yes.
SUMMERS: Do you all feel like you came away from this with any new understanding of Elizabeth Holmes's relationship to the truth? Or, I mean, honestly, is that even the right question to be asking right now?
ALLYN: Yeah, you know, I'm someone who knows Billy Evans pretty well from reporting on him over the years, and I know he has been really focused on rehabilitating Elizabeth Holmes' image, and, you know, that comes in the face of, you know, Elizabeth Holmes being one of the most famous fall from graces in Silicon Valley history.
Did what we see in this film, you know, change the view of her as sort of this grifter who repeatedly lied about her supposedly revolutionary medical device? Do we really think she's someone different? Hard to say. I don't know if it's going to move the needle at all. It's debatable whether that will happen, but there are very unforgettable moments of her, you know, reacting in a way where it does not seem like she is very rehearsed. It does not seem like she had time to prepare. Nathan Fielder really puts her on the spot, and I found that really engrossing.
L HOLMES: Yeah, I tend to be more skeptical about whether she is that unprepared. I always assume that everything on her part is calculated. You know, she has a lot to gain from image rehabilitation, as Bobby mentioned. I do think this film softens her image for some people. And it's hard for me not to think about the fact that perhaps this is how she convinced a lot of people to give her a lot of money for technology that never worked. And if I believe she manipulated people for years for that, I tend to believe that this is maybe not just her being her natural self.
SUMMERS: All right, I can't wait to watch this one, especially after talking to the two of you. NPR's Linda Holmes and Bobby Allyn, thanks.
ALLYN: Thank you.
L HOLMES: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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