Thirty-four days before she reported to prison, Elizabeth Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, let a comedian's crew into their rented San Diego beach house. The comedian is Nathan Fielder, the deadpan mind behind HBO's The Rehearsal. He's nobody's first pick to polish a public image. In the film, Holmes texts him, “You can totally see everything.” That film, You Can See Everything, opens Friday, Oct. 16.
Holmes founded Theranos, a Silicon Valley startup. It promised a wide range of medical tests from just a few drops of blood. The machines failed, and she went on assuring everyone they worked. She began an 11-year sentence in Texas in 2023 for defrauding investors. In the film, she tells Fielder she has never told a lie in her life. Kyle Smith, reviewing for the Journal, calls the film “ingenious, intricate and involving.” It runs three hours, and he says it raises more questions than it answers.
Who's on first
One scene gets at the whole Theranos story. Holmes once said her machine can run any test. Fielder presses her on what can meant, since it didn't mean what most people assumed. Then he plays her Abbott and Costello's Who's on First routine and asks her the first baseman's name. She can't answer. Evans says that's no surprise. She just thinks differently.
Money runs under the whole film. Evans posts on Holmes's X account while she's locked up. Smith reports that Evans apparently asked for a share of the documentary's profits without telling Holmes. She says she has a negative net worth because of the restitution she owes. Fielder and co-director Lance Oppenheim followed the couple for three years, through the prison gate and beyond. The Journal's Tuesday arts calendar notes it's Fielder's first feature as a director. A24 is releasing it.
Our read
This one sits in Insurance/Consumer Protection · M11, with a side of Behavioral. Theranos is the cleanest fraud lesson of the century. A huge claim, a tiny sample, and a founder who looked you in the eye. Investors bought the story. They didn't demand the data. Smart, rich, careful people got taken, because the pitch skipped the boring part. Most frauds have the same shape. The returns get described in detail. The evidence gets promised for later.
Here's the connection to your own statement. In many portfolios sits one thing bought on a story. A private deal a friend brought in. A product a nice person sold you over coffee. This week, pull that one out and ask the Fielder question, what can means here. Then make two checks. Look the seller up on FINRA's BrokerCheck or with your state insurance department. Ask for audited numbers, in writing, and watch how they answer. Holmes told a filmmaker he could see everything. You can insist on actually seeing it. The time to test the umbrella is a sunny afternoon.