A surprise Telluride screening revealed You Can See Everything, a three-hour film built from Fielder's 34 days shadowing the Theranos founder before prison.
Nathan Fielder has been sitting on this one for three years, apparently. You Can See Everything, his documentary about disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, showed up as an unannounced surprise screening at Telluride over the weekend, and A24 followed it up Sunday with a teaser that has people arguing online about exactly what they just watched.
The premise sounds almost too strange to be real. Fielder and co-director Lance Oppenheim started filming Holmes 34 days before she was due to report to federal prison in 2023, according to TMZ. What was meant to be a short window turned into a three-year project. Fielder has said he moved into Holmes's orbit during that stretch, spending time with her and her husband, Billy Evans, while she prepared to serve an 11-and-a-half-year sentence, JoBlo reported. That sentence has since been reduced, per TMZ, though neither outlet says by how much.
The teaser clip doing the rounds online is a straight staring contest between Fielder and Holmes, which is about as on-brand for him as it gets. He asks her if she's being real right now. She says she's always being real. That's it. That's the exchange everyone's screenshotting.
And the internet has feelings about it. Social media reaction has ranged from calling the pairing deeply uncomfortable to praising Fielder's deadpan face like it's award material. Which, fair. The man built an entire career on making people squirm without raising his voice.
At 174 minutes, this is not a quick watch. JoBlo describes it as Fielder tracking Holmes through the final stretch of her freedom, with the Theranos founder reportedly still not fully owning what went wrong with the blood-testing company she once ran to a $9 billion valuation on technology that simply didn't work. Early reviews, per JoBlo, call the film striking, though the outlet is warning readers off The Hollywood Reporter's write-up because critic Owen Gleiberman apparently gave away a third-act twist that Fielder specifically asked journalists to sit on.
Holmes's fraud conviction has already had one screen treatment, Hulu's The Dropout, with Amanda Seyfried playing her across a limited series. Fielder's version is being pitched as something rougher and more personal, less reconstruction, more real-time confusion. At Telluride, Fielder reportedly told the audience he still isn't sure what to make of what he filmed and is hoping viewers help him figure it out, according to Rolling Stone via TMZ.
Oppenheim, meanwhile, is having a moment of his own. His other documentary, Primetime, just played to strong notices at Venice.
A specific release date hasn't landed yet. Both TMZ and JoBlo have October pinned down, A24 hasn't gone further than that. Expect one soon, and expect the Holmes staring contest to stay in circulation until it does.
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