Elizabeth Holmes in 'You Can See Everything.' Courtesy The buzz around Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything continues to grow, as evidenced by a packed, star-studded screening of the film in L.A. on Tuesday night.
The project, from co-directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, first premiered in a surprise screening at Telluride before hitting the New York Film Festival last week and now onto the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, where Zach Cregger, Steven Yeun, Elizabeth Olsen, Hannah Einbinder, Meg Stalter, Patrick Ball, Aziz Ansari, Hasan Piker and Boygenius’ Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker were among those spotted in the crowd.
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The film follows tainted tech CEO Holmes in the month before she’s sent to prison, as she invites the film crew to follow the every move of herself, her husband Billy Evans and their kids, in what becomes a wild three-year story. The L.A. screening was followed by a Q&A with Fielder and Oppenheim, moderated by Bill Hader, who began by asking incredulously, “So they asked you to do this?”
Holmes had indeed approached A24 to make a documentary about her, and after a series of meetings Fielder and Oppenheim — who have been friends since 2021 — found themselves on board. Holmes and Evans seemed to have little knowledge of either of their past work, though, as Oppenheim recalled how Evans watched the first few minutes of his 2020 film Some Kind of Heaven and told him, “It’s not a very compelling opening.” Holmes had seen a YouTube clip from Nathan from You and that seemed to be the extent of her familiarity with Fielder’s comedy.
Fielder emphasized, “There was never a great explanation as to like why —”
“Why this is the guy to tell our story?” Hader cut in, as Fielder continued, “Or why you would want to spend your last month of freedom in a decade with this guy. Like, why? Even with no cameras — I like to see myself as like a nice person overall, but still, I wouldn’t choose me.”
Asked about where they stand with the couple now, Oppenheim revealed that “Neither of them have seen the the film. Elizabeth is still incarcerated; Billy hasn’t seen it,” because of now a strained relationship with the crew.
Fielder explained that as they were trying to finish the movie, Evans “started trying to exert a level of control over the process that made it very hard to engage with him, and it was uncomfortable for us and also A24 and everyone. And I think we sort of had to stop — I think communication broke down basically, and we’ve been in that like state for a little bit. So it’s been challenging in that way.”
The Q&A also revealed that Fielder was not originally intending to be on camera for the film, but Oppenheim said Holmes and Evans “kept kind of pulling him in until it felt suddenly like oh, the only way to actually make this is to have someone kind of confront their delusions in certain aspects.” And as the team moved into the couple’s guest house on their San Diego rental property, the filmmakers feared that the home was bugged and ordered a device to try to de-bug it, without success.
“We were in a conspiracy thriller of our own, we all were paranoid,” Oppenheim said of living in Holmes’ world. On that note, Fielder told the crowd, “I still am not sure to this day like what I experienced, and it’s one of the reasons I’m excited for it to come out and more people see it. It was just a small group for so long, and I actually think maybe it being out there, everyone can help me understand what I went through a little bit — or what we all went through.”
You Can See Everything hits theaters Oct. 16.
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