by Drew Martin
I stopped blogging five years, one month, and eleven days ago. The last post was about pre-trial, pre-prison Elizabeth Holmes. It's a little hard to read now. I was obviously incensed, mostly because so many people were negatively affected by her while she acted like she did nothing wrong. I was assuming she would get off but justice was served. And that doesn't actually feel good. It's still hard to see a mother separated from her kids, and a family split up by our legal system.
Yesterday I read Richard Brody's article He Said, She Said in the October 19, 2026 issue of The New Yorker about Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's documentary about Holmes, called You Can See Everything, and today I went to a mid-morning matinee (10:15, it's almost three hours long, so it was good to get an early start). It was released yesterday, October 16, 2026.
The small theater (in a big complex, Cinemark in Hazlet, NJ) was pretty full. The audience was united in interest and awe but fundamentally divided going in. By that I don't mean for or against Holmes, it's clear she was guilty. I mean, there were older people like me who had followed the case closely about Holmes, Sunny Balwani and their company Theranos, listened to the podcasts, saw The Dropout, but weren't so familiar with Fielder. And then there were younger people who were big fans of Fielder and were there to see him do brain surgery on Holmes, without knowing much about the patient. The two groups reacted a little differently, the former gasping by Holmes' continued charade, and the latter appreciating the punches Fielder was able to land, like no other boxer...if this were a fight. But it's not a fight and Fielder is much more patient and respectful than he comes across in the trailer that makes your skin crawl. And Holmes breaks it down to basically god is love, and it is hard to find her at fault even if you think she's delusional.
Regarding the He Said, She Said title of Brody's piece, it's too sexually/politically charged in a Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton way. And You Can See Everything doesn't sit right. Everything should have been off limits after Jonathan Safran Foer published his debut novel in 2002 with the perfect title, Everything is Illuminated, and then exhausted by the wacky multiverse film, Everything Everywhere All At Once. I would have offered the title The Drop-In, if not for the film then a better choice for The New Yorker piece. And that's not only because it plays nicely with the The Dropout but because that's Fielder's role and talent, like the friend who just shows up and the guest who stays too long. The magic of this film is his access to Holmes and her husband Billy Evans and how comfortable he makes the uncomfortable in his special outsider awkward way. I really wanted to dislike Evans on so many levels but there is still something about this film that despite giving me all the more reasons to dislike him, I still walked away intrigued in a good way.
One of the early signs of my father getting dementia was his confusion in following plots that jumped around a little. I know Fielder is famous for multiple reveals but I found myself questioning my mental acuteness while considering how many levels deeper we were going. The appearance by Amanda Seyfried in a good portion of the movie takes it to another level, but the overlapping of roles made me wonder what was staged and what was actually being played out. Either way, it was done brilliantly. What anchors this film is the very real sentence in federal prison and Holmes being separated from her family. In the few two-minute phone calls we can listen in on, Holmes is very conscious of that time, reminding us on the outside that this is her reality. I learned from Evans that federal prison excludes partners from conjugal visits. Not one to be the first to tell a joke, that one-way street is mostly trafficked by Fielder, Evans says he's be spending time with Pamela Handerson, which Fielder explains to a confused Seyfried means masturbation.
If you take for granted how up close we get with Holmes through the first part of the film, the intimate lens Fielder shares with us sinks in when she enters the Bryan Texas Prison Camp and we see all the photographers along the perimeter fence zooming in on her with gear that seem more like telescopes than cameras. It's a special comment on the documentary itself. Holmes and Evans invite Fielder into their rented beach house in San Diego to present a human side of the story in contrast to all we actually know of her from the media. The permission and trust at a human level is more revealing than the paparazzi style journalism.
Regarding the He Said, She Said title of Brody's piece, it's too sexually/politically charged in a Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton way. And You Can See Everything doesn't sit right. Everything should have been off limits after Jonathan Safran Foer published his debut novel in 2002 with the perfect title, Everything is Illuminated, and then exhausted by the wacky multiverse film, Everything Everywhere All At Once. I would have offered the title The Drop-In, if not for the film then a better choice for The New Yorker piece. And that's not only because it plays nicely with the The Dropout but because that's Fielder's role and talent, like the friend who just shows up and the guest who stays too long. The magic of this film is his access to Holmes and her husband Billy Evans and how comfortable he makes the uncomfortable in his special outsider awkward way. I really wanted to dislike Evans on so many levels but there is still something about this film that despite giving me all the more reasons to dislike him, I still walked away intrigued in a good way.
One of the early signs of my father getting dementia was his confusion in following plots that jumped around a little. I know Fielder is famous for multiple reveals but I found myself questioning my mental acuteness while considering how many levels deeper we were going. The appearance by Amanda Seyfried in a good portion of the movie takes it to another level, but the overlapping of roles made me wonder what was staged and what was actually being played out. Either way, it was done brilliantly. What anchors this film is the very real sentence in federal prison and Holmes being separated from her family. In the few two-minute phone calls we can listen in on, Holmes is very conscious of that time, reminding us on the outside that this is her reality. I learned from Evans that federal prison excludes partners from conjugal visits. Not one to be the first to tell a joke, that one-way street is mostly trafficked by Fielder, Evans says he's be spending time with Pamela Handerson, which Fielder explains to a confused Seyfried means masturbation.
If you take for granted how up close we get with Holmes through the first part of the film, the intimate lens Fielder shares with us sinks in when she enters the Bryan Texas Prison Camp and we see all the photographers along the perimeter fence zooming in on her with gear that seem more like telescopes than cameras. It's a special comment on the documentary itself. Holmes and Evans invite Fielder into their rented beach house in San Diego to present a human side of the story in contrast to all we actually know of her from the media. The permission and trust at a human level is more revealing than the paparazzi style journalism.