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A Secret New Elizabeth Holmes Documentary Stuns Telluride (techcrunch.com) 70

Posted by BeauHD from the behind-the-scenes dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Telluride just managed one of its best-kept secrets in years, per The Hollywood Reporter. On Sunday night, festival-goers filed into a 650-seat theater with their phones locked away, having no idea what they were about to see, told only that it ran nearly three hours, hadn't been shown anywhere, and that its principal creators would be in the audience. The surprise premiere they went on to enjoy is a new documentary from co-directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.

Called "You Can See Everything," the film is said to capture Holmes and her husband, Billy Evans, in the 34 days before she reported to federal prison in May 2023 to begin an 11-year sentence for defrauding investors about her blood-testing technology. Since then, her legal fight has limped along without success. Her appeals to overturn the conviction and shorten her sentence were rejected in February of last year. She then went a different route last year, asking President Trump to commute her sentence. That clemency petition is still listed as pending, meaning it's officially been opened and remains under review.

Fielder apparently lived in the couple's guest house during filming -- the access they provided sounds shocking -- but some of the buzz also ties to an A-list actress who becomes part of the story itself. A24 is set to release the film in October. You can watch a trailer for the film on YouTube.

A Secret New Elizabeth Holmes Documentary Stuns Telluride More | Reply

A Secret New Elizabeth Holmes Documentary Stuns Telluride

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  • It's just like The Osbornes! (Score:4, Informative)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2026 @03:14PM (#66329054)

    ... but with less-sympathetic, less-interesting, and less-sane characters.

    • Re:It's just like The Osbornes! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2026 @03:25PM (#66329080) Homepage

      I really don't understand why this is even that newsworthy. The last time I recall some documentary making it into the mainstream headspace was during Covid when everyone watched that Tiger King thing because Netflix's algorithm was like "You've binge watched Stranger Things fifteen times and seen everything else that's halfway decent - here's this random documentary that you'll probably tolerate because it's at least in English."

      • Re: It's just like The Osbornes! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ThurstonMoore ( 605470 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2026 @03:34PM (#66329102)

        It's called a Slashvertisment, someone paid for this shit "story" to be here. If it wasn't we'd know the mystery actress by the end of the summary.

      • It was a huge scam perpetrated on investors in the technology sector, and endangered the lives of a lot of people. Slashdot regularly covers movies that have no actual impact on the real word, simply because some nerds like comic books, and the movies made based on them. I'd love to hear your rationale for claiming the it doesn't belong on Slashdot.

        • I just don't feel like there's more to the Theranos story that needs to be said; we've reached the "beating a dead horse" stage.

          Tech investors aren't going to learn anything from their mistake either, because FOMO is a hell of a drug. Don't want to be left behind at the station when the train to the next big tech idea that actually turns a profit leaves. Sure, odds are it's just going to be another train wreck, but you won't know until you buy your ticket. All aboard!

          • I don't feel like there was ever anything to be said at all about marvel movies. It turns out you and I are not only two different people, we also aren't the only people who read Slashdot. There is a new documentary on Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes and that's what makes it newsworthy. You haven't watched it, so you can't really say if there is anything in it that is or isn't new, but according to Rotten Tomatoes, in any case, it's worth a watch to those who are interested.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by hey! ( 33014 )

            I think the fair-minded position is to see what people think when the documentary comes out. You're essentially arguing a negative here -- that there *can't* be anything of value that hasn't been said yet.

            Also, I don't think saying something *new* is necessarily critical. Sometimes saying something obvious but in an interesting way is worthwhile.

            In this case, Holmes gave access to the filmmaker. Obviously she has an agenda. If the filmmaker is smart, he has an agenda that's different from hers. If he kno

  • Really?

  • Couldn't imagine... (Score:3)

    by Junta ( 36770 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2026 @03:17PM (#66329064)

    On Sunday night, festival-goers filed into a 650-seat theater with their phones locked away, having no idea what they were about to see, told only that it ran nearly three hours, hadn't been shown anywhere, and that its principal creators would be in the audience.

    I could not imagine giving up three hours to watch something I have *zero* idea about, not even genre.

    • Re:Couldn't imagine... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2026 @03:26PM (#66329082)
      Do you regularly go to film festivals? The people who regularly do are the sort of people who tend to follow the industry closely and know a lot about upcoming films in much the same way that posters here follow rumors about unreleased tech products. For them the prospect of being one of a few hundred people who get to screen something that no one else has seen before or even heard about is going to be an alluring proposition, in much the same way that plenty of people here would jump at the opportunity to beta test some secret new tech product that's been kept under wraps during development. Maybe it will be a waste of time, but the potential is what draws us in.

      • I've always been fine with waiting until whatever I want to watch hits the high seas. Never understood why some people feel like they're getting something less if they're not among the first to experience something. It's not like they're going to run out of digital copies and you won't get one if you wait too long.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Junta ( 36770 )

        Actually I'd probably not be too interested in an unspecified new tech, as with things *that* open ended I end up stuck in a demo of some sort of warehouse inventory management software. Thinking back to the people that got all excited for the 'IT' product and then the massive letdown when it turned out to be a scooter.

        I would have to at least know a more specific area to figure out if I'm going to get excited or not. The mere rarity/exclusivity of an experience doesn't hold much appeal to me.

        I'm not a fi

        • Remember the news hoopla all about 'it'? That pretty much all died when we found out it was the Segway.

    • Re:Couldn't imagine... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Zero__Kelvin ( 151819 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2026 @05:27PM (#66329324) Homepage
      Well, if you watched it you wouldn't be able to say that you have no idea about the Theranos / Elizabeth Holmes debacle, and you would walk away knowing about something that happened in the STEM / tech industry of which you really should be aware. Can you image that?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kriston ( 7886 )

      Sounds like a mass kidnapping, or a Dubrovka Theatre incident.

  • Were people allowed to walk out? (Score:3)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2026 @03:19PM (#66329066) Homepage
    Because that would be the sane thing to do, don't give crooks and liars publicity.

    • Because that would be the sane thing to do, don't give crooks and liars publicity.

      That's kinda my reaction to this. I'm all for going to see a new film not really knowing what it's about. I've been to random test screenings, and it's usually quite interesting to see a film without knowing every detail like we usually get from standard trailers these days. But there hours of watching slime mold be slime mold would be more interesting that three more hours dedicated to the whole Theranos / Holmes debacle. It's shit people doing shit things for shit reasons, which is really just par for the

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by Zero__Kelvin ( 151819 )
      Following that line of reasoning we should just shut down all the news organizations.

    • don't give crooks and liars publicity.

      * gives Mass Narcissism the side-eye *

      That's not..a very inaccurate thing to say about the public.

      , festival-goers filed into a 650-seat theater with their phones locked away..

      Had to confiscate everyones personal spying device..because they're so honest and trustworthy?

    • On Sunday night, festival-goers filed into a 650-seat theater with their phones locked away, having no idea what they were about to see, told only that it ran nearly three hours, hadn't been shown anywhere, and that its principal creators would be in the audience.

      This is what happens right before an MLM pitch.

  • tl;dw (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    hubris

  • A clear case of fictional prescience :o (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mirnotoriety ( 10462951 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2026 @03:34PM (#66329106)
    Hawaii Five-O S01E19 (1969): Medical quack Dr. Fremont claims to have a machine that detects disease from a single blood drop. McGarrett swaps out the blood sample for vegetable oil exposing her as a fraud.

    • Hawaii Five-O S01E19 (1969): Medical quack Dr. Fremont claims to have a machine that detects disease from a single blood drop. McGarrett swaps out the blood sample for vegetable oil exposing her as a fraud.

      This looks like an AI hallucination.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PCM2 ( 4486 )

        It's not. [paramountplus.com]

        • My second guess was going to be that the fan sites and streaming service disagreed on the episode order. I'm so used to AI just inventing episode plots that don't exist that it was my first assumption.

          Of course, anything in the post-Simpsons era you can just say "Simpsons did it first" and be right 9 times out of 10.

          • PCM2 is right: the Hawaii Five-O episode is real, not AI slop. I know, because I saw it when it was broadcast.

            • The top Google result [rottentomatoes.com] returns a different episode. I concede that it was just a case of various sites disagreeing over the sequence of episodes, not an AI hallucination. Again, I jumped to that conclusion because I've often vaguely remembered plot details from old TV shows I watched in the 80s and ChatGPT is more that happy to match them up to episodes that never existed.

      • Hawaii Five-O S01E19 (1969): Medical quack Dr. Fremont claims to have a machine that detects disease from a single blood drop. McGarrett swaps out the blood sample for vegetable oil exposing her as a fraud.

        This looks like an AI hallucination.

        We're fast approaching a point where our entire reality looks like an AI hallucination.

  • Really? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm in Telluride and I haven't "been stunned".

  • The most unusual thing about this fraudulent business is that most of the fraud was committed against the 1%.

    Theranos only sold about 1.5 million blood tests, for significantly less than $100 million (probably closer to $10 million), and paid about $5 million back. But she stole more than $700 million from investors.

    Moreover, this money came from venture capital, she never went public. So all of it came from the 1`% wealthy, almost none from the less well off mutual fund investors.

    • Patients using Theranos tests received incorrect results for serious medical conditions, including miscarriages, HIV, and cancer markers. Those people weren't the 1%, and they were affected in a much more serious way than mere financial loss. Maybe you don't find that "interesting"?
      • I think you two are both correct here. The company was mostly funded by very wealthy investors, those folks lost money and are getting their pounds of flesh back by way of seeing her rot in jail. As you point out there were also actual patients who had tests ran (uncertain now what tests, where, by whom) and received crap results; those people of course are getting nothing back because they don't have enough money to be considered worth anything in the courts - even if they died as a result.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      The most unusual thing about this fraudulent business is that most of the fraud was committed against the 1%.

      That is why she is in prison.

  • Reviews included: "What the fuck did I just watch?"

    Between that review and this Slashvertisement, I now know what I suspected all along. I now know that I'd rather get a root canal than watch this dreck about a psychopath.

    For the baby's sake, I hope that the father is a decent father. But, he's gotta be kinda nuts too.

    Still interesting that such a fruitcake could take in so damn many people. Supposedly smart people.

    • I just watched the trailer and I got the same reaction - what. the. fuck. Nathan Fielder's comedy is kind of awkward/uncomfortable, but this is on another level.
  • Can anyone tell me if it tells the truth? Like does it say she's a complete mental patient, apple-obsessed cult member wack job with a fake deep voice and batshit crazy feminist obsessions? And they she let her dog run around a secure medical lab? Because if this is another ass-kissing fake documentary like the Michael Jackson one or the Steve Jobs one, I am going to throw up.
  • They genuinely believe, at least start, that a wild ass idea is the same thing as an invention.
    All they need to do is hire some lackeys to take their genius idea and finish the details.

    I had one back in the 1980s who thought he had invented the inertial tracker (after reading about it in a Heinlein book or possibly in Radio Electronics from Don Lancaster).
    He tried to hire me to do the "detail" work and was horribly offended when I told him that it was - A unpatentable - B with current technology undoab
  • Serial set a terrible precedent by firing up susceptible college girls to defend a child strangler.
  • The president will not pardon her, because as time goes by, it becomes more and more apparent that the technology was fantastical, and never possible. If it were achievable, others would have released a similar machine some years later, or at least research would have advanced. As of now its clear she was making a make believe machine the entire time, and bullying her staff into keeping it secret, hoping that if she poured more research money onto it, it would eventually "work".
    • In other words, a perfect candidate for a pardon from this admin, as long as her husband’s family coughs up the appropriate “donation”.

  • How she got away with it for so long. And then, why did that stop working?

    The reason, of course: "she's a woman CEO! In tech!!!"

    But - this was right before the intelligentsia decided that 1. "well, white women don't count as women, do they?", and 2. "what's a woman anyway? Anyone can be one!"

    So when that sea change started to happen ... she was toast. Her shiny protection bubble was gone.

  • Biochemist here. I've done genomics, I've done proteomics, I have customers in diagnostic medicine currently. My PhD was on protein-protein interactions, which is a big part of how our immune system works.

    A lot of people are quick to jump on the fact that the Theranos system didn't work, and many others claim that it was impossible and never could have worked. While indeed their system didn't work, that doesn't at all disqualify the principle.

    For one case study of how far we've come in recent time

  • A well-placed donation has brought pardons to many with this administration.

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