- In today’s CEO Daily: An early look at You Can See Everything
- The big leadership story: Jensen Huang’s new role as the anti-doomerist
- The markets: Mostly up globally
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Good morning. I spoke to comedian Nathan Fielder after a recent media screening of You Can See Everything, his absurdist documentary with director Lance Oppenheim that tracks disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes just before she heads off to federal prison. I asked why he’d spent three years on a film that could have come out soon after he’d spent 34 days living with Holmes, her partner Billy Evans, and their two kids. He told me they wanted more material on the couple’s next venture and a clearer picture of Elizabeth Holmes. Who was this woman?
Journalists love a great character, especially when they go off script. From this trailer alone, it’s clear that Holmes no longer wants to play the billionaire girl genius with a black turtleneck, deep voice, and game-changing technology that could run hundreds of medical tests from a single drop of blood. Now, she’s a clueless eccentric, an innocent in mom jeans with a beatific smile and unblinking eyes fixed on her “soul mate” Evans, a controlling striver who treats us to full-frontal nudity and other helpings of dubious judgment. We meet two cherubic babies—Holmes’s “angels”—whose birth delayed her trial and sentencing. Why not invite a comic to join the family for your last 34 days of freedom, prior to starting a 135-month prison sentence for investor fraud and conspiracy? Crazy kids! Pass the popcorn!
I like the movie. I also recommend watching Tilda Swinton’s mirror scene in Michael Clayton to get a feel for the self-conscious way in which Holmes rehearsed—and rehearsed—her now-ditched persona modeled on her perception of Steve Jobs. Go look at the number of patients and doctors who were deceived, her clueless star-studded board, the number of people who bought into the dream because they wanted it to be true. (We called her an extraordinary entrepreneur and subsequently challenged her model.)
The problem with quirky characters is that they can distract you from important parts of the underlying story. When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan’s show last year, we paid more attention to his “masculine energy” makeover from nervous-nerd-in-a-hoodie to tech-bro-in-streetwear, complete with a gold chain and luscious curls. The host was too busy discussing bow hunting and jiu-jitsu with Meta’s newly macho main character to delve too much into his controversial policies that later led to an $18 billion settlement.
We have an equally kooky cast of characters dominating today’s business discourse. There’s Elon Musk with his erratic X posts, moonshots, and personal push to repopulate the planet; Dario Amodei and Sam Altman publicly debating whether their products will kill usas if such things are beyond their control; Jeff Bezos morphing from a customer-centric everyman to a bulked-up billionaire cruising on half-billion-dollar yachts and sending Katy Perry into space. The stories could practically write themselves, unless we pause to look into what’s really going on.
Before getting too caught up in Holmes 2.0, though, look at the lies, damage, and corruption that landed this character in jail. Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at [email protected]
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