The documentarians are coming for the billionaires

A conspiracy theory I have is that social media started driving billionaires insane, and the pandemic finished the job. Social media allowed the proletariat to talk directly at the richest people in the world, and where they expected to be met with ass kissing similar to that which they receive in real life, instead they got a bunch of eye rolling jerk-off motions, and a shocking awareness (to them) that most people don’t actually like them. Then the pandemic forced them to confront a labor class demanding fair wages and better work-life balance. And then Elon Musk bought Twitter, and I believe that was about destroying the platform, no matter what he or anyone else says publicly.

All of this is now coalescing in cinema, as two documentaries launched over the weekend with billionaire(ish) subjects. Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim collaborated on You Can See Everything, a documentary detailing Elizabeth Holmes’ days before prison, and her impact and image after she is incarcerated. The film was Telluride’s “secret screening”, and it looks appropriately bonkers.

The thing about Elizabeth Holmes is that she has just fully bought into her lie, she simply will not admit she is a fraudster (convicted). Her intensity is at least in some parts due to her ferocious grip on the fantasy of Theranos. And she is SO convincing in her delusion that we are still debating if Theranos was always a fraud, or if there was some kernel of good faith at the beginning, and the worm turned when the science failed. (Personally, I think it was always a fraud because she was told repeatedly before dropping out of college that her “single stick” blood testing machine could never work. Elizabeth Holmes isn’t stupid, she’s greedy. She went ahead knowing her machine would never deliver, that is my opinion.)

I fully expect You Can See Everything to be deeply uncomfortable and weird, because that is what Nathan Fielder does. And here he is collaborating with Lance Oppenheim, who is also launching Primetime in the narrative film space. When writing about Primetime, I said of Oppenheim: “documentarian Lance Oppenheim loves weirdos and he never approaches weirdos and their very specific fixations in a straight line.”

I expect no straight lines when it comes to the trifecta of Elizabeth Holmes (liar), Nathan Fielder (provocateur), and Lance Oppenheim (professional weirdo documenter). Elizabeth Holmes is no longer a billionaire—she’s still incarcerated as of this writing—but she was once because of a lie that promised both patient benefits and riches. A lie she is still clinging to, and now she and the lie are the subject of a documentary from two of the slipperiest documentarians working today. This film should be VERY interesting.

Elizabeth Holmes is also the subject of a documentary by Alex Gibney (The Inventor), who is as much a provocateur as Nathan Fielder, but for a different reason. Fielder likes playing with expectations, perspective, and unreliable narrators. Gibney is provocative because he is constantly aiming his lens at power, often at the crossroads of money and influence. He has made documentaries about Enron, Scientology, the Catholic Church, and multiple docs about Wall Street and politics. Now, he’s made a documentary about Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and arguably its most powerful, too. Every time Elon Musk faces the least little bit of public criticism he crashes out and finances more fascism, so the fallout of Gibney’s doc Musk is actually scary to think about.

Musk just premiered at Venice, and there is a profile about Gibney making the film in The Hollywood Reporter. I’m sure everyone, including Elon Musk, will be super normal about this.

On top of these two documentaries, there is also Luca Guadagnino’s narrative film, Artificial, about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. It is not expected to be a flattering depiction of Altman, or the AI corporate game. I am actually a little worried about the fallout of all these films centering on some of the richest people—or liars aspiring to be among the richest people—because if the last decade has shown us anything, it is that billionaires cannot handle criticism. They are extremely sensitive. Some might even say delicate, like snowflakes, unable to withstand a single touch. And some of the sharpest, most incisive, most critical filmmakers working today are coming for their throats. Good, I just hope they don’t take their feelings out on our democracies.