From Scientology to disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, documentarian Alex Gibney has never met a subject too big or too controversial to tackle.

Then came Elon Musk.

When Gibney was approached with the idea to do a documentary on the Tesla and SpaceX CEO in 2022, his plan was straightforward: Tell the story of how Musk used his businesses to become one of the most powerful figures in the world.

But when he was ready to deliver a two-hour feature film on Musk two years later, HBO issued him a directive a filmmaker rarely hears: Make it longer.

It was 2024, and the breadth of Musk's influence had expanded into the political sphere. With Gibney's subject helping President Donald Trump campaign for a second term, then later spearheading the second Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency, Gibney's story had expanded. His documentary would need to, too.

The result is "Musk," an incisive, nearly four-hour documentary that chronicles the personal, professional, and political life of the richest man in the world. From his controversial acquisition of Twitter, which he renamed X; to his relationships with the mothers of his children; to the accidents tied to Tesla's self-driving feature, Gibney's film is a comprehensive look at the scope of Musk's power and influence in the 21st century.

Gibney even found a clever workaround for featuring Musk in the doc after he declined to be interviewed. Playing on Musk's belief that we are all living in a simulation, the director used AI to craft an avatar of Musk, who speaks in quotes amalgamated from his past interviews.

Of course, a man as powerful and outspoken as Musk has already voiced his displeasure with someone else controlling his narrative. After the movie's world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September, Musk threatened to sue Gibney's production company for defamation. Musk has also bashed the movie on X, stating: "Gibney just assembled a hit list of people who either have an axe to grind or don't even know me (but still have an axe to grind). He has ZERO integrity. Horrible human."

Hearing from angry subjects is nothing new for Gibney, who was the subject of the Church of Scientiology's full-page newspaper ads decrying his work over 10 years ago tied to the premiere of his documentary "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief."

"With Elon Musk — and he's not unique in this, but he specializes in it — he begins tweeting horrible things about people and the next thing you know, this army of followers and bots starts to gin up the rage matrix," Gibney told Business Insider.

Not that he's rattled yet. With decades of documentaries speaking truth to power under his belt, Gibney has developed thick skin and some top-secret harassment survival strategies.

"Let's just say I've taken some precautions," he said.

For the latest interview in Business Insider's Director's Chair series, Gibney talks about creating an AI Musk, being followed by Scientologists, and his nerve-racking experience in a self-driving Tesla.

On creating an AI Musk avatar and making the movie longer

Business Insider: You thought you had finished this movie in 2024. Was it daunting to go back down the Elon Musk rabbit hole when HBO asked you to?

Alex Gibney: Yeah, it was daunting. We had to renegotiate the budget and all sorts of other stuff. But I got why HBO wanted that. And when Musk hitched his wagon to Trump, it was clear: This is big.

I started out making a film about 21st century power, which in this case involved economic power but also tech power. Now, add to that political power, and suddenly it's a really big story.

Was AI Musk in the original movie? 

The idea of it was. We had put in a placeholder for it, but we were also anticipating that maybe we might get an interview with him at some point.

It was kind of an epiphany to do it this way. It came out of past experience: What's the workaround for somebody who won't or can't talk to you? In "Client 9" and "Zero Days," we came up with workarounds that fit those stories. The key here was to find a workaround that would fit this story. That's how we ultimately came up with the idea of the avatar.

Did it unlock anything in you regarding using AI tools in your work in the future?

I think it will depend on the project. AI has become a kind of suitcase term for everything from Siri to AGI. In this instance, this was a human effort using AI tools, which revolved mostly around sync; in other words, making the lips and the body sort of move with the voice. But there was also designing the room, what he was going to wear, the gamer chair.

The further we pushed it and the more interested we got in AI with the company we used, Makemake A.I., this idea of memes and looking at his own image, that's where we came up with certain scenes where you see the back of his head and he's watching himself. Those were things that we improvised on.

On the qualities Musk and Elizabeth Holmes share and Tesla's image

I couldn't help but think about your Elizabeth Holmes doc, "The Inventor," when watching "Musk." The "fake it 'til you make it" ethos that's baked into Silicon Valley, has that been fascinating to observe? Both Holmes and Musk are founders who are amazing salespeople hoping that what they bet on takes off. 

I think there is a similarity with Elizabeth Holmes. What was rattling around in my head through this was confidence. Musk, like Holmes, was able, through force of confidence, to convince people of things that they knew not to be true. That became a superpower.

The big difference between Tesla and SpaceX and Elizabeth Holmes is that those are real products. The Tesla S is a great car. These reusable rockets are extraordinary, and we show the magnificence of that in the film.

Not to take anything away from him or those companies, but there's also the bullshit factor. The idea of going to Mars and the promises. And you can see how they repeat themselves and get bigger and bigger. Oh, yeah, full self-driving! I'm sorry, Tesla's self-driving option is still a level two system, and over 60 people have died.

(Editor's note: Tesla has maintained that its Autopilot feature requires constant driver attention, and that its vehicles issue prompts warning the driver to stay alert and hold the steering wheel.)

The things you highlight about Musk's involvement in DOGE and suggesting he influenced the election are shocking, but the things you highlight about Tesla got me the most. The battery swapping, the self-driving car feature. Were you shocked by how much smoke and mirrors there are at Tesla?

Yes. It was something that I didn't know when I started. And as you mentioned, fake it 'til you make it. They just faked it. Mostly, it was in order to raise the stock. The economic fundamentals of the company never warranted a high stock price, but if you can convince people that the CEO is a genius and also that it's not really a car company — it's a tech company, so some super inventions are coming down the road — you can persuade people to gin up the stock. 

(Editor's note: Musk and Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.)

On almost hitting a child while using the self-driving feature on a Cybertruck

You rode a self-driving car yourself; you did it with a Cybertruck for the movie. 

I did. There was a cut where we included a four-minute sequence of me in the Cybertruck. I went to the San Francisco Tesla showroom and wanted to drive a Cybertruck, and they showed me how to turn on the self-driving feature. I pressed "Go," and off I went to the other side of the city. It was like a 20-minute ride there and back.

What's interesting is for most of the trip it was kind of astoundingly good. But then there were moments when it was astoundingly bad, sometimes in ways that were played to safety. Like, I was trying to merge onto a very busy thoroughfare, and cars kept coming, and if it were me as the driver, I would nudge out there, but full self-driving couldn't figure that out, so I sat there for 10 minutes. Other instances, it couldn't decide what to do at critical moments and almost hit a pedestrian. 

It came uncomfortably close to a child. The child kind of came from the side out of a parked car. It's not something you would anticipate, but it was really scary.

Why didn't you put that in the movie?

Ultimately, the legal case that we spotlight in the movie was a far more powerful deep dive. There were mortal consequences. A woman died. And the deep dive into the evidence itself was so much more powerful. If I had only done a film about Tesla, I probably would have included it. 

On the movie's fate on HBO and the consequences of checking power

The greatest irony in all of this is this movie could have been out a year or so ago, but HBO asked you to make it longer. Now Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery have merged, so HBO is now under David Ellison, who once considered bringing on Musk as an equity investor in Paramount. Are you concerned HBO will not air "Musk"?

I was concerned until recently. I'm always on the alert. But I've been told that they will air it and that even David Ellison very well knows about it and promises he will air it. 

You have worked with HBO forever. 

Yeah, I love them. 

So if they are telling you it is going to happen, you believe them. 

But what you learn is, shit happens. [Laughs.] Executives change. Circumstances change, and the next thing you know, it's not what you thought. But, for now, we are making very specific plans about when it's going to come out, which is likely in January. 

Because of where the industry is going — fewer networks and distribution options, and the options available are mostly run by conglomerates often looking for political cooperation — for the kind of stories you tell, are you looking for alternative distribution avenues in the future with your company, Jigsaw?

We have a skunkworks inside Jigsaw to try to solve some of these distribution problems.

In this new environment, films that people desperately want to see are being held back from audiences. The platforms tell you people don't want to see them, but that's just not true. HBO is the exception, but what a lot of the platforms are doing is investing in predictable, least objectionable programming. A lot of the platforms want it to be like the cereal aisles at the grocery market: they are all the same cereal, but different variations between Rice Krispies and Froot Loops. They can predictably get people invested in that mixture of salt and sugar that keeps them coming back for more without providing anything that is nutritious. 

So the avenue is theatrical, like it was a decade-plus ago. "Musk" is out in theaters through Bleecker Street, and that's powerful because it's a lot harder to put the genie back in the bottle when it's already out there. 

Checking power sometimes comes with blowback. You have experienced everything from Julian Assange leaking the script to "We Steal Secrets" before that movie came out to Scientologists following you around after you made "Going Clear." Do these things wear on you, or do they fuel you?

I mean, given the fact that I haven't stopped, it seems to be fueling me. That said, it doesn't mean I don't need to take precautions. But I'm still motivated by the idea of people with enormous power abusing it at our expense; that seems to be a spur for me. 

When it comes to Elon Musk, he's the richest and arguably the most powerful person in the world, so it can have these devastating consequences. Ashley St. Clair has security because the X platform has a way of directing vitriol at people. And Elon can say it's just free speech, but he knows very well that by doing what he does and by the platform tweaking its algorithm for replies and rage addiction, he knows that his statements are going to be amplified in a really horrible way that may result in harm to an individual.

(Editor's note: Musk, who has called himself a "free speech absolutist," described X's policy in 2022 as "freedom of speech, not freedom of reach," saying the company would limit the reach of negative posts but not delete them. Musk did not respond to a request for comment about his X posts and the company's algorithm.)

Is your experience with Musk's followers different from what you experienced with Scientology?

Scientology is a little different, but people did come up to me in dark parking lots in a way that was discomforting. But what some ex-Scientologists told me was, "What they are doing is they aren't going to put a rattlesnake in their mailbox; they are trying to get inside your head. So once you understand that, just don't let them inside your head." That turned out to be very wise advice.

Scientology was tough, and when my film on Assange came out, the vitriol on Twitter was extreme, and I wasn't prepared for that. What I've come to learn is you have to know your enemy. 

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

"Musk" is in theaters now.

The hit documentary 'You Can See Everything' is dividing audiences with a scene focused on Charlie Kirk making conservatives out as bad guys.

The post Elizabeth Holmes Doc ‘You Can See Everything’ Divides Audiences with ‘F**king Ridiculous’ Charlie Kirk Scene appeared first on Breitbart.

• Former "GMA3" co-anchors Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes are married.
• The two first sparked controversy when they were spotted cuddling while still legally married.
• Nearly four years later, the two are now legally wed, and their exes are engaged.

As one of the internet's favorite sayings goes: Never let your spouse stop you from finding your soulmate.

"GMA3: What You Need to Know" co-anchors T.J. Holmes and Amy Robach sparked controversy in November 2022 after their relationship became public when photos of them cuddling were published by The Daily Mail.

The relationship between the two journalists — who were legally married to other people at the time — subsequently made national headlines. 

Holmes married attorney Marilee Fiebig, 49, in 2010, the same year Robach married actor Andrew Shue, 59. After the news broke, both Holmes, 49, and Robach, 53, said they were either separated or in the midst of divorce proceedings when they were photographed together.

"To be clear, we were outed as being in a relationship, but everyone else thought we were being outed as adulterers — being outed as cheating on our spouses — and it wasn't the case," Holmes said on a December 2023 episode of their podcast, "Amy & T.J."

In October 2025, nearly three years after the first headlines about their relationship, Holmes and Robach announced on their podcast that they had gotten engaged.

One year after their engagement, Robach and Holmes married on September 19, 2026, in Holmes' home state of Arkansas, according to public marriage records. People reported the news on October 13.

In a happy twist, Shue and Fiebig are also in a relationship and have been together since December 2023. They announced their engagement just over a week after Robach and Holmes' marriage became public.

Here's a timeline of the scandal that rocked "GMA3" and led to both Holmes and Robach exiting the morning show.

Holmes and Robach did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Keyaira Boone, Esme Mazzeo, and Libby Torres contributed to a prior version of this article.

November 30, 2022: The Daily Mail published photos of Robach and Holmes.

Robach and Holmes began cohosting "GMA3: What You Need to Know" in 2020, although they had worked together at ABC since Holmes' hiring in 2014.

In November 2022, The Daily Mail posted images of them together in a series of intimate situations, including having drinks in a New York bar and traveling to a cottage in the Shawangunk Mountains of upstate New York. The two were pictured laughing together, holding hands, and casually touching one another.

Shortly after, Entertainment Weekly reported that Holmes shuttered his X and Instagram accounts, and Robach deactivated her Instagram profile.

December 2022: Shue deleted pictures of Robach on his Instagram profile.

Shue's account was wiped of pictures of his wife the day after The Daily Mail published their photos of Robach and Holmes, E! News reported.

December 2022: An interview with Robach and Reese Witherspoon from earlier in the year resurfaced, hinting at similarities between "GMA3" and "The Morning Show."

An October 2022 interview between Robach and Witherspoon resurfaced on Twitter, reminding viewers that the host had once possibly hinted at drama occurring behind-the-scenes of "GMA3."

Witherspoon, who was promoting her Apple TV+ drama "The Morning Show," asked Robach and her co-hosts whether the fictional workplace drama "hit home a little bit."

"We can give you a few more plot lines," Robach replied, as her colleagues laughed. Witherspoon jumped on the opportunity to take the show's stories to the next level. 

"Email me," she told Robach.

December 2022: "GMA3" staffers said Robach and Holmes did not start dating until they were separated from their spouses.

People reported that Holmes and Robach were both effectively single when they began dating, citing sources. 

"This was two consenting adults who were each separated. They both broke up with their spouses in August within weeks of each other," a source said.

"The relationship didn't start until after that," they added.

Meanwhile, the two anchors continued filming. On December 2, they even joked about what "a great week" they were having in a sarcastic tone, according to Page Six.

December 5, 2022: Robach and Holmes were pulled off the air.

Robach and Holmes were placed on hiatus from "GMA3" amid the scandal. The New York Times reported ABC News' then-president, Kim Godwin, called the news frenzy surrounding their relationship an "internal and external distraction" on a morning editorial call.

It came amid claims from staffers that Holmes had engaged in relationships with other colleagues at ABC during his time there, while married. He has not publicly commented on the accusations.

December 28, 2022: Holmes filed for divorce.

Holmes filed for divorce from Fiebig in New York. They were married for nearly 13 years and share one daughter, Sabine.

On the same day the news broke, Holmes and Robach were photographed making out in Miami.

January 2023: Holmes' estranged wife, Marilee Fiebig, spoke out via her divorce lawyer for the first time since the scandal broke.

"Marilee's sole focus has remained on the overall best interest of her 9-year-old daughter," Stephanie Lehman, Fiebig's lawyer, told The Daily Mail.

She confirmed that the divorce between Fiebig and Holmes was progressing. "To that end, T.J.'s lawyer and I have been working together to move their divorce forward privately, expeditiously, and as amicably as possible," Lehman continued.

Lehman criticized Holmes' public actions.

"Notwithstanding, we continue to be disappointed by T.J.'s lack of discretion, respect, and sensitivity toward Marilee and the party's daughter," she added.

The divorce was ultimately settled in October 2023, People reported.

January 27, 2023: Holmes and Robach exited "GMA3" permanently.

In late January 2023, TMZ was the first to report that the co-anchors were preparing to officially exit "GMA3."

The same day as the reports, Holmes' and Robach's exits were confirmed. In a statement given to Business Insider, ABC said that Holmes and Robach were officially leaving the network.

"After several productive conversations with Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes, about different options, we all agreed it's best for everyone that they move on from ABC News," a spokesperson for the network said. "We recognize their talent and commitment over the years and are thankful for their contributions."

December 1, 2023: Robach and Holmes made their red-carpet debut as a couple.

The two attended KIIS FM's iHeartRadio Jingle Ball 2023 together. They showed plenty of PDA in their first public appearance as a couple.

December 5, 2023: Robach and Holmes released the first episode of their podcast, a year to the day after their relationship was publicly revealed.

During the first episode of "Amy & T.J.," the former anchors emphasized that they were both separated from their respective partners when their relationship began.

"To be clear, we were outed as being in a relationship," Holmes said on the podcast. "But everyone else thought we were being outed as adulterers, being outed as cheating on our spouses, and it wasn't the case."

Robach, for her part, said her close friends knew she was in the middle of divorcing Shue when the photos of her and Holmes leaked in November 2022.

"I took my ring off early August. It was very clear to anyone who knew me that I was in the middle of a divorce," she said.

Holmes also acknowledged that the couple probably could have gone about things differently.

"We shouldn't have allowed — and I could say that in hindsight — for folks to find out about our relationship before they found out about our divorces," he said. 

But Robach said they were trying to protect their families from potential backlash.

"We thought we were protecting our children and our families, and we thought we had time," she said. "And we thought we had a right to privacy. And maybe that was foolish and silly."

December 5, 2023: The same day the podcast launched, reports surfaced that Robach's and Holmes' exes were dating.

Page Six first reported that Robach's ex, Andrew Shue, and Holmes' ex, Marilee Fiebig, had been dating for about six months.

People reported that they "bonded over their shared experience of splitting from their partners," citing a source.

March 17, 2024: Holmes and Robach ran the New York City Half Marathon together.

As running has been part of their relationship for years, the two continued their tradition by participating in the NYC Half Marathon in March 2024.

Robach called the day "13.1 miles of pure joy" on Instagram.

September 30, 2024: Holmes and Robach announced they had moved in together.

The decision to move in together was spurred by Robach's then-21-year-old daughter, Ava, who asked to temporarily move into her mom's apartment due to a roach infestation.

"I've just said, 'Hey y'all, knock yourselves out. I'll be at T.J.'s,' " Robach said on their podcast.

This led to the two officially cohabitating.

"I've enjoyed the time that we've had together. It's been a little different, but I've liked it," Holmes said.

In February 2025, Us Weekly reported that their exes, Shue and Fiebig, had moved in together as well.

October 14, 2025: They announced they are engaged.

In a four-minute minisode of their podcast, Robach and Holmes shared the news that they are officially engaged — and had been for around a month.

"I was in three massive football stadiums three weekends in a row, wearing my engagement ring very proudly, very excitedly, and kept waiting for somebody to point it out or ask me, 'Hey, what's that?' And it never happened," Robach said.

Holmes added that if any news about the proposal came out from anyone besides them or "the 10 people" they told, it was nonsense.

September 19, 2026: They get married in Arkansas.

According to a wedding license obtained by People, Holmes and Robach applied for the license the day prior. They tied the knot in Arkansas, where Holmes was born and where his alma mater, the University of Arkansas, is located.

October 13, 2026: News of their wedding becomes public.

The license was filed with the County Clerk's office in Washington County on October 13, which is how the news of their marriage became public. They have not commented on their marriage yet, but they've talked about it before.

During a May 2026 episode of their podcast, they shared that they had picked a date and "a way" they wanted to get married that "would be very special to us," but didn't give details. "We can't say what that is. That's a big thing for us."

October 21, 2026: Shue and Fiebig announce their engagement.

On October 21, Shue confirmed to People that he and Fiebeg were engaged after three years of dating.

"I don't know how it happened, but there's a happy ending," he said. "I don't think there was anything other than this just happened to be our way of getting to know each other and being able to share ourselves with each other in a time where we both needed a friend," he added, referring to how they first met.

"We're very grateful and hopeful," he concluded.

Tickets for film about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes said to be selling out after $15m opening weekend in the US

It is the film everyone seems to be talking about, spawning memes and fuelling feverish online debate about its subject, the disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.

Now, a month before Nathan Fielder’s documentary You Can See Everything reaches UK cinemas, tickets for screenings are already selling out after its remarkable $15m (£11.3m) opening weekend in the US.

The hit Elizabeth Holmes documentary led to increased interest in the award-winning narrative series on Hulu as well as Bad Blood, a 2018 book on the scandal

• ‘Stranger than stranger-than-fiction’: how Lance Oppenheim made the year’s two buzziest films

• ‘You can’t make this stuff up’: why we remain fascinated by Elizabeth Holmes

Interest in Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos fraud scandal has surged amid buzz for You Can See Everything, the record-breaking documentary on the disgraced former CEO.

Viewership for The Dropout, the 2022 Hulu series starring Amanda Seyfried as Holmes, surged by 186% in September compared with the month prior, according to Variety, after the announcement on 6 September of the previously secret film’s first teaser.

• John Carreyrou told Business Insider that he loves the new Elizabeth Holmes doc as "a great piece of art."
• But audiences who want an accurate retelling of Theranos' downfall should read his book, he said.
• It comes as people allege that he's "missing the point of the film."

John Carreyrou has seen "You Can See Everything" twice.

The reporter, whose award-winning investigation for The Wall Street Journal helped bring down blood-testing startup Theranos, told Business Insider that he liked the documentary. It follows Elizabeth Holmes, the startup's CEO, in the 34 days before she reported to federal prison in 2023.

The film — co-directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim — has inspired a mix of reactions from viewers, ranging from shock to boredom to sympathy for Holmes.

Carreyrou doesn't see that ambiguity.

"The film is a great piece of art, but let's not confuse that art with the underlying facts," he told Business Insider.

It mirrors what he's been writing on X. Carreyrou has been pushing back on people who, he said, had accused him of "missing the point" of the film — namely, that Holmes is unknowable.

"She went after Tyler Shultz and Erika Cheung with everything she had," he wrote, referring to the two company whistleblowers at the center of his 2015 story. "I was threatened with litigation on a daily basis for months on end. It was a ruthless cover-up of a breathtaking fraud, and she was at the controls."

He has also reposted a Monday morning interview with Schultz, who said that Holmes "knows that she did something wrong," and alleged that, during the film, she brought out a different device when she was asked to show Theranos' hardware.

The documentary does not retrace every detail of the Theranos scandal or the reporting that exposed it. Instead, it puts viewers inside Holmes' home as she insists that she was wrongly convicted.

For audiences, it's raised bigger questions about performance, self-deception, and whether the film's subject can ever be fully believed.

Carreyrou has told Business Insider that if audiences "have questions afterward or want more context about the Theranos saga, I would encourage them to read my book."

He ended his X post by saying he "loved the film." He also gave a nod to its early Oscar buzz.

"#BestPicture, IMO," he wrote.

• The tech world is buzzing with thoughts about the fresh Elizabeth Holmes doc.
• From "sympathetic" to "uncanny" to "innovative" to "boring — the film is inspiring huge reactions.
• If you haven't seen it, don't worry. We're holding the movie spoilers.

Elizabeth Holmes is back on the silver screen, and the tech world has has thoughts.

Holmes, the disgraced Theranos founder, is the subject of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's new documentary, "You Can See Everything."

Holmes was convicted of defrauding investors after her blood-testing startup falsely claimed it could run hundreds of diagnostic tests from a small amount of blood. She has consistently denied wrongdoing.

Since the film's theatrical release on Friday (it grossed an impressive $15 million in its opening weekend), people who work in and around tech have been sharing their reactions.

And don't worry if you haven't seen the film yet: We're keeping it spoiler-free.

Holmes' legacy

Audiences can't pin down how they feel about the film's central characters.

John Loeber, a San Francisco-based investor and the former CEO of Limit, said the film brought him back to a 2019 party when he ran into Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans.

"Double take. She's not in jail?" he wrote Saturday on X about the encounter. Seeing them on screen was equally "uncanny."

"I have never before seen a movie where I have personally met the leading cast. And I was not prepared for the level of surprise and weirdness in seeing their faces — especially Billy, whom I had not thought about in seven years — on the big screen," he wrote.

Nick White, a former software engineer turned YouTube and Kick streamer, said the film reminded him of "why I left the tech industry."

"There are so many narcissistic, delusional morons in that industry who genuinely believe they're geniuses," he wrote on X.

Last week, ahead of the doc's release, a tech crowd got a sneak peek of the doc at a Manhattan movie theatre rented out by AI startup Extend — Business Insider reporter Henry Chandonnet was there.

That audience couldn't settle on what to make of Holmes, either. Some said she had become a meme. Others called her an utter psychopath, while one attendee said the film had unexpectedly made Holmes seem sympathetic.

Mostly 'great,' a few 'boring'

There's a range of feelings about the film itself.

Songwriter Grimes — whose own artistic career has circled Silicon Valley — called the film "innovative" and called the movie's second half "artistic futurism."

The pseudonymous X user roon, who runs a well-followed techno-optimist Substack from Silicon Valley, called Fielder's filmmaking talent "almost incomprehensible" — but said he was wasting it on "some quite boring subject matter."

John Carreyrou, the former Wall Street Journal investigative reporter whose investigation helped expose Theranos, disagrees. He called it "a great film."

Carreyrou also wrote an op-ed for The New York Times, published on Sunday, about his jealousy around the Fielder and Oppenheim's access to Holmes — and his own worries about personal safety.

But the film, he wrote, is the "#BestPicture," he wrote on X, referencing its early Oscar buzz.

• Nathan Fielder's documentary about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is a bona fide hit.
• The film, "You Can See Everything," grossed $15 million in its opening weekend in the US and Canada.
• It offers a revealing portrait of Holmes, who was convicted of defrauding investors.

Nathan Fielder's nearly three-hour documentary about disgraced entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes is running up numbers at the box office.

The film, "You Can See Everything," grossed $15 million in the US and Canada during its opening weekend, according to A24, the film's distributor.

That's the best opening weekend for a documentary this year. "Melania" had the second-biggest opening weekend for a documentary after its release in January. It grossed $7.1 million.

The film's financial success is matched by viewer reception, too. It scored a whopping 99% among critics on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie-rating site, and a 98% among regular audiences.

Directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, the picture offers a remarkably revealing portrait of Holmes, who was convicted of defrauding investors with her blood-testing company, Theranos.

Theranos was at one point valued at $9 billion. It said its product could run hundreds of medical tests using just a pinprick of blood from a finger, but investigations revealed the company was using expensive lab equipment to surreptitiously run the tests.

Holmes, as the company's CEO, was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison after journalist John Carreyrou published a withering investigative report in The Wall Street Journal, sparking what eventually became criminal charges.

Business Insider's Henry Chandonnet has seen the film twice so far. He called it "one of the most shocking, revelatory, and oddly funny films" he'd ever witnessed.

"It was twisty and worthy of seeing with fresh eyes," Henry reported.

• Tech companies and venture capital firms are hosting private screenings of the Elizabeth Holmes doc.
• I went to one hosted by the AI startup Extend.
• Attendees I talked to said they looked at Holmes more as a joke than a product of their industry.

Elizabeth Holmes is a black mark on Silicon Valley's reputation. And yet its residents are lining up for the documentary about her.

Tech companies across the US are hosting screenings of "You Can See Everything," the documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about Holmes and her fiancé, Billy Evans. Venture capital funds are bringing their founders to the movie. There are Luma events upon Luma events.

The irony, of course, is that Holmes makes tech look bad. She sold big dreams with her medical testing company, Theranos, which eventually came crashing down. Holmes was convicted of defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars. (She has long said that she is innocent.)

Holmes is the exemplar of Silicon Valley's hucksterism. She's who much of America points to when they call founders liars or scammers.

So, what's with all the tech love? I went to a Thursday screening of the documentary hosted by Extend, an AI documentation startup, to find out.

Inside the Extend screening

A swarm of techies crowded outside theater nine at New York's AMC Lincoln Square.

The screening was set to start at 7. By 6:40, a crowd had formed to talk shop and admire Extend's custom stickers. Outside the theater door, I met Bo Lau, the event's organizer who works in developer relations for Extend.

Lau recently moved to New York and said she didn't want to watch the documentary alone. So, she posted about it on X — and it helped that she already had a following on so-called "Tech Twitter."

"I was like, 'What if I just turn this into a work event so I can expense it?'" Lau said.

The event got 1,400 RSVPs for about 120 seats, she said, and she's flying to San Francisco soon to host another screening. The tickets were given out free, so Extend got no benefit other than brand awareness, she said.

Why was it so popular? Lau said that Holmes was a source of fascination within Silicon Valley, and that Fielder's "awkward humor" matched the awkwardness of tech.

Filing into the theater, I heard my seatmates chat about AI and which tech companies let you work from home. On a brief social media scroll before my three-hour Do Not Disturb, I spotted Lau's recent project: a simulator of Holmes' desk.

Holmes' X account responded: "Impressive project."

Laugh lines, reflection time

This was my second time watching the documentary; the first was at New York Film Festival. The reactions among the techier crowd were mostly the same. There were lots of laughs, both at Fielder's discomfort and Holmes' oddities.

The crowd didn't react strongly to (mild spoiler alert) the big, AI version of Holmes that her fiancé creates after she goes to jail. That struck me as curious; maybe the tech crowd is already used to AI replicas.

There was also a much stronger gasp at the reveal of who's running Holmes' X account. That wasn't shocking; the attendees found out about this screening through X, after all.

We walked to a local wine bar, sipping cocktails while debriefing the film. Two techies that I talked to were split. One came away feeling bad for Holmes, then feeling bad that he felt bad for her. Another thought the film certified that Holmes was a true and utter psychopath.

I asked: Why is tech so comfortable laughing at Holmes? Her boastful visions don't sound too different from those of the current crop of young AI founders.

Maybe it was because the crowd was mostly in their 20s, not yet working in startups when Holmes' reckoning came.

Or Holmes has been detached from her Silicon Valley roots. The techies seemed to view her as more a product of the media — the books, the tabloid stories, the Hulu show — than of their own industry.

One attendee put it to me bluntly: she's turned into a meme.