relative to expectations, I’m disappointed with the nathan fielder/elizabeth holmes movie, you can see everything. spoilers below.
there were some awesome parts, such as the old comedy clip he shows her, and her reaction. and some of the shots, and the information leaks their hosts gave them, are indeed great.
but given the intense level of access, how is it that there is nothing clearer than this? based on their prior work, nathan and oppenheim are very heavily committed to pushing ideas like “you’ll never know (and maybe can’t know?) what truth is.” so even if, say, holmes did say something completely guilt-proving, would they even put it in? would you bet your life that they didn’t intentionally edit the movie to maintain a desired level of plausibility that she’s truly innocent (or not), to the audience?
so i’m claiming it’s likely that this film was consciously edited and designed to foster a specific mix of belief and disbelief in the audience. i’m also claiming the chosen level was picked at least as much with an eye to fame, interest, and thrills as to showing a clear or very likely truth, if the footage they got showed anything liuke that.
i base my claim on the lack of infrastructure that could have helped clarify things and reduce this problem.
okay, a much more charitable interpretation is that this really was the max(truth) version of what happened: it’s what they came up with when trying to make her look as bad as possible.
viewed this way, OFC this is highly interesting cinematically: the riddle of “are the filmmakers trying to make her look as bad as possible, or as good?”
like I said, that’d be super cool, IF this weren’t a significant world incident.
my other evidence is mostly circumstantial. they spent 34 days with her, at least two weeks of which apparently involved 24/7 access to their home. yet every time holmes starts to say something interesting, the conversation we see is interrupted.
it’s cool, i guess, that they included the text at the end of the movie. but where is the bond, or an actual claim from the filmmakers, on their honor or on money, that it’s actually true? in recent times, so-called documentary makers have sometimes included absolute lies in their supposedly true films. are nathan fielder or oppenheim on record as opposing this? ofc not; it’s just the normal status game: what a loser you are for asking for such a thing, etc.
i like fielder a lot. i wish there were something real to base my interpretation of the film on. by real, I mean him stating, in court or in a video he doesn’t disclaim: “I, nathan fielder, affirm that the movie, as released, was intented to show the truth as we saw it as clearly as possible and to produce the most honest impression in the audience, via the same means we reached our interpretation, and that it isn't intentionally misleading either in final intent, or in any aspect of it and what was included or not included.
(I'm trying to guard against both: high-level gaps between what they make the audience think and what they know, and also "parallel construction-like manipulation" such as the makers believing something for unshared reasons (e.g. she is a liar) but then assembling a movie whose goal is to make the audience believe she's a liar by using separate evidence, which itself may be used dishonestly.
the symbolic aspects of the movie would complicate this, and they are indeed cool. truth IS hard to know, and bias is real.
but overall, deconstructionism and promo and all that stuff be like “truth is fungible, you’ll never really know truth, because, you fool, there is no such thing.” and then they GO OUT OF THEIR WAY TO OBSCURE what actually happened: what actual words were said by real people, in real contexts (during trials, while in jail, for example).
what was left on the cutting room floor? did the other side threaten or sue them? were there statements or scenes that made something about her or the other people in it utterly clear (probably as an extremely proficient liar), which even a 12-year-old would understand, that were left out? or not? did they really have the level of access portrayed in the movie, or not?
the scene where billy seems to be on coke: was there more they could have included that would resolve it either way? i.e., does he sniffle in known-not-on-coke situations, and does the crew know he has allergies, but they left that out to frame him? or conversely, is that kind of sniffling going on all the time, and it’s very obvious to them he’s on coke? did they leave anything out because he threatened to sue, or because they wanted to leave it vague?
those questions really matter.
Other deceptive docs
the symbolic aspects of the movie would complicate this, and they are indeed cool. truth IS hard to know, and bias is real.
but overall, deconstructionism and promo and all that stuff be like “truth is fungible, you’ll never really know truth, because, you fool, there is no such thing.” and then they GO OUT OF THEIR WAY TO OBSCURE what actually happened: what actual words were said by real people, in real contexts (during trials, while in jail, for example).
an older netflix doc, wild wild country, about the rajneeshees in oregon, was extremely manipulative in the information and interviews it presented. after watching it, I looked up a lot more about it, including contemporary news reports, which made the situation clear. the gang had been committing crimes and terrorizing people all along. a few surviving, non-jailed members were now painting a rosy, self-serving, and mostly false version of their own history. the vision the filmmakers showed was just fake, and they must have known it.
similarly, serial turned out to be just wrong. the author probably tricked herself, but the producers and others let it go out, even when it was misleading, because it succeeded as a truthful-style block of info.
another doc, The King of Kong, was similar. if you look it up afterward, the doc’s so-called drama turns out not to be in question at all: one side is a complete liar and cheater. there’s plenty of evidence, including active selection for truth: there are open challenges to one of the claimants to prove himself on some of his old (lying) records, which he hasn’t taken up.
I assume all of the production staff of you can see everything were sworn to silence for life+more. that probably even prevents them from revealing anything about the film after death, and even in not-for-profit contexts, with legal and definitely large financial penalties. Is that true? I think this is standard in most pseudo-reality shows, like pawn stars.
I think that is relevant when judging a documentary.
but there is no answer, no mention of this issue at all, huh?
how about all the extra footage: will it ever be made public, even in 100 years? or not? has it already been destroyed? when will it be destroyed? what about alternate cuts, or the rest of the interviews? i know it’s not standard for any of this to be made public. but i don’t care. at least nathan could go around saying: “I really tried to clarify the situation as much as possible, and i didn’t intentionally leave it vague.”
why am i imposing this duty on Nathan? he started as an outsider, and he still acts like one. for comedy, i don’t mind not knowing what is true and what isn’t.
but now this is a major issue, tied to big future concerns like the reputation of silicon valley compared to traditional east coast media. you already see people trying to use holmes as evidence against VCs and SV attitude and culture. the promotion for theo baker’s book how to rule the world also used this line of attack, although the book itself doesn’t seem to have people like Elon as its main target.
many normies mistakenly take the soft treatment that let Holmes trick people as proof of something wrong with SV. but her tricking a bunch of old dudes (kissinger, old generals, and one nutso SV VC, tim draper) just is not an indictment of people like Jobs, Elon, etc. She succeeded specifically by leveraging herself, when necessary, into greatly increased sex-based tolerance for violating the normal systems that catch cheaters like this much earlier.
A true understanding of her story would focus on how she was able to use new (relative to history) methods of manipulation, legal harassment, lies, etc. to survive. for guys, whom it’s fine to either praise or criticize (and many are), there isn’t that initial layer of invulnerability that helped Holmes keep things going so long. So the positioning of this issue matters on a pretty huge scale.
I mean, it is a hollywood movie, and these guys aren’t scientists or whatever; but they are in the mix, and Nathan is an outsider. He mostly seems to be playing the role of “i’m a cool guy who isn’t sullied by being mainstream; now i’m the coolest guy in the room!” but he’s not actually changing the rules of how information is presented to audiences.
the film’s topic covers this too: how the dropout and its fictionalization misled most normie viewers. but just including that section doesn’t excuse the filmmakers here. acknowledging that there is a risk of misrepresentation doesn’t mean they can do whatever they want for the rest of the movie.
in truth, i think they likely really did try to make something true. but did they even have control of the final edit? what if A24 gave them a last-minute fait accompli: wait another year for release, or accept a few edits nathan didn’t much like? are we sure nathan and oppenheim haven’t been pressured that way?
of course, nobody is ever totally free of this risk. but consider a world where, at minimum, people have and exercise the right to criticize, to speak up, and to publish things (if only after death). while still not perfect, it is a lot better.
If Nathan does have that right, it would be great if he exercised it and put his reputation on the line. He should say things like: “I truly couldn’t tell what it meant; we tried to make it as absolutely truthful as we could; we fought to include every meaningful shot and clip.” That way, if someone leaks a clip that headshots this claim, he’d be known as a liar, and the statement would incentivize those kinds of leaks. So their not happening would serve as a kind of evidence for him.
another reason to forgive them for the format: holmes wouldn’t have accepted a more in-depth, trial-like, or verifiable investigation. they had to make a movie to get this access.
and i’m open to judging this by the outcome in 10 or 20 years. suppose nathan hangs out with detectives, lawyers, and carreyrou, and fully shares everything he legally can about what actually happened. that would be the most truth-favoring way to go. but if he just keeps acting cool, going to parties, and making big films, and the reality of holmes’s mind and way of thinking doesn’t become clearer in a reliable way, then that’s a lowroll and it’s a masquerade.
So, overall, it had some amazing parts. I like the multi-level, symbolic way it was edited. For me, though, a mass-appeal, bite-sized summary, possibly made via parallel construction (even if done by someone honest), isn’t as good as I’d hope the standard could be.
I am comforted that there are so, so many fact-based videos and other media about this online, with references and footnotes. The interested public really does seem to care a lot about truth, rather than watching videos that mostly just make things up.
Related
Thinking about this, a couple of other pages I have are very relevant.
1984 part 2 is about how someone might manage to completely control a target via law, culture, and ideas, in an inescapable way. even then, this is NOT “actually changing reality through control of the definition of truth,” because things like aliens arriving can still happen! the physical universe is real no matter what you say!
Also, at a more basic level, I’ve long hoped for tv shows with openly higher truth-claims; see A Real Reality Show I’d Like to Watch