October 27, 2026

What I Saw in You Can See Everything

By Emily Poler

Alert! If you plan to watch You Can See Everything, the documentary about disgraced entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes and haven’t yet, some very mild spoilers ahead. Otherwise, read on.

In case you’ve missed the cultural hoopla, the film crew basically moved into the house Holmes shared with her partner, Billy Evans, and their children for the month before Holmes went to prison for defrauding investors in Theranos. (If you’ve forgotten, Theranos was a mult-billion dollar health technology company founded by Holmes. She claimed the company invented a revolutionary mechanism for performing blood tests. However, it was all a bunch of B.S., she was convicted of fraud, and sentenced to 11 years in prison.)

There were sooooo many interesting things about the doc! It focuses on Holmes’ world and her relationship with Evans just before going behind bars in May, 2023, and follows up two years later while she’s doing time and Evans is raising their two kids. But the film is also about the relationship between documentary film crews and their subjects, what’s truth and what’s a lie, and, most fascinating, how people’s minds work.

Is talking about a documentary an unusual topic for this blog? I suppose so, but there are a couple of legal, or at least legally adjacent elements to it, that I think are worth discussing. Plus, it’s my blog!

So first off, unlike many documentary films where the crew is unseen or appears only as a disembodied voice asking questions of the subject, the crew here and co-director Nathan Fielder, are very, very present throughout. As a lawyer, I found Fielder’s manner fascinating. He frequently would ask Holmes or Evans questions and, after they finished answering, Fielder would say nothing. Eventually Holmes or Evans would start to talk again with both, and Evans in particular, revealing more than was in the initial answer. 

This tactic is similar to something I and many other litigators do in depositions. We ask a question, get an answer, and then pause. There are a couple of reasons for this but a big one is that most people are uncomfortable with silence and when faced with it, they will start babbling. As in You Can See Everything, leaving awkward silences can lead to getting your best information.

Also, Fielder spoke in a completely deadpan, cool manner, as if he had no idea his difficult or embarrassing questions might make the subject uncomfortable. Again, this is really similar to what many litigators do in depositions. When questioning a witness, I need to get a great deal of information, much of which is banal, but some of which the witness might not want to divulge. So I need to dispassionately ask questions that get the easy answers while also not tipping the witness off to where I’m going in quest of the hard stuff. I also can’t show any emotion when he or she divulges something that’s great for my client’s case (or display my frustration when the witness is less than truthful). Those “gotcha” moments are, of course, critical to the process, but while I get the sense that a lot of non-lawyers (and maybe some lawyers who aren’t litigators) think litigation is just a series of “gotcha” moments, it’s really not (at least for me). They’re one piece of the overall gathering of necessary data. 

If you watch the movie, you’ll see Fielder did a great job using those techniques to draw unexpected revelations from Holmes and Evans, which is a big part of why the doc is so amazing and it seems like everybody is talking about it right now. 

Finally, a question for any criminal defense attorneys out there: How does the law handle profits generated by a book or film for people who have been convicted of crimes when they participate in the production? I don’t want to go into too much detail here, but part of the film delves into whether Holmes or her partner, Evans, will make money from the doc, which has already grossed $45 million in the two weeks since release. Given that Holmes owes millions of dollars in restitution, is there any chance that she would ever receive that money or would it go (relatively) straight to her victims? 

If anyone has any idea, can you let me know?