And now we have Now You See Everything, which like many others apparently I did not even know about until this week. The first time I’ve ever seen a documentary in the theater. I have no intention of being spoiler free. So you can check it out first before reading more here.
It’s really good. It’s definitely a smart movie. It’s too long, but not long enough for an intermission. Some of the content is unsettling, and that makes it thought provoking because as a doc it’s ostensibly based on real conversations. But is it “real”? A common theme others have latched on to - what happens when several master manipulators are interacting with each other?
So spoiling the end for you right off the bat. Actress Amanda Seyfried, who portrayed Elizabeth Holmes in the film The Dropout, as herself instead of a reenactment (the doc has a lot of those) tells us this:
It’s complicated.
With this level of money and attention at stake, a strong but shallow personality can’t operate at a high level forever. Once I realized that toxic narcissism was involved I was hooked, long before the word narcissist was mentioned. And the narcissist in question, Liz’s partner Billy, has invited a documentary film crew into the house to get some things off their chest.
The dynamic is perfect, since Nathan Fielder has a particular style and previously had a TV show, The Curse. That’s about people running a housing scam. A “What were you thinking” moment. Can Liz and Billy be truly genuine for such a long time with cameras running? Can Fielder be truly genuine when the documentarians have control of editing? Really complicated stuff.
It would be dishonest of me to claim that I was unbiased. My negative view of Elizabeth Holmes is established and my own views on toxic narcissism - I’m sure I know more than the average person and sure I know far less than I think I do. And that brings us to key scene number one. As a defense mechanism our brains trend towards thinking we are smarter than we really are. I’m better equipped than most to take a step back and reevaluate. I’m certainly better than Holmes who admits on camera she NEVER LIES. Not rarely. Not even a little white lie. When pressed she admits that she will do the little white lie. But as for the serious stuff and the multibillion fraud, oh no way. This ties in to later conversation and one can pick up the sense she is actually incredibly naive. The perfect target for a toxic narcissist.
Another sure to be fan favorite scene is (allegedly) Liz’s first exposure to the famous Abbott and Costello Who’s On First? skit. The finale of that is that we are to believe Liz genuinely doesn’t get the joke. And the same way her brain is wired to not understand that the point is someone’s name is actually Who or What - that’s the same brain that misinterpreted a key part of the real life fraud case. My testing machine can test for anything. As long as the particular thing I’m testing for isn’t a set up correctly ahead of time. I’ll try to explain this with the self created analogy while in the theater. You can brag that your dog can do any trick. You’ll eventually get challenged, because it’s framed as an absolute black vs. white instead of complex situation. Then if your defense is, “Well, only if I train him” you are exposed for not being clear on “My dog knows how to sit, shake and lie down now. I know I can teach him to do any other ones later.”
And within that scene we get a glimpse into Liz’s partner Billy. He gets The Who’s On First? joke. And somehow we are supposed to believe after all this time and money spent on legal fees he’s never explained it to his soulmate? Really? Really???
We are given a glimpse at Theranos 2.0. The never say quit stick to it entrepreneur fire. Where the actually mechanics of the first Theranos are pretty much scrapped to let AI take care of the processing. Because sure. Getting bitten once by the first (alleged) scam needs to latch on to the trendy AI (alleged) scams. More fundraising. More dubious and vague promises of future value. More of the (alleged) toxic narcissist who handled and will handle the business end pulling the strings and having meetings to just say that with a little more money this will work the next time. My own bias instantly latched on to the gematria sports predictor’s wild claims of spectacular success rates and constantly being shown to be right about 50% of the time. Or being right 0% of the time for the end of the world Jesus is coming rapture crowd.
One of the reasons for the length of the doc is the extensive Amanda Seyfried material. For the role in The Dropout she watched a lot of deposition tapes and interviews. She nailed Liz’s mannerisms - the patented bobbing the head up and down and wide eyed unblinking stare. When discussing narcissism it is important to remember that you can’t just wildly claim it after limited exposure. But a true pattern over months and years. That’s starting into dark and dangerous territory. Where the narcissist spoon feeds tiny bits of positive reinforcement while the supply just keeps them happy long enough to get what they want. Even a three hour documentary isn’t enough to make a completely informed opinion. I’m assuming that legally Seyfried and the makers of The Dropout knew what they were getting into. But I wasn’t privy to those talks so who knows.
And that’s a lead in to a discussion of film interpretation and analysis. Movies are a great thing for narcissists who want to dominate a social setting. Purely subjective material can always be framed as “my opinion is right, yours sucks.” Calling a film ruined by being too woke has always seemed shallow and dishonest to me. The low quality evidence (it’s a take my word for it thing) is the mention of Charlie Kirk. The audience has already been through two hours with a couple of audible chuckles at Liz’s less than stellar showcase of herself being spontaneous. Fielder asks Billy what Liz thinks of Charlie Kirk. No big deal. Then he asks Billy who brightens and admits he’s a Kirk fan. That prompted quite a negative reaction from the group at my theater. They were not fans. Kirk is one of those polarizing figures in recent history, and my tribe for the afternoon reacted the same way - recognition that Kirk was a for profit manipulator who likely didn’t even believe in what he was saying.
Ultimately it’s kind of a dark and sad movie that is hard to come away with clean answers. It should be safe from MAGA trolling at the theater. YouTube psychologists are going to have a field day discussing manipulation, Stockholm Syndrome, and NPD. It’s hardly my favorite documentary ever or even that close, but if you’re genuinely on the upper edge of the IQ scale I’d recommend it. Like The Odyssey it’s worthy of genuine conversation instead of the everything is black and white approach.
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