The packed audience was laughing and gasping throughout the three-hour documentary, which takes several unexpected turns as it shows the days leading up to Holmes’ prison sentence and her family life with partner Billy Evans.

In the post-screening Q&A, which avoided the shocking scenes and spoilers in “You Can See Everything,” Fielder and Oppenheim explained how they met and got in touch with Holmes.

Oppenheim had cold-emailed Fielder after learning he ha watched part of his documentary “Some Kind of Heaven,” and the two filmmakers became friends. They had visited the Magic Castle together a few years ago, and a magician asked the audience for a celebrity’s name for a close-up magic trick. Someone suggested Elizabeth Holmes, which reminded Oppenheim that the Theranos fraudster had reached out to the indie company A24 about someone documenting her life.

Fielder, who had read the 2018 novel “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup,” was “fascinated” by Theranos’ downfall, and decided to set up a meeting with her via A24.

Holmes and Evans agreed to let Fielder and Oppenheim film them, and A24 gave the small crew a chance to “pull the plug” on the docu if they couldn’t find a story to tell.

“It wasn’t until we started shooting that moments would happen — some of them are in the film — and then after Lance and I would talk about what we thought happened there,” Fielder said. “We’d completely disagree on what something meant to us and what we thought was happening. Then we were like, ‘This is really interesting. If we can’t agree on what’s happening, there’s something here.’ And our curiosity sort of just like drove us from there.”

Everyone had different point of view

“Every person that worked on this movie was going through similar feelings of cognitive dissonance,” Oppenheim noted. “We would unpack the day’s events, and no one could agree on the seemingly mundane moments that would transpire. Everyone had a different point of view. So Nathan and I started thinking, ‘If we can just try and get out of the way of this and capture this and attempt to bring people as close to that experience of being there as possible, then maybe there’s an interesting project to be made out of this.”

The first teaser for “You Can See Everything” went viral as the camera focused on Holmes’ face and she told Fielder, “I don’t have anything to deceive you on. Of course I’m not deceiving you. I’m engaging with you as a human being. Why would I deceive you? There’s no reason for me to do that.”

After that, the full trailer showed Fielder moving in to live with Holmes and Evans 24/7, sitting on the bed with them and Holmes crying during the interview.

“I cannot tell you how weird it was that we were there,” Fielder said. “Truly, to this day, we’re still like — anyways, sorry. I wouldn’t think I’d be the person you would want for your final period. I’m a nice person, I do believe, but I’m not the most comforting. You know what I mean? I think you know.”

“She said, ‘First and foremost, we see this as a human story,’” Fielder recalled. “It’s so hard to understand where they have been coming from, but maybe there was a sense that inviting someone who was like a friend of theirs, no one would take that seriously. I don’t know, it’s so hard to speculate.”

Oppenheim compared the feeling to the 1979 movie Stalker, which featured a mystical zone that grants people’s innermost desires.

“The laws of reality and everything that we thought was going on outside just evaporated, and no one could agree,” he said. “I feel like our brains were scrambled. We were also unsure for so long if we even had anything that was worthwhile to make and put together.”

After breaking out with his comedy series Nathan for You, Fielder made bigger name for himself by blending documentary filmmaking with elaborate, scripted narrative in HBO’s The Rehearsal. He also wrote, directed and starred in Showtime’s The Curse.

You Can See Everything marks his feature directorial debut. He’s teamed up with Oppenheim, who’s also on a hot streak after last week’s release of “Primetime,” starring Robert Pattinson as “To Catch a Predator” host Chris Hansen.

Oppenheim has directed other documentaries like “Spermworld,” “Ren Faire” and “Some Kind of Heaven,” all focusing on oddball communities like sperm donors, renaissance fair owners and retirement community members.

After the screening, Fielder and Oppenheim asked the audience to keep for themselves the many surprises and twists that “You Can See Everything” takes.

Viewers will have to wait until the film hits movie theaters on October 16.

About Elizabeth Holmes 

Born in 1984, Holmes is a businesswoman convicted of fraud due to her health technology company Theranos. Holmes founded Theranos in 2003, and its valuation soared in the 2010s after claiming to have revolutionized blood testing by developing methods that needed only  small blood volumes, such as from finger prick. In 2015, Forbes named Holmes the youngest, wealthiest self-made female billionaire in the U.S.