“The Dropout” starring Amanda Seyfried on Hulu is a retelling of the wildly dishonest rise and eventual, if belated, fall of Elizabeth Holmes and her biotech firm Theranos. In short: Theranos raised billions on the promise that it could build a small, portable device that would change medicine forever by generating a vast array of test results from just a single drop of blood. Despite big-named investors who gave this swindle the stamp of legitimacy, none of it was true.
It is a story already explored, in considerable depth, in the nonfiction book expose “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup,” director Alex Gibney’s HBO documentary “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley” and a podcast also called “The Dropout.” Of those projects and their analysis of Holmes herself, “I watched and listened to all of it, but I learned nothing about her,” Seyfried told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s crazy that she can still be such an enigma with all the information surrounding her.” And yet she remains an enigma in the new project as well, despite a very good performance from Seyfried, who goes all-in on Holmes’ deeply off-putting intensity.
One might reasonably expect new insights from what is now the fourth high-profile version of this story. Failing that, the limited series is just the latest in Hollywood’s fixation on entrepreneurial chicanery. Sometimes there are actual crimes involved (Holmes was found guilty of charges including conspiracy to defraud investors and she faces up to 20 years in prison) and sometimes we’re looking at unethical power moves rooted in exploiting systems (and people) for substantial personal gain.
There’s a deluge of this stuff at the moment, from “Inventing Anna” on Netflix (a surprisingly vapid look at an elaborate con pulled on New York’s society circles); to the recent premiere of “Super Pumped” on Showtime (about Uber co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick — couldn’t get through 10 minutes of it before the deadening “he’s smug and uninteresting” vibe of it had me seeking other uses of my time); to the WeWork debacle depicted in “WeCrashed,” which arrives on Apple TV+ later this month starring Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway (reviews are still embargoed so I’ll just say it is as tiresome a pageant as the trailer suggests).
As someone on Twitter put it: “Maybe not every public monster needs a piece of prestige fiction made about them.”
But Hollywood has always had an affinity for schemers and maybe that’s because show business itself is run by these very types: Powerful people high on their own supply of overconfidence and fast-talking obfuscation. The cult of personality can grease a lot of wheels, but actually capturing that quality on screen has proven to be a challenge; as central figures, the Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delveys and Travis Kalanicks of the world are brash but also weirdly uninteresting and unconvincing as maverick something or others. Too often these projects feel like an expensive acting exercise — of wigs and costumes and elaborate vocal experimentation — where everything is set off in air quotes, as if to answer a question nobody actually asked: Does a story even exist until well-known actors reenact it?
1993′s “Six Degrees of Separation” starring Will Smith (based on the John Guare play, which was inspired by true events) is a good point of comparison. It’s a movie that’s interested in more than the mere fact of the swindle, but why it worked: Smith’s character has an innate understanding of human nature and, despite the con, a genuine desire and need to connect with people. The self-congratulatory swells he targets are in turn flattered by his lies and project onto him all their unacknowledged neuroses and prejudices. Perhaps it works so well as a story because Guare (who also wrote the screenplay) wasn’t aiming to recreate a scandal but instead used real life to inspire his imagination, poking around the nooks and crannies of how interpersonal bonds form and fray and dissolve into nothing before your eyes.
“Six Degrees of Separation” (streaming on Hulu and HBO Max) feels rich and complicated because it also contemplates the way race — and the smug self-assurance that only other white people are racist — plays into the game Smith’s character is running. That’s notably missing from the aforementioned projects. Whether it’s Elizabeth Holmes or any of these other central figures, their whiteness is key to granting them the benefit of the doubt and getting them through doors. Strangely, these limited series have no desire to excavate this in any depth.
Why did so many power players swallow Holmes’ lies? Why did everyone want to believe in her so badly? One of her few naysayers offers a theory: She’s pretty and she’s blonde. This is at once astute but also a misread of the situation. If we’re trying to pinpoint why her physical presentation got her as far as it did, her whiteness is a primary factor. So is the fact that she’s thin and youthful. Were she Black or overweight or visibly middle-aged with gray hair and wrinkles, would this cabal of important white men have rallied behind her? Early on in her tenure at Theranos, she is flagrantly unkempt and unshowered and it’s not a stretch to wonder if only a white person could get away with that without suffering professional repercussions.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Theranos saga, Gibney’s documentary on HBO is tough to beat. And it gets the job done in two succinct hours versus Hulu’s eight-episode, eye-glazing marathon, which can’t quite make a case for its existence.
These days even just a modestly successful nonfiction book or podcast or documentary can function as a proof-of-concept for a Hollywood adaptation, but there are plenty of real people and events that aren’t as well known that would probably be more interesting to me personally.
For one, I’d be intrigued by a “Mad Men”-esque show set in the 1970s at Johnson Publishing. Talk about the potential for capturing a moment in time, with an approach that also makes room for fictional characters. Take us inside the editorial meetings of Jet and Ebony magazines, of Black writers and editors weighing in on pop culture and issues of the day in ways that aren’t filtered through the sensibilities (or fears or biases) of white people in charge. Here is a company with the rare woman, in Eunice Johnson, in a prominent role on the masthead. As a premise, this has everything: Journalism! Chicago! Workplace drama! Just the stylistic backdrop alone is thrilling, of the clothing and music and culture and the incredible design of the Michigan Avenue offices themselves. (The building has since been redeveloped as high-end apartments).
A 1972 issue of Ebony includes a nearly 40-page spread of the magazine’s then brand new office space with the headline: “Johnson Publishing Co. builds $8 million headquarters in Chicago’s Loop district.” The photos are magnificent and include the groovy-swirling orange graphic design of the test kitchen, which has since been dismantled and reassembled for an exhibit currently on display at The Africa Center in Harlem, New York.
That same edition features Muhammad Ali, his then-wife Khalilah and their newborn Muhammad Ali Jr. on the cover. And inside, there’s a commentary piece that feels tailor-made for a group of TV writers to hash out and play with, about the racism of “American’s No. 1 super-star” John Wayne. How was the story pitched and debated internally before its publication? What were those conversations like?
Someone make a smart, funny, high-end series that takes place in that kind of real-life setting and I’ll watch as many episodes as you make.
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