There is a theme beginning to emerge from many of the documentary films this year at Sundance - that individuals will use their money, power, and celebrity to get what they want, and to suppress those who would oppose them. This theme is definitely apparent in the film "Leaving Neverland," and surfaces again in two more documentaries about rich and powerful individuals - "Untouchable," about Harvey Weinstein, the movie mogul who co-founded Miramax and The Weinstein Company; and "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, " about Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the tech company Theranos.
In both documentaries we are shown individuals who build their companies from the ground up, and become multi-millionaires in doing so. Both individuals gain prestige, fame, and major influence in their respective areas of business. But as they rise to the top, greed, avarice, and narcissism overcome them. Because of the power and influence they wield, they are able to exert extreme pressure to get whatever they want, and to crush anyone who would resist. They become blind to reality and believe that they are untouchable, which ultimately leads to their downfall.
For decades Harvey Weinstein has been the darling of Sundance where he first gained major notoriety for independently producing and premiering "Sex Lies and Videotape" in 1989. (At that time tickets for a Sundance movie were only $5, and they were a lot easier to come by.) It is rather ironic that the film "Untouchable," which details his catastrophic fall from the heavens, is now playing at Sundance, where it all started for him.
For nearly twenty-five years, Weinstein has been racking up massive numbers of awards including Oscars. Miramax literally transformed the independent film scene. He worked with the most talented actors and directors in the motion-picture industry, and produced some of the most seminal films of my lifetime. But all the while, he was sexually assaulting and raping women on his proverbial "casting couch" in hotel rooms around the world.
Was it a secret? Not really. For years, rumors have swirled around Hollywood about his misconduct. When asked about how she felt about Harvey Weinstein on the red carpet, Courtney Love once infamously replied, "If he ever invites you to a private party at the Four Seasons, don't go." But nobody ever openly spoke out about it. Nobody ever went to the police. For decades, Harvey Weinstein got away with it. Why? Because Weinstein was so powerful, he could break a career as fast as he could make one for a woman. He had enough money that he could buy anybody off, and almost all of the women he assaulted accepted that. When confronted with any kind of resistance, Weinstein often responded with the question: "Do you know who I am?" Once he answered that question to Andrew Goldman, reporter for the New York Observor, right before putting him in a headlock and punching him repeatedly in the head: "...I'm the fucking sheriff of this fucking lawless piece-of-shit town." And he kind of was. Not only was he powerful and wealthy in his own right, but he had lots of wealthy and powerful friends like the Clintons and Barack Obama. And he was backed by major companies like Disney.
Things changed in 2017 when a reporter named Ronan Farrow was able to get several women to go on the record to talk about their experiences of sexual harassment, assault, and rape by Weinstein. Farrow also found out that Weinstein hired the private intelligence agency Black Cube to investigate his victims or those who would oppose him, and used that information for blackmail.
Articles were published in "The New York Times" and the "New Yorker," and the floodgates opened. Many more women came forward to talk about their experiences of sexual misconduct with Weinstein. Ultimately it destroyed the man who was the "King of Hollywood."
With her documentary, "Untouchable," director Ursula Macfarlane chronicles both Weinstein's rise to power and fame, and his monstrous downfall. She reveals how Weinstein got and used his power over employees in his office, friends, reporters, and the actresses with whom he worked. On camera, Macfarlane interviews many of the women whose lives were forever impacted by Weinstein, their pain and suffering evident as they relive the memories. She also shows the difficulty these women face (and continue to face) in an industry that makes it difficult to come forward, and in a judicial system that favors those with the money to fight against their accusers.
In "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley,"Alex Gibney directs a documentary investigating the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, a one-time multibillion-dollar healthcare company. In 2004, Holmes dropped out of Stanford to pursue her dream of revolutionizing the healthcare industry. Her goal? To create a mini, portable lab that could perform 200 tests on a finger-prick of blood. Doing so would help make disease diagnosis more accessible to the masses, and render the few major companies that controlled blood-test laboratories obsolete.
Holmes is a brilliant business woman who, like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and even Thomas Edision, wanted to disrupt the establishment. She's also an idealist with big aspirations. She is a genius at selling her product and her company's mission. She attains hundreds of millions of dollars in investments, and lures some of the most prestigious individuals in our society to her corporate board including former Secretaries of State George Schultz and Henry Kissinger, General James Mattis, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, Riley Bechtel (CEO of the Bechtel Group), and former Wells Fargo CEO Richard Kovacevich. But until 2016, Holmes didn't include anyone from the medical industry on her board - an interesting side-note for a company whose primary industry is healthcare.
By 2014, Theranos was valued at over $9 billion, which made Holmes the youngest self-made billionaire in the world. The company had contracts with Walgreens, and Theranos blood tests were used on drug trial patients of Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline. The company seemed on a rocket propulsion to success. The problem was that the mini-lab, the Edison, was never a fully-realized product. Over the course of over a decade, Holmes poured millions of dollars into the development of a machine that was flawed in its conception and technically incapable of doing all that was promised. Holmes deceived backers and financiers about the product, which never really existed. She misrepresented the methods by which blood test results were achieved, and publicly proclaimed breakthroughs in science and technology before they were actually invented.
Two years later, Theranos began to fall apart. Scientists and engineers who tried to explain the laws of chemistry and physics to Holmes were dismissed as incompetent. Holmes was reporting fraudulent revenue gains. Medical professionals were questioning the viability of the Edison, and employees were questioning the ethics of the company. Holmes' "fake it until you make it" philosophy was coming unraveled.
In 2015, reporter John Carreyrou of "The Wall Street Journal" published an expose on Theranos that questioned Holmes' claims and the existence of her purported technology, which spawned investigations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which later sanctioned the company and revoked its CLIA certificate, prohibiting Holmes from owning or operating a medical lab for two years. Lawsuits were filed by state attorneys, former business partners and patients. By 2018, Theranos was worth "less than $0," and cited a "massive fraud" by the SEC. And still, Holmes continued to tout the company's success and achievements and legally pursue whistle blowers and those who would speak out against her and the company.
Using amazing footage and testimony by Holmes and insiders, director Gibney details how Elizabeth Holmes' own personal narcissism prevents her from seeing reality, makes her believe in science and technology that simply doesn't and cannot exist, and gives her the chutzpah to defraud millions of dollars from investors and mislead patients and doctors. She still doesn't seem to comprehend that she peddled a hoax and deceived millions of people.
Untouchable Rose Wagner Theatre January 27, 2019
The Inventor Broadway Centre Cinemas January 27, 2019
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