Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Inventor: Out For Blood In Silicon Valley’, HBO’s Documentary About The Fall Of Elizabeth Holmes

If you were never a fan of getting blood drawn to get tested, then Theranos was a company that held a lot of promise. Over 200 tests from a finger-prick drop of blood. Amazing, right? And the person who started the company, Elizabeth Holmes, was a symbol of promoting STEM to girls as well as one of the most charming Silicon Valley entrepreneurs since Steve Jobs. So how did go all wrong so fast? A new HBO documentary by the esteemed Alex Gibney explains it all….

THE INVENTOR: OUT FOR BLOOD IN SILICON VALLEY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: In 2014, Elizabeth Holmes and her company, Theranos, was splashed all over business and tech media, promising a revolution in blood testing. With Theranos, not only could patients order their own tests as opposed to going through a doctor, but over 200 tests could be performed on a tiny drop of blood from a finger prick, rather than the test-tubes fill of blood that usually get drawn via venipuncture.

Like many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Holmes — who dropped out of Stanford at 19 when she got patents for a predecessor to the Theranos testing machine nicknamed “Edison” — had a sincere belief that she could “disrupt” the healthcare industry. And through both the fact that she was one of the few female entrepreneurs in the Valley and the force of her personality, she got hundreds of millions of dollars of financing to develop the testing machine. She also managed to get Walgreens on board to roll the machine out to the drug giant’s in-store clinics.

One problem: The Edison wasn’t even close to ready. And as the engineers and lab technicians reported problems with the device to Holmes and her COO/boyfriend Sunny Balwani, they were summarily dismissed. Not only would the device only perform a few tests, the results that were returned were wildly inaccurate. Yet, the Walgreens rollout went forward, with most tests done the old-fashioned way, with vials of blood sent to Theranos and tested on standard third-party equipment.

Alex Gibney, one of the leading documentary filmmakers around, documents the quick rise and even faster fall of Holmes, who currently is under federal indictment for fraud. While he had no access to Holmes or Balwani, we see her charm and sales pitch in archival footage and outtakes from a documentary about the company. He does have access, however, to Roger Parloff, whose profile of Holmes in Fortune led to an explosion of interest in the company; Ken Auletta, who had a similar profile of Holmes in The New Yorker, and John Carreyou, the Wall Street Journal reporter whose 2015 expose about the company’s problems sparked the downfall.

He also speaks to the two main whisteblowers in this case, young research scientists who knew that the product had no chance of working. One of them, Tyler Shultz, is the grandson of former Secretary of State George Shultz, who was one of many old-guard political figures who invested heavily in Theranos during its early days.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: In a way, The Inventor reminds us of the two recent Fyre Festival documentaries (Fyre and Fyre Fraud). It has many of the same beats, where a personable and driven entrepreneur made promises she was convinced she could deliver, but never considered what it would take technically to get there. Yet, unlike unrepentant con man Billy McFarland, it seems like Holmes sincerely believed in the lie she was spewing. But instead of a few rich Instagrammers being scammed, people were being told they had cancer when they were completely healthy, so the stakes were much higher.

Performance Worth Watching: Tyler Shultz is absolutely riveting. Think about this: He’s a young man who not only took on one of the hottest young entrepreneurs in the country, but also his grandfather who — oh, by the way — helped end the Cold War during the Reagan administration. Even though he had evidence that Holmes was committing fraud, George Shultz still stuck by Holmes, believing her assertions that they were oh so close to a breakthrough. Tyler Shultz’ courage in this case can’t be understated.

We also love Phyllis Gardner, a Stanford professor that was an early mentor — and equally early critic — of Holmes’. The incredulousness in her voice as she talks about Holmes made us wonder why no one talked to her before handing Holmes hundreds of millions of dollars.

Memorable Dialogue: Every time we heard Holmes in her (fake) deep baritone tell the story about her father getting skin cancer that metastasized, we were sucked in. And we understood how she could snow everyone from Shultz to Henry Kissinger to Rupert Murdoch to all her employees.

Single Best Shot: Every time we saw behavioral economist Dan Ariely and his half-beard, we strained to hear anything he said, we were so distracted. Apparently, he grows it that way on purpose (he has skin grafts on the right side of his face), just to shake things up from time to time.

Our Take: Alex Gibney, who has unpacked other scandalous business stories in documentaries like Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, was the right person to deliberately unravel Holmes’ various lies. The Theranos story needed a measured approach because there was so much involved, not the least of which was the idea that her hubris directly affected the health of actual people her company tested. He was able to unfurl exactly what was wrong with Holmes’ idea and why the execution of that idea was never going to meet her vision, no matter what happened.

The Inventor is certainly a deeper dive than ABC’s 20/20 special The Dropout, which seemed to be more concerned with the superficial (her voice) and scandalous (her personal relationship with Balwani) than the fact that her lies were putting people at risk. At times, it goes a bit astray, with an extended comparison to Thomas Edison, who often used the “fake it until you make it” method of marketing to burnish his image as an inventor. And Ariely has an extended segment explaining an experiment about how and why people lie, especially when it comes to money.

But the major coup is getting Shultz, who didn’t talk to 20/20 to talk about what he put at risk by talking to Carreyou; it wasn’t just a job, it was his family. It was especially apparent when his grandfather got him to sign an NDA and had Theranos’ lawyers waiting in another room. The fact Tyler stood his ground was amazing, and Gibney gives him more than enough room to tell his story.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Inventor is a fascinating look at a person who lives by the George Costanza mantra “It’s not a lie if you believe it.” Only this isn’t Monk’s Diner, and the stakes couldn’t have been higher.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream The Inventor on HBO Go