18 Oct 2026 · 46m · Michael Barbaro, Alissa Wilkinson, Jason Zinoman, Nathan Fielder, Peter Baker · 23 quoted facts
The episode argues that Nathan Fielder's documentary 'You Can See Everything' is a real breakthrough. Critics Alissa Wilkinson and Jason Zinoman say Fielder's comedy, built on staged situations, awkward silences and blurred fact and fiction, makes him the ideal person to film Elizabeth Holmes. They think the film pushes documentary beyond its usual limits, and they promise not to spoil it.
The central tension is trust. Fielder's work asks whether manipulation can still produce real feeling, and Holmes is a figure whose career depended on persuasion. The critics say they swing between seeing the film as sympathetic and as calculated. They also argue it may divide viewers over how much it reveals about Holmes versus about Fielder himself.
In the gas-rebate episode, strangers climb a mountain for a rebate nobody could collect, yet they really bond. Zinoman reads this as Fielder's point that the connection is real even when the premise is a con.
Fielder builds an exact replica of a bar, and even of a man's apartment, to rehearse conversations. The critics say this forces viewers and Fielder himself to question the morality of manipulating real people for art.
Zinoman says the kids appear in many frames and work like armor, helping her appear as a mother, daughter and partner. He argues this is her version of a magic trick for rebuilding her reputation.
Wilkinson says it moves between comedic, dramatic and investigative modes simultaneously. That mix makes viewers question what documentary makers actually do when they turn reality into entertainment.
Zinoman compares Fielder to Penn and Teller, who open by calling magic fake and then still fool you. With cynical audiences, he says, a filmmaker must first earn authenticity before steering viewers.
It follows comedian Nathan Fielder as he moves in with Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her partner in the weeks before she went to prison. It is co-directed by Lance Oppenheim.
The critics say his comedy is built on blurring reality and performance, and Holmes's career also blurred what was real. He also asks blunt questions about human behavior that other filmmakers avoid.
Holmes dropped out of Stanford and founded a blood testing company that promised many tests from a pinprick of blood. It reached a $10 billion valuation, but reporting by John Carreyrou showed the machines didn't work, and in 2022 she was sentenced to 11 years for defrauding investors.
On 'Nathan for You' he gave small businesses outlandish ideas and committed fully to them. On 'The Rehearsal' he built replicas of real places so people could practice difficult conversations.
No. The hosts pledge not to spoil it, and they only say that viewers may keep changing their minds about whether Holmes or Fielder came out ahead.
Stated by the speakers. Each quote matches the transcript, which shows what was said, not that it is true.
Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford and founded Theranos, a blood testing company that promised to run many tests from a pinprick of blood.
“she dropped out of Stanford and started this blood testing company called Theranos. The idea of which was that you would be able to run a huge battery of tests from a pinprick of blood.”
Elizabeth Holmes appeared on magazine covers and became the world's youngest female self-made billionaire, while Theranos was valued at $10 billion at one point.
“She was on the cover of magazines. She became the world's youngest female self-made billionaire, and Theranos at some point was valued at $10 billion.”
Investigative journalist John Carreyrou uncovered that the Theranos machines did not work.
“our colleague, the investigative journalist John Carreau, uncovered that these machines didn't work.”
Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison for defrauding investors.
“in 2022, uh, she was sentenced to 11 years in prison for defrauding investors.”
Amanda Seyfried won an Emmy for playing Elizabeth Holmes in the Hulu miniseries The Dropout.
“Hulu miniseries for which Amanda Seyfried, who plays Elizabeth Holmes in it, won an Emmy for her performance.”
Nathan Fielder is Canadian, grew up in Vancouver and loved comedy and magic as a child.
“Canadian, grew up in Vancouver. He loved comedy and magic as a kid”
Nathan Fielder worked as a segment producer on Canadian Idol early in his career.
“he was a segment producer on the Canadian version of American Idol, on the Canadian Idol.”
Nathan Fielder later worked on This Hour Has 22 Minutes, a Canadian satirical news show likened to The Daily Show.
“he went to work for a show called This Hour Has 22 Minutes, which is sort of the Canadian Daily Show.”
Nathan for You, a Comedy Central show starring Nathan Fielder, premiered in 2013.
“Which was a Comedy Central show called Nathan For You that premiered in 2013.”
Nathan Fielder really does have a business degree, as his on-screen persona claims.
“he does have a degree in business. Um, so he actually wasn't lying about that”
Elizabeth Holmes saw the gas rebate episode of Nathan for You, which led her to invite Nathan Fielder into her home.
“the gas rebate episode, which is the episode that Elizabeth Holmes saw that made her invite Nathan Fielder into her home”
In the gas station episode of Nathan for You, Fielder tries to help the owner of a gas station called Savon Gas attract more customers.
“he's trying to help an owner of a gas station called Savon Gas get more customers.”
Nathan Fielder's HBO series The Rehearsal premiered in 2022, and Alissa Wilkinson calls it her favorite of his shows.
“my personal favorite of his shows is The Rehearsal, which premiered in 2022, was just kind of the best thing I've ever seen on TV.”
In the first episode of The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder builds a full-scale replica of the Alligator Lounge bar in a warehouse to rehearse a conversation.
“He actually builds a full scale, exact replica of the bar in a warehouse.”
In The Rehearsal's first episode, Fielder first created a replica of the participant's apartment before building the bar replica.
“before he creates the replica for the bar, he creates a replica for the apartment of the guy he's supposedly trying to help.”
Elizabeth Holmes and her partner Billy Evans invited Nathan Fielder to stay in their home in the weeks before her prison term.
“Elizabeth Holmes and her partner Billy Evans invite Nathan Fielder into her home.”
Billy Evans, Elizabeth Holmes's partner and the father of her children, is present throughout the documentary.
“Billy Evans, her partner, the father of her children. And he is always present in the film as well”
Elizabeth Holmes has two children, and having them delayed the start of her prison term.
“she's had two children, which has delayed her going to prison in the 1st place.”
Lance Oppenheim, Fielder's co-director, has made documentary work including Sperm World and a series about a Renaissance fair, and also directed the fiction film Prime Time.
“He is a documentarian who's made work like Sperml World. He made a series about Renaissance Fair. He also directed the fiction film Prime Time that's out right now.”
John Wilson made the HBO series How To with John Wilson, short documentaries built around everyday how-to tasks.
“He made this HBO show How to with John Wilson, which is little documentaries with a lot of B-roll about how to do tasks”
Ross McElwee's film Sherman's March is about 40 years old and was recently restored for theatrical release.
“Ross MacLay's work, whose film Sherman's March, uh, is 40 years old, and it was just restored”
Sherman's March begins as a film about Sherman's march but turns into a portrait of the director's romantic anxieties and his ex-girlfriends.
“it turns out to be about all of his anxieties about his singleness, and we basically just meet all his ex-girlfriends on this journey.”
Jason Zinoman says Penn and Teller opened their act by declaring that all magic is fake, then fooled audiences anyway, and he compares this to Fielder's approach.
“Penn and Teller came along and they said, All magic is bunk, all magic is fake.”
The critics say the film lives up to its buzz and could become a landmark documentary. This sets the stakes for the conversation.
“I'm gonna I'm gonna say unequivocally, yes, it does, uh, live up to the hype.”
A short recap of Theranos, the fraud conviction and the earlier pop-culture retellings shows why a new take on her story is notable.
“she dropped out of Stanford and started this blood testing company called Theranos.”
His mix of comedy, magic and reality-TV editing explains the style he brings to the film.
“one thing that defines him is he's sort of boundary blurring and genre crossing.”
This episode of 'Nathan for You' shows his method of elaborate schemes that lead to real connection. It is also the episode that led Holmes to invite him in.
“I'm gonna give the short version of this, cause this is the part that I think is remarkable. It's a complete fraud.”
Fielder's HBO series takes his commitment to the bit further, and the critics say it leads him to question his own methods.
“He actually builds a full scale, exact replica of the bar in a warehouse.”
The critics separate his early cruelty from his later self-scrutiny and argue he also believes audiences can enjoy being deceived.
“But what I think is what's interesting and admirable about Nathan Fielder is he confronts that critique.”
The film's setup resembles reality TV, with Holmes's partner and children central to it. The critics describe a contest between two people who control information.
“I mean, she's a genius at saying nothing.”
Lance Oppenheim, John Wilson and Ross McElwee help place the film within a tradition of documentaries that drift into the filmmaker's own life.
“Well, I definitely think we have to discuss John Wilson.”
The critics say Fielder earns viewers' trust by exposing fakery, then uses that trust to surprise them. They see this as expanding what documentary and comedy can do.
“Exposing the fraud, exposing the fake, that's the trick.”
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It's selling out everywhere.
Is it? Cause I was debating with I was debating with my wife yesterday. I was like, Is this really a thing? Or is this like a New York Times no, this thing? is a thing this is a family I have. I film.
have heard strangers on public transit talking about it.
Friends with very little interest in uh, movies mad at me for not taking them to the screen.
Alright, save it for the episode. They From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily on Sunday. Every once in a while, through a combination of subject matter and clever marketing tactics, a movie becomes a phenomenon long before anyone can even see it. Usually, it's a star-studded blockbuster. Think of Oppenheimer or Marty Supreme. What doesn't normally come to mind is a three-hour documentary. But a few weeks ago, it was the anticipation of a documentary kicked off with a coy trailer.
Why would I deceive you? There's no there's no reason for me to do that.
That touched off a cultural wildfire. And sent my colleagues, film critic Alissa Wilkinson and critic at large Jason Zinoman racing to a secure screening room in Midtown Manhattan in order to watch it. What they experienced
my head is still sort of spinning.
floored them.
I just feel like in these people, he sort of met his match.
It is emotional, it's romantic, it's wildly intimate for a documentary.
Get to the end and you're like, hang on, what have I been watching this whole time?
But maybe the most intriguing thing about the documentary, and really the source of all this hullabaloo, is who made it. The comedian Nathan Fielder, whose shows are known for blurring the line between reality and fiction, and the documentary's subject, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, whose career blurred the lines between reality and fiction. So today, I speak to Alissa and Jason about why this documentary, called You Can See Everything, is, in their estimation, a bonafide breakthrough. It's Sunday, October 18th.
Alissa, Jason, welcome to the Sunday Daily.
Great to be here.
Great to be here again.
So I'm just gonna start off by conceding that I have not seen the movie. You can see everything. That's gonna be very much the center of this conversation. And so I just wanna get out of the way. The ironclad pledge that we are all gonna be making to each other, and most importantly to the listener, that we are not going to spoil this film. We're not gonna tell you everything that you can see. In this, do we agree?
You can't, you can't hear everything.
That's right. I want an oral What? form, Alissa Oh, absolutely, I promise. Jason
it will be hard, but but I I pledge, I pledge.
we can also edit it if you falter, but thank you for for signing the oath. My first question is this worthy of all of the hype and excitement that it has engendered in this world?
It's a very tall bar is the first thing, uh, because it's hard to remember something that has generated this much hype. That said, I'm gonna I'm gonna say unequivocally, yes, it does, uh, live up to the hype. It's unlike anything I've seen before.
I write a documentary column for the paper every week, so I think it's safe to say that I see more documentaries than most people, and this is unusual and excellent. I'm sort of expecting this film to, and this sounds like hype, but I believe it, to lodge itself in one of those greatest documentary categories. Well, I think that this film is not just about what it's about, but it's about documentary, too. And that, I think, is an extra level that really makes it stand out in the field of many, many, many documentaries that come out every year.
I think also there's all sorts of judges of of what makes a movie worthwhile or good. One of which is does it stick with you? And do you keep thinking about it? Do your opinion of it change? I had that feeling, and I you have not al
been able to get out of your head.
Yes, I've thought about it a lot, and I also think it'll be a discourse object for much longer than the sort of the origin, you know, when when the reviews come out, etc. And part of that has to do with Nathan Fielder, part of that's to do with the genre, but a lot of it has to do with Elizabeth Holmes. And and I think that on the Elizabeth Holmes of it all, it's gonna be, I think, polarizing.
it's got the juice.
It's got legs. So I think a lot of people hearing this right now are gonna be asking themselves why this story is being retold at all, because it's been told so many times already. But from what I gather, you're both saying, it's the combination of both Elizabeth Holmes, her story, and who Nathan Fielder is as a performer that makes this project unique and special and worth retelling. correct. So Alissa, at heart, with your no spoiler pledge still 100 intact, what is this movie about?
So it is, I guess, ostensibly and to some degree, about Elizabeth Holmes and Elizabeth Holmes. If people don't remember, um, she dropped out of Stanford and started this blood testing company called Theranos. The idea of which was that you would be able to run a huge battery of tests from a pinprick of blood. And she built
That was her breakthrough. It was just like the tiniest little blood. It was gonna be a revolution in kind of all medical testing.
right, you could just go down to the drugstore and get tested for everything all at once. And, you know, this made her an incredibly popular figure for a while. She was on the cover of magazines. She became the world's youngest female self-made billionaire, and Theranos at some point was valued at $10 billion. But this all came crashing down because our colleague, the investigative journalist John Carreau, uncovered that these machines didn't work. right, famously, So this all came crashing down, and in 2022, uh, she was sentenced to 11 years in prison for defrauding investors.
right, she She
kind of disappears.
well, she it, she sort of disappears, but she also becomes the subject of many a pop culture object. So there's been, um, the Bad Blood podcast about her with Carrie Ru. There also was a documentary called The Inventor, and
Oh, there was a dropout,
and there was the Dropout, which is The miniseries a a Hulu miniseries for which Amanda Seyfried, who plays Elizabeth Holmes in it, won an Emmy for her performance. So she has sort of stayed in memory as a character who exists, but she herself kind of dropped out of sight. And that is where Nathan and his co-director Lance Oppenheim come in.
okay. Well, before we get to this movie, I think we have to describe the work of Nathan Fielder, because he's not always been mainstream, and we can even debate, I hope, in this conversation, whether he is even mainstream now. Perhaps this movie's gonna mark that moment. But how would you describe what he's been up to up until now?
Well, I mean, one thing that defines him is he's sort of boundary blurring and genre crossing. So he's he's tricky to describe, but he he's Canadian, grew up in Vancouver. He loved comedy and magic as a kid, both of which show up in his Like literal work. physical magic He was a
show magic?
he was a child magician. In one of his fir, I think, you know, his first two jobs are, I think, important context. He he was a segment producer on the Canadian version of American Idol, on the Canadian Idol. And and uh, um, was that a snotty American laugh that we all did in the uh, you know, just silly it's just it's just things?
a it's just a. It's a slightly amusing place to begin one's career in television when you end up in documentary.
Yes, yes, and I think that that is a, uh, through line through his whole work is an interest in reality television and the the authenticity or contrivances of it. And I also, my I suspect he developed a lot of skills about editing from that show, which show up in all his work, including in the Elizabeth Holmes movie. Um, and then he went to work for a show called This Hour Has 22 Minutes, which is sort of the Canadian Daily Show.
I sat down with relationship psychology expert Dr. Maryann Fisher.
the reason that younger women tend to prefer older men are because And you're older men have more starting to see him, money. uh, use the tools Uh, of interviewing women, real people
What about younger men and older women?
and the tools of documentary to make comedy.
I don't. I don't know if there would be as many evolutionary benefits to that.
I just I I really like your shirt. It's really pretty. Thanks.
And that leads him to the show that, uh, first brought him to some fame. Which was a Comedy Central show called Nathan For You that premiered in 2013.
right, and we should be clear on the emphasis. Nathan for you. Right, Nathan for
you, yes.
My name is Nathan Fielder, and I graduated from one of Canada's top business schools with really good grades. The premise is Now, I need that he to find out is going to help just how struggling small business struggling business owners make it in this competitive increase their profits, world.
get more attention. And typically, they would have some small problem that he would have some outlandish, absurd solution for.
You're gonna guarantee 8 minute delivery, or you get a free pizza.
Yeah, no, I don't think so.
Cause why you can't deliver in 8 minutes, right? Of course not. I It's
mean, I can't cook the pizza for 8 minutes. that's the point. You'll Yes,
always be late, but the free pizza they get will be an inch big.
Based on the biography that you have supplied us with so far, he is wholly unqualified to be providing this counsel to the small businesses he encounters.
We well, he does have a degree in business. Um, so he actually wasn't lying about that, but but but no, he's probably not qualified to do this work. Um, but he certainly carries himself with this authority. And I will say he's often on a very crude level, effective in things like getting attention, creating a media circus, getting customers in, even though he's being absurd.
Well, just talk about that, Alissa, for a minute, the absurdity and what makes this show a breakthrough for Nathan Fielder.
I think it's a breakthrough in part cause he's on Comedy Central now and not just Canadian TV. But I think it also establishes for us a couple things that mark him, one of which is he commits really hard to the bit. And his solutions are so elaborate to problems that, you know, that these business owners are having.
Like, if you look at the gas rebate episode, which is the episode that Elizabeth Holmes saw that made her invite Nathan Fielder into her home, right? That what a was she
segue, as we say.
Yeah, um, that means a lot coming from you, Michael.
So I'm gonna pause, and when we come back from the break, I wanna hear about this gas rebate episode and how it sets this film into motion. We'll be right back.
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If you're a subscriber, thank you for being a part of that.
Jason, tell us about this episode of Nathan for you about a gas station rebate.
So I I went back and looked at this episode from the first season of Nathan For You, the gas station episode, because it seemed to be the only piece of Nathan's work Elizabeth Holmes was familiar with. And in that episode, he's trying to help an owner of a gas station called Savon Gas get more customers.
So I want you to charge $1.75 per gallon.
You know what is utopia? It's in your mind. You're not gonna see dollar 75 gasoline anymore. Only he'll then give in the pictures.
you a tip. Well, listen, listen to me. You give reasonable No, I am being
and no.
I am reasonable. You didn't let me finish after rebate.
So he says, Yeah, but here's the trick. We'll say to get this rebate, you have to climb a mountain.
on the top of the mountain. Yeah, that's good.
tricky way to make money.
Most people don't wanna do it, and you'll be fine, right? So then he has several people who do wanna do it.
To be honest, I didn't expect so many people to wanna do the hike.
And they he goes up the mountain with these people. And I'm gonna give the short version of this, cause this is the part that I think is remarkable. It's a complete fraud.
I began to doubt that any of these eight determined cheapskates would drop out before reaching the peak of the mountain. You might think I'd be nervous that Savon gas was going to lose money. But what I had told no one is that this was about more than just helping a gas station. I set out to create the world's first perfect rebate, a completely legal rebate that absolutely no one claims.
They climb the whole mountain.
When I began this thing, I never thought that I would meet three people
They waste their whole day. They have lives, they have presumably they have, you know, jobs, right?
with so much free time that they'd be willing to camp out on the top of a mountain with a complete stranger just to save $13 on gas.
They were completely conned, like you might say, some people involved with Theranos were completely conned, right? And then at the end of it,
And those three people turned out to be three of the most fantastic people I've ever met.
he says, Yeah, but you know,
We've all gained something even more valuable than a rebate friendship. Amen. it's really all about
I I totally agree.
friendship, right?
So what's your favorite food then?
Now, these people really did make a connection. They all seem kind of lonely, like Nathan, they really did. They went camping like you do when you're a kid. They really seem to enjoy themselves. And is when he says friendship, it seems ironic and he's making fun of it. But it also, I've come to believe that his real point is to say that even if you get no rebate, you can make this human connection. And emotionally, that really is real and matters.
And, you know, take it where you can get it.
right. And another way of seeing this is that manipulation isn't inherently awful,
Yeah, so there's another famous scene in another episode. It it's a very long story, but essentially Nathan Cass, a play, and he asks an actress to run lines with him. And it really quickly devolves into this very weird moment, uh, basically in a kind of quintessential Nathan Fielder moment. He stares and pauses and tells the actress to run her line, Look into my eyes which is I love you.
and say, I love you. Okay, no, I'm not believing that at this point. So say it again.
Then he says, let's try it again, and he says, try it again, Again. and he has it over and over and over.
I love you. Again. I love you. Again. I love you.
It creates this incredibly awkward moment to watch, but also awkward for them. But then it segues into an actual genuine emotion. He actually sheds a tear.
You have tears in your eyes.
Oh, really? Oh my god, sorry.
it's one of these moments that moves from awkward to funny to then something else.
right? And suddenly you're left with the question, which I've had in all the times I've watched Nathan Fielder. Content of what is really going on inside this person? Is it possible that what he just experienced was the love he has craved his whole life? This potentially broken man who's somehow reinventing documentary, or is everything he does a performance? Is there any verisimilitude available at all in anything he's doing?
and is there a difference between those two things? I've been thinking of him more and more as kind of a performance artist, asking questions about the nature of reality as it's depicted on screens, because his work gets more bizarre from there. Um, my So we're moving pers-
a little bit through time now.
yeah, so my personal favorite of his shows is The Rehearsal, which premiered in 2022, was just kind of the best thing I've ever seen on TV. And then had a a second season last year. And the concept of this sort of springs from Nathan for you, which is he's going to help ordinary people who have some kind of difficult thing coming up, a difficult conversation with an estranged family member or wanting to ask somebody out. He's going to rehearse it with them, and he's going to, as much as possible, create the circumstances in which they would have that conversation.
And so, in the 1st episode, he's going to help a man who needs to tell a friend this secret that he's been keeping from her.
This is the trivia night episode.
The trivia ni- the 1st one, uh, he asks this guy, Where are you gonna have this conversation? He said, Oh, we're gonna have it at the Alligator Lounge. And in order to rehearse this conversation, he doesn't just say, Well, why don't we meet up somewhere and we'll talk about it? He actually builds a full scale, exact replica of the bar in a warehouse.
It's about 11:00 now ticking. I invited Core into my secret warehouse to begin his rehearsal.
And what we're seeing here is him, like, playing with an HBO-sized budget, which explains a lot of this show. But he's taking that commitment to the bit and really extending it, right, literally supersizing it, it, uh, quite supersizing it. I mean, this is a perfect replica
Every detail was meticulously replicated this time.
Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.
This spice rack, it's the exact spices they have, the garlic, the basil. This chair is an exact this these racks.
yeah, and that even even that's, um, well, that's a good way of
down to, like, balloons that are half deflated, sort of floating around in the background.
when you show up on the actual night, it'll feel just like this.
I I think there's so there's also something else that starts to emerge, which is an interest in the ethics of what he's doing. Um, you learn in this episode, before he creates the replica for the bar, he creates a replica for the apartment of the guy he's supposedly trying to help.
Like, this conversation's going pretty well, right? Okay, I'll have I mean, do
to continue.
you think so? I don't know.
So f- I'm so far, so good.
So that's no accident. Everything that's happened so far today, I've rehearsed it dozens of times. These exact words in a replica of your home.
And how does he get that replica?
Remember a couple weeks ago when the gas company came by because of a leak in your building? He's basically snuck Well, there was a leak in into this the building, guy's house, invaded that was like his privacy, two weeks or a few months took photos, ago. And with the help of a fake you, I could practice every single permutation of this interaction and have a plan for it. I mean, do you think I should say something about the doors?
and then recreated his Yeah, I, I have apartment. And while and I
he's doing rehearsals for him, he's doing rehearsals for Nathan Fielder, I over preparing to talk to this guy. hi Nathan, hey, hey, hi Nathan, hi,
hi Nathan.
hi, make me a hug. But this is
Door City over here, huh? And I'd adjust And then you each time
kind of think every episode's into the gonna be that. But then this show veers off in a wild direction that has to do with na- seemingly Nathan's own kind of fears about the future, about perhaps having a partner, um, becoming a father.
hm. So he's kind of working out his own life issues while he's on this show, working to help others figure out their life issues. And it sounds like his work clearly touches on what is ethical, what is moral in storytelling. And I think, to a certain degree, his answer is sort of like, whatever it takes,
Yeah, or or I well, this is why I keep thinking of him, you know, as a performance artist. It's like he keeps kind of poking in different directions with this. I think we tend to see whatever we see on screen as if it just kinda got there, and we believe what we're looking at. And as someone who started in reality TV and talks about that in the 2nd season of the Rehearsal, he, um,
is showing you all the ugly bits and the seams and what really is required.
and he's activating the audience too. He's he's pulling us out of our passivity and making us. Maybe we're gonna be angry at him, maybe we're gonna be laughing, but we're going to have a reaction to what we're watching. In a way that if we just plopped down and watched a random documentary on Netflix, we might just kind of not think about all the filmmaking choices, the ethical questions that went into making that.
Hm, he's asking us to be deeply, deeply alert to all the dynamics of this, because he's literally showing them, exploring them, testing them, exposing Yeah, and them.
I think it's it's also, I mean, I'll say for myself, and I'm a huge Nathan Fielder fan. But there are times when I think, especially early in his career, when I do find in his humor cruel and unethical. There are certainly some jokes in Nathan For You that feel less a part of the tradition of documentary and more a part of the tradition of the prank show. Um, but what I think is what's interesting and admirable about Nathan Fielder is he confronts that critique.
The more deep into his career he gets, I think in the rehearsal, certainly season one, he has a character, this woman who wants to have a see if she can have a a kid, and she wants to rehearse it. It, that eventually, as it often does in Nathan Fielder, becomes more about him and him wanting to have a kid and rehearsing it than it is about her. And in, uh, that process, he gets a fake version of her.
This is her name is Angela. You hear this critique in the voice of her fake Angela.
why are you even here, huh? What's the real reason, honestly?
Okay, well, why are you here? Huh? Why are you doing this? Are you? Are you really trying to help me? Or am I the silly part that you talk about, huh? Is my life the joke? Do you sit here with your friends at the end of the day laughing at me?
And then he defends himself kind of pathetically.
No, you're not the joke, not at all. The no one's the joke. The situations are funny, but interesting, too. But this can be, like, the opportunity to raise your kids in a in a in a person.
And it's a moment where where it's I wouldn't call it funny, but you, you, you start to think, Oh, he's after something bigger here.
And what's that bigger thing he's after?
I think he's earnestly examining the morality of what of not only what he's doing, but of a certain kind of art. And I don't think he lets himself off the hook. I don't think he always succeeds.
Do you want to feel something real? That's sad. You never will.
But I I think he also believes there's a deep pleasure in being manipulated, in being lied to. That's, I think, in some ways, the one of the hardest, most transgressive ideas, cause no one likes to be lied to. But, you know, I think all of art, to some degree, involves deception, and surprise is a key part of any effective kind of art, certainly comedy, and part of that surprise depends on sending you one way, going another.
misdirection, And that misdirection, which is to go to m magic, which I'm sure we'll talk more about, uh, because that's a that's a theme that we talked about. That he begins his life with and is very much a big theme of this new movie. And I think it's a very challenging idea that we enjoy to be lied to, we enjoy to be manipulated. But I also think there's some a deep truth in it. We'll be right back.
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Okay, so now that we are quite well versed in the ethically murky performance art slash comedy that Nathan Fielder has been purveying, that is still somehow deeply vulnerable and human. How does Fielder take that style and turn it on to Elizabeth Holmes?
Well, it's bizarre, but with a little over 30 days before she goes to prison,
so I know you guys invited me to to stay here.
Elizabeth Holmes and her partner Billy Evans invite Nathan Fielder into her home.
Does any part of you worry about me being here 24/7?
I don't think so.
To live with them?
Yes, to live with them.
But what if I see something that makes you look bad?
And the setup reminds me of a reality show, reminds me of, you know,
This is the truth, though.
we picked a few strangers
It's okay to live on a
to live in a house, stop find out what happened being polite, when you start getting real.
the real world. Seattle.
Uh, except in as opposed to seven, you know, real world cast members, you have, uh, Elizabeth Holmes, Nathan Fielder, uh, Lance Oppenheim and a ton of camera people.
um, and there's a 3rd character who's really important, which is Billy Evans, her partner, the father of her children. And he is always present in the film as well, and that becomes more and more important as we watch the movie.
W- Would you say it's accurate to say he is a much less gifted performer than these other two?
Yeah, or I don't know if he would think that, but I definitely think that you have a you f- you feel like you understand him better by the end.
Well, let's just linger on that for a moment. What a curious decision this entire project is for both parties. I mean, this is a big, big leap for him, and it's a somewhat curious decision for her,
Yes, she's had two children, which has delayed her going to prison in the 1st place.
right? Perhaps not an unrelated
That's what a lot of people thought when she started having children was, oh, how how convenient is this? But then that depends on your idea of who she is. Is she a master manipulator? Is she, as some people say, a pathological liar? Is something else going on there? And that is sort of the question of the film.
You really feel you did nothing wrong?
I did not.
So where did things get lost? Like, how are you where you are right now?
I I wish I knew, you know, I I don't know. I don't. I don't feel like I understand that.
It is a little obvious that this is in Nathan Fielder's wheelhouse, very much because he's just willing to ask questions about human behavior that other filmmakers tend not to ask, and certainly not of their subject.
Give me just an example of that.
So, for instance, there's a scene quite early on where Nathan's just kind of hanging out in their kitchen and they're cooking, and something occurs, and it when you watch it, it's it's sort of a normal interaction that people might have with one another. But he zeros in on it, he really hones in on it, the camera comes right in and we're seeing it, so we know this is significant. And he asks them, Why did you do that?
And then he keeps saying, Why did you do that? And they have a very revealing interaction at that moment, whereas most people might not have picked up on that. It's just color in the background in most documentaries.
right, and in most documentaries, the whole point is to kind of let life occur, and that's not at all what's happening here.
No, I mean, he's sort of a he's inserted himself into an interaction that would be normal life, and he continually does that throughout the film without any apparent discomfort. Totally willing to sit in discomfort, and we've seen that in all of his work. Discomfort is not an issue for him. So that, you know, that's kind of fascinating. And then also, you know, in many ways, he's examining the question of, as Jason was saying, of being deceived, of the perhaps pleasure of being deceived.
It is in Nathan Fielder's wheelhouse, that's completely true. At the same time, he's not a legal expert, he's not a scientific expert, he's not, uh, he doesn't demonstrate in this film a mastery of the facts of the case. And quite early on, he says to her, You picked me, who's a comedian, d you know, basically saying, Did you pick me? Because I'm not gonna give you the hard-hitting journalistic questions? He she didn't pick a journalist. Uh, What is which
she saying in response? If I can ask,
uh, I mean, she's a genius at saying nothing. And you're left with this question, is she the most naive human being in the world or the most cynical? And my take coming out was there's nothing in between.
well, so it seems pretty clear, and here I know we'll walk up to the edges of of spoiler-dom. That these are two masters of maybe manipulation isn't the right word, but they are very much in control of information and how it's gonna be presented, when it's gonna be presented. And so I think it's seems safe to say that this movie is two kings, queens of that particular realm, going toe to toe.
Uh, completely, I think. Look, you know, one thing Alissa said about her having kids is really remarkable is how she uses the kids in this movie.
How does she use the kids in the movie?
They're almost like the armor for her. I mean, if I would say, what's her magic trick, what's she doing, right? We all know these horrible things about her. She's a pariah, right? How is she gonna resuscitate her reputation? It's not easy, right? Well, taking the cynical view, she's gonna show us her as a mother. The kids are in so many frames of this movie, right? They're they're all over the place. Show her as a daughter, as a partner, right?
And so I think she what she's trying to do, or I think one might conclude she's trying to do, is humanize herself. And Nathan allows her to make that case. And my first reaction to this movie was that it it put her in a much more sympathetic light than I would have
How could it not?
expected. But I then the m the more I thought about it, the the less I was committed to that idea.
and I think that that is again, like, a little bit of the point. I watched the film and went back and forth continually on what I was looking at, just constantly. And like Jason, I kinda walked out the door, had an idea of what I think I saw, and then I have been waffling on it for the last week. Is it is it real? is it not real? What does real mean in this case?
One of Nathan's tools is how he asks questions. He's a great interviewer, and one of his tools is sitting in this discomfort. And when you're when it's silent, people fill this void. And if you ask the same question over and over again, people sort of heighten and they say things that you know, m maybe either are more funny or more true. And in the trailer, what you see is, you know, he's trying, he's looking at her and he's saying, Are you for real?
You're being real right now. And she says, Always being real, always Yeah, she for
doesn't just say this happens, I think, several times in the movie where he uncovers her saying something that seems on some level absurd, um, and they're juxtaposed with this giant absurdity at the core of her story, which is just the fact that this machine didn't work. In fact, well, I guess I won't, I want to,
we'll go there.
I won't go there, I won't go there. Sorry, sorry, Well, let sorry.
me ask you guys, by the end of the movie, who seems to have gotten the best of the other?
so you don't know exactly, although there is a s answer the movie kind of gives you,
Which we're not gonna and
which we're not gonna say. But whether or not you believe what it says is part of the whole experience of watching it and very intentional. I think what makes this a great documentary is that it is s living somewhere between a comedic documentary, a dramatic documentary, an investigative documentary. There's all these kinds of levels to it, and they're all happening at once, and they call into question the project of documentary entirely. The idea of taking the real stuff of the world and turning it into entertainment, um, and what the creators of documentaries are really doing when they make a documentary in the first place.
hm. So I wanna end our exploration of Nathan Fielder by situating him and the kind of documentary work he's doing in a larger context. I mean, as we're talking about in this conversation, it's not really a very clear genre he's occupying. The kind of manipulative, self-aware documentarian inserting himself version of documentary doesn't necessarily have a name, but talk about the world he inhabits, who else is in it, who matters. So Alissa, where does he fit in?
So Nathan Fielder's work fits into a really long tradition in documentary of people who start going in one direction and end in a completely different place. So 1st, I think we have to talk about Lance Oppenheim, who's Nathan's co-director on this. He is a documentarian who's made work like Sperml World. He made a series about Renaissance Fair. He also directed the fiction film Prime Time that's out right now. And what is interesting when you watch a Lance Oppenheim documentary is that he often frames protagonists, p- real people, as if they're characters in a movie.
Occasionally, he will show you a character and then he'll show you something else as if they're thinking about it, which really walks up to the line of what is nonfiction. He really brings that style to this film. There's a ton of zooms, there's a ton of very close cropping, so we're really looking close at these people's faces. But he also is very willing to train his camera on people who seem a bit strange, and and to some extent, Nathan Fielder is doing exactly that thing.
It's just that he's inserting into the situation and provoking the strange reaction. So so it makes perfect sense to me that the two of them working together would turn out this film.
okay, that's Lance Oppenheim. Who else?
Well, I definitely think we have to discuss John Wilson. He made this HBO show How to with John Wilson, which is little documentaries with a lot of B-roll about how to do tasks, but secretly it's really about humanity. He just made this documentary, The History of Concrete.
Do you ever think about concrete?
Exploring, basically, like bureaucracy and infrastructure, and it's great.
Now will you sell this presentation to somebody? But Yeah,
He's sort of exploring the world through his filmmaking.
kinda hard to, um, get people excited about concrete, I'm finding.
is it?
All of these guys are, you might say, heirs to or students of Ross MacLay's work, whose film Sherman's March, uh, is 40 years old, and it was just restored and it did really well when it got released in theaters.
Two years ago, I was about to begin shooting a documentary film on the lingering effects of Sherman's March on the South.
It starts out with him saying that he's gotten a grant to follow Sherman's March.
And I stopped off in New York from Boston, where I live, to stay for a few days with the woman I'd been seeing. But when I arrived, she told me she'd just decided to go back to her former boyfriend.
But it turns out to be about all of his anxieties about his singleness, and we basically just meet all his ex-girlfriends on this journey. So instead of being And
an exploration of one of the most kind of heinous acts of of military conquest in American history, it becomes an exploration of the director's personal life.
yeah, you learn almost nothing about Sherman's March, and it was never the point in the 1st place.
I'm gonna add just one other s some idea to that, which is that in a movie like Sherman's March, you have, um, it, it's a documentary that presents itself to be about the world, about this important historical event, and it ends up being about somebody's navel, right? And there's an aspect of memoir to a lot of these filmmakers that they're, it's about something, but it's really about a portrait of themselves. What Nathan Fielder, I think, has has done, and he's not the only one, but maybe no one has done this better, is he's taken this, this idea of making something about the world, which then refracts back into your navel and then keeps pushing back out through your navel back
out to the world. So if you look at the his that's really beautifully said, his, his career, he started doing these prank shows, and then with the rehearsal, he started to go l- look at being a father. And now he's he's looking at Elizabeth Holmes, one of the, you know, most notorious figures of our time. And it's an incredibly difficult thing to to tell this story through himself, but also not being purely self-indulgent. And I think this is where the the movie might be dvi- divisive is how much does he get out of his own navel?
How much do we learn about Elizabeth Holmes at the end of the day? I if it's mean,
also as much about him,
correct, correct. And I I think that once people see the movie, that will be a really interesting argument.
hm. What's interesting to me about what Nathan Fielder's up to, and I found this in John Wilson's work too, is that there's just a lot of authenticity to the documentarian putting themselves so forcefully in the center of things. When you log onto the streaming services these days and you watch a documentary that you know Taylor Swift has authorized and told which cuts can be in and which can't be, you sort of know you're being manipulated, and the authenticity is pretty limited.
But there's a lot of kind of incidental revelations that seem to come your way in the work of someone like Nathan Fielder. And maybe I'm overstating that, but it feels like there's a kind of a deeper, more unintended truth that arrives.
I mean, I I also think that you're onto something, which is that the audience is very cynical about, and they should be about documentaries right now, that so many of them are are paid commercials. And what I see Nathan Fielder doing in this movie, I w- I was thinking about this. It it reminds me of what Penn and Teller did to magic. Penn and Teller came along and they said, All magic is bunk, all magic is fake.
That's how they start their show. And then they take you behind the scenes of how this trick is actually done, right? And then they tr- fool you. And it turns out that the authenticity is the misdirection. Exposing the fraud, exposing the fake, that's the trick. And I think what he the reason he does that is precisely because people are so understandably cynical about these documentary format and they already begin. You know, these are people right now, they've grown up on reality television, they've grown up on these contrivances, they've grown up on, uh, not believing the editing.
Um, and so I think you have to, I think what Nathan Fielder, uh, believes, is you've gotta do something extra to earn that authenticity So that you can back. then manipulate Exactly, yes, yes,
yes, exactly, I agree. I
is it fair to say that this film, and what Fielder has become, is advancing the form, this form that I know you have spent so much of your career thinking about and caring about?
I think that judging from the response to this film, people's excitement for it, the sort of internet meltdown when the trailer came out. I think it's fair to say that it's putting the form in front of people who might not otherwise flock to a more esoteric documentary. It's and it's entertaining, and people are gonna be talking about it. I think we're gonna be talking about it for a long time. So in that way, I think that it's a huge jump for the form, and I'm really excited about that myself.
yes, yes, no. I think you see a huge, uh, expansion of the ambition of this form. That it not just documentary, this particular kind of documentary, but also, uh, this specific kind of comedy which uses the real world in documentary. That he, as he's shown over and over again, this kind of comedy can reveal oneself. It can reveal the world. It can be not just funny, but it can be emotional, it can be tender, it can be.
It can portray people in a complexity that you can't in a piece of journalism. This slightly borderline, unethical prank humor can actually mature into something that is really challenging and a a complex work of art.
Well, Alissa and Jason, thank you very much, thank you for honoring the pledge. Of course, We kept our word and thank you for your time.
thank you.
Thank you.
If you are not yet a Times subscriber, we have some news for you. You can enjoy full access to The Times without a paywall for 30 days. All you have to do is download the New York Times app to get your 1st month completely free. And if you're already a Times subscriber, thank you. This episode was produced by Lena Richards, with help from Alex Barron. It was edited by Wendy Doerr. It contains music from Dan Powell and Marion Lozano, has production assistance from Dalia Hadad and was engineered by Rowan Niemisto.
That's it for the Daily on Sunday. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow. I'm MJ Franklin, and this week on the Book Review podcast, Sweetsie by Emma Cline.
Hands down, the novel with the most impressive control I've read this year.
Someone is losing their mind and they're approaching their death.
Completely moving, elegantly written.
And it's got lost in the prose of it, which sometimes feels like poetry to me.
What does a life add up to? What does it all mean?
Listen to the book review wherever you get your podcasts.