If there is one thing at which Vancouver native Nathan Fielder is a master, it is knowing how to grab people’s attention. Yet no one can quite grab your attention like Fielder, and therein lies his genius; he will create and develop concepts that blend reality and fiction into something entirely its own, bolstered by the personas he embodies in the most ballsy, cringe-inducing manner possible.
As much was clear when he launched his first major production, the Comedy Central Show Nathan for You, which saw a fictionalized Fielder helping actual people and businesses by using the most outlandish, costly, and often counterproductive methods. In one such instance, Fielder tried to help a struggling clothing store by actively encouraging certain people to shoplift their products as a means of promoting the apparel outside the story. And he somehow managed to keep this going – with great consistency, I might add – for 32 episodes over 4 years before deciding to move on to other projects.
From there, Fielder continued his unique brand of pseudo-reality cringe comedy by producing, writing, directing, and starring in his avant-garde docuseries The Rehearsal, as well as the satirical black comedy series The Curse, which he developed alongside Benny Safdie and marked Fielder’s first creative foray into pure fiction, though it did not lack for the outlandishness and wild set pieces that he has become known for. Following these latest shows, fans wondered what would be next for the idiosyncratic creative, most likely expecting a third season of The Rehearsal, or indeed a second season of The Curse, as both Fielder and Safdie have even acknowledged that they have ideas for a follow-up to the latter show.
Well, about three weeks ago, we got our answer in textbook Natah Fielder fashion, as he and A24, out of nowhere, dropped an immediately viral teaser trailer for the upcoming documentary film he co-directed in secret with Primetime director Lance Oppenheim. It’s called You Can See Everything, and centers on the enigmatic former Theranos CEO and convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes in the weeks leading up to her incarceration in a federal prison, having received an 11-year sentence.
For those who may not know about Elizabeth Holmes, the long and short of it is that she created a company, Theranos, and claimed that they had developed a machine, later called the Edison, that could diagnose a litany of illnesses and disorders with a single drop of blood, which made her the youngest self-made billionaire in the world at the time, aged 30. The problem, though, was that the technology didn’t exist to begin with, and the machine Holmes did have them develop simply did not work, but she continued to lie to investors and silenced naysayers, even rolling out a number of machines in Walgreens.
However, the noise made by whistleblowers, in addition to an explosive article by The Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, proved to be Holmes’ undoing. Prior to her downfall, Holmes had managed to dupe and rope in some of the richest and most powerful people in the U.S., including Rupert Murdoch, Larry Ellison, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, and former Secretary of Defence James Mattis, amongst many others.
Through sheer chance, Fielder’s co-director Lance Oppenheim had heard through the grapevine that Holmes and her partner Billy Evans were seeking out a film crew to document their daily lives, and they felt that the public simply misunderstood her. The filmmakers reached out to the couple, who invited Fielder and Oppenheim (backed by A24) to live with and film them for the month prior to Holmes’ incarceration date, leading to an experience that Fielder himself states, “I really am struggling to this day to understand”.
While details are still decidedly nebulous, reports from those who have seen the nearly 3-hour documentary have described it as “wild”, and there is seemingly a notable shift in the documentary’s structure and content after Holmes goes to prison, to the degree that people are claiming they have never seen anything quite like You Can See Everything.
Whatever the case, while the full-length trailer that followed the teaser a little over two weeks later shed much-needed light on the content of the documentary, it also raised even more questions, but this, of course, is wholly deliberate, as Fielder, in an interview moderated by his friend Emma Stone, expressed his hope that viewers would go into You Can See Everything knowing as little as possible.
While You Can See Everything will not be widely released until October 16th, there are already a handful of critical reviews that have been released and they are nothing short of stellar, landing a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average score of 9.50 based on 10 reviews, while on Metacritic, which uses a different scoring system, it currently sits at a 95, based on 7 reviews so far.
As such, there is already a great deal of Oscar buzz hovering around the film, with the expectation that it will at least land a nomination for Best Documentary Feature, though the 2027 race in this category is proving to be the tightest in years, having to compete with the likes of American Doctor, Everest: The Other Side, Naza, Once Upon a Time in Harlem, and the two Alex Gibney’s films Musk and Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie.