What "You Can See Everything" Is Really About, with Wesley Morris

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out brought to you by Apple Card. I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is. I think you're being poisoned by your by your journalistic impulses here because you want an answer and you're never going to get one. Right after this. I just can't believe I get to sit in a room where Blake Griffin maybe just was. And just Blake Griffin, I just you know you're sitting in his ass group. That's oh my god. Oh my dream. Pablo making all kinds of dreams. But that's not my point about Blake Griffin. He's just one of those people who just makes the most with what he's got. He's one of those rare people who just understands the advantages to be asked in life. I will also tell you that it's funny. I was thinking about this. Why am I so charmed by Blake Griffin beyond his natural talents and he's charming. Why is he so charming? I think it's another level of his charm which is the physical sensation of you should not care this much about what I do. About media. He's so interested in like stuff that the. No, this is the thing. This is the thing about making the most of what you got. Anyway, I just. That's not why you're here. That's not why I'm here. But I just wanted to say like what an honor to be breathing breathing. Some of the air cycled carbon dioxide that break lift the break grip. Blake broke. I can't even talk. I'm so in awe broke. He broke my mouth. That broke you know Blake Griffin was breathing. I'm just what I'm not. He's the pleasure. Love that guy. He's just I mean just also really good at being in commercials. Like one of the few athletes who just makes sense. I think the audience now understands we both have a crush on Blake. I mean, and it's uncomfortable for everybody. It should not be uncomfortable because they share it. Is this just like how they're not asked about how much you guys like Blake Griffin. I mean, I do. The answer is yes. It is not a whole. Smash cut to one hour later, but I would leave it. I got to set the scene. Because Wesley Morris multiple Pulitzer prize winning critic for the New York time. Critic at large. I have just walked out of you can see everything. The film that everybody seems to be arguing about. And I have never been as excited to unload whatever it is. I'm about to say to you that I am right now. So thank you for doing this. You're welcome. I think I share whatever and I don't know what you're going to put down. Same. Happy to pick it up. I some caveats. This this movie is three days old in in my brain. Yeah. I don't normally do things like this, but I'm going to say I am I'm going to I'm not y'all won't know that I'm holding back. But like there's so much to talk about in this movie to think about to think through. I want to I want to write something. This is not your written piece. This is. I know. I know. But some of the film a bit of them making up Bobo. Often talking to you is it it's the plants. It adiates the need for corrupt sitting down. It could be a corruption. If you if I work for you, I don't need to type sometimes because the talking is a satisfy. I've like gotten to the place that the writing probably was going to take me. So with that said, let us begin. This episode is brought to you by Neuro makers of the world's smartest gum and mitts. Neuro energy and focus so smart. Well, it's designed to deliver calm steady energy that lets you hunker down and focus. That is decidedly smart. What is decidedly not? Well, energy drinks that leave you jittery twitchy, amped up, utterly unable to focus on the task at hand. And look, reporting a story can be a long and quite tedious process. It isn't always easy to focus when sifting through. I don't know. 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So I want to describe, you can see everything as what I believe it to be. It has been advertised as a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. That is not what this is. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, guess, yeah, yeah, go on. This is a movie about how Nathan Fielder would make a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. All of which is directed by, co-directed by Lance Oppenheim. And the making of, I think, is just the key thing I want to spotlight here. As we will spoil a whole bunch of stuff, we can't get around that. Let's just start with what it means to spoil this movie because I am a person who saw this movie knowing that Amanda Seifried is in it. I knew it. I didn't want to tell you. Someone told me. I mean, were you mad when they told you? I didn't know to be mad. It's a Nathan Fielder movie. Anything can happen, right? Like his whole project is, well, you're here because you didn't know what was going to happen. Right? So I, that didn't matter to me going in. So Amanda is Amanda Seifried? Seifried, yeah. The pronunciation of her name is also a joke in the film, but she portrayed Elizabeth Holmes in the Hulu series. And so she has been, and this is crucial to the film that we're here to talk about, sort of the face of her in Hollywood. Yes. And so she shows up in a key way. Knowing that she was going to appear just enhanced the time spent with this movie in her, in her absence. And I'm saying in her absence because the way she functions is almost as a moral, ethical, and emotional reframing experience. Yes. Right? So just to set up the premise of this, it's about a month out from Elizabeth Holmes. 34 days. Yep. Go into federal prison and Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim and their crew show up. In this turns out to be rented house and in San Diego, and it's about the time they spend before she checks in to prison. And once she does, it feels like there's another movie. And in fact, because the movie is two hours and 55 something ish. It does feel like when Amanda shows up, the actress, like it's the beginning of another film. We're now doing something that is not only reframed, the thing we just saw, but also is beginning perhaps to reveal what we're actually here to talk about. You know, like a lot of people, this trailer got sent to me, being like, oh my god, this is going to happen. And I watched it and I was like, all right, fine. I'm not that person. I can promise you that. I don't have anything to deceive you on. Of course, I'm not deceiving you. I'm engaging with you as a human being. Why would I deceive you? There's no reason for me to do that. Okay. But all right, fine was in part, not a Nathan Fielder concern because I suppose if anybody's going to look into one of these tech startup Silicon Valley enclaves, let it be him. I also feel like we're at this really depressing moment. You look at the lineup and you're like, well, this is great. The thing that we care most about is Mark Zuckerberg and the open AI guy. Yeah, Sam Altman. You're right. It has Elizabeth Holmes. I didn't put that all together, but this is our time. Yeah, but also there's an Elon Musk documentary and you know, there's a new Danny Boyle movie about the explosion of Rupert Merak's journalism career in the in the 60s. And this is, by the way, the second wave of the of this interest, right, because there was an entire series of television shows and limited series about these same people or some of these same people. including the one that figures in. - Including, including the dropout. which is the film that Amanda Seifried stars in that becomes the hinge point for this movie's sort of philosophical dimension. - Yeah. - I mean, obviously they're gonna be teaching this film. It's worth studying because it's got so many sort of documentary world cliches that it is thinking about and exploring without even saying as much, right? Like, do you pay your subjects? Huge, huge sticking point. Like a thriller level event in this movie. Intimist subject director intimacy. - Yes. - I mean, this movie is almost exclusively about that. How much of the director do we need to see why are we looking at the person making this movie? Couldn't we have done this without his direct participation? No, of course we couldn't have. - And also, and also relatedly, how much are you leaving out of this that the journalistic record had elsewhere established with such clarity that might undermine the particular angle and the perhaps advantage that you are seeking by exploring this particular perspective. One of the things this film is not about as we established earlier is Elizabeth Holmes and her story and there it is. It's just not. In part, it touches on it, but just to establish what I think is a popular strain of argument, people are like, well, is she as much of a fraud as we thought is she old? - From this movie? This is how people are talking about it? There's a revisiting of the, how do we feel about her? Is she an all out liar? How much of a fraud is she? - Oh, wow, that's deep. - Well, and I just want to remind people, whether you read the reporting. - John Carey was like, I settled this. - He did, the legal system has settled this. - So to that point, in bad blood, John Carey was, you know, he's talked about this, threatened with litigation on a daily basis for months by Elizabeth Holmes. It was what he calls a ruthless cover-up of a breathtaking fraud and she was at the controls. The US Attorney's Office, 2022. Elizabeth Holmes, this is established, sent out inaccurate results. This is me quoting the government now, inaccurate results to patients being screened for cancer to women monitoring their pregnancies and to one victim who was led to believe she had the precursor virus to AIDS among many other examples. And then elsewhere, the SEC points out that yeah, she created fake financials, boosting revenue to 108 million when it was a little more than 100,000. She falsely claimed the technology was used on the battlefield in Afghanistan. She admitted in court that she personally affixed the logos of like Pfizer to reports that would falsely indicate those companies had endorsed Theranos. She's a f***ing scammer, full on scammer. That is not-- - This movie's not about that. - And perhaps you could argue, man, you guys didn't do enough to say that, but I find that's so much less interesting. - It's been adjudicated. - Exactly. - She's going to prison. She'd also say that we work in media. - Yes. - And this is a film about how to make media. - Say more about that. - Well, everything that we explore here is about what do you believe? What are you disclosing? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Who are you manipulating? What are your ethics around any of it? And who do you trust? And that's what we do journalistically. - I think that this is also part of what makes this movie fascinating, which is that it is simultaneously obeying rules that it is bending, breaking, challenging at every point. While also asking its subjects and confronting its subjects, its two subjects, Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans, with the rules they're breaking and the lies they're telling. This is a movie that is so straightforward on the one hand. Filmmakers move in to the home of their subjects and just watch what happens. Period, truly, period. There's a countdown, we know we arrive on date 34. - Three days, you see it. - And then see you're off to prison. Now within that very simple setup, are like thousands of choices, right? - Yes. - There's so many decisions that have been made to bring this movie to us. Some of them, I don't even know if choices are right. They're more like things that happen that the filmmakers use. - So I'm gonna pivot your word of choice to the degree that I think is more true. I think they're all strategies. I think in this film, you have a bunch of people who are for a while with holding the degree to which they are strategizing. - Mr. Oppenheim, Mr. Fielder, and this Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans. - All of them, all of them. Everyone who has the ability to is, is manipulating each other in some direction. And I don't even say that to be, again, scolding. I just think you see this over the course of the film and they actually admit it over the course of the film. - The thing that's important to say here is that the opening shot of this film, and this is, I mean, I'm getting chills thinking about it, but this film opens with Billy Evans laying down, he's talking on the phone. But it also seems like he might be in some kind of compression chamber or something, like a tanning bed. It's just the shot is so tight that we don't have a context for whoever this person is in the phone. 'Cause by the way, I did not know anything about this man. I didn't know he existed. I don't know, there were babies. I don't know anything about this woman's like, "Say." - Because you know what, Pablo, I did not care. - I didn't care. - I didn't care. - Frankly, say. - Because once-- - I'm stunned by how much I care now, because I didn't before. - I didn't care. - I didn't know anything about this woman's life beyond with the podcast, the dropout, and the film, the Hulu series, the very not great Hulu series, starring the nonetheless wonderful Amanda Safery. - We'll get back there. - So he's lying down, taking this call, basically establishing that the reason that they've agreed, he's telling someone on the phone that, you know, we want the chance to humanize Elizabeth Holmes because, you know, classic, the media sucks, they get it wrong, their facts are wrong, they're out to get us, witch hunt, fake news. Biyada-yada. - Mm-hmm. - There's a cut. I mean, maybe the call hasn't ended, he's still on the phone, but there's a cut to a wider shot. And you see that he actually is lying down on his back, and in the background is Elizabeth Holmes handling a child. And you're like, okay, that is not a major, that is not an agent, I thought it was an agent, who I thought was on the phone or a manager or something, or a publicist. - Well. - And as it turns out, Billy is three of those things in about eight other things. I'm like, okay, this straight forwardness is clear, these people have invited this team into their homes, who knows what they know about the people they've invited. Why'd you choose these two guys? Especially Nathan Fielder. But that's, well, I mean, I guess we can talk about that later, but they've invited them in. They're now inside the house making a movie that Billy and Elizabeth think is going to exonerate - Well, no. - But they're thinking that it's gonna help. - Help with the way to having two kids before you go to prison might help. Not to be too cynical about it. - But workout the timelines, right? And you can have a very persuasive case for strategy across the board. - I like that this is the word we're gonna be coming back to throughout this conversation. - And again, I say this as someone who knows something about the choices and how they become strategies. What are you telling your audience? What are you not? How are you doing this fairly? What are the things, the handcuffs on you that perhaps only a commitment to disclosure and ethics can bind? But they are doing this, I think, because before she goes to prison, they have a shot at changing, nudging, helping the public understand Elizabeth Holmes as she wants them to. - I'm like, okay, so this was meant to be a commercial, essentially, because think about the era of nonfiction that we're in, right? Like we're in an era of documentary filmmaking in which the subjects are the directors, right? - We see the sports all the time. - The subjects have the control. - They all agree on how they see this story. - Yes, yes, everybody's on the same page. The director has been hired to be on that page. And so I think they're operating with one cultural assumption, right? Billy Evans and Elizabeth Holmes, but Lance Oppenheim comes, you know, I don't know anything about his education. I don't know where he, I don't know what his criteria in situation is, right? But he and Nathan Fielder have, they're coming from a completely different cultural universe. And they have seen their Earl Morris. They have seen this is really important. They have seen, I mean, the, the Maisell's work, right? They understand that, that, an author, the director's vision is, you know, Ross McElwee's Sherman's March, we, we tell the story, right? And everyone else, perhaps at their most controversial points, perhaps including the audience, you don't get to know what we don't want to, right, to understand. The first time, I don't know about when you saw it, but the first time the audience cracks up is one of the first cutaways to Nathan Lurking. Yeah. His presence, because, you know, we don't really know what the formal conceit here yet. We don't know what the language is going to be. That, that Nathan Lurking thing, that's not necessarily nonfiction filmmaking. That's paranoia thriller, right? Nathan is 80s horror movie. And Nathan's lurking is funny because it's out of context. But it's, it's, it's, it's a signal. Yes. That's a signal. Something else. This guy is a character now. But all you need to know, period, is that now we're, now this person is not only a character, but he's a voyeur, the director is a voyeur. He's got a gaze. He's creeping around. And he's just in the corner, like looking at Billy and Elizabeth have a conversation. They are severely miked. This lurking, is it necessarily necessary? It's a signpost for something else about what this film is trying to do. Yes. Yes. Yes. That is part of the strategy. But what are the stakes? So I want to establish, because I was also curious, what are the stakes? How do you take this, the story that's been previously reported and invade it or be invited in and then decide, how do we set up these questions, these standards of success. And, and there are a couple of things that they narrow. And I'll just say them because I think it's, it's, it's useful here. Okay. One is this question around will Elizabeth Holmes admit that when she said that the Theranos device can do any test, she was lying, as opposed to saying, well, at some point, it could eventually, it has the capacity to versus this is the who's on first scenario, which Nathan Fielder brilliantly plays for her and Billy. It's Abedant Costello doing their, this is a sports show. It's important to reference. This is about baseball. Yes. They're doing who's on first. That's what I want to find out. I want you to tell me the names of the follows on a St. Louis theme. I'm telling you. The first, what's on second? I don't know, is on third. Do you know the follows names? Yes. Well, then who's playing first? Yes. I mean, the follows name on first base. Who? The follow playing first base for St. Louis. Who? The guy on first base. Who is on first? Nathan explains it to Elizabeth Holmes who does not get the joke, but essentially, it isn't so much, it isn't, she doesn't get it and it's painful how she doesn't get it. But then the, the first turn, well, okay, have we seen Billy's, at this point, we've seen Billy's shot. Now we have. So that's the first turn. We should, we should establish that the sudden cut to Billy in the shower after a neck. He's like, we haven't, we're doing a really bad job of like explaining Billy, right? To the extent that he can be explained, Billy is what I would describe very, very reductively as a, as a finance bro, tech bro, finance bro, type guy, golf, bro, tall, kind of generically handsome, like, you know, if you found Charlie Kirk attractive, you'd probably find Billy Evans attractive. And this begins later into the, and Charlie Kirk, there's a moment where he comes from exercising, he gets in the shower and the camera essentially watches Billy's shower. Billy is allowed in the name of, of raw nakedness, you know, just truth. You get to see, you get to see me shower, you know, with no cuts. Yeah. Well, there is a cut. He is a cut. He is a cut. Uh, thank you for pointing that out, not homosexual, because I'm like, hey man, I'm the son of a urologist. I just, oh, that's right. Yeah, I mean, I'm like, I just like, okay, yeah, you, they did it. There's a whole thing which is why they did it and what does that mean and how does that reflect on Nathan's, I understand one reason to do it, though. Yeah. And the reason to do it pays off at the end of the movie. But I think in that moment, what you're realizing with this sort of thriller dimension, because every shot of Nathan for about the first 20 minutes is, is as this lurking presence in the background of Billy and Elizabeth and their children's home life. He understands that Nathan is both a creep. He's playing the role of a creep. He's present in a creepy sort of way. But he also, fundamentally, that's the first tonal shift or like, thematic shift to me that like, like Nathan is a kind of adversarial presence in this home. Well, he's, there's also the scene when they're standing outside and Billy is explaining how he met Elizabeth and Nathan is interrogating him. And they're both, again, tight close-ups as so much of this movie is. And Nathan is pressing him on how crazy it seems to Nathan and also to the audience who are in alignment that he would fall for a woman. He did not recognize what Elizabeth Holmes, who had a bandage on and sunglasses in a hat. And he himself has money via his family. And he was like, you know, this lady's man who has all their girlfriends and he decides I'm going to fall in love with her and Nathan is effectively deeply, disbelieving. Yeah, but of his story. The amazing thing about his disbelief is something else that pays off, like by the time he gets to the end of the movie. This really is, I mean, I'm just going to say the thing that's very obvious, but like, this is, I mean, it's obviously a love story. I don't even know how aware Nathan is of this. And this is when I wanted to kind of debate you about this question of strategy. I think Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder and their team have complete control. They have so much control. I really was willing to be naive here. With respect to these questions of truth, I mean, I've done zero journalism on this movie. But, you know, we learn at some point in an off-handed comment that he's going through a breakup Nathan Fielder. Yeah. And I think this is a person who is looking for something that's not the thing he got to that house to find and I think he was genuinely into her. I think that the thing that happened to like Henry Kissinger and every other person that came into her life at some point during the OG Theranos days happens to him. And the reason to call bullsh*t on Billy's story, right, is that I think Nathan is thinking, well, bullsh*t, Billy, because no man could ever fall in love with Elizabeth that way. That's not how you fall in love with her. How you fall in love with her is prolonged exposure and deep eye contact. If this woman is wearing sunglasses in a hat, that's such a great take by you. You're not getting even 1% of the Elizabeth Homes experience. I, Nathan Fielder, call bullsh*t, you know what, I don't even call bullsh*t. I say, you're not worthy of this woman. But I want to come, this brings me back, sorry, to the who's on first. I might start crying thinking about it because, I mean, it was just wild because, again, I don't care about this one. But this movie, the person in this movie, I did find myself concerned for. So he shows her who's on first. She doesn't get it. But it's not just that she doesn't get it. She doesn't get that what she's watching really is a relationship. Haban and Costello, famous relationship, great American relationship, all these guys do his fight. Their love link, which is fighting. She does not understand what she's watching as an argument. She thinks that this guy doesn't understand what this guy's trying to say. Okay, sure, when you diagram the sentence, that's what it is. But no, man, it's a f*cking fight. But it's not that she doesn't get that. that Nathan has to explain the joke to her, he kind of has to explain how how comedy works to this woman. And then Billy, amazingly, is like, you know what, babe? He's right. You're like a unique, special tender, fragile thing. And you just don't see the world the way everybody else sees it. And you know, the whole of American comedy history, everybody gets who's on first. But you know, like the thing that makes you such a (beep) treasure, babe, is that you don't get the greatest American comedy bit of all time. And you're just so special. So you've got these two men. She's sitting between them. She's in a man sandwich. - And there's a shot where she's watching and there is an arm that is like scratching her back. And for a second, when I saw it, I was the second time I was like, who's armistat? I was like, oh, it's Billy's. But it's also just-- - Yeah, you can't tell. - You can't immediately tell. - So there is the triangle and the physics of-- - Yeah, but she, that to me is not a triangle. It's a sandwich, it's a press, it's a vice. - And that's why you're concerned for her. - I sat there and I thought, okay, this is no longer a movie about a woman who defrauded a bunch of people. This is a movie about a woman dealing with men. - Well, so it absolutely is that and the thing that I add to it with my perhaps endless reserve of cynicism is that she wanted the sandwich. - What the fuck? - She's a lizard with a hobs. God fucking damn it. - All right. - I accept. - And so, and by the way, and by the way, I don't know if, I mean, let's put it this way. She has every incentive in her strategic a f*ck. 'Cause every incentive to adopt the strategy of, I'm gonna say I don't get it. (buzzer) I don't know this. I'm a little baby. - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, wait, stop it. That's not what she does. What she does is like, she is truly. - Oh, she is an excellent. - It's happening to me right now. - I think she's happening to me right now. - Like, by the end of this episode, we'll know right now. We're all in the air. (upbeat music) - You know, the thing I keep coming back to that this doesn't even come up in the film is what's in the podcast about the way she creates the voice, right? And she deepens her voice because she hears somewhere like a masculine sounding voice is likely to draw more investors because business people will take you serious. - Authority. - We've done some work with people at Hopkins who have developed and demonstrated that in blood, you can see the onset of pancreatic cancer 17 years before a tumor forms. - She concocts a voice, right? So we already know that performance is an aspect of the Elizabeth Holmes experience, right? She not only deepens her voice, she starts dressing like Steve Jobs. - Steve Jobs. - Harry Okie. - Yeah. So, well, she does Steve Jobs in Nathan Fielder, right? Right? And I think that she has been doing performance art for money the whole time. And yet, I'm at the benefit of the doubt stage, right? Where I'm watching a person really sit with the fact that she's unequipped for regular life. Honestly, the first turn is the egg-beating moment where he takes the bowl. - So, let me explain this for a second because this is another sort of inkblot test. It's the test of, okay, Elizabeth Holmes is with Nathan Fielder and Billy in their kitchen and she is very lightly beating some eggs. - She'd not stop it. - Okay. - You make eggs. - I have. - To Billy's, to some already point, I mean, I watched your doing, I'm like-- - She wasn't. - She wasn't getting any. - What is in that bowl? - Okay. - Because she is like very wonely stirring this big ceramic bowl. She's so-- Oh, God, I guess it's time to make the eggs. - True. - I don't know what-- Oh, I might follow him. Billy finally is like, oh, my Jesus Christ, lady. Give me the bowl. - And so, to me, when I saw this the second time, my thought was that is her getting Billy to take the bowl. Wesley has taken off his headphones and is fortunately collapsing onto the floor. - Okay. - So I'm that kind of, perhaps I'm a paranoid investigative reporter. - No, no, no. - But this lady knows how to deal with men, not always successfully, not always successfully, but she has a strategy. Wesley, she's fucking has a strategy. And she's been in an abusive relationship by all accounts with Sonny, her co-executive at Theranos, and she has gone through some real stuff that I do not diminish in any way in her life. At one point, her dad, casually from the sky mentions everything changed after she was raped. And they never follow up on it and you're left to do some Googles afterwards. And at the same time, in the yes and of this story is also, perhaps because of, she is deeply manipulative and knows how to handle men with a strategy, even if it lands her in fucking prison. She's trying, man, she's trying, in my view, oh my God, Pablo, what the fuck? Okay, so maybe I can be convinced. But this is, you're hearing me think through this. - This is where we have to bring on the, now, I mean, just legendary screen performer. - It's time. - Amanda Saferat. - Dude, so she shows up and I know it was like in your theater. - It was Gasp's. I mean, it's funny. I just, I mean, it was a wonderful thing to, I mean, I'm glad I knew because I didn't know when it was going to happen. But I'm like, oh, it seems like this is, this seems like a pretty good time to bring her on. I mean, the audience can see that it's her because he makes, Billy, he makes Elizabeth in Billy's company watch the dropout. - It's truly organic to what this film has been, which is part of the brilliance of having her show up. - Yes, watch Elizabeth, can you please watch Amanda Saferat play you in this Hulu series, for which I believe she won an Emmy. - Yeah. - Elizabeth Holmes can't do it. It's too much for her. - She begins and then she says, please, it's hard. - I mean, and I can't imagine if somebody, - Oh, dude, that part, that part seems the most plausibly sincere to me, that scene, perhaps, of all of them. But the strategy with Amanda here is brilliant. Amanda is presented with Nathan's issue. Elizabeth Holmes is now in prison. And things have happened before they started rolling, even, or when cameras were not around, that he wants to show the audience, it turns out. And of course, Amanda seems to organically and spontaneously question mark. - Okay, I've always thought about what it would be like to portray Elizabeth Holmes after the trial. And soon, indeed, she was. - Probably you are sparing nobody. It's very interesting, like, I just don't know how to dial my sentences. - Again, I'm still it, I'm still it, I'm still it one. I'm still at stage one with this, right? - It's just, it works so well. - Which is wonder, my stage one is wonder. And I, my, my, perhaps, questions about strategy are informed by how wondrous it is. - I think he's trying to control her Amanda Sifred, right? Like, but he can't, and it's crazy to me, the only person here to question, as it turns out, eventually combat aid and a bet along the lines of therapy, morality, ethics and art is an actor. But an actor takes direction. But for most of Amanda Sifred's relationship to this movie, she's, you're not going to let me say this, but I'm going to say it again, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, she's not being directed. - Okay, so this is where I actually agree, I think she's a loose cannon. - Yes, she is the one person who cannot be controlled. - And the question I have, and by the way, they think this is the question I have at every level of how they made this, is when Do you recognize there's a strategic opportunity? 'Cause I think she is organically this way. - Wait, what do you mean by that? - So when you're Nathan Fielder or Lance Oppenheim, and when they are presented with a loose cannon, who also happens to have one awards for her portrayal of Elizabeth Holmes, and she has takes immediately, like Nathan, you should break up Billy and Elizabeth. - These aren't, okay, okay, okay, hold on. - Again, whether it was said 60 minutes in or immediately after they show her the footage, it happens real early in our encounters with Amanda. - But these guys know, I mean, how do I put this? Like, it's crazy because we've been thinking this the whole time and what she is, another thing, in addition to therapist, ethicist, moralist. She's a reality check. - She is a proxy for us. - Yes, that is what, so when I saw this the second time, I'm like, oh my God, the brilliance of her as the loose cannon is that she is the actor and is going to have all of that argument and wait attached to the concept, which they do argue about in the most crucial arguably part at the end. And she's also saying the things at the audience. - We've already been saying, we've been saying them to each other. They Nathan and Amanda show up to meet Billy and the kids. - Oh, this is the scene. - And this scene is just crackling with electricity because immediately you're like clocking the awkwardness of like how does a person who has never talked to Elizabeth Holmes or Billy with Elizabeth now in prison show up at the house. - The frontery. - And suddenly we're in situ and clearly time has elapsed. And suddenly Elizabeth Holmes is on the phone. - Yes, calling from prison. - Billy receives the call. One of Amanda's questions actually to Elizabeth is, "Did you know that I would be here?" - Oh, this answer. - She goes, I don't know. - No, she said, I don't know if I knew. - I don't know if I knew. - It's true, out of you. Anyway, so Elizabeth and Amanda are on the phone and Amanda keeps on saying, you have a beautiful family. You're family beautiful. And there's awkwardness. - Actors don't typically, especially when the portrayal is scathing, as scathing as this portrayal after all is, right? You don't, I mean, she's partially punishing herself in some way. - Okay, and so what she ends up saying, squeaking out is a compliment. - Yeah, I love you. You're great or something. - Yeah, I don't remember the exact attitude now, but it's like, you're wonderful. - Yeah, it's the thing. It's the thing. - It's the thing you say in Hollywood? - Yes, and you're like, oh no, my unconscious nervous system activated, I just started complimenting people. Even the woman that I scathingly portrayed to Emmy Award winning effect, yes. - Effect in recognition. And it turns out eventually resentment. Because I want to speed through some of this because there's this scene in which now, Nathan, Amanda, and Billy are at a table. And Billy is now sniffling in ways. Then I'm just like, what's going on with Billy? - The sniffling. - The sniffling. - Billy is sniffling. - He's also puffier. - We're concerned for Billy. - I mean, no, we're not, no, we're not, no, we're not. - We're clinically intrigued. We're wondering, what's up with Billy? - Billy is just very energetic and he's sniffling a lot. It's okay. What we do learn is that Billy has been operating those of the homes's Twitter account and has power of attorney. And Amanda reacts with the way you did by falling on the floor. It's like, what? She's alive. She's, why? And at this point, Billy then goes on to criticize her Twitter account 'cause she tweeted something about Charlie Kirk and then Billy. - He had a hateful person was I think the tweet. - That's what she had said to Billy. And Billy says with pride that he is a fan of Charlie Kirk and it gets to like Thanksgiving dinner. We're now like doing this. - Yes, yes, yes, yes. But Nathan the entire time is at a tennis match. That's it. He's watching, turning, head pivoting. And it's delightful and really tense. - Yeah, I think though it's funny because what's happening here is that the actor is playing a version of the role that maybe some part of her wishes, her subject had played in the other relationship somehow. - I think there is. - Or standing up on behalf of this person, who she just got off the phone with, who's not with her children, but is in prison. - And at this point, by the way, I do wanna speed through more because Amanda, as a person who has these views that are perhaps informed by her work as Elizabeth Holmes and as just a person, a woman, a human being, I'm speeding at great peril, Wesley, to the point that Nathan visits Elizabeth Holmes in prison. And he comes back and Amanda is presented in front of a roaring fireplace. - This transcript. Or I'm sorry, scar ripped, scar ripped. - That is Nathan's presented memory and what we are presented with as we watch it is what has the vibe on one hand of reporting. Here's my interview. You're not allowed to bring, as someone who's been presenting Texas for journalism, you're not gonna bring watch, pan, pad of paper, anything. But he brings back a script and how accurate it is, how precise we don't know, but this is presented as context. - But we do know that when they're running their lines by this fireplace, he offers a sticking point. - So to build to it, Amanda is reading Elizabeth critique and effectively blame her for a lot of the bad things that have happened to Elizabeth Holmes. And Amanda says to Nathan, resentfully in order to respond to Elizabeth, it's not our job to teach people things as an actor in an adaptation. Amanda has claimed this is fiction, nonfiction. It's a character inspired by-- - The show, the show, the show. - The show, the Hulu show. She also says, it's f***ing TV. - You know. - Yeah, I mean, it's quite interesting. I mean, this is how you know that she's a rogue agent here because she-- - This one fell real. - She's with this woman's family. And so she just doesn't have the language to make a case for why what she's doing is in any way different from what her subject has done. - And there is a thing that they, Amanda and Nathan work through together in which they wind up crossing out a word on the transcript. The word changes from it to the word something. - And in the moment, it feels like a crucial distinction. - Yes. - But the point is that the meaning shifts. - Yeah, it's important and they agree to change it. - The point is we see as an audience, Nathan's memory is fallible. And now you see them trying to make it more true. - Yes, yes. - And-- - But he's doing this collaboration with an actor. - When you're interweaving her reenactment as they are reading the script and editing it, which is again, just like a really well done piece of art. - But you have to-- there's one thing that's important to say about this intercutting between the rehearsal and the performance. Which is that I think to me, it's one of the great movies about acting, something in this woman needed to take that call from Emma Stone or Nathan Fielder or Lance Oppenheim, whoever rang her phone. I think the actor is kinda looking for the same thing that the subject is looking for. Except she might be looking for it in some way from the art form somehow. - In that spirit, I wanna take us to a scene that felt like it was perhaps the story here. And before they do that thing, we just described in front of that roaring fire. Nathan drives up to this horse farm where it seems or a ranch or something. She may live on a farm. She says to Nathan, "I'll reenact anything." You know how many people believe that I was her. And Nathan says, and I wrote this one down, the point isn't to convince people that this is her. It's to convey what happened. Accurately. And do you remember what happened next? 'Cause I forgot until I saw it the second time. What happens, Wesley? As the word "accurately" is sort of like muttered by Nathan Fielder. Is that a nearby horse farm? - Fars! - Yes, sorry. - Yes. - And that fart felt directed at me personally. The guy with the nodes who's going on about journalism and accuracy. And he's like, the point is actually to fart on the performance of accuracy. And I just can't help but be frustrated by and jealous of that out. The out of we're here as artists to challenge whatever it is. - Yeah, but I think you're giving too much. - Or by the way, maybe it was just like the greatest time fart I've ever seen on film. - No, I mean, look. - But you may be. I don't have the reporting. - But again, like to me, not a, I mean, part of the strategy, sure, also like very specifically a choice, right? Didn't need to think, didn't have to keep that. But keeping it, it just creates this other level of, it just adds to the origami, the sort of moral, ethical, formal, artistic origami of this project. I feel, I'm not sure what I do and don't believe at all. (upbeat music) I've been calling this a culturally destabilizing event because everybody who has seen it, who's ever watched anything, read anything, been to a press conference, or been in a relationship, right? Been in a, this is the most important thing to me about this movie is been in a relationship. What you get to say is true is always kind of in flux because is the question whether or not it's true or what is the truth or the lie in service of, right? - Yep. - I feel like it just calls into question itself and therefore our relationship to it. I feel almost foolish not being you right now. - Thank God you're not. - In some ways. - Because I, I, I don't know what not to believe about this thing and I want to believe what I'm supposed, like quote, supposed to believe, right? Which makes me, which brings me closer to you, right? - Well, I want to bring us to the last thing in the film, but Amanda asks Nathan. - I got to sit back. - Because this, this shit is deep. - Amanda asks Nathan if he covered up anything from their experience together in prison which she ends up reenacting but this is them now talking after. If he covered up anything that was deceitful that seemed as if Elizabeth was being deceitful in order to protect her, dot, dot, dot, why? Because you care about her. Nathan responds, I'm not really putting my feelings in this, dot, dot, dot, I'm just trying to be accurate. And instead of a horse fart, what you get is tape. You get this footage. - The movie tells. - The movie tells. - You get footage of what Nathan had previously said in the film he would not do which was swim in the ocean with Elizabeth Homes. And there they are, Nathan Fielder and Elizabeth Homes in the water together, swimming. And Amanda, Cypherid smiles and says, quote, it's very complicated. - Yeah, and as the end of the movie, buddy. And so what did we find out watching this movie? - You go. - I think as Nathan's reliability as a narrator is undermined, as has everyone's reliability as a narrator in this movie has been undermined, I think Elizabeth Homes, in the end, gets something like what she wants. - I really wanna believe I'm after one of youing of the mind that I feel like I understand what's true and what's not true. But that's foolish. That's foolish. This is the stabilization to me, right? - I feel at the end here Wesley, I do feel, I mean, frankly, I do feel somewhat destabilized. And what I am circling is that as we go to your favorite place, a movie theater and the lights go down and we're sitting there watching something that we don't know what to think of quite yet. But I'm wondering as a parody of myself is whether democracy is dying in this darkness as well. - Oh God. - Wow, what a place to go. - No, I mean, it's just, I loved watching it and hated how much I'm thinking about it. And I'm just like, is this the difference between journalism and watching a movie and having a great time? - Maybe. But I think that the, I think you're being poisoned by your journalistic impulses here 'cause you want an answer and you're never gonna get one. You know, you're just, it's unanswerable. And for as much as I can sit here and just be like, I think I know. I don't really know. And that's the beauty of the art of this movie. I think that the thrill of this movie is gonna be our shifting relationship to it, right? It should be the type of person who goes back to it because there's something really essential about, we wanted to make her more human, but really what it's exposed is this thing in us, this thing in us that wants to understand who and what we are to each other. And that that's what you can see everything is about. Lie to me. - Lie to me. - Lie to me real good daddy. (laughing) (upbeat music) - This has been Pablo Torre finds out a metal art media production. And I'll talk to you next time. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)