“You Can See Everything” and the Nathan Fielder Effect

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Each week on the show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. What a day. What a day it is. Okay, everyone, you've probably heard about the topic of our final movie month episode. Because it's been near-dem impossible not to hear about it, I think. And yes, my friends, today we are talking about the new film. You can see everything. If you're like the one person who somehow hasn't heard about it, here's the gist. So we have Disgraze Thernos founder and convicted philanthropist Holmes, who invites a documentary crew into her home to film her and her family in the final days before she goes to prison in 2023. That crew is headed by Lance Oppenheim, who also directed the recent movie "Prime Time," and also crucially by the comedian, prankster, devil himself, philosopher King Nathan Fielder. 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 wish I knew. I don't know. I don't feel like I understand that. I haven't seen this much excitement about a documentary, maybe ever, or at least not in a very long while. Would you guys agree? I would agree. I think it's objectively true. We've seen that this movie has made $15 million in its opening weekend, and yes, I texted everyone on the podcast in an absolute panic a week before the movie released to say tickets are flying. You need to get your tickets now, now, now. Otherwise, you will not see this by the time we need to discuss it. It's been all over the place. I can. If there has been another, I missed it. Yeah, I think we can safely say that it's a phenomenon, right? It's a cultural phenomenon. So today, we're discussing, you can see everything. Which it's, yeah, it's technically a documentary, for sure. But it seems at times more, almost like a philosophical treatise on the nobility of other people. Like, what kind of big questions that it bring up for you guys? Yeah, it certainly introduces a lot of themes, like sort of like reenactment, interpretation, trust, truth. Yeah, those are some, those are all the enormous ones. Trust and truth, pretty big. Yeah, I would say, no, me, I like your focus on the nobility of another person, and you wrote a great piece about that for the New Yorker online. And I also think it's about the documentary form and what it is for. And if documentaries can get at the truth, if they should get at the truth, how we in the audience perceive different things that are on screen, it's a kind of or a shock test, I think, for the public. Yeah, yeah, what is reality? What is reality? And we're also going to be talking about Nathan Fielder as a figure. I mean, his work is extremely hard to categorize kind of this odd blend of comedy, reality television, documentary. And even though it's often excruciatingly uncomfortable, I mean, it's just simply, you know, it's sometimes it's really hard to watch, even for me who generally loves it. It's very hard for us not to be captivated by it or not to be at least intrigued by it. And so my question for us today is, what does it say about us as viewers that were so caught in Nathan Fielder's web? So that's today on Critics and Arch, the Rorschach test of you can see everything. So you guys, before we get into talking about this movie, we need to address something, the question of spoilers, right? When I went to the press screening, you guys went to just a regular showing, right, after the movie already opened. With the public. With the public. No, with the public. In the press screening, there was a little video, like a little video clip before the movie, in which you can see Nathan Fielder and Landshop and Heim addressing the audience. Their face is kind of like an extreme close-up, kind of like in a photo booth, camera vibe. Saying, if you're writing about this, if you're posting about this, we implore you not to share anything from the second half of the movie. There was a great kind of sense, just generally, that you don't want to spoil. Not just coming from the filmmakers, but between people. You know, I went to a birthday party this weekend. People were like, have you seen it? Oh, I haven't yet. I'm going to move away while you talk about it. You know, there was a lot of discussion about spoilers. Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, the beauty of the podcast is that you don't even have to move away. Just pause it and come back after you've seen the movie. That's what I'm going to say. I mean, let's, I want to hear how you guys rule. We're going to discuss everything. You can hear everything on this show. That's what I say. Because I totally respect what Landshop and Heim and Nathan Fielder wanted critics to do in the written material. We're publishing this episode. The movie has been out for a week. You can, it will be there for you after you've seen the movie. Yeah. And even from what I've seen, from what Nathan Fielder has been saying at this point in the, in the press cycle. A lot of his talking points have been around the idea that he doesn't fully understand what happened to him during this experience. Landshop and Heim said a very similar thing to our beloved former colleague, Alex Barich, who just published a profile of him in New York magazine. They're kind of soliciting this reaction from audiences to try to make sense of the movie too. So here we are. Here we are. Do not feel a need to listen to this if you haven't seen the movie yet. Just come back. Vincent, what do you think? I totally agree. By the way, I love it when our colleague, Richard Brody, sometimes goes away from reviewing individual works and gives like sort of interesting like he does takes on the state of the movie business. And a couple of days ago, he did a piece on the New York website called Spoiler Alert, Keeping Movies Under Rack. It's all about the sort of increased pressure on the spoiler on the one hand he talks about how on some level It's a kind of marketing that like The sort of element of surprise knowing that you don't know as much about a work as you will is a reason to hasten and get yourself into the theater So it works as a sort of forcing mechanism to see something quickly and on the other hand that there are a lot of sort of Mass entertainments that are indulging in very sophisticated formal play And he gives a lot of examples of this and Suddenly even talking about the dramatic shape of a work and not necessarily the content of it does have a more fraught Thing going on with it. It's a really interesting exploration of this spoiler if you're interested in it um, I think we should talk about the whole work because I don't think we can confidently talk about this movie without it Honestly, I think it's just um, there's certain works because of their sort of drastic Turns and twists and whatever That you can't if you talk about only one part you Will not have Delivered the thing that we all want to do. That's what I think I completely agree. I think it was a one and senseless experience Okay, let's fucking go get you up. Who wants to synopsize friends? I'm gonna do it. Do it do it Alex. I'm gonna do it Okay, you all know that this movie Maybe you don't but you should know by now that this movie you should know everything you should know everything this movie begins 34 days before Elizabeth Holmes reports to Prison in Texas to begin her prison sentence as a felon for defrauding investors in Theranos her um tech biotech startup company that purported to be able to diagnose Hundreds of medical conditions from a single drop of blood taken from a finger Elizabeth Holmes at this point is living in a rental house in Southern California near San Diego with her romantic and business partner Billy Evans their two children Young William and Invicta their baby Invicta who they refer to as Ivy Able they refer to as Ivy they innocuously refer to her as Ivy But in fact her name is Invicta to profess a kind of you know, we shall overcome vibe for felon Elizabeth Holmes and Into this mix they've invited felon Elizabeth Holmes. That's very New York Post. I love that please continue I mean, I'm saying it because I think to some degree one of the fascinating things about this movie is just the degree to which Elizabeth Holmes Curry's sympathy and one of the slippery things about this movie is the degree to which We feel that Nathan fielder is leading us to feel sympathy or not for her And we're gonna get to all of that But into this house they invite the last person on earth Anyone should want to be near them at any moment let alone a moment of Dress Nathan fielder There is a shot early in the movie and my entire theater exploded with laughter you've seen Billy on the phone you've seen Liz you've seen the kids and then suddenly behind the glass of a window pane Like a horrifying Halloween spectacle you see Nathan fielder his characteristic now a bit sultish and peppery hair Full head of hair the kind of hulking stature The absolutely expressionless gaze. It's a jump scare. It's terrifying and everybody laughed and he and his camera crew are there For many many hours a day and the premise is that the Holmes Evans household has solicited this has asked them to come and to film Everything that nothing is off limits including Billy Evans in a naked shower sequence after his Rather rigorous work out at the gym the Schmeckle does dingle dangle the Schmeckle dingle dangles and doesn't he want you to know that it does So Nathan is there to see everything to presumably ask everything and we are brought into Immediately a very strange interpersonal dynamic between this couple where Elizabeth Holmes seems like a lobotomized person who basically understands nothing has no memories of anything The only thing she will say She's like Reagan in their unconscious It's a lot of I don't recalls She she with her enormous blue eyes and her very expressive mouth um Is continuously presenting herself as a kind of animatronic doll? basically saying I did nothing wrong. I don't understand how this even happened No, I actually don't understand the sequence of events that have led to me being in this position. They're face-offs between her Nathan um, and meanwhile Billy Evans is circling about circling about He seems to be a bit of an overactive over Overbearing kind of partner, but each of them really holds they they share two core truths One Theranos would have and could have worked and in fact They believe in this to the degree that they are going to create Theranos book 2.0 and two That they're loved for one another is the stuff of fairy tales is the stuff of story books that they It was love at first sight at a party two years after the collapse of Theranos and From that moment on their foundations as a couple have been as solid as anything you can imagine So we're going to talk about all of that that's the first part of the movie and then Liz goes to jail goodbye. She's off. She's going to prison We see her go we see the paparazzi scrum and Nathan drives away half of the movie is left And here is where we're going to get into some spoilers the second half picks up two years later Liz has been prison in that time and we get more Billy Evans and his increasingly Sort of off-kilter behavior And then we also get Nathan trying to make sense of what is going on what his experience was and who Elizabeth Holmes is and to do that it will not surprise Viewers of their hersel to know He turns to this question of reenactment and how to recreate scenes that he was present for that the camera wasn't present for that the camera was present for and to do that The kind of big surprise here is that he uses Amanda Cyfred the actress who played Elizabeth Holmes on the dropout and She becomes Increasingly involved in helping to parse and interpret the material and the character of Elizabeth Holmes Which all of us are trying to do at the same time What do you guys think that's great that's great and it's difficult. It's difficult. It's difficult. And it is yeah a three-hour movie I just want to hear kind of reactions Like thumbs up yay nay thumbs up thumbs down. What did you guys think? I had a devil of a time trying to figure out what the big deal was supposed to be Okay, okay, I have never had this experience in a movie. Oh wow, okay, by the end of it I was like I must have fallen asleep for a part, but I did not Wow Wow, yeah, you know, okay, I love this actually number one and you know part of the deal with Nathan field There's supposed to be he's always talking about how you know I'm not the best for a book communicator. I don't understand people that well And so it's like we're supposed to be understanding These as explorations through his At least you know self-evalidly limited frame of reference And so the first question is like has he never met a really bad liar mm-hmm like I'm God forgive me. I'm related to some Terrible liars and let me tell you it's actually not that interesting Yeah, you can't believe the things they say and sometimes they blend the truth and the lie and the best Slashed worst of them Sort of believe their lies such that it becomes hard to interpret what they say. Okay That's just like Experience that's just life and so I don't want it so there are all these like really big themes of truth and think that he's like gesturing at these themes But never once did I think he was getting any closer to them by any means mm-hmm whether it was by the sort of strict Repertorial approach slightly funny Repertorial approach of the first half Billy Evans's california brown homesteader dick not with standing Um california brown homesteader dick Uh, and certainly not through the interventions of Amanda Seifried You know Yeah, I mean he looks like there's a that's a that is a horse and buggy dick. Okay, like like an oak in it's just like a oak It's just it's a dick that says I built the house that I live in. I don't know. I can't tell you I don't know or at the very least that I'm renting it for many thousands Yeah, it's like some Joan Diddy and dick. It's like some like so it's not wow to Anna wins dick It's not the more you say the less I understand but the happier I am that you're saying it. No, I kind of I kind of see what you're I kind of donner party dick. Okay, we got it. Let's go anywhere. Don't let me don't Okay, no, I could I could do this for like the next like a few minutes. Tan speckled kettlebell as look at it so um and um And then on the other hand, um, oh you oh now I'm gonna get a man deciphered and involved because what cuz she played her It just seemed like everything that he wanted us to be like it's leading me into a further mystery was like Okay, duh, and then so though and the whole second half of the movie is is should I believe her that she does she know That billy has arranged to be paid for this just like another question of truth on top of us person who's already a spectacular liar As demonstrated by the first half of the thing and as demonstrated by the person's whole history the answer is who gives a shit So the whole time I was like is there a part that's supposed to tell me who gives a shit or what this like I just I was short circling all time. I was like who cares. Oh my god I love this. I was like, who gives a shit? She's lying or she's not, or a little bit of both. She's a psycho, dude. Everybody can see it. So I don't know. I just, I left it just like disoriented. I was like, did I sleep there a part of it? I was talking friends like, okay, and this happened, and then that happened, right? I was like, what did I miss? And the answer is nothing. And so, I don't know. Okay, I totally respect this. I respect this. And it's almost like I love a dissenting opinion. I love a dissenting opinion and I love anger, as you know. And so, I'm like kind of relishing in this and your reaction. I feel like maybe I'm like a huge patsy because to me, not that I don't think she's not a liar. Like, something is very wrong with her, but I think it's a little, to me, it was a little more complicated, like the relationship to, like I feel like she believes what she's saying. And one thing that struck me about it, when a filter is talking to Amanda Sifreed and they're talking about the relationship between Billy Evans and Elizabeth Holmes. And they're talking about their seemingly telepathic connection, they're like great love. They're like-- Building monuments of love for the other. Building monuments of love, you know, which is like insane, but I think they believe it. And I think in their hearts, and similarly, I think they also believe that she's innocent. Like, I think that they have convinced themselves that she is somehow, as Billy Evans murmurs to her, at one point, you're so good and so true, you know? And I'm like, I think they believe it. And I find that interesting. And I find the enforced intimacy between all of these people that this process and acts, I find that interesting. I feel sympathy towards that, towards your annoyance, but I did feel like there were questions here that were worth asking and that there was kind of a core of a problem there to investigate. Because obviously, many people, many, many people believed Elizabeth Holmes. And it's interesting, I think, to understand why. Like, why some people, why she even believes herself, you know? Much less like many, many others-- - General Madison. - That she, that she duped. And so I found the movie very interesting. So that question of like, she's a liar case closed. I don't wanna deal with, you know, it's like, I appreciate it, but I don't know if I'm totally there, or there at all, actually. Alex, do you wanna say something? - Ah, I'm already loving this conversation so much. It's just delightful. So the first thing I'll say is that the, I'm really glad I saw this as part of an audience of the public and not a screening audience, because the experience of seeing the film itself was exhilarating and fun. The audience was loving it. I was by myself on the very end of a row, with a bunch of like a big group was next to me, and I felt like it was with their group. You know, I was saying, oh my god, all the time. And I was like, oh my god, I'm saying, oh my god, I'm embarrassing this group. They probably, they probably want me to shut up at this point, but everybody is kind of hooding and hollering. And one thing I have to say in response to what Vincent said, is that this movie is fundamentally about Nathan. And it's fundamentally about Nathan going through this experience. That's why, and it makes total sense to me, the Nathan is walking around saying in his various press clippings, I still don't know what happened to me. Tell me if you know what happened to me. It is about what happened to Nathan Filter. It is not what Elizabeth Holmes did. It is not even about what Billy Evans did. Elizabeth Holmes committed, I mean, I'm fascinated by the degree to which this movie seems to open people up to the idea that Elizabeth Holmes didn't know what she was doing. Vincent, everything you say about lying is spot on. Elizabeth Holmes is a lying liar, who lies. That's who she is. There's no doubt about this. We can, I can name 100 lies off the top of my head, simply from just like standard issue information. You know, here's one. She claimed that Theranos devices were used by the US military and war zones. She had to say, under cross examination during her trial that that was not true. Yet she tells Nathan Filter, I've never told a lie, I can't remember telling a lie. You know, my dear, you told a lie on the stand and you had to admit to telling a lie on the stand. So there are 100 things like this. This to me really is a movie. Everyone is parsing, this is a movie about truth and layers and what you can't believe in, what you couldn't understand. But to me, the fascination of the movie is a large part, this is the first time we've seen a column fielder just to see how it is. This is the first time we've really seen fielder take on a very different kind of target and different kind of subject. Usually the comedy and the discomfort in his work is from watching him go up against extremely ingenuous people. And here, for the first time, he's actually up against, I think like really worthy targets. And I think that kind of explains why the comedy doesn't work in the same way. Because the comedy is not on this gap of ingenuity and then wondering how ingenious or disingenuous it is. What I've had to be very pleasurable and enjoyable about the movie was watching that flip take place where suddenly, Nathan is in the position of one of his own subjects because he's like, that's why I don't think the movie is at all about pheronos or Elizabeth Holmes or how much truth. I think that whole conversation is complete red herring. I think it's about the fielder method being applied weirdly to Nathan. - But is it though? I mean, like how do you see him becoming. - Fielderized. - Fielderized. Because is he like possibly doped by her? Is that what you? - I think that's part of it, yeah. I think part of it is watching the weirdness is. Like he is put in more of a journalist role in this film than he's been in any other kind of work. I mean, it is a documentary. You have Nathan in the simulation that they've created of their lives trying to unravel it. That's what I mean. - Yes, yes. - And increasingly feeling sympathetic towards Elizabeth. - In very herself. - Going down this whole lane of how much does she know about what you're doing? Does she know that you agreed to be paid for the documentary? As Vincent says, who cares? Doesn't matter. But he gets a little bit spun around in the simulation that these two have created. And that's what I think is fielder-esque about it. (upbeat music) When we're back, the world of Nathan Fielder. This is Critics of Large from The New Yorker. (upbeat music) There's a reason millions of people start their day with Morning Brew Daily. 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And you're going to help me. Here, start filming when I say. - Seems like a lot when you could just depop all those boots. - Oh, resale socks. They take such a big cut. - There's no selling fees on depop. And it's easy to list. - Oh, really? Huh, easy. - Make money on depop with no selling fees. Download depop and start selling today. (upbeat music) - Okay guys, I want to turn for a second to talk about Nathan Fielder himself, or rather his persona, as it appears in the movie, but also in his earlier work. Have you seen a kind of progression or transition of this figure of Nathan Fielder over the last, like, you know, decade or decade plus? - Well, one thing that we can say about this persona is something that we've kind of been trying to talk about in various ways over the past couple months on this podcast, which is like, especially in various portrayals of tech figures. There is a certain kind of representation of neurodivergence happening, and this is one of the key aspects of his appeal. Someone who asks questions, and perhaps this goes to the point that Alex makes about him being a good sort of protojournalist in this, at least as it shows up in, you can see everything. By asking seemingly very obvious questions about human behavior that the rest of us kind of skate past, perhaps he's able to get at certain truth. That this might be, you could talk about it in this way. One of the more memorable scenes of you can see everything is him sort of, it's almost like he's trying to implant an idea in Holmes's head, which is like basically, they're having this interpretive, it's already, by the way, he's already being manipulated because she's dumbness in many other forums, including in court, talk about what did she mean by this? device can do every kind of blood test, whatever, you know, can or could or blah blah blah blah blah. They're going down this interpretive wormhole, which is just her wrestling him to the ground, but fine, whatever. He says, I'm the kind of person who I don't know lots of words, you know what I mean? I don't know how to say it. Yeah, I'm the kind of person where you know, I don't know how to say stuff. And she's and he's like, are you like that too? And then she kind of sits with and she's like, you know, yeah, maybe. And then, you know, later on, it's like a nighttime scene. He's on the couch with the two of them admittedly, very funny that they're just like on the couch together. And he's like, they're like a thruple. Yeah, he's like, have you ever seen this very famous bit? Who's on first? On the St. Louis team, we have who's on first? What's on second? I don't know. It's on third. That's what I want to find out. I want you to tell me the names of the fellows on the St. Louis team. I'm telling you, who's on first? What's on second? I don't know those on third. Do you know the fellows names? Yes. Well, then who's playing first? Yeah. I mean, the fellows name our first base. Who? The fellow player first base for St. Louis, the guy on first base. Who is on first? And she, you know, watches it. She doesn't get the word play involved. She doesn't get the whole joke where she claims she claims not to get the whole joke. This is one moment when I actually kind of believed what I was seeing a little bit because she tries to pretend she's like, but Billy's like, see, I'm not surprised by that. Like looking over her talking an eighth and being like, yeah, isn't she fucking weird? And I could see her like, she was kind of annoyed by this. And I was like, that's real. Whatever. Maybe not. They're playing around this idea. And I think it really actually works particularly well because he's in the milieu of Silicon Valley. It's like, maybe these people don't know what words mean. And maybe I'm the perfect interpreter, you know? And so I think there is a that, the kind of person who doesn't understand human sociality at a moment when human sociality is rapidly changing and kind of up for grabs. How we relate to one another is a is a swiftly changing thing because of various technological trends and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so perhaps somebody who is walking around always disoriented by other human beings is the perfect adversary from, you know, us to them. I don't know. So you're talking Vincent about Nathan's persona as well about his persona as being kind of like detached guileless neutral flat, never heard of nothing. Exactly. Yeah. I think so that is exactly the fundamental Nathan Fielder persona. And people have referred to him as a performance artist, which I think is true. I think he's also in line with like a social scientist. I think the big thing about Nathan's persona was when in the Nathan for you era, which was his show in which he played a version of himself, a kind of avatar of himself, who would come up with these horrific ideas to help struggling small businesses. My mission was to fill yogurt haven with customers. My plan, a crazy new flavor that will get people talking. That flavor is poo. Is that serious? Yeah. The media responds to controversy. We know that. I feel like a poo yogurt flavor might be a news story. If people read the paper could bring like hundreds of thousands of people in here, maybe, or just to try that flavor. Yes. Of poo. Yes. I really needed to sell my idea to Nick. This kind of cunning coldness behind this flat, affectless facade that collided with the general willingness of people to help each other, help someone understand, take someone else seriously, like watching someone unsocialized, interact with the socialized, and the socialized impulse to facilitate connection, be agreeable, all of that created these absurd results because it kept going farther and farther and the comedy was in there and for me, the discomfort was there. I think something interesting happened with the persona in the rehearsal. The rehearsal came about because Nathan and his team and making Nathan for you would try to rehearse different outcomes that could happen when he approached these business owners with his outlandish plans. They discovered that they could rarely predict what was going to happen, but it gave him this idea he has said for what if you could rehearse life events, especially uncomfortable ones or difficult ones. It sees in one of the rehearsal, we get everything from this Bartrea participant rehearsing this confession to his Bartrivia mates that he does not have a higher degree as it has been applied to this fundamentalist Christian woman who's dealt with various addictions in the past rehearsing parenthood using a slew of baby and child actors, which Nathan gets bizarrely implicated in his own way. By season two, Nathan is claiming that this actually has a solitary social benefit, that the thing he's suddenly interested in, which is a true shock when you start season two is airline safety. Why not? But that he has concluded that this inability of people, this almost like the over socialized impulse is actually causing disaster because the second in command has been socialized to be respectful of the chief in command to not want to over assert themselves to pipe down and that basically if people could like unsocialize themselves when the higher stake is when something big is at stake, this could save lives. And there's one particular moment, Vincent, that you're reminding me of in season two of the rehearsal that I think is relevant for the interaction between Nathan Field Journalist with Holmes. There is a whole weird side plot where Nathan creates this singing competition to be part of his weird experiment with the airline pilots. And he basically is cracking up. It's hilarious. I mean, he puts out this cast angle. It turns out that his what's it called like wings wings of voice. Yeah, he has different airline pilots be judges to try to basically see how forthright they can be about delivering bad news because if they can say to these singers, sorry, you're not advancing. Maybe they have a better chance of saying to a pilot in charge, sorry, sir, you don't see actually where the landing strip is. I'm taking over the controls. And he finds that one of these pilots in particular does a great job and he watches a video to try to figure out what makes her be great at it. It's not a mystery. She's friendly and personable and always has a nice thing to say even when she's rejecting someone. But he concludes that the answer is that she keeps saying fantastic. So saying fantastic when these people come in and you're watching him genuinely not understand how to interact with another human being in a way that might make them feel good. And by the end he does, he can play the role. And once again, the question is, is he for real? Yeah. So the reason I'm bringing all of this up, I think Elizabeth Holmes is a perfect pairing for him because I think she is someone who has effectively learned what the airline pilot did. She has watched the video of the airline pilot. She's the metaphorical video and figured out what to do. Yes. And so Nathan is sitting with like a successful product of a social experiment. And to me, her sociopathy is real, but is her persona fake on top of it? Whereas with Nathan, is his persona real but his sociopathy is fake? Are they like a perfect weird image of each other? Yes. Yes. Where like they're either both performing the same thing or they're performing opposite things. And that is what we use. I think they're performing opposite things. I think they might be. I think, yeah. Because he's performing, and again, who knows, is this real? Is this not? He's performing blunt unpleasantness, right? He's performing. I'm going to come into your home where you're like about to go to jail, nursing your child, you know, no matter what she did, no matter whether she's a liar, whatever. It's like an intimate and difficult situation, right? Yeah. I'm going to come in and I'm not going to give a fuck, you know, I'm going to be like, so did you do, are you a liar? Did you do it? She's like, you know, nursing and like going to jail in two days and never going to see your family. It's like getting her a wig as a getaway costume as a joke. Right, right. That was a funny moment. Yeah. And everybody did that last one. But it's like also like, what are you insane? Like something is wrong with you. So he's like really leaning on that. Yeah. And she's really leaning, you know, prepping for the episode. I said, you reminded me of a turtle, you know, this sort of like round headed, like wide eyed blinking, you know, always nodding. Always nodding. Like I'm going to amble around slowly with my shell. I'd never wear shoes. I am a good person. I'm like, you know, so she's kind of leaning on performing that and vis-a-vis his kind of performed meanness or whatever you want to call it. It's, it's, that's, I think it's the those opposites, right? Yeah. I think each has maybe the underlying condition as performing the reverse. And that would be one of my points of speculation about why this is hitting the culture so hard. Because what's definite and definitive is that it's hitting. And like what is putting him right here at the center? Why is every ticket to this sold out before reviews? What's happening? We're going to take a quick break and try to answer that question right after. There's a reason millions of people start their day with Morning Brew Daily. You'll leave each episode of Morning Brew Daily smarter and ready to take on the world around you. I'm Toby Howell and I'm Neil Freeman and we're ready to show you that business news doesn't have to be boring. So join us on Morning Brew Daily available wherever you get your podcasts. One of you the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays, here's a tip, the Apple Sports app. What are you doing? Starting up my poll, I need to go viral to earn extra cash and you're going to help me. Seems like a lot when you could just depop all those boots. Ah, resale socks, they take such a big cut. There's no selling fees on depop and it's easy to list. Oh, really? Huh. Easy. Make money on depop with no selling fees. Okay, guys, we've been talking about, you can see everything we've been talking about Nathan Fielder's persona and his past work. If we could turn now to ask, you know, the kind of double-pronged question of what is Nathan Fielder's project about right now and why is this project, why is this figure of Nathan Fielder so magnetic to us right now? Why is this movie making so much money? Why, you know, there isn't a ticket to be found in a tri-state area, you know, on opening. This is a documentary, you know? This is like, this is not, we're not talking like Top Gun Maverick here, right? Why? I do think there is something particular about the, call it like social political scenario of encountering Elizabeth Holmes and the industry and it's set of proclivities that she on some level represents. There's a very smart gentleman who gets cut off immediately toward the middle of this film who's saying, every tech founder is always lying and she was just kind of laying out the bare fact that yes, she is a particularly deranged liar, but that she only exists on a continuum with everyone who's in, who has oversized power in our public life. But more generally, I think that his ability or at least his willingness to try to kind of a strange normal things or make them kind of alienating to us echoes a breakdown of just normalcy in society. I think there's like, you know, nothing feels normal, whether because, you know, the, sort of the tactile is going out, the written word is on the way out. There are so many things that are exchanging alienating in the way that we just apprehend the basic fabric of reality. It does seem to me that there's some justice that like the sort of the figure of the person who is kind of crusading not only against political arrangements, but also just against our many incomprehensions would be somebody who just admits that he doesn't understand anything. Because the rest of us, I mean, we kind of walk out of the house with some things kind of like, you know, we got to fake it till you make it, you got to make it through life and at least kind of pattern your responses to things by your recognitions of them. But if somebody comes on and says, I recognize nothing, it's like, well, you know, maybe it's useful for us. I don't know. And that's interesting. I just, you know, I think the question about like, I totally take your point about like nobody knows where the fuck is going on. But I feel like maybe Nathan Fielder is one of the only people who kind of does or at least where he positions himself and the kind of projects that he makes. He is trying to wrap his hands around what is going on. I have to say that like his, his kind of like, I still don't know what I think think like that's kind of like extra textual, you know, like the interviews he's been doing saying like, I'm not sure yet, yeah, I'm not sure what I found out. I'm not sure exactly what I think about what happened. I went through a transformation. But I'm not sure. I'm like, really? Come on. That's, that seems a little guileless to me and kind of a little disingenuous because I'm like, you're really, really, really smart and you've made a really original, really ambitious movie. And you took many kind of like this, you made many, a lot of strong decisions. Tell us what you think about it or you can say, I don't, I don't feel like telling you what I think about it. That's okay too, you know, but the sort of like, I'm not sure what I think about it thing is a little like Nathan, just tell us what you think about it. Yeah. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. I totally agree. That's the thing about like, nobody knows what's going on. I think he does know what's going on. I don't know what's going on according to him because he won't tell us. I mean, the work tells us in a variety of ways, but he won't articulate it. He won't articulate it. I'm not good with words, et cetera, et cetera. He is good with words. He is really, he does know what's going on. I do think that that's that I take your point about like, it's, it's a very confusing time. Yeah. It's a very confusing time. I'm not good with words. Yeah. truth for for fakeness also. Like I remember one of the kind of disconcerting things of our current moment in AI awareness is when a platform like Instagram marks a real post as AI generated or like a real photo is AI generated. And suddenly you have or when people kind of get out their pitch forks and say, I know this is AI and the thing isn't AI. We're just in such a state of really not knowing what's real and what isn't real. >> And hypervigilance and panic. >> Yes. And so Nathan Fielder's work has evolved in that direction. And it's evolved in that direction in this incredibly fascinating handmade ways such as the elaborate sets that he builds on his sound stage in Los Angeles for the rehearsal with their apparently unlimited HBO funds where they can recreate bars and the interiors of people's apartments in the entire, you know, George Bush airport in Houston. >> And they can create these simulations and try to put real people into the simulated reality of it. I think it has a lot to do with how and try to look for something authentic in the social response. >> Yeah. >> I think that mix of the simulated in the fake with the authentic human response makes him really has he has his finger on something that we're all going through. >> And what it is to be human and to try to like live life and interact with one another and interact with our world while our world is changing rapidly and becoming faker and faker. Most people wouldn't say that's why they love Nathan Fielder. That's not why I would say I like Nathan Fielder's work, you know, I think people would say he's funny he makes man comfortable I can't look away all that stuff but I do think this is one big thing that makes him his work increasingly unmissable. >> And if you want to understand where the culture is at or talk about where the culture is at, you need to be looking at what he's making and thinking about what he's making because he knows how to make us uncomfortable in a way that's very personal to this moment, you know, Emily Eakens book, her recent book The Frenchman, which is about structuralists and like the group of French structuralists who brought structuralism to America. >> And the reason I'm thinking about it is because of this structuralist idea that everything is language, that the entire world is language, that language creates reality more than it reflects reality. >> And the kind of, again, vertiginous, confusing upside-down possibilities of a world in which that's true, like someone from Derrida creating deconstruction, where the thing you thought was that the center is actually not the center it's the center of something else, I think Nathan Fielder is a structuralist in this way. >> Yeah. >> And this movie is an act of deconstruction, and I actually believe in that he doesn't fully understand what happened here. I think the movie would be more coherent if he did, frankly, and I think it would lead to a clearer place. >> Yeah. >> I think it's about that. I think Elizabeth Holmes' whole fixation on the word can is part of the same impulse, and I think our very human need to trust people while knowing that no one is really fundamentally trustworthy, but wanting everyone to be is at stake. So, like, we're all kind of on trial here, too. >> Yeah. >> I think another thing is that, as I often say, we are looking for a strong leader. And maybe I'm just speaking to myself, but I do think it's maybe a kind of a broader cultural desire to have someone making work that is original and smart and daring in a way that somehow avoids or evades the culture wars. And so it's almost like it's not monoculture exactly, it's still kind of a relatively rarefied, you know, kind of a 24-ish piece of work that, you know, it's not Taylor Swift, you know, it's not Travis Kelsey. But I do think there's a need for kind of like a shared language centered around someone who has a vision. I think I really agree with you, Alex, the sort of like handmade authenticity trying to figure out nature of fielders' work within the sort of like everything is fake, everything is double, it's a simulacrum, et cetera, et cetera. There's a real hunger for that. Like show us possibilities in art, show us possibilities in culture that will make us think in a way that doesn't go into these root grooves, algorithmic grooves that were kind of like increasingly being shepherded into. Yeah. And it strikes me too, just like as a sort of broader sort of maybe like, I don't know, industry point, maybe that. Yes, it is very surprising that this, you could call it a kind of art house documentary has made, already made so much money at the box office, it's had a successful first weekend as we sit here. Yes, that's surprising, but on the other hand, it seems to me that documentary as a form has never been more popular thanks to streaming services and stuff like that. I mean, there's a, every day there's a new documentary, we've talked about True Crime on this podcast, there's a way in which the Elizabeth Homestory is a kind of true crime and he's at least sort of skimming on the surface of that genre as well here. And there's a moment in the film where this is a, I guess, part of a reenactment where they're having conversation about whether Billy Evans should be paid for his engagement and the film and he's like, you know, I know people have been paid for this kind of thing. You know, I know that because, you know, I've, and he talks about, because I know a lot of grifters, exactly, I know various, yeah, I'm friends with every scoundrel you could name. He's like, you know, what about Prince Erie? And then they're like, and so one time that the director Lance Oppenheim speaks up, has only speaking roles to be like, that's not a real documentary, like a lot of the stuff that masquerades on as reality on your streaming services is just a series of staging and, you know, he's like explaining media literacy to this idiot, you know. But we are increasingly surrounded by this kind of Spong Con masquerading as reality. Yeah. And so it does seem, you know, perhaps in that connection, interesting to have a figure that is like really interested in at least trying to get at a certain kind of reality. Yeah. And I think true crime is an interesting comparison because of course the promise of true crime is we're going to take you through the details of something and by the end you're going to know what happened. And here you start out with knowing what happened. You get maybe confused about it along the way, but then you get farther and farther from caring about that as the premise or the idea at all. It's more about people and how they are and what their relationships are and what they want from each other and how they're positioned together and all of that. It's a very different kind of reality exposure. And I think a lot of Nathan Fielder's work interacts with the idea of reality TV and which we all know to be a version of reality mixed with their version of fiction. I think Billy Evans is a reality TV performer in this documentary, he has shaped himself to be that. He's like a WWE heel. Yeah. Yeah. He's like Jack's Taylor. Yeah. He's a WWE heel. He's just out there, you know, carrying a gun, saying crazy things. Like that's his role and that's its own version of fake responsibility hunger that maybe thinks it's sincere and maybe becomes sincere. But begins his performance and then ends up as something else. So the loops are endless, the loops indeed are endless. This has been critics at large. We had assistance on this week's episode from Nora Richie. Rian and Corby as our senior producer, our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Our show is mixed by my coachman and we had engineering help today from Pran Bandy, but music by Alexis Quadrado. Listers will be seeing some of you at our live taping if I need a critic at the New York Festival this week and we're so excited for that. And for those of you who won't be there, you will be able to hear it on the pod next week. We've never done this series live before, so really anything could and will happen. And as always, you can find all of our episodes at NewYerger.com/critics. I'm Toby Howell and I'm Neil Freiman and we're ready to show you that business news doesn't have to be boring. So join us on Morning Brew Daily, available wherever you get your podcasts. 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