You Must See ‘You Can See Everything.’ Plus: Judd Apatow!

I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about seeing everything. Today on the show, we are diving all the way into You Can See Everything, directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's new documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. That is one way of describing the movie, at least. Another way is to call it a form-shattering examination of celebrity, nonfiction, science, power, love, and epistemological truth. This is simply one of the most fascinating, entertaining, and provocative movies of the year. We will talk about all of it on the show. Later in this episode, I will be joined by Judd Apatow, legendary comedy filmmaker, showrunner, producer, and documentarian. Judd has not one, but two new docs on Netflix this month. The first, which is now available to watch, is Norm, an intimate portrait of the late Norm MacDonald, one of my favorite comedy voices. Of my lifetime. The second arrives next week. It's called Paralyzed by Hope, the Maria Bamford story, which charts the complex and fascinating life of another brilliant comedy mind. Judd has never been on the Big Picture before, so we had a great time talking about his doc work, his history as a comedy filmmaker, his next big movie with Glenn Powell, and a lot more. Judd is a fantastic interview and a comedy historian, so stick around for that. But first, some movie news, including the Narnia trailer, right after this. Does checking your bank statements feel like digging through a dusty attic full of forgotten subscriptions? And old free trials? Experian can help take the pain out of canceling by handling it for you. Think of it as Operation Get Your Sanity Back. Over 200 subscriptions are cancelable. So get started in the Experian app and see how much you could save. Results will vary. Not all subscriptions eligible. Savings not guaranteed. Paid membership with connected payment account required. See Experian.com for details. Tammy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college. That's why she shops at BJ's Wholesale Club, saving up to $1,000 a month. The 25% off grocery store prices. Beef jerky, microwave meals, laundry pods, even they can't screw up. Have you met my kids? And with BJ's gas, she gets there for less. They call me the road warrior. This is your home, road warrior mom. Home of the save. Join for just $20 at BJ's.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon. Limited time offer, new members only. BJ's, home of the save. Okay, the magician's niece is here. The plumber's daughter. The plumber's daughter sits before us. We have a trailer for Greta Gerwig's new film. We do. Narnia, the magician's nephew. And I have been, this almost felt like waiting to speak with you about Digger. Oh, really? Yeah, where I was like, I wonder what Amanda's going to think of this trailer. Well, in grand big picture tradition, I watched it approximately two minutes ago. But in this case, in my defense, it was not because I was, you know, doing other things, living my life, pursuing hobbies. But because I did. I did see the trailer on my phone, actually via your Instagram story, started to watch it, then realized that a horizontal trailer on the vertical setting of my phone was not the ideal way to watch anything. And I stopped and I waited until I could then watch it full screen on my laptop, which is I'm sure how, you know, the inventors of cinema and Greta Gerwig intended it. Yeah. So let's talk about what we thought about the trailer. And then after that, I'm going to share. I'm going to share some feelings about the way that we consume trailers per your note about you. So this, of course, is the first story in the C.S. Lewis chronology. Everyone just waiting with bated breath for your thoughts on how we consume trailers. I mean, they absolutely are. That's why they're listening. What did you think of this trailer? Listen, the stairway is directed right to me, even though it would seemingly be just directed at rock dads. But stairway is very big in my house. Right now, stairway to heaven, the Led Zeppelin song, which is which soundtracks this trailer. Yeah. Are people listening to this review of a trailer without watching the trailer themselves? Of course they are. People are entering this space with no context. They're firing it up and be like, what's going on in movies? I'll check out what Amanda and Sean have to say about the latest movie news. I appreciate that. But I also want more for everyone. Well, you know, this is broadcasting. Sure. We provide context for everything. Here we are. Forty two on Netflix. Anyway, stairway. Yes. Everything else. I mean, I just I do not like CGI worlds. I just don't like CGI worlds. It doesn't matter who's making them. It doesn't matter what the story is. I would say the visual aspects of this that are imagined that have that video game quality are not to my taste. I think I knew that that was going to happen in one way or another as soon as this project was imagined. And obviously, I've just seen a trailer on a laptop. I did not see the full movie in IMAX, but we've been talking a lot about identifying what is your taste and what is not your taste. This is just that aspect of it visually is not my taste. So I was a little bummed by that. Remind me again, you didn't read these books growing up or you did? I haven't read The Magician's Nephew. I did read Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe. OK. And I had a full paperback set of these books or at least that series. I'm not really sure where The Magician's Nephew fits in chronologically. And I also had to go to a school. I went to a school where you had to read the Old and the New Testament. So, you know, I'm steeped in some of this. Wow. You didn't know this? How did that go? Some of it stayed with me literarily. Yeah. And some of it I've rejected. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that has really come to the surface with the news of this adaptation is that I don't think I fully realized that Greta was a person of faith. And that, you know, that these novels obviously are very much an allegory for Christian faith. And that's really fascinating to wend into what I think is going to end up being the biggest Netflix movie of all time, whether it's the highest grossing or the most watched. We'll see. But it seems like it's a very expensive proposition. I really like this trailer for one simple reason. I just think that Greta clearly has a take on the movie. Yeah. And the take is to move the storyline 50 years into the future to post-war England, to include a kind of rock and roll, rock opera centric vibe to the filmmaking. It looks a little bit like if Todd Haynes tried to make Lord of the Rings. And there's something appealing to me about that. I agree with you about the CGI. I think a lot of that stuff is, looks sort of almost unfinished to me. And it's in real contrast in this story, unlike a lot of other stories like it, because the stuff that takes place in the real world of England at that time, I thought looked quite good. Yeah. And so I'm not thrilled about that. The question I've been asking myself since watching it is, what is the alternative when making a movie like this? And I have read The Magician's Nephew recently. And so in my head, as I was reading it for the first time, I'd never read the book before. I was thinking of many of the worlds that the two children go to as more forest-like, for lack of a better word. And maybe they would be fantastical in certain ways. And there would be these kind of thrilling, phantasmagoric moments with the White Queen. But I don't think I envision them as like this kind of blur of objects floating all over the place. Outer space in many. I mean, there are kind of a space movie video game reference to a lot of them. I think I was hoping for the Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson style interpretation, which is using an incredibly beautiful part of the natural world on Earth to represent an imagined world. Yeah. To me, that doesn't automatically make it good, though. And I'll tell you how I know, because I just recently watched the Chronicles of Narnia trilogy of films that came out in the 2000s. Sure. They're not good. They're shot in real places. But the story isn't like the film is not well made. It's not well told. Totally. I think just to the point of what, how to realize a world that is imagined and only on the page. And, you know, again, as I said, CGI would not be my choice. Yeah. Yeah. The other alternative, obviously, would be to even if you don't set it in the natural world to just use more practical effects, you know, to just create more like more puppets, I guess, more things that. We've been on a puppet run. This year, you know, I just watched the new VHS and there's a whole segment that is the Jim Henson Creature Shop, like it helps to create. It wasn't a great segment, unfortunately. But, yeah, there is a we're in a puppet moment. I'm pretty torn on this. The my other take on it is related to the point that you were making, which is when we were kids and you would go to the movie theater and you would watch the trailers. That was the first time you would see the trailer on the biggest screen imaginable with loud music. This movie has licensed Stairway to Heaven, which has never been licensed in any movie or television show ever. And I'm sure they paid an extraordinary sum of money to Page and Plant to get this song in the trailer, I think. And it effectively conveys at least her idea of the movie, you know, the sort of majesty and rock god vibe that they're going for. But I watched this on a laptop. You watch this on a laptop. I then went and watched it on a large television after that just to get a little bit more of the vibe. We complain about movies on Netflix all the time because of the compression and the way that they look and the way that the audio is very rarely as good as you want it to be. And so it feels weird to be consistently judging trailers, especially those that are not meant to be seen this big in this way. And so maybe I'm just giving a little grace to Greta Gerwig, whose movies I like, although there was a similar reaction to the Barbie trailer. You may recall people were like, what the fuck is this? That's true, though. That movie was made very practically. Yes. And once you saw it. on a big screen, you could tell. Also. You know, the response to the Barbie trailer online had many layers. Yeah. Before you added in Hillary Clinton, so. Right, right. Because that's a story about a woman getting, what happens to her? In Barbie or Hillary Clinton? Let's move it. It's a different pod. Keep moving. Yeah, different pod. What happens to Barbie at the end? She goes to the gynecologist? Yes. Yeah. Well, she goes to Century City. That's right. Which when I was recently at Century City and I was like, you know what? That was funny. That was a good joke. Great ending. Narnia the Magician's Nephew comes to theaters February 12th. Yeah. Will this movie be a big box office hit? I have no idea. I was watching this and thinking, oh, it's a children's movie, which is obvious, but because of Greta Gerwig, because of Barbie, because of, you can, it is, it is coded and energetic. It was communicated to me that this is for children, which is wonderful because I want good things to take my child to. So I started doing the math of like, is this going to be too scary for my four-year-old, but probably will go anyway because he'll just stand up and yell stairway. I hope it's in the actual film. And so in that sense, like a kid's movie that people, that, that is made with effort that people want to go see, there's some possibility. I believe February 12th is. I think it's going to be a super bowl weekend because the super bowl is on Valentine's day, which is another thing. It's also going up against, uh, you know, Valentine's day people, whatever they're doing. That's not something you participate in. Um, I do though. Don't you feel a little lame now? Like getting a babysitter for Valentine's day proper. Um, I do. I don't, I guess I haven't really thought about that. Why? Just because you're feeling like you're in a different era of your life. Well, I'm just kind of romance gone away. What do you, what do you mean? Well, I'm just like, are we really gonna? Spend this much money to do it's, you know, it's kind of like it's new year's eve. It's like a holiday for newbies, you know, and like we're married, we can do it another time, but are we actually going to be observing Valentine's day on Valentine's day? No, I know what you mean by that. Yeah. Um, yeah. Okay. But also this is the M night Shyamalan Nicholas sparks weekend, I believe. Is remain all, I thought room was the fifth. Oh, so they're doing it early and the just advertising it as Valentine's day. This is like resident evil coming out September 25th. Yeah. I think remain is the fifth. They are saying this Valentine's day in the trailer. But you are right. That is February 5th. Um, so yeah, I think you're right about the kids moving. And I'm glad you pointed that out. I was on another text chain with some friends talking about this trailer. And a lot of people are like, I'm pretty concerned about these visuals. Um, and my, my response was what you just said. I'm like, this is a movie for eight year olds, you know, and I'm sure it'll be a movie for 40 year olds who read the CS Lewis novels growing up and have a big emotional attachment to them. Or who have eight year olds. Um, will not surprise you to learn that my daughter was like, put this on right now. Like this is the most important thing that's ever happened to me. Um, and also Aslan, the, the lion, that's like, that is not only a God to CS Lewis and to Greta Gerwig, but also to my daughter. Have we decided on a Halloween costume yet? Is it too late for the lion? Now we've pivoted to like a fairy. I don't know. Okay. Every day is a new idea. Well, since it's a weekend, it seems like there could be several options. Yeah. Yeah. We also have multiple events that day. So because of that, well, maybe we'll cycle through some of our options. I haven't figured out my costume yet. Though I'm strongly considering Elizabeth Holmes. Um, so yeah, we'll see about the magician's nephew. Uh, a little bit of news that just broke this morning. Yeah. Zendaya to star in Alex Garland's new sci-fi movie for a 24, not the movie he's making right now, which is an adaptation of Elden Ring, the video game, but his next movie after that, which I guess starts shooting next year. You say what? She has cool taste. And I like that she's doing these things. Even if I have a mixed record on Alex Garland. Alex Garland's, uh, directorial work. I don't. He's a genius. One of my favorite living filmmakers. Uh, this is very exciting. This is very exciting. This is this generation of actors is doing everything. I hope they would. They're cool. This is so exciting. I mean, come on. Yeah. She doesn't have to do that. It's true. She could go make a stupid franchise movie. And she could be like, all right, well, Spider-Man's slowing down. I know. No, he's doing Fred Astaire. Come on. That's true. I'm excited. All right. I'm excited. I'm excited. The kids are doing great. Yeah. This is such a relief. Two thumbs up. This show is going to go on maybe three or four more episodes after the X-Men movie. You know? So this is going to shoot in 2027. Yeah. So are you thinking? I think the Elden Ring movie is 2028. So maybe this is like coming later that year or in 2029. I don't know. I'm just trying to project how long we're doing this. Okay. Well, we'll see. I mean, maybe, maybe actually what this could be is it could be a much more stripped down movie since he's got a huge cast. He's got a huge production of Elden Ring going. So maybe it'll be like a more of an Ex Machina kind of film. That would be wonderful. And then he can squeeze it in between the release of Elden Ring, which unfortunately for you, I think will also feature a lot of CGI. It's an adaptation of a video game. It is. Yeah. It's okay. I've never played it though. And I think I don't want to say anything about what I think it is because I don't know what it is. I wanted to give the listeners at home an update on how we're going to be trying to cover movies for the rest of this month too, because it's been a little confusing even for me. I had some big plans for what to do, when to talk. I was talking to Eileen last night because she's now seeing two movies in two consecutive days. And she's, so she's seeing, you can see everything in five hours. Okay. And then she's seeing, she's seeing Digger tomorrow, but she was like, should I see Digger or La Bola Negra? And she was kind of stymied because she could, La Bola Negra is not wide, wide. Like it's not in like every regal theater, for example, but it's in some AMC. So you said go see Digger before it is removed from theaters. And begins its Academy screener campaign extraordinaire, which listen, that is happening. Oh my God. It's really, really intense. I was telling you. Well, I know, but I, I wonder if we're almost going to boomerang because this is so intense now. People will be like too much. Yeah. People are like, no, no, no, no. Digger is like a masterpiece. The most important thing I've ever seen. You know, 45 nominations. Neil Young said it's the greatest film ever made. That was awesome. Right. Neil Young is the fucking man. So are we going to come back around? To like, hmm, interesting. Some points were made, but I don't know if this is the best thing ever. I am also like once, once the movie we're about to talk about gets out in the world, once some other movies that we've seen get back in the world, but I, you know, the, the Digger Hive, you guys are doing the work. You are doing your work. Yeah. And as I said to a friend, you know, you got to have a reason to get up in the morning. So I'm glad they found it. Completely. Thank God for Neil Young continuing to wake up every morning to work on behalf of Digger Um, she's seeing Digger. Uh, and, and that, that is related to what I was trying to set up here, which is that we'll cover La Bola Negra a little later. It is officially in movie theaters, a good number of movie theaters around the country, but not a lot of movie theaters. Um, and I think it's going to have a pretty long lifespan in movie theaters, but we'll probably more likely cover it when it hits Netflix. Um, so that we can have what I think is a movie that is worthy of a big, long conversation. Yes. Um, that said, we would encourage you to go see it in. Okay. It is a movie that deserves to be seen on the largest screen possible for not a number of reasons, but there is a, just, there's a scale to it. Agreed. So, um, related to that, the original intention was to cover Fjord on the show this week, and I was confused and I'm still a little unclear on how much Fjord is going to expand. Uh, it's in three theaters in Los Angeles right now. I don't know if it's going to more over time. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but I did, what I didn't want to do is another movie that I think is worthy. I think it's worthy of big discussion and has already provoked a lot of debate already. Um, but I, I don't want to do that because that's annoying, I think, for the listeners when they can't see it at the movie at all. And it's not, I don't even know what the horizon of release is for that movie. So maybe we'll just table it until we know what it is. And it would be a very text-based discussion of what is actually in the movie and how it is shown in the questions raised. So there, there would be no frame of reference, unlike our spirited Narnia trailer breakdown. That's right. Well, everyone can, can check in on that. It is a little confusing. Confusing that Fjord, the, the release schedule for Fjord. I don't get it. I don't know. I'm not sure I follow. I mean, you and I were speculating that it, that's a neon film. It won the Palme d'Or and has, was tipped for best picture from the, the very beginning. But now it sort of feels like neon is putting its resources elsewhere. I agree. Well, I mean, it's got artificial. Exactly. And so, you know, now it does feel like a lot of, and they have other films, obviously, but it does feel like some of that energy is going over there. The other thing that is coming out this weekend, this weekend is the Devil's Restoration that Ken Russell filmed that I had a chance to see at Cannes. Chris and I will talk about that on the show at the end of next week. Okay. So when we do our annual horror episode, The Devil's is in many ways a horror film. So we will get into it there. Whalefall. Yeah. And Sense and Sensibility are out this weekend. They're both being covered on the show on Monday. Correct. Tuesday, I guess. The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, the new John Turturro film directed by Noah Segan and Misty Green, Chris Rock's movie, we'll talk about at the end of this month. But all of these movies are either. They're in theaters or expanding this weekend. And so we have yet another weekend where there's just a ton to see, a ton of options. And yet, I think there's only one movie to see this weekend, if you can see it. Yes. Correct. That movie is You Can See Everything. So I'll give you some details in this movie before we dig into it. Directed by Fielder and Oppenheim, as I mentioned, the film stars Elizabeth Holmes, Nathan Fielder, Billy Evans, and others. Yes. Okay. We're going to have a brief, non-spoiler discussion. of this movie. - Okay. - And then we will spoil the fuck out of it. - Okay. It is impossible to talk about in full. And you and I have not discussed this movie yet. I guess that's true. No, we had one text conversation about one aspect of it. Did we? Okay, I don't even remember that. The story of the movie, I'll share with you. 34 days before she's sent to prison, notorious Silicon Valley founder Elizabeth Holmes invites a skeptical film crew to document her every move. What begins as an intimate portrait of an enigmatic felon soon becomes a mind-bending three-year journey into the abyss. Now, for those listening at home who don't know anything about Elizabeth Holmes, I'll provide some context. Sean, tell us some facts. Elizabeth Holmes founded the blood testing company Theranos in 2003. She raised $700 million up to $9 billion on false claims that its proprietary machines could run a wide range of tests using only a few drops of blood. The company secretly relied on conventional third-party commercial equipment and manipulated results. In January of 2022, a federal jury convicted Holmes of conspiracy to defraud investors and three counts of wire fraud. In November of 2022, she was sentenced to 135 months in federal prison. That is effectively where the movie starts. Now, Elizabeth Holmes, you might be thinking to yourself, gosh, I've seen the Alex Gibney documentary. I read John Carreyrou's Bad Blood. I watched the Hulu series, The Dropout. How much more Elizabeth Holmes do I really need in my life? Is she really worthy of a three-hour documentary? All these years, and I would say maybe not, but that's not entirely what this is. So I'll start by asking you, what did you think of You Can See Everything? So this is the movie of the year, right? For at least from the perspective of this podcast and the things that we're interested in. And I think it's the movie of the year for two reasons. One, just because of what it accomplishes as a film and an exploration of its subjects, which are Elizabeth Holmes, Nathan Fielder, documentary filmmaking, the nature of truth, quote unquote, how we speak to each other as people, and many other interesting questions that bubble up as you watch it. I think the other way that it is the, quote, movie of the year, which is different than my favorite movie, though this is one of my favorite movies of the year, is just that it is very much of this moment of movie, both of moviemaking, but also, societally and what it says about where we are as a country and as people who spend time on the internet, certainly. - Yeah. - But then also, you know, it's released, the surprise quality of it, A24, really just like finding the heat once again. This particular class of filmmakers led by Nathan Fielder, but also Lance Oppenheim. You could put the Safdies in there, I think. Emma Stone and Dave McCrary as producers. So it's just, it's kind of located everything that is big and exciting and surprising and new about movies right now. - Yeah, it is all of those things. Like it is clearly a very buzzy movie that has been well marketed and well handled. I shared on the show my experience of seeing it for the first time at Telluride, which I found to be like an utter delight and mind blowing in such a fun way. And for the most part, I think the surprises of the movie, you also were not revealed to you beforehand, right? - Nope. - And so it's hard to communicate about the movie. And I'm quite curious to see what the reception of the movie, how different it is when the cat is out of the bag. And I would imagine that by the time this episode is out, the cat will be out of the bag about some of the choices that the filmmakers make. But I echo your thoughts entirely. I think this is, it's very rare for a movie to metastasize a feeling in the culture to the sense that you, we don't feel like we can trust anything anymore. And as someone who's been obsessed with documentary for a very long time, I don't spend enough time thinking about what its goals are and what its purpose is. And this is a movie that is entirely concerned with the idea of what is the truth? And is there such a thing as an objective truth, especially when it comes to human failure and human frailty. And it's a movie that is about a person who we think of as a con person, a con woman. - Mm-hmm. - And. And it's a movie about a woman and not a man, which is really interesting. - It is a movie about a woman. - Yeah. - But made by a man with a very particular sensibility around the truth and human failure. - Yeah. - And all of Nathan Fielder's work feels like it has been working towards this, but this movie also strips out, I think a lot of the artificial convention that he builds around his projects. And I think this is really where he and Oppenheim's collaboration- - Exactly. - Becomes, makes it more special. And I'm such a Nathan allegiant. I think everything he's done is like at worst fascinating and at best among the smartest and most creative thing that we have in movie and TV and film culture. But Lance is a real documentarian. He's a proper documentarian. And so his filmmaking skill and style colliding with what Nathan wants to do when getting this really intimate look at the Holmes family and Holmes' story, and then everything that transpires after that makes this just a special stew. And there's not a lot of examples of this where you've got two distinct creative figures who were like, "Hey, we have some stuff in common, but we have some stuff that is different. What if we worked together to execute on a project like this?" And so in that respect too, I think it's like a wonderful, like a sign of the future. Like I would love to see more people trying to do something like this. - Totally, yes. It expands the Nathan Fielder project while also engaging with it and exploring what it means to have watched all of those things. I do feel like I've had a lot of conversations with people who say, like the Nathan Fielder of it all makes me very anxious. I can't really sit through that stuff. I can't bear it. And I don't think that the project is in that tone because you have, you know, Lance and his team as intermediary and also kind of studying that tone itself. - Yes. - So you don't have to be a disciple of Nathan Fielder in order to enjoy this. I mean, it's a bigger tent. But also if you know the work, then there is a level of richness to it. - Yes, I can definitely affirm that. So there's something interesting about it that happens in the opening moments of a movie that is not really a giveaway of any sort before we start really digging into the text, which is that the film opens in a very traditional documentary style, very verite style, where the first thing that we see is Billy Evans, Elizabeth Holmes' husband talking on the phone. - But I think not legally because of money reasons. I don't- - Oh, they're not actually married. I don't know if they are, yes. - I never heard them specify that. - And I think that they probably are not because- - Their finances are kept separate, I guess. They're together though, and they have a family together. - Yes. - They have children together. And he's on the phone speaking. And then we see Holmes with her child through her son's crib and she's behind bars. That's like the first time we see her. Very purposeful choice. And the- The film starts to play out in the first few minutes and we think that this is gonna be a pure fly on the wall doc about how these people are living in these final 34 days before the family's broken apart. And then there's a cut to Nathan Fielder who is standing about 10 feet away from the family in the living room, looking on quite like faux malevolently. - Yeah. - Like a figure of doom and the score shifts. And- - As I was watching this for the first time and I've now seen it twice. I was like, okay, this is gonna be a Nathan Fielder thing. Like we're doing the rehearsal season three. And I wasn't against that, but I was like, okay, this is- And the movie I think actually continues to set you up for what it thinks you think it's gonna be. And then it kind of drains that because to your point about this not being just like another Nathan Fielder thing. - Yeah. - The way he comports himself in this film as he becomes a major participant in speaking to Elizabeth and Billy. - Yeah. - And the other people who appear in the movie, he's not really performing in the way that he usually does. He's not going for laughs. He's not doing that like very purposeful, awkward, if I say this to you, what weird response will I emit from you? - Right. - Like he actually is working more as a journalist or like a detective in the film. - Yeah. - In a way that I wasn't expecting, which I think is what you're saying is like complicates the movie in such a great way. Where I'm not sure if we're getting the real Nathan, but we're getting a different Nathan. That I thought was like a brilliant choice on the filmmakers part. - Yes, and there's even one scene where you can, where he, the character is kind of introduces himself into the scene and to the narrative of what you're watching. And I remember thinking, okay, so this, a normal documentary filmmaker would not do this, would just observe the moment, keep the camera running. And that would be enough. And the moment itself is very telling, but it reveals something. Something about Nathan that he inserts himself into it and also reveal something about the structure of the film. And so you're already thinking about documentary choices, but you can also tell that it's not quite a character. There is something impulsive about the moment. So you also know that you're getting a different Nathan than the rehearsal. - I would just like to add something, which is that at the screening, Amanda, you and I were at afterwards, Lance and Nathan gave a cue. with Bill Hader and they set up that the original plan was not to have Nathan so in front of the camera and they kept feeling Elizabeth pulling him in and pulling him in to a certain point where they just gave away. He said the same thing at our Q&A and he basically said that Billy and Elizabeth would just turn to him and ask for his point of view on something while they were making the movie and that that invariably kind of drew him into the conversations which is interesting. I just want to say I was talking with a friend of the show recently and that friend suggested maybe we should be skeptical of everything here in a way that maybe I hadn't fully thought about and that there may be even more construction going on even more artifice going on than we realize but I will just say for the first time that I watched it I received it as documentary like I received there are parts of it obviously that extend well beyond that that we will talk about but I didn't feel like I was being put on when I was watching the movie. What did you how do you feel about that? I don't think that I was I guess I watched it as self-aware documentary. I was aware of the construction and there are a few choices that they make in the edit to make you aware of the people behind the camera and their involvement and not you know not just Nathan himself and so I think Nathan to me is a character throughout and it's funny that moment where you cut to him the first time you see him and there is this kind of like overly foreboding score but in my head reflexively the Curb Your Enthusiasm score just started playing because like there is a moment of humor in it and I do think that the filmmaking communicates some sort of structure and something that and choices. It's designed but is it fake I think is the question that I'm asking. Like the person was insinuating to me that like some of this might be fake. Oh that they staged it. I don't I'm not sure that I saw it that way. I don't I'm not sure why I didn't but I think because some of that self-awareness that you're describing makes me think that that would be really elaborate. The other thing is that I'm not sure that Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans would be able to operate successfully inside of a fake environment. I don't know that they really or or are they operating inside a fake environment all of the time. Well right. Could they operate in someone else's fake environment I guess is the question you know and you know as Jack pointed out that the fact that they are constantly pulling Nathan into the narrative themselves you know suggests a level of awareness and I mean and that is one of the ultimate questions of this this entire project right is like what is purposeful what's manipulation like who's in control and the movie definitely kept me guessing on that throughout. What do you think about Elizabeth Holmes? What do I think about Elizabeth Holmes? So it's just roughly my age and I guess I have a lot in common. Thanks so much. So thank you. One of my friends one of my best friends you know her went to high school with Elizabeth Holmes and so anytime she was in the news my friend would always text me and say Oh I know. Oh yeah. She would always say I knew she was a fake because she was only in honors chemistry and not AP. Wow. Which I What a kill shot. Which is a kill shot and also is just all I've ever thought about whenever she comes up. But so I was in New York working in magazines for the the first round of Theranos and the and all of the photographs including the very famous one that is referenced in the documentary and I was actually working at Glamour when she was a woman of the year and was scheduled to receive the award on the night that John Carreyrou published his first That night. That night. Yeah. And so if memory serves we're going to have to do it. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't really know what to do and then I believe that the only person who would present her award was Jared Leto. So I listen I'm pretty sure I'm right on that. Wow. That's a great story. I've never heard that. People can correct me. Did you interact with her at all? No, I didn't. I was assigned to some other woman of the year that year. I can't remember who. Wow. Interesting. You can't remember her name. Which is just to say that I've consumed a lot of Elizabeth Holmes content from all different areas as you know as a person watching this story in real time who doesn't know anything about science as a journalist who is confronting some of that like what's true and what's not here and also just how are we going to present this to the world even you know I was just adjacent to it and I did watch The Drapout so I do think that she is a character of our generation. No question. And so I was interested just in a plain documentary about her especially from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim. I was like oh okay if you guys want to do this sure I would love to know more. Yeah. I'm very similar. I didn't work at Glamour and I didn't encounter her in that respect but otherwise same. I thought she was I'm not sure that I thought she was fascinating but I certainly thought that story was fascinating and I didn't listen to the podcast and I didn't read the book but I did watch the doc and watch the television series and I think she's representative of kind of um web tech founder 2.0 syndrome and we're in we're in kind of 3.0 now you know we're in the Sam Altman era of this sort of thing but she precedes him she's not Steve Jobs and she's not Bill Gates but she is she was literally working in the in the image of those figures and aspiring to be just like them and there's always people who reach high and fall hard and she's a classic version of that Icarus story. And it is also it was 2015 I believe the end of 2015 so we are in scammer 2.0 era and we are also in the Donald Trump is running for president but he can't possibly be president right phase of and then fast forward a more innocent time yes but and a time where we didn't understand the world that we were living in where people like Elizabeth Holmes could thrive I think that sets her up really well for what this movie is attempting to do because um you know she was convicted of some of the charges yes but not all of the charges and that's very important to her and Billy in terms and they clearly have some things that they really want to get across to Nathan and Lance in the making of the movie and I think this is probably the time to say that we're going to start to spoil the movie um I think we did a pretty good job yeah this is I could not agree more with the movie of the year sentiment it's certainly among my five favorite movies I've seen this year I've seen it twice now the second time was very different and I can talk about that as we get into it and how in terms of how I received it and what I liked more or less or whatever but um it is a hearty recommendation from both of us to check out the movie we will spoil it now so do not complain because uh there is some stuff in here that you're going to want to see for the first time without knowing it okay three two one here we go um there's something really interesting about the truth aspect of the movie because one of the key turning points very early on in the film is we see in bed Elizabeth and Billy reading a New York Times profile by Amy Chozik that has been written about Elizabeth Holmes yes and there's a very particular moment where there's a quote in the piece that says at one point I tell her that I heard Jennifer Lawrence had pulled out of portraying her in a movie Holmes replied almost reflectively they're not playing me they're playing a character I created now both Billy and Elizabeth seize on this moment but Billy a little bit more aggressively than Elizabeth and Elizabeth seems confused like that's not something I said but then Billy starts imagining what he believes she did say and then they start taking issue with the entirety of this profile it's been written right and they say they've recorded tapes because their crisis team told them yes yes I believe that Risa Heller is name checked at least there's a Risa yeah would make sense that that's the person who was consulting with them on how to handle her pre-prison experience but this quote and the nature of reporting becomes this kind of stand-in for the big question of is Elizabeth Holmes a lying fraud or is she a person who is just sort of like railroaded by a series of powerful men and people or in competitors and people who wanted to take down a strong young woman with a big idea that could change the world and um it's a really interesting and skeptical movie about journalism as well I would say in terms of the way that she's framed well also trying to do journalism itself and finding the act of journalism very hard and ultimately subjective which I think any real journalist would tell you that it that it ultimately is you try to get as close to the truth as possible you try to lay out real facts and there there are still facts in the world but how you put them together it really depends on the person it does there's something interesting too about Holmes at this stage of her career we've talked about this a lot because of the work that your husband does because of the work that we've done over the years there is a difference between a brokered profile and an act of investigative journalism and Elizabeth Holmes was kind of the subject of both over time right in this case this is really more of like her team probably sees the New York Times profiles and opportunities kind of like humanize her and redeem her before she goes to prison right the Times may have a more skeptical point of view but there's also been so much reporting about what she's done she's literally gone to trial um We never hear from the New York Times reporter in this movie. And the New York Times reporter is not named in the movie, which I noted. Probably purposeful. I assume legally. Yeah. But ultimately, that person never provides the notes that were taken from the piece, nor do Holmes and Evans provide the supposed audio recordings of the interview. And so I latched onto this part of the story so deeply because I've just done this work before. And I've written profiles where I've relied on my notes, and I've written profiles where I've relied on the audio recording. And neither is 100% accurate, is what I would say. Like, even the way that you frame contextually a quote. And the movie is also, in addition to being this kind of fascinating portrait of all this stuff, it's a movie about language and the way that we use language to deceive each other or the way that we can be misunderstood by not clearly communicating. I think about this all the time on the show. I feel like I say something on the show and people are like, you said this! And I'm like, I didn't say that. But you hear what you want to hear, right? Yes. They're fixating also on the. The I in the sentence. They identify, they're playing a character I created. And they say, maybe you said they're playing a character they created. But they have one very specific linguistic, but, you know, important, because it changes the meaning of the quote, complaint, that could be clarified by tapes. And they would say over and over and over and over again that they recorded all of the. We've got the tapes. We've got the tapes. They never produced the tapes. At the very. At the very end, the tapes were never produced. Yeah. So, you know, then you're like, there is. It's plausible and it could even be proven and they're making like a decent point, but also they don't have the evidence. So what are you supposed to. No, neither side has the evidence. It clearly animates Fielder's imagination around this because he is looking for any opportunity in either direction to say, someone's working against her. Mm-hmm. She's not receiving any kind of empathy in this experience or here's a smoking gun. Yeah. This just confirms what everyone thinks, which is that you're duplicitous, that you are working only in service of yourself and you're always constantly claiming that you're being. You're Cassandra, right? Mm-hmm. That you're, you know, you're not to be trusted. No, Cassandra is right. Is it that no one believes Cassandra? Yeah. Sorry. What's the opposite of that? Boy Who Cried Wolf? Yes. I think so. I think that that's a major part of. Is that social reckoning? Yes, that's right. That's why I'm thinking of it. We see also like the artifice starts to appear where there's a moment where Billy and Liz are still miked. Yeah. And they go and have a conversation in another room. It's really the only time that the documentary does this. Because at some point, Billy and Liz become aware and ask them to start cutting the mics. Yes. But in this one, they're having a conversation. And they're also having a conversation about what's being shown because Liz is working on a memoir throughout the beginning. And so she has her laptop and she's kind of trying to cover it. And so the conversation is about Liz saying they were trying to film or they were filming what I was writing, but I don't want my memoir as a part of this. But I don't. The whole point of this project is that I'm supposed to be revealing, you know, to show that I have nothing to hide, that I'm not duplicitous. And, you know, Billy takes the other side of you got to stick up for yourself and you got to decide what you want and you don't want. In pretty short order, it's clear that Billy is going to be a much bigger part of this movie than I ever would have imagined. And that he is a very interesting character, to say the least. In the aftermath of that secret conversation where they sort of de-mic about five minutes into it, Billy kind of takes center stage in the doc. He. It's clear that he sort of runs the household in a lot of ways. It's clear that he is a kind of. Protector figure for Elizabeth Holmes, that he is clearly a bit obsessive, that he shares a kind of unbroken eye contact oddity in terms of the way that he, like, communicates and interacts with people. Zach Woods would play him in the fictionalized version of this. Very much. Very well, I think. Yes. There's a moment where, you know, the movie starts to become this kind of series of personal encounters between Nathan and the two of them in their own home while they're attending to their children or having other people or taking Zoom calls. And at a certain point, Nathan's like, what are we going to do next? And Billy's like, well, I'm going to the gym. You can come with me if you want. And in my head, I was like, why the fuck would we go to the gym with this guy? Who cares? Again, a very important moment in the movie because this is a person who would love to be filmed while working out. And that also, I think you can see Nathan kind of coming to an understanding that we're going to show everything up to and including Billy in the shower. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Full frontal. Uh-huh. In full. It's so funny how, I mean, that is a very funny and quite, and literally as well as emotionally revealing part of the shower, but of the film. But I looked at it and I was like, all right, so there you go. Cool. And both you and my husband have like really fixated on this part of it. It's such a huge choice. In fact, I saw the movie a second time. And I don't really care that much about it. I ran into Matt Bellany and Craig Horlbeck outside because they were seeing it for the first time. And Matt was like, the big question is why the dick in the shower? You know what I was like? But this is kind of, this is sort of a summation of like the philosophy behind dick pics in general, which is like the people receiving them, the women at least, like don't really care. We don't understand. But the men are like, this is the most important thing I can send you. Well, it's related to the Nathan experience though, for me. Sure, yeah, of course. Because Nathan throughout all of his work, and this isn't the only kind of recurring theme that will come up, but he is always like kind of the beleaguered man, the lesser than, the less masculine. He's a man who's intimidated and also very lovelorn in a lot of ways. And he keeps kind of circling back to like Billy's success with women. He has a conversation with Billy about meeting Liz for the first time. And he's got a lot of serious questions about the nature of their meet cute. And he seems suspicious. He's clearly- Well, sure, because they did meet after Elizabeth Holmes was, if not, I don't believe she had been through the legal process yet. Right, but she's been disgraced. She's been disgraced effectively. Yeah, so pretty thoroughly. Yes, and all of this stuff is all working together. The conversation that they're having about their meet cute at a party where Liz is wearing a hat and she's got a bandaid on her face and he didn't know who she was. He didn't know who she was. And we start to become really suspicious of Billy in general, that he seems like a bit of a huckster figure. We learn that because Nathan directly asks him about it, that he comes from some wealth, some personal wealth. And that he's a very ambitious person who's trying to make a name for himself in some ways. And so he has kind of latched on to Elizabeth Holmes so much so that they're in a relationship together. They have a family together. And the flip side of this is that the movie also seems quite fascinated by what could also be described as like their very pure and true love story. And where is the line between obsession, need, what decisions you make when you have a family, and how you commit in a way. This part of the movie is so interesting to me. And it's not the most, it's not the stuff that's going to get the headlines, but watching it a second time, whatever it is between Billy Evans and Elizabeth Holmes, actually I feel like is maybe what fascinates Nathan the most, even beyond his own personal interactions with some of these people. Right. Because there are times when you're looking at these two people and you're like, this is the phoniest, most bullshit relationship of all time. Right. And then there are other times, especially because of the way that they're filmed, where you're like, this is a real family that loves each other. Right. Yeah. Despite all of the absolute weirdness of their lives. And so I really liked the movie as this kind of like push-pull between those two dynamics. Yeah, I think to me, the movie is, I agree that what's going on between them was kind of like this central question, because in some cases or from some perspectives, what's going on between them ultimately answers. If you could understand it, then you could understand everything that's going on in this situation. And you could understand the questions that the movie asks and wants to answer. I do, it's funny, like all of the family stuff, they do seem like they love each other very much. I was affected by it very, very differently, which was just, I found it incredibly sad. And the film, to its credit, but also maybe to its manipulation, but then also maybe to Elizabeth Holmes' manipulation to agree to do it in the first place, is very, very aware that you are watching a family and two small childrens and this tiny, chunky baby who is nursing Elizabeth Holmes, like with Elizabeth Holmes all the time. And then it's just kind of like slung over her shoulder in the last time that they're going to be together, like as children. It's a huge part of the question of the movie is why has this family in this, the most vulnerable moment of their lives agreed to allow film crew and celebrity Nathan Fielder into their lives? Yeah. Nathan, to his credit, seems to be baffled by the decision to allow the family into their, you know, them into their lives. Ask several times. Like, do you want me to go away? Do you guys want a minute? Are you sure that you want us here? This is your last time before you're going to prison for 11 years. That's her sentence. Yeah. And there's, sometimes we see them together when they're talking about their work and they're throwing a lot of buzzwords around and they're talking in jargon jargony fashion, but in the way that the film is cut in this very kind of excited way where there's one montage in particular where it seems like they're kind of building Theranos 2.0 out loud. Yeah, at some point during that, and I've only seen the film once, but during that montage, I thought to myself, is the reveal going to be that they figured out the technology? I was like, oh, is the reveal that actually Theranos is real and they fixed it? And like, congratulations, the world is saved? Well, they're speaking with such excitement and such confidence that at first it couldn't seem like an insight into, wow, are these people actually pretty smart? And then the reveal is actually like, well, they're con people in a way. You know what? They're aspirational. They're honors chemistry. Sure, yeah. They're trying to build something and the truth is that many people, which is cited by one of the scientists who appeared later in the film, who have big dreams and big ambitions, they start saying what they can do before they can do it to kind of manifest something. And that, you know, if you looked at Elizabeth Holmes in a more generous light, you could say, well, she was pushing us towards an inevitable future that we need to fight for. I don't believe that, of course. But the movie kind of also jostles with that concept. The one thing I just wanted to say quickly about Elizabeth and Billy too that I find interesting is like, you see this in a lot of relationships. Two people who are obsessed with each other but maybe don't understand each other, but they're obsessed with the idea of being with that person and that they then like compel themselves to be in that relationship forever. I find that very interesting. I see this all the time. Like subjective, from my own subjective perspective. Yeah. But I, there were times when I'm watching the movie where I'm like, Billy really loves this person. And there are other times where I'm like, Billy is the biggest bullshit artist in the history of time. And he just wants as much attention as he can possibly acquire. So he'll do anything he can, including taking care of two children by himself after his wife goes to prison. Yeah. To prove the point that he needs and desires this level of attention. And I love that the movie jostles with that. This isn't even like the most interesting stuff in the movie per se, but my mind is going to it as we're talking through it. You know, I've found the things that I keep thinking about are like the shots of the kids. Yeah. Which are like used very purposefully. And then I start wondering, okay, but does, did they know that that would be affecting to me? And is part of this campaign here of look, you're, whatever you think about, you know, prison or Theranos, you're separating like a young family. That's right. Also, again, this is based on one movie and the footage that was chosen, but I'm like, I don't, Billy seems like a good dad. He's offering Nathan Fielder waffles and bagels on a regular basis, which is very, very funny. Very dad, coded. You don't offer people waffles. I have a waffle maker. Do you, when was the last time that you used the waffle maker? For guests, never. My daughter and I made waffles a month ago. Mickey Mouse waffles. That's very cute. We just do frozen waffles because I'm real mommy, not other mommy. I don't think Alice knows frozen waffles exist. Yeah. And she won't learn yet. On the flip side of this stuff is there are moments like the egg, egg beating sequence, which were occurs a couple of times a moment where Billy or Elizabeth Holmes is preparing to make maybe waffles. We don't know. She's, she's beating some eggs in a bowl. Maybe, maybe to make scrambled eggs and Billy, who's talking a lot in this three person conversation, takes the bowl of, of cracked eggs away from Elizabeth and starts beating it the way that he believes it should be beaten. And Nathan, you know, master of the awkward encounter that he is asks why Billy has taken the bowl away from his wife while she's beating the eggs. And Elizabeth attempts to deflect by saying like, oh, he doesn't think like in a kind of a kind way that I know how to do this. No, he's, he, I don't remember who answers first, but his answer is because I wanted her to be able to focus on talking to you. And she explains he wants me to beat them more quickly because then it, she has almost like a scientific, like the, the science of cooking explanation and it makes them taste better is, is what she says. Yeah. And, but it's his OCD. It's drawing that and his need for control. Is it his OCD? Is it his just basic domineering? Let's do it my way. And I think there's a collision between those two ideas. And I say that as someone who truly understands the impulse to watch someone doing something, whether it is like my husband chopping herbs or my son putting on his shoes and to reach and just do it myself. Right. You know, because like, no, can we just, can we do this? Okay. Um, you know, all of these moments are revealing. And then we see them like a second time because of where the movie is headed. Um, and you tell me when you think we should get into that because what I did was after I saw the film a second time, I just raced home and I was just like, I'm gonna try to write down as much of this movie as I can remember because every incident feels valuable. And in fact, many of these incidents are recreated or discussed in real time in the movie. And so, yes, but not yet in the movie. Not yet in the movie. You're still getting, I mean, I do think that there is something ingenious and essential to the experience of the movie as an almost two hour, if not like traditional documentary, but very to here is what is going on with Elizabeth Holmes. You think that you're just in a, in like the experience of being with them for the last 34 days. And your questions are about why are you letting us see this? And what do you want me to see? Both Elizabeth Holmes, Nathan Fielder, you know, what does everyone involved want me to take away from this? And then the movie, like quite literally engages with those questions. Yes. So before we get into the engagement, it's a, it's a tale of two halves. Yeah. The first hour and 20 minutes is inside of this home, which I should say is in San Diego and Del Mar, a home that they're renting before eventually she has to go on the beach before she has to go to Texas where she'll be in federal prison. But there's a moment where Elizabeth's parents come to the house and visit one day. And this is where Nathan being in the movie is so crucial because he can become this kind of interlocutor. Interlocutor, interrogator of anybody who crossed paths with them. And one of the more upsetting moments in the movie I found was this conversation that he has with her father where he talks about, Nathan asked him very frankly, like, why do you think this has happened? Yeah, because he's already asked Elizabeth that. He said, where do you think all this went wrong? Why do you think you're in the position you're in? And she's like, I don't know. I wish I could understand. If I could, I could fix it. And then he asked her dad, same question. And he says, well, she was raped. And so that's where, that's how all of this happened. Which is just devastating. Yeah. And the bluntness with which he delivers that verdict, and like, maybe it is true, but maybe it is too boiled down to ever understand like someone's psychology in such a simple way. But like, the fact that he says that on camera to Nathan, I don't, I'm not, I still don't know what that reveals about the dynamic of their family and Elizabeth's psychology. because he is also, her parents are, are not, you know, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. They are, they are obviously of a different generation. They're very buttoned up. Yeah. Very traditional. I think, Nathan, very soon after that in just kind of like a classic whiplash moment is like, so you worked at Enron, right? So good. Which I think is factually true. So it is true. And, but so you're watching him try to keep up with the entire narrative around like his daughter and this person who he has raised, but then has then gone into the world become a signpost for an entire generation of an entire way to talk to each other. And that has also, he's been given talking points about like, no, this is like our version of what we think's going on. And you're almost just watching a man who just like, it's like too much, you know? To, to fully digest and process and interact with. And the way the parents are filmed the rest of the time, they are, they're not really engaging. They're just observing kind of in a way that to me, telegraphs regret and dismay. A lot of the, a lot of it is the filmmaking choice. That montage I mentioned earlier of them kind of developing Theranos 2.0 together. The parents are present for that moment. And, you know, they train the camera very closely on their hands and the way they do it. The way that they're kind of like, you know, calming each other, but also stressed and kind of like need to have movement without actually communicating. And that, that conversation that Nathan has with her father clearly kind of narrativizes it, like puts words to this idea that Elizabeth is a person who keeps falling in with these kind of like manipulative, dominant, in some cases even abusive, older male figures. Yes. You know, and that, is it Sonny Balwan? Is that his last name? I believe so. Who was her longtime partner both in the Theranos company and romantically and who was also charged with crimes and, you know, who she puts most of the blame for the, what she's convicted of on him. And he was convicted of all of the charges that he, he faced. Yes. But then as we're watching the movie and we're seeing the way that Billy has a kind of domineering quality and the way that he has like simultaneously maybe fallen into her trap but also taken over at the same time and the convoluted power dynamics that are going on between them. Well then it, and then it becomes, for me at least, what is the nature of the trap? Right. And there are two specific sequences that are incredibly memorable. One, the can versus capable conversation and then the who's on first. Yes. That I would like to talk about in great detail. It's essentially what comes next which is that there is a semantic discussion of a quote that Nathan plays out loud for Elizabeth during one of many conversations that he's having with her throughout the movie. And they're all kind of finely cut together. But they are also, they are at least telegraphed as in the course of daily life, Nathan says, okay, I'd like to like sit down and have a conversation with you. I'd like to interview you rather than just kind of doing my observation thing. So they've sat down at a table together and he wants to ask her some questions. Yes. And so one of the questions that he asks her is about a quote that she gives around the Theranos technology that says that they've developed a device that can run any test. Yeah. And that this is the primary focus of her legal troubles. And that this is the, this is where the defrauding comes in. And it becomes this long semantic discussion about what it means to run any test versus run every test. And the implications that are made by changing one or two words in the delivery in a, in a journalistic setting or in a public forum. And Holmes eventually busts out all of the tools that she has, like all the, you know, broken down pieces of Theranos device to explain literally to Nathan how it might work and what she meant by what she said. And they kind of effectively, like she does sort of convince him a little bit that she's been misunderstood because maybe, you know, she's been misunderstood. But she doesn't have, because of the way that her mind works, the ability to differentiate the nuance in her claims. Right. And we don't quite know. So Nathan is kind of like chewing on this. And he's trying to figure out, is he being scammed in real time by the way she's talking? Is it possible that she is like, I think there's a lot of questions of, there's no other way to say this than to be frank about it. Like, is Elizabeth Holmes on the spectrum in some way that she maybe doesn't have the ability to communicate or she isn't communicating in the way that we are receiving her information? And that if there is this kind of loss of, this inability to connect properly, where two people are not saying to each other what they think they should be saying to each other, then is that enough that someone's life should be destroyed because of their ambition? And this becomes like kind of a central intellectual question of the movie. And the way that Fielder chooses to animate it is so funny. And it's such a perfect, like you need a comedian to do this to make this work. The only thing I want to note about the other scene is that before she gets the device out, she is, he's asking her broad questions about Theranos. And she is referring so heavily to printed notes in front of her. Yes. In such a, and the camera trains on the notes and trains on her looking down and then looking up. And I don't know what to take from that, whether I'm supposed to take that she doesn't know what she's talking about and so she needs notes, or whether she's in such legal peril that, and has been, has managed into an inch of her life, or she's just nervous, or to the point that we're about to, she doesn't know how to communicate and has some awareness that she has the way that she instinctively wants to communicate is not getting through to people. Yeah. Though she doesn't seem to have enough of it to circumvent any of her other problems to be discussed in the scene, which I'm glad you think it's funny. I found it incredibly sad. I think it's so illuminating and so like, I. Well, okay. I, too. To me, I found it to be a little shattering, certainly, but also really important. Yeah. Because as a longtime Nathan fan, Nathan's, I think a lot of his comedy and sort of the brilliance of the way that the schemes in his mind work is this kind of unspoken feeling where we're like, is Nathan on the spectrum a little bit? Like, is his inability to communicate or connect with people in the way that he wants to, is that sort of his superpower, the way that you hear that described for people who are on the spectrum? And in this scene where he plays the famous Abbott and Costello who's on first comedy routine, he is dropping all of his comedy artifice. He is like actually genuinely curious. Yeah. And whatever the performance of the Nathan Fielder character is, has like officially gone away. And he's like, I thought of something while we were talking the other day. Yeah. This is the most famous comedy routine of all time. I'm going to play it for you. Right. And they watch. Did you watch who's on first? Did you watch who's on first as a kid growing up? Were you familiar with this bit? Yeah, of course. No, because I think to most people, or at least people who spend their time caring about words, then, and I think that's another thing to note here is that we're not doctors. We don't even have to like talk about spectrum or whatever, but that Elizabeth Holmes has a numbers mind and a science mind, or at least wants you to think that. And neither she nor Nathan Fielder, follow what is traditional societal norms, which is where Nathan's success in comedy comes from and where her issues come from. So, yeah, no, I, of course I knew about it. And I know it's like, it's a reference as a, it's not just a comedy routine, but a shorthand for like miscommunication. Completely. I'm sure I'm like many people growing up, but my dad loved this routine. Loved Abinacostel. I watched this over and over again. So when he busted it out, I think I immediately, I immediately knew what he was doing, which was showing you that gaps in linguistic understanding can sometimes lead to extraordinary misunderstanding. And Elizabeth Holmes knows that it's funny or that it should be funny. Right. But Nathan very pointedly after they watch it asks, asks her why it's funny, why, why people think it's funny. And she does not know. Yeah. Or at least she says she does not know. And I think he even asks her, what is the name? What is the name of the baseball? Player on first. She says, I don't know. Yeah. She doesn't get it. And I don't think that's a performance. I don't know if it's a performance, but I don't think it's a performance. I also responded that it was not a performance, that it was like an astonishing and ingenious act of psychological insight. It's not even psychological. I guess just internal insight as well as like amazing journalism. Like, oh, this can actually so much of this. This can be explained so clearly. Yes. It is him using the Nathan Fielder strategy, but not doing the character. Yeah. Which is where he presents people with a way to kind of draw information out of them by giving them the opportunity to like discuss what they think something means. And it's fascinating. And it's also a great insight into Billy, who attempts to be as a sort of like uniter peace broker person in this moment where he's like, I'm so glad you've done this, Nathan. This is why Elizabeth is so special. It's because she's different. Yeah. She thinks differently. She doesn't quite understand this in the way that you might imagine. And that explains this big problem that we're having. Yeah. He's like, I think this is really perceptive. Yes. I think it's a really good point. And he's really smarmy. At this point, we pretty much don't like him. But like also maybe he's right a little bit. You know, like there is kind of something going on here where you're like, could she be a con woman and also innocent? Like, I honestly don't know. Right. Same. I don't know. But this moment does isolate for me. I was just like, oh, you know, and sorry to say Billy is right just in this one instance. But like, yeah, there is something different about her. There is something that is not just ambition. And, you know, maybe she's not pathological, as I understand the definition of pathological, that there is there's something else going on that I don't quite understand. But that also makes me feel like there there is a misunderstanding. Yeah. You felt sympathy for her in this moment. Yeah. Totally. I mean, also, she is nursing a child. Right. Literally, while all of this is happening. I mean, there's a whole like postpartum thing, too, that is not even explored that you could like very easily if you wanted to say, well, also at this time in her life. Yeah. With all of this pressure that she's feeling about going to prison and being separated from her family. Plus, she's like, I mean, how old's that baby? Six months old? Less. Yeah. Then they watch the dropout together. The Hulu. The Hulu show. Yeah. And it's clearly just too much for Elizabeth Holmes. Right. They watch a few scenes. It's for it's edited tightly together and particularly a scene between her and her character and Sonny is very painful for her. And she kind of falls back and stops watching. And we're getting the days are counting down like we're getting down to the final days of this experience. By this point, Nathan has already moved in. He lives at this house in San Diego. We see that montage of them rebuilding Theranos. And then we have yet another conversation between Liz and Nathan on the deck where they're talking in depth and she is not breaking eye contact, hardly blinking. And she's trying to be as sincere and persuasive as possible to get him to believe that she does not believe that she ever did anything wrong. And he asks her point blank. Have you ever lied? Yeah. And it seems like she honestly tries to answer, I've never lied. And he starts to say like, not even like somebody's going to an acquaintance's party that you didn't want to go to. You like you never lied about that. And she's like a bit dumbfounded about how to like answer this question because it's like, is she worried that she's going to be indicted for anything she says? Or is she actually a person who wouldn't know how to lie? I got to say, my wife is one of those people who's like, I don't know how to lie. Like she doesn't really like she gets. - Right. - And so, I don't know, Like, I was trying to figure out, like, again, with Holmes, I'm like, was this true? And then she sort of, she attempts to redefine what he means by lie. The concept of a white lie is introduced and she's like, well, you know, and then that, but a white lie is something that you would use to like smooth social interactions, which is also, you know, like a frequency to which she's not like totally attuned as evidenced by what happens next, which is the single most incredible thing that I've seen on, which is then she goes to the beach. Well, one thing, I just want to point out one thing that happens, which is that this conversation is interrupted by Billy and the kids because they want to go to the beach and the movie creates this series of moments where just as Nathan is getting to the bottom of something, somebody comes crashing in and interrupts. Sometimes it's a conversation with Billy, sometimes with Liz, but it's like, it's almost like a sitcom style editing where like every time we're about to reach some meaningful understanding. Cue the curb music. Exactly. And so they go to the beach. And. Nathan stays on the deck and seemingly while she's on the beach, she texts Nathan. You can totally see everything. And you the frame of the shot is that you can see her in the background of Nathan is on the deck. She's on the beach in the background because they have a lovely beachfront home that they've rented and you can see her on her phone. She's not in focus. And then he gets a text message. And he's like. You just watch it happen. He's trying to figure out what it means, how he's supposed to respond. That's so weird. And he gives her the thumbs up. And then we, they cuts to a shot of her looking at the phone and almost like affirming the thumbs up. And it's like, there's just, this is a house full of very strange people. You know, like this is a very bizarre social environment that we're watching in real time. And, you know, movies very rarely make space. Yeah. For this kind of strangeness at length. There was something so. Like freeing and beautiful about that though, to me, because don't you feel that way all the time? Every day you just wander around and like people make choices and do things and you're like, why are you doing that? Yeah. What's going on? You treat me that way very often. Yeah. I mean, you wouldn't not text me from like 15 feet away on the deck while I was at the beach and then like do a thumbs up, but you wouldn't, you wouldn't say anything like that. I wouldn't say you can totally see everything. Yeah, exactly. So. So, I mean, you're the Nathan in this, obviously. But there is just something, I really do walk around feeling like everybody's just crazy all the time and I don't understand why they do it. And this validation that's not me and that there are just really, really weird people out there appreciate it. Yeah. The movie is really good about that. Eventually, the final days arrive. There is a long drive to Texas. The movie starts to get quite sad. It's really sad where everything is really dawning on Holmes that like she is going to prison. Nathan is sitting with them in like their awkward final hours drinking cold brew once they arrive in Texas. Right. And he keeps saying, do you guys want me to get up so like you can go have sex and. And then there is a break and then he says, how was it? Yes. When he sees them again. Her reaction to that too is fantastic. People will have to see this movie. But that also, I mean, that scene, I've been thinking about it for many reasons, but he does again. Try to do like a Nathan type thing. He has a gag gift ready for her that he presents, but his heart isn't in it because of her parents. Right. Which he also acknowledges. And he's like, normally I do this, but this is not really appropriate. Like, I'm sorry. And, you know, even, you know, you wonder whether that is sort of like a meta awareness performance, but it is a very interesting creation or examination of the Nathan character in that moment. Yes. And then she says, I love you. And then I left some milk in the fridge for Ivy and starts crying. And that was when I was just like, oh. It's very sad. It's incredibly sad. Yeah. And the tears are genuine, even if the decision to put all this in front of cameras is to make me feel sympathetic. In that moment, I was like, wow, this is brutal. Or were you just being taken in by this sociopath? I, maybe. I mean, the movie consistently confronts you with moments like this. Yeah. Because this moment happens and eventually, you know, Nathan and. And Holmes have this final conversation outside the car where she essentially is like, it's going to be okay to him before she gets into the car and drives away and they go to prison. And I got to say, when I was watching the movie at this point in the movie, I was like, well, where do you even go from here? Like, this is over. Like, you've lost access to Elizabeth Holmes. Yeah. This was interesting and I'm glad I watched it. Yeah. I wouldn't say I was like overwhelmed by how great I thought it was. I thought it was a very fascinating portrait of a person at a critical moment in their lives and also a kind of desaturation of the Nathan Fielder experience in a way that I really liked. And then it cuts to two years later and almost exactly the halfway mark of the movie. And we're back in Texas and Nathan is visiting Billy and something feels different. We see that Billy's got like a Komodo dragon that is wandering around the house. We can hear the ambient sounds of the kids. Again, there's a lot of Lance Oppenheim's filmmaking stuff going on here with the kind of curious roving camera. In places you wouldn't expect. The sound design where you're picking up a lot of audio in outside spaces that really provides this sense of like discomfort, I would say, while you're watching. We see Billy on a gun range. Yeah. And, you know, we've been hearing for years about people moving to Texas, no state tax, getting away from the government's intrusions into their lives. And like, he kind of seems like he's becoming one of these guys. Yeah. Though he is in Texas because her crimes were committed. In Texas. That's the other thing. And, yeah, because Enron, that's right. So that's where she was. And so that's where she is in prison. So we start to see like the venture that he's building up on her behalf. And there's a fascinating interview with one of the scientists he's working with, which is now oriented around lasers in an attempt to rebuild Theranos. And Nathan is attempting to get information about why this, he thinks this, the scientist thinks Theranos didn't work the first time around. Billy interrupts the interview and comes between the cameras. He comes between the cameras and Nathan and he's very mad that questions are being asked, that he doesn't want portrayed in the documentary. And then Nathan becomes very agitated by Billy attempting to control the documentary. And then we can really see that like this is going to become the frictive component of the rest of this movie is who's going to have control of this movie. Yeah. We then also see that Billy is in contact with a man named Ryan L. Hosseini, who is, I don't know if you've seen these billboards up in Los Angeles. But the Elizabeth Holmes billboards with a website called, justblood.com on them. And apparently this is a guy who's developing a similar technology, a blood testing device of his own, who believes Holmes was innocent and railroaded. But also he's involved in some sort of like experimental theater, telling her story and take, you know, grifting off of her fall. And Nathan is very disturbed by all of this. And Billy is kind of letting it happen and maybe even consulting with this man. Right. And Billy's. Like meeting him in parking lots. Yeah. And Billy's grift is. Is coming to the fore. Yeah. I would say. His business doesn't seem that credible. No. And then I just have to say the sound editing in this, the amount of sniffling. It is quite audible and suspicious. And then there's a hard cut. Yeah. And we see Amanda Seyfried. Yeah. Who is the star of The Dropout. Yes. She's sitting on a couch in her home. Her New York City apartment. I believe I saw that one, that Architectural Digest tour. Was it the apartment and not the ranch? I thought I recognized it as the New York City apartment. And then later they go to the ranch. I could be wrong. I don't want to dox her here. Yeah. Well, I mean, it was in Architectural Digest. It was in the film. Yeah. And. Amanda and Nathan are sitting together and they're watching the footage that he has captured, all of which. We've already seen in the movie. Yeah. So some of the most memorable scenes, like the egg beating sequence, for example, or the sequence of watching scenes from The Dropout. Amanda Seyfried is watching. Mm-hmm. And, you know, I've been talking about this about her, like, over the last five years, where I'm like, this is really one of the most interesting celebrities that we have because she seems like she's extremely comfortable with a level of candor that most celebrities are not. And I don't just mean about being, like, politically outspoken or things like that. She just seems like a little kooky in a very entertaining way. But also perceptive and paying attention. She's smart. She's smart. She's in Instagram comments, you know? Right. Like, she's a poster. Yeah. She's a little bit of a poster. She's getting involved in a way that, like, you're not supposed to get involved. And so when she shows up, there's something very, like, at the Telluride screening where nobody knew anything about this movie. Yeah. There were gasps. People were just like, oh! When we saw her in a way that was so fun. Yeah. And she, I would say she lives up to the billing. In terms of what she does in this movie. Well, yeah. But you don't even know. So when you see this, you think that they've just are scrambling for a way to flesh out the end of it. That's right. And they're like, we don't have access to her anymore. And so we're going to show Amanda Seyfried. And they're watching on a laptop. And her earrings look so great. If someone could ID those, that earring stack for me, it would really. But I just got my ears pierced. So I was like, that. That's what I want. Okay. But you think you're just watching some sort of filler. And she has some. And they have a conversation about it. And it is. is a good conversation. And it's almost like in the conversation they're once again finding the third act of the movie and they realize like oh this person this person has some insights they have something she that she could bring she's our pathway to figuring out how to continue this story in a lot of ways and it's in part because she is this incredibly perceptive person so when she's watching the footage she's like and she's talking about this on camera yeah she's like oh my god billy like who would ever want to you know no woman should be with a man like that she's like you gotta find some dirt on him so they break up yeah she says that just like which is true and instinctive and she also like very naturally puts herself into the position of the there is suddenly a like a woman you know perspective on this film which is which is which is important and she is right no woman would want to see another woman with a guy like that like red flag central immediately yeah and and she's totally active by the material that she sees and then she starts talking about how she's becoming intrigued by playing elizabeth holmes again now for amanda syford who's like an academy award nominee and is like a big movie star you know was in the house made last year um the dropout is the thing that she has gotten the most acclaim for yeah she won an emmy for it she that show was a big hit and i'm not sure if it's the you know everybody's seen mean girls she's been in a lot of successful stuff but it could be the role that she's most closely associated with and you can see the kind of like fertile and hungry mind of an actor being like yeah there's another chapter here that is so interesting and i will say she does put herself in some positions to be extremely like heroic and lovable in this movie and also in some positions where she does not look that great she looks thin skinned she looks a little bit like compromised because of some of the decisions that she's made in a way that i find is really is a credit to her that she would allow herself to be included in this way totally and she's immediately engaging with one of the questions that she's asked about of of the film and particularly her involvement in it which is that she was like did i do something wrong by participating in this and who did i if i did who did i wrong and what are my responsibilities as an artist what are my responsibilities as an artist versus this project as a documentarian um or you know it's what are my responsibilities as a person a woman and she is defensive of herself while also definitely engaging with the questions because once again she's a poster so it's it's cool she's so game like from the outset and you can feel on that couch that she's just gonna go for it which then leads to just some things i never thought i'd see on screen it also just clearly animates yeah nathan is just like so excited by how excited she is to be doing this and they agree to go to texas together to go to visit billy and he kind of clearly softly lets billy know that maybe you know he's become friendly with amanda and maybe she'll come along but um they go visit billy and the kids in texas um to find out what what the status of everything is that's going on in their lives and also to give amanda an opportunity to confront billy it seems or at least get more information and at first the scene is so remarkable in so many ways but at first you feel like she's been completely cowed where she's like yeah this is a nice guy with his little these beautiful little kids right and elizabeth holmes calls on the phone you only get so embarrassed that she's there you only get two minutes from the call from prison and so they she doesn't want to get in on the family time and the kids are like hi mommy how are you like on the speakerphone and they're treating it as such like a normal part of day-to-day life this is how they are as a family now and but it's also obviously quite sad and she's a human being so she's like oh i don't want to you have a beautiful family your kids are very special is what she's saying on the phone and then even the way she's talking to her kids i'm like oh that's how you talk to like your friend's kids yeah you know where you're like talking about their pajamas and you know like what they're drinking and all that all that stuff she's clearly very clearly a mom um but then 30 seconds later when elizabeth holmes gets on the phone and she's like did you know i would be here and she's like i think i kind of knew or i kind of didn't know and she's kind of waffling maybe she says i'm i don't know if i knew right right which you know which amanda cypherd immediately seizes on yes and it's like i don't know if i knew what does that mean yes um you know instincts in the moment and that's also just fun like watching the seams and she's very much an audience stand-in but she's also showing you how this all works in real time but also an active participant because the first thing she does is she calls nathan over who couldn't hear what was being said on the phone and says this is what she just said to me and so she the movie kind of flips into this like buddy cop detective story where the two of them are trying to figure out what's really going on after they get off the phone later they're eating takeout with billy the kids yeah yeah the cameras are trained on them just want to note like there was definitely both red wine and a lighter rose at some point which just like that is our number one amanda right there uh yeah i mean you have an amanda cohort amanda you know she seemed like she had a couple drinks and she's getting in the mix with billy in their conversations then we learn a bunch of stuff during this sequence we learn that um billy hasn't been late in 899 days pamela handerson yes he's been he's been spending some time with pamela handerson yeah um which they think is hysterical actually nathan thinks it's hysterical and absurd but amanda seyfried immediately knows what he means by that um that he's been posting as liz on x.com um he thinks he's great in bed which amanda seyfried immediately uh undermines and like the most obvious way of like i faked it with every guy i've ever been with which is like yeah he looks like stunned he's like so he's so hurt by the suggestion this is also wet like so they are positioned around the table where nathan is like kind of at the head of the table in the middle and he's just sitting there like magic is happening and i also don't know what's happening and i'm no longer i'm just gonna sit here it's just reaction shots of him they're really good they're working on a liz hologram she'd been photographed previously in the film earlier in the film and so there's attempt to use ai to kind of regenerate her so that she can participate in the family's house but also possibly in business projects yeah it's it's very confusing what's going on um we learned that billy has power of attorney uh we also learned that um yeah he's not afraid to punch back at amanda seyfried and is extreme as they start getting into it a little bit over some of this especially the outrage that she has about him posing as her on social media that he says i wouldn't be taking advice from you certainly not about social media because she had just been dragged for some comments that she had made right previous couple of days and then they really start getting into it we learned that billy is a charlie kirchner and she's a charlie kirchner and she's a charlie kirchner supporter yep we learned that um he is somebody who believes he is well resourced and good at strategizing around how to take people out he's very unclear about what he means by that um and billy kind of pulls the mask off yeah and he seems like a real shithead and it like and amanda provokes him to pull the mask off that he's been able to keep on around everybody else but she keeps pushing she keeps asking questions and she even says something on their way to texas or before about she's like no i'm gonna come i'm people talk to me differently than they would speak to you and she is quite right 100 right and they get so much out of billy that nathan never could and he seems like a really unseemly character after this conversation absolutely electric scene it's one it's phenomenal i mean and to she's like to amanda's enduring credit like it does not seem at all scripted you know i'm now thinking about our our friend who is like can you trust what you see but in this moment i don't know how you would do that because you're even cutting to nathan fielder who's like wait what am i watching here like what's happening billy would have to be a world-class actor to make that be an imagined sequence um but also i mean such respect to her for just staying in the moment she is though i mean she does she's defensive yeah you know she really is like you can see he's getting under her skin like he's really bothering her with some of the things that she and there are times where she doesn't have like she doesn't always have the like boom gotcha response like she gets him at first and then he says a couple things where she's just like oh whoa and then i you can almost feel her mind turning over with like not what have i gotten myself into per se but like am i complicit in something that maybe i hadn't fully considered right before this and that plays out as we go further into the film one thing i just want to note about billy that is so funny and this is maybe just the way he's portrayed he's always eating or consuming something and to your point about the sniffling it's like he's eating pizza he's eating dumplings he's drinking a spindrift he's drinking a cold brew more cold brew later on in the movie yeah he's just like the the eating kind of undermines my assumptions from the sniffling but you know still he's a consumer though really really really noticeable it's very suspicious yeah it wouldn't be stunning yeah um it's there that energy is there yes after this meeting though it becomes clear that um amanda will be recreating her role as elizabeth holmes for the purposes of this film and there are a number of ways in which that plays out um one of the ways is that as nathan starts to describe certain things to her conversations that were had between he and holmes that were not filmed yeah we then have them recreated for us with fielder and holmes yes and billy who is portrayed hysterically by christopher abbott the actor that's the really really incredible that was a full guffaw in the theater he is revealed and he enters from off screen it's just fantastic but one of the conversations is about um you know around whether whether or not how much she knows about what's transpiring here and Fielder shows Seyfried a clip of Holmes saying that she doesn't know that she doesn't believe she's being financially compensated for this documentary. Yeah. Right. And it's not even it's not that she doesn't believe it. She says, I'm not benefiting financially from this. So why wouldn't I do like X, Y, Z? She almost introduces it into the conversation. Nathan then recreates the entirety of a business meeting that transpired between Elizabeth, Billy, two executives from A24, Nathan and Lance. Yes. Lance plays himself. Lance plays himself very well. Good job. In which they negotiate certain terms of the deal. And the meeting opens in a Beverly Hills home, apparently, with Elizabeth reading from her memoir, which she did not want portrayed in the movie. Which sounds horrible. Horrible. I mean, it's just so terribly written. The reactions of everyone. Wow, that was so beautiful. Yeah. So thank you for sharing that. Back to Amanda Seyfried. She's just like, what? All that stuff is great. They're sitting outside at this point, apparently at Seyfried's ranch. And then I was going to say Amanda goes upstairs, but Elizabeth Holmes goes upstairs because she hears her baby crying to go take care of the baby. And then after that, Christopher Abbott playing Billy Evans then asks for financial participation in the documentary. And then this becomes a crux point because that's not something that Nathan Fielder wants or Lance Oppenheim want. They want to make a real documentary. But then Billy has some points about how there are other films where this is the case, where the participants are able to be included financially. A24, we learn, eventually agrees to this. And Nathan and Lance do go forward with the project. But then there becomes this big question of what did Elizabeth Holmes know? Was she a conspirator in this deal or not? Or was she just a person who was, right. Yet again, aligned with another duplicitous male in her life. Is she being taken advantage of or is she part of the architect of this? Yes. I mean, it's notable. So this meeting happens before everything we see in the first half of the film. But they are in Los Angeles at a friend's house, presumably taking meetings in order to facilitate this project. So, I mean, that's, you know, an important. Who else did they meet with? I'd love to know. Sure. I'm sure other filmmakers. I wouldn't be surprised to learn. You know, eventually that dynamic between them is wonderful where Seyfried is trying to figure out, is Holmes guilty of something? Is she a victim of something? Nathan confronts Billy about this back in, I believe, are they in New York or does he go back to Texas? It's unclear. The movie starts moving very fast at this point. We're kind of in the home stretch of the film. And then after he confronts him, Billy is pretty honest with him, even though he seems really smarmy at this point. Yeah. About how, why he's keeping things from, you know, keeping things from, you know, keeping things from Elizabeth and what he needs to do to kind of keep the train on the tracks of all their projects. It seemed like they were in like a soulless Austin office park at that point. Yeah, like a WeWork maybe? Maybe it was at the WeWork. Yes, it is because there is then that establishing shot at the WeWork. Which again, another like the rise and fall of the web tech 2.0. And then we have a cut and Nathan is in New York and we learn that he's going through a breakup and he desperately needs to get in touch with Elizabeth Holmes. He really wants to speak to her. He has not been able to speak with her. He's alone, sad and disconnected. He's staying in a hotel and he writes her a letter. And in the letter, he communicates how alone and sad he's feeling, but also how he's thinking about her. And he has some questions for her and he wants to connect. Because he's concerned about her relationship with Billy and how much she's being taken advantage of. And does she know of these things? And he is, or at least the character of Nathan within the narrative of this film, has taken on the most sympathetic view of her. That's right. He's being drawn, magnetized into her space. He hears from Billy about this, who doesn't want her to talk to him because he demands context for what the nature of the call is. He then says that he doesn't want her to get in trouble if he records that conversation. We don't even know if that's really true, but he suggests that she could be shipped to another facility in Arizona. Yeah, the warden is not playing ball and I don't want to move to fucking Arizona is a real. And I mean, it's so interesting how Billy is handling all of this with like a mixture of a very corporate smarm. Even the. I really need some context for this. All of this is handled in that sort of like, like bloodless HR speak. That's right. With threat engineered. And then Arizona is the only time you hear the real Billy like breaking through. It's true. While staying in the same hotel room, eventually Liz calls. And when she calls, he does not record the conversation, but it's clear that it's been transcribed because the next cut is to Amanda Seyfried in a studio recording the audio with Nathan. And he's sort of giving her notes. Yeah. On how to do the performance, pull back from the mic a little bit, slow down, take that again. Right. And the artifice comes to the fore. That's not how I remember this. So then it becomes, you know. It becomes a meta narrative about what is the nature of what's been said, you know? Exactly. The exact issue that he's been trained on her early in the film, he starts getting caught in the slipstream of his own memory about these interactions that he's having with her. And, you know, she draws him in pretty well and she's very empathetic. And she's very warm. And she's, like, coaching him on, like, you're going to find somebody. You're going to be happy. And she's shifting the attention away from herself and onto him in a way that is. Right. Con person move. And so the whole thing is fascinating. Fielder, after this conversation, decides that he has to go visit her. And this is the final set piece of the movie. So he is going to go visit her in prison using the information that he knows about how Billy operates and on what the visiting day is and how he can get there. And he's going to go visit her and have some alone time with Elizabeth Holmes to confront her about what he believes Billy is doing. And just to get maybe even some closure on this story that he's been trying to tell. And so the way that that sequence is represented is a full-blown recreation, effectively the dropout part two, that is a meeting with Elizabeth Holmes in the prison in Texas. And it's intercut with a conversation between Fielder and Seyfried in which she's talking to Billy. And she's reading the script that he has written for her to perform. So we get this real-time interrogation of his memory of meeting with Elizabeth Holmes in prison with her asking questions about it. And then we are watching her perform what Nathan has written for her. It's a real mindfuck. Yeah. It's wonderful. To me, it's like the apotheosis of the Nathan Fielder project. I was like, this is. And it is not confusing. No. It's totally cogent. Mm-hmm. It gives you a lot of room to think about what you're doing. What's actually happening. It's suspenseful. It's fascinating. I'm not sure that we really like learn anything, but Seyfried in the performance totally embodies Holmes. Yeah. We don't know how accurate a representation it is. I tried to do for this movie what Nathan does for the conversation, which is I just raced home and just like wrote down everything I could possibly remember. So it's not going to be a pitch-perfect, accurate representation of their discussion. But it has to be. And it feels like it could be close because a lot of what Holmes is doing is she expresses tremendous frustration with Amanda Seyfried about the way that she portrays her and the way that the makers of the show. Yes. portrayed her on the show. And Seyfried is reading this in real time and getting super defensive and sad and looking for the words to find a way to exonerate herself from the feelings that she's having. And she doesn't quite get there. No. And that to me is an incredible insight into this whole project. Totally. I mean, to me, the insight also that. the Holmes character, at least in Fielder's Recollection, is so fixated on the dropout. And she even says, you know, in prison, it's just the, like, someone came up to me and said, you're a bad person. I saw that TV show. That's right. And that the TV show has overtaken, honestly, anything else that negative that has happened to her in terms of her lot in life. Yes. Which, you know, says then an amazing thing about the recreations that they're doing and also this project. It's astonishing. They pivot the conversation. They pivot the conversation into Nathan trying to discuss with her. I mean, there's a lot of wonderful little details about, like, getting her snacks. And she, you know, she looks longingly at someone else eating food, and she wants to have some food, so he gets food for her. And that kind of, like, the way in which they're connecting with each other or that she is connecting with him. And then he starts confronting her about all these things that Billy is doing. She seems completely nonplussed. She's unbothered. She trusts him completely. And then she pivots the conversation into the nature of their love and the way that their love is intertwined with, like, what she thought faith was supposed to be. Is actually, like, God is just their love. And that, like, they're building monuments to each other. And all of this stuff that we've also heard Billy say on the other side. Yeah. That she trusts him implicitly and that they're connected in a way that we will never understand. And it doesn't seem untrue. It doesn't seem. They may be deluded, but it doesn't seem like a lie. Yeah. And. I'm, like, fascinated by all of this. You can see Amanda Seyfried in real time is kind of like, What? What does this mean? Like, how could they possibly be so enthralled to each other? Or, like. And then Nathan, you can almost feel him feeling like maybe he failed. Right. In his quest to get to the bottom of what was really going on with this person, with this couple, with this stage of their life, with the nature of all these big ideas. Right. That are at the forefront that we're talking about here. Amanda asks at some point, like, are you protecting her? Yes. Is that why you don't want to commit to X, Y, Z? So it's. I mean, it's so beautiful that she is also there as the interlocutor for the audience and for anybody else who's like. Like, why aren't we answering these questions? But then there's this other thing that kind of swoops into the movie that has always been there the whole time that is an absolute feature of every Nathan Fielder project, which is that he portrays himself, often comically, but also with a bit of sadness, as a very lovelorn, alone person. Yeah. Who's always looking for connection and romance in the female figures in the stories that he's telling. You don't need to know that when you watch this movie to see that the movie is sort of telling you, like, did Nathan also become ensnared in Elizabeth Holmes' tractor beam? Mm-hmm. And Amanda Seyfried is also realizing in real time that maybe he did. Yeah. And she's questioning him about it. And then. But also the tractor beam's not for him, as he learns, because in his recollection of the Elizabeth Holmes conversation in the prison, she's just. She's just only talking about Billy. That's right. Yeah. And then Billy eventually arrives. Yes. And there, the family is reunited in the prison, and they're going to have some time outside together, and Nathan leaves. Yeah. And then the film closes with two very memorable images. The first is Elizabeth in her jumpsuit in prison with the kids playing, and she's being tracked from outside the gates. And then she sits down with Billy as the kids play together, and they are the picture-perfect family. And then a second cut to Nathan and Elizabeth swimming in the ocean together back at the home in Del Mar. And I just want to say the score that Ari Belugian does for the movie, especially on all of the beat sequences, is so reminiscent of the score from The Master, the Johnny Greenwood score. Specifically the instruments that he's using, like the block and the sort of like the chime sounds. And this is sort of atonal music, and it does feel a bit like The Master. Where you've got like two people who like are in love with each other maybe, or maybe one of them is manipulating the other one. And it felt like such an echo to me of that kind of a story. But that Fielder and Oppenheim would choose to end the movie on this moment. Yeah. Where is it Fielder imagining a happiness with this con person? Is it the potential for true love? Is it a representation of like what could have been? Is it the last time Elizabeth Holmes was ever free? Like you could read so many things in there. Yeah, she's leading him through the water. And I think that that scene is the conclusion to a conversation that's showed in the first hour, which is about how she wants to go to the beach. And he says, I'm afraid of cold water. And she's like, I'll help you. And then she is kind of grabbing his hand. It's so funny though, because in my, I forgot that shot. It's very affecting. But in my mind, the last shot is the shot through the prison of the family. Which is how the movie opens is her in prison. Yes. And that she's been imprisoned. And is it her fault or is it someone else's fault? And then we see it again. She's in prison. But that's not the way that the movie ends. And then the movie does become a movie about Nathan. Yes. And not about her and not about Billy and not about Amanda Seyfried. Phenomenal choice. The second time I saw it, because the first time you watch the movie, there's so much information. And I give you so much credit for having such a grasp of the material, like having seen it over a week ago. I mean, you have a script here. Not like a script, but this is very useful, much like the notes were useful to Elizabeth Holmes in that scene. But it is funny. Also, what stays with me and what I remember is very different than the emphasis that yours is. When you sent me this script, no mention of the kids. No written down. And I was like, that's what I've been thinking. You know, and it was funny, the things that stayed with me. And you're right that the movie and the movie is very much about Nathan and it ends on Nathan. But to me, in my head, the movie ended with that shot through of seeing her family through the prison. And I think that's what I was thinking. I don't know whether it's a happy ending. I don't know. To me, well, you know, and even that's it. Here's the perfect family and like they're all together and it's a perfect love. For Nathan, it's not. For them, it might be. Right. But again, I don't know whether I believe it. And so, you know, the question of what am I supposed to believe and is she being taken advantage by more people, including maybe the filmmakers, though I don't think that she is because she, you know, was participating in the movie. But it raises the questions of is this person in control or is this person not in control of anything? I still don't know where I stand. The movie is called You Can See Everything. Yeah. But I think the movie is about how we can't really understand everything. And I. I'm not saying that I don't know as a criticism. I'd say that's one of the exciting things about the movie and one of the movie that the questions ask. But I just, I interpret it very, not very differently, but the emphasis points to me are very different. I mean, it speaks to me specifically because I've spent my entire, life and career being a person who's like, I understand. Yeah, I know. You know, and let me explain it to you. Like, that's my whole personality. So to be presented with things that complicate that and shatter that so deeply is just really exciting. And also just that it, like you said at the beginning, it speaks to the act of trying to make a documentary. The purpose of this is to reveal something. And we learn a lot. But do we really get to the bottom of anything? And I don't know if this was true at your screening, but at mine, Nathan in particular was like, I still don't really know what we did or went through and like what it means. And I'm still working through that. And to your point about the children, I don't know if Lance and Nathan will come on the show. I hope they do. But I wanted to ask him how they felt about including the kids and whether or not that was a decision even that they would consider like trying to get between Elizabeth and Billy and say like, are you sure that you want to do this specifically? Right. Because it's such a fraught circumstance with going behind, going into prison and you know, like what their lives are going to be like for, and now what their lives are going to be like after this movie, which is obviously going to just make a huge impact on the culture. Right. And a lot of people are going to see it. I told you, I like moderated a conversation between Lance and Nathan when I was in New York for the movie and you know, the people who were in the screening were like the most famous people, you know, it was just like, this is going to be a huge deal. Oh yeah. And it's going to put her right back in the center of the world for at least a period of time. And I do, I feel for those kids. Like, I don't, I don't feel great about that. You know, like, um, but by the same token, I was like, they seem like good parents, you know, like there's something really fraught about all this. They're go, they're visiting every Saturday and they were playing in the lawn, you know, it's, and the kids see, they know how to talk to her on the phone. Like they clearly talk all the time. Totally. They have a routine. This is their routine. This is their way of knowing their moms. So it's, they seem okay. It's such a fascinating thing. And then the decision to include them ultimately was the parents. Cause I don't even think that they could be featured without a release. So then you began to wonder if I feel bad about it, why do I feel bad? Do I feel bad because I don't think the kids are okay. Or do I feel bad because I feel like I'm being had by these people? I don't know. I mean, maybe they're being used as props or maybe their kids will be just like them. You know, there's no way to know. Um, it's an amazing choice to pursue. This, you know, Fielder said that, um, this started in 2023 and that the story that Lance has been telling is that they went to the magic castle together. Did he tell this to you guys? Yes. Yeah. Um, and they were in the closeup magic room, which is one of my favorite rooms in all of Los Angeles, the closeup magic room in Los at the magic castle. And I've another chill I felt after I'd watched the movie, they're telling this story and one of them, the magician who was performing in the, in the magic room, the magic castle called for the name of a famous person so that they could perform their next trick related to that person's name. And someone called out Elizabeth Holmes. And then that led to a conversation between Nathan and Lance. And then they had both heard that Elizabeth Holmes was maybe shopping around for the chance to make a documentary like this. Um, and that led to them making this movie together, but that specifically the choice of her for both of these filmmakers who I think are both can be quite humane and can also be quite cutting about humanity. And a lot of Lance's docs, you see people in a very raw way. Yeah. Um, but using her as the microscope into all of this stuff that we talked about at the top of the episode could not be more perfect. Does checking your bank statements feel like digging through a dusty attic full of forgotten subscriptions and old free trials. Think of it as operation. Get your sanity back over 200 subscriptions are cancelable. Results will vary. Not all subscriptions eligible savings, not guaranteed paid membership with connected payment account required to see Experian.com for details. Hank joined BJ's wholesale club the day he became a father of 30. I coach football. Now coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices, 30 pounds of pasta, three cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. And that's just pregame. He knows teamwork and BJ's knows savings. This is your home coach. Home of the save. Join for just $20 at bjs.com/mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months open soon. Limited time offer new members only. BJ's home of the save. Hi there. I am fully charged and here to tell you Toy Story 5 is now on Disney Plus. Woody. It's been too long cowboy. Woody, Buzz and Jesse are back for a brand new adventure with some seriously cool new tech. What? Holy butterscotch. You said it Jesse. So save your batteries and watch the. global phenomenon at home and the best part it's perfect for the whole family power up your movie night and watch disney and pixar's toy story 5 now streaming on disney plus rated pg you know we haven't really talked too much about the filmmaking but the filmmaking changed a lot it's amazing it's like a three camera setup in the house it seems like originally they were trying to make it like a pure lance movie with this like really deep focus shot on anamorphic right and then they had to change it to be a little bit more like the way yeah nathan would do it with a lot of coverage i mean lance said that they realized that a few days in that they just were missing everything that they wanted and they just completely changed their time and he worked on this with david boland who is his cinematographer um on all of his projects and looks really good that's enough our q a was uh with bill hater who was just like hey why does this look so good how did you do this yeah i mean it looks like a lance doc to me like they all really look good they're really they have this really like uh profound deep subjective gaze on the characters that they're looking at but he also you know he does these great kind of altman-esque slow zoom throughout the movie where you can hear something happening and something you're watching something else on the screen and the kind of the conflict between those two ideas or the synchronicity of those two ideas a lot of shot reverse shot a lot of like we're over nathan's shoulder we're over elizabeth's shoulder if you feel like you're in the middle of a conversation and that is very intimate you know elizabeth holmes's face is just kind of captivating she's just a great subject for the camera you know that unbroken stare and that the the she never gives away the game there's no irony there's no sarcasm there's no bitterness she is just an open subject she's not looking for an out nope she doesn't find it's it's almost like she doesn't experience awkwardness which does also seem to be nathan fielder's superpower at times making people feel awkward yes yeah but also then just not breaking eye contact or or wanting it out of the conversation no completely it's like um it's the uh immovable force versus the unstoppable object i think people who interview people who interview people who interview people for a living including my husband would tell you that that actually is the secret to being a good interviewer and asking question is living with the discomfort and that you know that most interviews especially like in the podcast era just don't really want to give you the discomfort because no one wants to sit through it but if you just sit there someone's going to the silence it's true uh you just have to endure the silence there's a huge difference between the video audio version of that and the written version yeah totally yeah and this is interesting because nathan leans into the awkwardness in the in the filmed version of that you know which is very rare as you say um yeah what a what a movie absolute banger really really cool um i think is rewarding on second viewing because you're not as like wow i will say it plays a little bit more durational for sure because there's a lot less like oh wow happening in the moment but you can really focus on the choices that they're making in the edit which makes the movie more impactful um amanda cyfrid legend forever can she be nominated for an oscar for this let's talk about it let's talk about what this what's going to happen with this movie um it's opening in 800 theaters i think it's probably going to go to 1500 in the following week if i had to guess that's just a guess and then it's a real proper wide release movie it has a chance to be one of the most successful documentaries roughly of the last 10 years we had a period in the 2000s you know some michael moore movies are really huge i don't know if it's going to quite get to that level but it is like a true word of mouth sensation style movie let's say for the sake of conversation it gets to somewhere between 25 and 50 million dollars that'll make it one of the biggest docs last of the century i she should be eligible she is eligible for supporting actress yeah she's giving a performance yeah i think she'd probably be nominated more for what she achieves when she's not acting in the movie in a way where her finest work is as a person experiencing the circumstances of this story but her acting is also brilliant yes i'm has there ever been a documentary what are the rules of what are the rules of acting within the confines of a oscar nomination i don't think she can get nominated i'm not do you think she can according to the rules yeah like the academy's rules okay well let's pull them up i'm looking i'm looking at them now i'm trying to figure this out specifically i thought that it was there was word that she could be i thought that that had been reported this is interesting i'm learning here that amanda cypher publicly denied being involved in the project they're really trying to hide this one if she can't be that's interesting i would say that's a mistake um performing in a recreation is absolutely a performance yeah um there's a bigger there's a bigger question here too about how the doc branch will receive this movie versus whether or not people will perceive this to be a best picture i thought matt bellany uh made it the great point that this could very easily go into best picture and not in best documentary for one reason because there are 10 best picture slots and only five uh documentary but also the documentary branch is particular shall we say uh and resistant to celebrity documentaries in all forms if i had to put money on it today yeah i would say that that is what happens that it does not get in a doc and that it has a chance like a legitimate strong chance to be a best picture nominee because of the amount of attention and excitement that the movie is going to generate i could be wrong a documentary has never been nominated for best picture in the history of the academy awards but this is something beyond a documentary i completely agree also i think the last five years that the oscars are changing so rapidly that everything everything is on the table i think it'll happen i don't think it'll happen in documentary and then and then maybe they'll finally reconfigure what's going on in that branch that would be a fascinating confrontation with that um you know you mentioned the a24 thing and it's like they've got the debut they've got club kid they've got um what's the uh the the invite they've got a lot of contenders i genuinely feel like this movie is at the front of the line yeah i think so i mean some of that is recency bias right now that we're just like we're in the season and we're what three weeks out from primetime which is also a hit and you know robert pattinson coasting on all of this goodwill and into a best actor you could see it yeah so uh i think this and the invite are probably still tied i can't tell whether people over 55 are gonna like this like i don't know whether my dad sitting down my dad who is like a very sophisticated filmgoer is gonna quote unquote get it i don't know the other thing to consider is that nathan fielder is a very specific flavor yeah and if you're not you have to be all in as you said earlier to to get this but even still you're on the ride with him the whole time he is your true guide through the movie so if you don't love him then it's not going to be as effective because he does he he lives in a kind of awkward cringe comedy space for lack of a better phrase that not everybody loves but i think as an interrogation of celebrity and truth and a big national news story that this holds a lot of appeal yeah um broadly so yeah man we'll see what happens uh we'll see what happens we'll see what happens we'll see what happens um good job everybody yeah you guys did it you can see everything you can see everything in the movie theater um any any closing thoughts i'm so mad if people listen to this without seeing the film first people do it all the time well i just i don't approve the uh audience for the social reckoning episode was unusually high relative to the engagement with the film at the box office yeah of course um the same is also true of the digger episode so um okay so we get a lot of looky-loos yeah yeah did we say that so billy did we talk about the cards at the end oh no because good point so at the very end uh it is revealed as we discussed that the the new york times stands by is its story but never produce evidence of the quote nor did billy and liz um that shortly before the film was released billy renounced his profit participation in the film at our screening they shared that billy had still not seen the film and i'm just curious how that's gonna go i mean he's been posting about it on elizabeth holmes's i have seen that yeah um you know in many ways one of the lessons of this movie is that this is wonderful for him it makes him more famous yeah it makes him more uh well known in a certain kind of way which is why i think it's so important for him to be a part of the movie and i think it's so important because it's so important for him to be a part of the movie and i think it's so important for him to be a part of the movie and i think it's so important for him to be a part of the movie and i think it's so important for him to be a part of the movie which is clearly something that matters to him um he can speak about his political ideas and his ideas on the future of tech more easily because he will be the subject of a great many interviews in the aftermath of this movie um the way that he handles it versus the way that the subject of lance oppenheim's other movie uh chris hansen handles it'll be interesting yeah um there's this new tactic when you become the subject of like an unflattering portrait in the media of like responding to it in a way in a very grand eloquent way of being a part of the movie and i think it's so important for him to be a part of the movie like and now it is my time to reveal my verdict on the thing about me i suspect we'll get the same thing from billy yeah but with like more of a shit poster flavor i would believe would would it would ai elizabeth holmes video be surfaced to respond to the contents of the movie that seems totally plausible given what we see yeah we live in hell as evidenced by this film i just tried reading as much of the academy's specific rule set to every award and i can't find any language that is for this specific issue so i wonder if it's like uncharted territory gray area kind of thing it'll be very fascinating for amanda yeah for sure I mean, even better, even better if we have to have some sort of like rules of engagement discussion about what is and is not a performance in a film. I look forward. It's great for us as well. Uh, okay. Thanks for listening. Let's go to my conversation now with Judd Apatow. For the first time, Judd Apatow is here. Very nice to see you. Sorry. I'm sorry it took so long. No, that's okay. Long Island Brethren. So we share that, uh, Huntington station. Dad, uh, moved to Huntington, uh, when my parents got divorced and, uh, there was like this old, maybe it was an elementary school and they turned it into condos. So it was like my dad lived in a classroom. Wow. My dad left Huntington when my parents got divorced. So we traded dad space. Um, let's, let's, let's talk about your movies. Cause you have a, you have two, two docs right now. And, um, I'm, I'm fascinated by like your pivot to this. I think it's, I think these are your fourth and fifth films. I think more. It might even be like, I was going to say about comedians. Oh yeah. Yeah. So, you know, you obviously you've got the Ava brothers film and you've made the film about the our beloved Mets, but like comedians, I know when you were a teenager that you sought them out and interviewed them. Exactly. And, and now it feels like on this side of your life, you're sort of doing a similar act. I know. I just realized that recently that maybe I'm mirroring the time when I you know, money to do it, you know, with cameras and budgets. What draw, what's still drawing you to them? It's a good question because when I was a kid, I just so wanted to know how it worked. And I was looking for a way to talk to people directly. So, you know, when you watch a star on TV or if you love comedy, you know, you think, God, it would be so fun to talk to John Candy. So it was almost like I was manipulating this high school radio station that we had to meet people. Cause my friend, Josh Rosenthal, uh, he would do it with musicians and he would go, you know, interview REM in like 1983. And he was like, you should try to do that with comics. And back then, you know, there was, you know, there was no internet. There wasn't a lot of long form interviews happening. So if you called up and wanted to talk to Jay Leno and he's just playing rascals in New Jersey, he doesn't mind giving you an hour, even though you're a child. And so most people said yes, like 50 people. And I would just tell them, you know, how do you do it? How do you get on stage? How do you write jokes? How do you direct? I interviewed Harold Ramis right as he was prepping National Lampoon's Vacation. He was literally in his office prepping, which is so weird now when you think about it. And he just, you know, walked me through everything and people would be so nice. And then years later, after I dropped out of film school, I realized I had learned more talking to these people. Uh, although now I do realize I did learn things at film school. Every once in a while I'm like, oh yeah, that's from when I took Sid Field's class. When you were, I mean, were you 15, 14? Yeah, 15, 16, 17. Were you nervous in those environments? Um, a little bit, but I was kind of like a lunatic. I think, you know, I think like when you're young, maybe you're genetically programmed to figure out how you're going to survive in the world. And it's funny because I am just finishing up a documentary about Billy Strings with my friend, uh, Chris Wiltshire. We're directing it together and, you know, he's, you know, one of the guitar players in the world, bluegrass, but he can play everything. And I was thinking, why am I interested in this? And I think it's also because he had this slightly, you know, uh, driven aspect to him of like, I need to survive and I need a skill. One of the things that I really like about the comedian documentaries is that you seem very interested in their humanity, like who they were as people. Yeah. And you explore them in different ways in these two movies. But when you were a teenager, did you feel like you were thinking about these people as people or just these sort of like ends towards understanding something you were obsessed with? Yeah. I don't think those interviews were emotional. It was really like, what was Saturday Night Live like in 1975? I mean, I hunted down almost all the original writers from Saturday Night Live. So I'm interviewing, you know, Don Novello, who did Guido Sarducci, James Downey and all those people. And, but I didn't know to ask them about their lives and what their life was. I was just a kid. So I, so I probably couldn't even make the connection that, oh, this pain in your life led to that. And when people would open up, I didn't really know how to handle it. And I always remember interviewing Harry Anderson, the, the, the great comic magician con man from Night Court. And he started talking about his childhood and I don't even know if this is true, but he started talking about his mother turning tricks and this rough childhood. And lately I'm like, was he making all that up? Cause I was a kid and it was just funny to shock me, but let's assume it was true. I didn't know how to have the conversation about how did that affect you? You know, and that's what I'm interested in now. So if I talk to Maria Bamford, I want to know how her life made her this brilliant comedian. So which of these two came first, Norm or Maria? Maria came first. I, you know, I always wanted to do something with, I wasn't sure what it was, you know, in the beginning I would try to get her to, you know, write something or think of a movie idea and she never would do it. And then she had her TV show, Lady Dynamite. And one of the episodes is about me trying to get her to make a movie and her refusing because she just, you know, she walks her own path. And so then in my head, I thought maybe she should do like a one woman Broadway show where she takes the best of all of her jokes and tells her life story. And that would be pretty amazing. And then one day I thought, I think it's a doc. I think it's a doc. And I called my friend, Neil Berkley, who did the Gilbert Godfrey documentary, which is amazing. And I said, let's, let's try to make a doc with Maria. I'm going to call her and see if she'll let us. And I called her and I said, could we come over tomorrow and just start? And she said, you can come over, but you have to bring me $500. And I said, why? And she goes, because nothing ever happens. And my time is running out. And I said, why? And I said, why? And I said, why? Like, that's not kind of how you do it. she works and you know the way she writes you know she doesn't want us paying attention to the creative process so she wasn't like yeah i'm gonna do all my new jokes here and here and here she kind of was like that doesn't feel right you know so then we're you know finding ways mainly neil to like go around the country and and see her work and then it becomes something completely different you know which is she was dealing with you know uh several you know very important deaths in her family she was affected by the altadena fires and we got to see you know as it happened and it's very moving and it becomes unexpected and you feel very close to her and the funny thing about it is you know she's talking about intrusive thoughts that she has these ocd uh ocd and intrusive thoughts which basically means where you might be driving in your car and you can't stop thinking about it would be terrible if i hit a hit a chipmunk that to her expands another 25 levels right uh and i think when i watch it when people watch it i think most people think i'm like maria like i have those or i have depression or i have something and she may be a larger version of it but i'm really relating to these like daily mental struggles you know that i go through and so that's something that was also surprising to me that it became very relevant to me and i think that's something that i've been doing for a long time and i think it became very relatable yeah you didn't perceive that before you started making the doc that that would be that it was about me well that's usually what happens all the work is right yeah you know on some level you go why am i fascinated with this person who's having mental health struggles uh i'm not depressed i don't want to know the answers or how to survive um how does she feel about it because it's very you know her her work is also vulnerable and she has like a real kind of metaconsciousness i think about how she's portraying something that she's struggling with but watching yourself in such a raw environment where you're like oh my god i'm not watching yourself in such a raw way especially going through as you said these sort of like tornado personal events that that happened to her during the making of the film yeah does she can she watch it she does and i think she loves it and i i didn't know is the truth she you know she's written books about these stories she's basically told all these stories in comic form in her stand up so the idea of her telling the true story and then showing how it became art was a big part of this but to her it's kind of funny because she's like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know but it's funny because what she says at least is well i lived it and it's not even that interesting to me you know she like laughs she she doesn't like say that's devastating she's just like yeah that happened yeah that happened to me yeah i remember it yeah so you're just showing me something that i went through also no self-consciousness about it is interesting too because you'd feel like some people would feel just a little awkward about sharing those things but maybe that also doesn't well the whole thing is about sharing all of it right right and you you really want to get someone that wants to be a part of it and you really want to get someone that wants to be a part of it and you really want to get someone that wants to be a part of it and you really wants to do it i think that sometimes you see these documentaries and they're clearly pr pieces if anything like that's what pop star was about the movie that you know the lonely island did incredible movie yeah uh it was about a certain type of justin bieber-esque one direction documentary that was just a fluff piece and so you know their idea was what if that went terribly wrong and everything went wrong while you were making the fluff piece right and so i'm always looking for people that will tell me the truth or a family that will allow me to go deep you know kelly carlin george carlin's daughter she said my dad would hate this if you didn't go all the way and shanning's cousin uh and the people from his estate you know we're we're comfortable with you know telling that story but i think most of the time there's someone saying you can't or there's a person saying i'm uncomfortable with that piece of information and it's very rare that you have you know the ability to be completely honest and i think i've gotten very lucky with that i want to talk about norman relationship to this specific question but is it better worse how different is it if you do or do not have a personal relationship with the subject when you're making a film about them uh you know i'm not sure because i think the people that know them could maybe judge how we did so with the george carlin documentary you know his daughter kelly uh who's amazing was very you know involved and became a key part of telling the story so she was really happy with what the story was but you know i think it's a very important part of the story so but i don't know you know with shanley i kind of know how i did right because i was close with gary with with george i hope we did it well and i'm glad that you know the family thinks that we did and yeah it's it's different because it's also i'm trying to figure out someone that i don't have the observations from from life right with gary i had some observations some turned out to be correct some not but i had a lot of experience with him and you know with norm i didn't know norm that well but i knew him for a long time you remember when you first met him how i met him was he just moved to town and this would be around 89 90 i think and i saw his hbo half hour special i think they were called one night stands and i was just blown away i just thought this is the funniest guy and this attitude and just all of it everyone's like you just you just fall in love with him and i'm like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know what to do with the comic and i was always coming at it as a fan i just you know love finding someone that i enjoy more than anything and i remember taking the tape out and showing my roommate adam sandler because i was just so excited that this guy was this funny and adam watched for a while and he's got great taste in comedy and he just went i don't care i'm trying to get famous so yeah let him go do his thing i got work to do and then of course he became the biggest norm fan and he's in all the movies and they toured together of course but i was you know very excited like this is one of the greats and then that's kind of how i was as a kid i would see a comedian on tv and i would track them like they were athletes or something yeah and uh and so then norm and i get hired to write jokes for rosanne and this is like right around the national anthem era the peak of tom and rosanne and i had written some things for tom and now rosanne liked these specials i wrote and some jokes for tom and so me and norm you know went over to her house and you know we would go there like and not many times like on a sunday and sit at a table like this and rosanne would bring out like a stack of legal pads with joke ideas and she just starts going through these concepts like you know one of the concepts was this because then we would have to turn it into a routine she's like i want to do a bit about how it's better to suck dick than kiss ass because when you suck dick it's like it's a it's a deal it's a negotiated deal i will do this and you will do this for me but when you kiss ass you're doing it with the hope that they'll give it to you and so then you know we would she had a special comic mind oh brilliant yeah amazing and it was truly like the peak of her powers because it was right at the you know it was like a the beatles in 1964 the show boom and she was so funny yeah but we're young and you know we're trying to write for a 40 year old woman uh and norm was so great that very quickly she just said i'm gonna put him on the tv show rosanne and so now he's gone and i'm doing it by myself for the next year yeah and uh and then maybe within the year he got hired by saturday night live uh and and was doing update shortly after that so his thing really took off were you in touch with him at all after that period i asked because like my experience of him is so represented in the film which is so mediated by just watching him in short form yeah you know that like our our relationship like i'm i'm like so many people my age just such a massive fan of his yeah just the most influential funniest person yeah and but you know when he when he passed everybody was just like what i do is to comfort myself i just watch him on youtube you know we all had that experience but if you you were crossing paths with him and watching him kind of work behind the scenes without going forward but did you guys keep up in that period well adam you know left to do saturday night live you know one day he's like i'm going to chicago to audition for saturday night live and then two days later he's like i'm moving out and so i'm in the apartment alone adam left all his stuff he literally didn't even take his stuff like i still have his driver's license and his wallet from 1991 uh and i would go visit uh adam and see norm over there and he was like i'm going there and then hear from adam how everything was going and i wasn't like a big part of that scene but i certainly was like trying to watch and oh my god springsteen's on and i fly in to watch the show sure i remember seeing bonnie rate i remember all the all the people who were the musical guests like uh what was that band that sang groove is in the heart oh d light i saw d light sure um but i remember going to see adam and then norm was there and i said hey norm you want to write some update jokes because we used to write jokes together i'll help you write some update jokes thinking that's his job and so we go in his office and shut the door and there's some newspapers and we both are just looking at the newspapers maybe i pitch him a thought and literally after like two minutes he goes hey judd and i leave and i'm like norm i'm trying to help you i thought you'd jokes for the update and he's like i want to leave it is perfect um in terms of trying to capture him like you make a these two docs are very different yes it's kind of structurally stylistically where this is there's no talking heads it's entirely archival why did you do that I think the idea was that you were not going to really figure out completely who Norm was and even his closest confidants are not going to tell you yeah and even they probably couldn't really make it clear and probably don't fully know just because he was a fascinating person and you know even like everyone that went on the road with Norm you know they all love Norm but they would still say I don't quite get it like what all the motivations and levels are because he was so smart but in a devilish way sometimes didn't always tell the truth was provocative and so it was it was hard to know exactly who he was and so the thought was well we're not going to crack that code but we could make a documentary that shows what Norm put into the world and maybe by arranging that you would get like a sense of who he was and that's what Norm says about his novel which is it's not true but hopefully it adds up to something even more truthful and so that's what we did and as you know we researched we found that Norm would talk about himself but it would be like all over the place like you know he says something to Mark Maron on WTF that feels truthful and then you would listen to like an interview from morning radio in Maui and for some reason Norm opens up for an hour to just some random morning crew and so you know piece by piece we could figure out maybe what he was thinking at times you know he was sick for nine years with cancer and only told a few people and if you look at all of his work over those nine years you can see what's on his mind and he's doing jokes about cancer but it's happening to other people and you're seeing that he's opening up and he's becoming this more spiritual person more loving person but he's not telling you why it's happening the movie is really interesting because you frame him so well and like it's a sort of a literary device as an unreliable narrator like where we literally don't know from moment to moment if what he's saying is true about whether he has siblings or what experiences he had or like very specific things that seem like they would be verifiable and yet he has this kind of like Mark Twain character quality to him which is just so unusual in contemporary times because nobody is a mystery everybody is just in your face all the time like they're so willing so I'm kind of curious like did you feel like you were were you withholding what you felt to be truths that you know in order to create like an interesting perspective on him no because I don't think that even while I made it I I I got an enormous amount of new stories or insights you know sometimes when you make a documentary you find out things you didn't know shocking things you know when the George Carlin documentary Kelly talks about like being in bed and her dad being like on drugs and laying with her and talking to her and some of it is very like unsettling yeah yeah but with Norm I did talk to all of his friends I definitely like did the research to try to get more insight and I think I kind of landed at Norm was just this kind of brilliant funny strange mercurial guy who loved jokes who loved being a part of comedy and loved his family above all else and at the end of the movie you see this footage we found of him with his mom and his son incredible and you've never seen him more at peace or happier and I just thought oh that's Norm you know he has other gears uh so it wasn't like all this other stuff came up that revealed this other thing it was it seemed to me simpler do you have like is there effectively a team of archival producers who are hunting for any living material of him that exists and then how are you guys going through it and figuring out how to construct something like this because it's so different from camera on Maria and then we'll use what we get from Maria to sort of stitch together a narrative yeah it's I mean there's like six months or more where we're not even starting where people are just looking the funny thing with Norm is you know I went online and I said hey if anyone has any Norm stuff send it to me and people had videos and photos with him and some people had stories uh the first thing we did is you know I said okay let's print every tweet he ever made and read them and see what was in there it was like 25,000 tweets because he would watch golf oh yeah and do play by play for three hours yep it's like he didn't care if he lost all of his followers because he was just doing this thing that would just you know stuff up your feed and then you know we had a whole team of people transcribe every episode of his interview shows and then at some point you need a group of people to read everything and recommend because you know I can't watch 300 hours of stuff so you have to spread it out you know what in those tweets do you think is worth us paying attention to and then you know they might go here's a thousand to look at and then that process is happening but literally last week I saw a clip of Norm I had never seen before that was really funny and bizarre that I thought ah I couldn't I didn't get that in do you have a favorite Norm joke I mean I think about the old ones because it's when I really came to like love what he was doing and I don't know what you know the words were but he had that bit about how no one talks about the Doberman anymore everyone's afraid of the pitbull but what about the Doberman yeah that's really great I was wondering because you're making these movies now I feel like for the previous 10 years you were seen as like the ambassador to and the explainer of comedy of contemporary comedy you've had such amazing success making comedy movies and television shows that people always come to you and they're like what's going on what does it all mean where does it stand but I also feel like maybe simultaneously you're trying to chart it more sociologically or historically with the docs like do you see it as part of a process or like a mission that you're on in some way I mean it's just instinctual I you know I'm a real I'm really into like pop psychology you know I'm obsessed with you know therapy ideas and it's partly you know started with Shanling just his whole thing was like why do we behave the way we behave and that's what the Larry Sanders show was about just getting to the core of people and their motivations and you know what life experience led them to wear the mask that they wear and that's what Shanling has always talked about that just everyone is wearing a mask and is putting on some kind of character and it's very rare that they're completely honest and the mask comes off and that's a little bit what all these documentaries are about is you know how people of all kinds use art to make life okay or to you know answer questions or to heal themselves and you know I've done that in you know writing movies you know like Funny People or This is 40 or you know King of Staten Island where it's the same process and with the documentary you're just dealing with what exists and you're looking at a real person you know so if I'm you know writing with Pete Davidson you know even though it's fictional we are just sitting down going how are you doing and how did you get here and what do you think is going to happen next like how can you heal you know what would it take and that's a big question whenever I work on a screenplay with someone else I just say what do you think your problem is and what would it take for you to get it and make a change those movies are so interesting Funny People and This is 40 because they are so transparently personal in so many ways a lot of the choices that you make who stars in the films and then it did feel like you made kind of a transition to looking for other vestiges to help figure out maybe some of your own stuff but also tell their stories I'm just kind of curious like why you made that decision to start working with people like Amy or with Pete to make movies like that At some point you feel like you've really mined your vein for the things that trouble you or built you and you're just waiting for more stuff to happen to have another one of those and also sometimes you write something like I wrote a movie you know around the COVID time and I worked on it for years and then it just fell apart and you go oh that would have been the next one like that and I just you know for a bunch of reasons I couldn't get the whole package together Why does that that's another thing that I think people maybe would be confused by because you're you so why would a movie that you're working on that is very personal like why would a movie like that fall apart? Well it was it was probably a little edgy because it was about comedy and why certain things are funny and why certain things are offensive and it had a very specific casting idea that when that fell apart it literally couldn't be made without the person got it and I couldn't crack because I had just tailored it so specifically yeah and that happens every once in a while and you realize oh I just lost years so I'm usually balancing working with people writing my own stuff and then certain things happen and if nothing's happening I'm also making documentaries and you know I'm just kind of going with the flow. - Did you feel like you were able to tap into some of those ideas and feelings through music norm because that's something that he obviously at times yeah he would explore stuff with bits that like was was on the edge that made people really uncomfortable and then he always kind of managed to dance through the raindrops a bit um because he was so revered for his his like his wit and his intellect but i don't know if that was something that kind of drew you to that too i think unconsciously yeah you just think why would i want to talk about norm for years and you don't you don't really sit and ponder it you just know you want to and then in the aftermath you go why didn't i even do that i mean we all love norm yeah but to spend years thinking about norm is not what most people are doing yeah and then it has to be personal on some level to go i want to understand that mind and that humanity and you know it's funny i did a show with norm a couple of years before he died and it was at largo and i do a show there once a month and it's always for a different charity and norm was there and i hadn't seen him in a while and great talk and and then he went on stage and he did this set and you know he was funny as as always and then at the end of the set he gets like very emotional and you could see it it looks like he's like beginning to cry and he says something along the lines of you guys are so great but i now i gotta go over there but you guys i like it here but now i gotta go over there and then he says i don't know what to say i love you and he walks off and you know we're all kind of blown away also because we don't know he's sick and that might have been part of it where you want to know how did he get there and so that's the last moment of the documentary because it is an arc towards love in some way you know and george carlin had that as well you know in most of the docs you see people you know you go through your life and you're crazy and you're trying to get ahead and you have all these battles and some things go well some things are terrible but on another level you're having the spiritual journey to figure out you know what is the point of all this and hopefully for most people the point is connection and love and you know being there for other people and finding your purpose carlin and norm are such interesting contrasts and styles because you know i also loved obsessed over carlin and listened to every record and watched every special and you know he it felt like as he was getting older he was getting angrier and more ferocious yeah and more unsparing in his comedy and norm as you say like something softer kind of entered the frame yeah and i'm curious like what you make of that like what's more consistent with comics that you've observed over time well the funny thing about george carlin you know according to his family is while he was getting darker he was getting lighter in life so he wasn't the bitter guy yeah but he would go on stage and go it's a big club and you're not in it yeah and he saw something and what's interesting is when we were making the george carlin movie he was like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm george carlin documentary me and my partner michael bonfiglio you know we were like should we make this montage of current visuals over him talking about america the american dream and this famous routine and we're like is it too political is it too much our politics and we we thought now i think we should do it because he's talking about something very specific that seems to be occurring which is this idea that the whole idea of the government caring about you is an illusion and you don't even know what the real reasons for anything is and they're very happy for you to have sneakers with lights on them yeah that's what you say like you have two political parties and 36 flavors um i always think of if you're pre-born you're fine but once you're born you're on your own like that's one of those things that he had so many insights like that well all these words to you he was always talking about like these orwellian words even just like trump saying let's call it super intelligence like you know he was very you know aware of that before anyone talked about it yeah um and i think that he got some comfort in giving up now we don't really know what his full intentions were because my instinct is by telling people the system's not fair and you don't even care and you're not going to do anything about it it is a call to arms but it's like a mocking you challenging you yeah yeah like see you know no one cares don't even pretend you care yeah uh but i think down deep he wished everyone cared because he was a hippie yeah uh well you'd watch him on larry king sometimes and you feel like he would remove that a little bit and would be like frank but kind of doing the material but not as jokes yeah and it was much it was more nuanced in that way but um it's just a fascinating to put them side by side because they're both i feel like stand in similar they're in similar standing where people are just like i don't know how this person did this but one was so dark and one was became more light so or or they're both equally dark in a certain way right i mean you know george carlin was talking about a certain kind of corruption which is now laid bare for all of us to see so he would have said all your politicians are ripping you off it doesn't matter what side they're on and then we look at and go like yeah the democrats trade stocks too yeah you know that's the most painful part of george carlin is he he attacks both oh yeah um and he he indicts the entire system and you know there is an aspect with norm that's not going to work and i think that is dismissing the system and you know when he was asked about his politics he said he thought it was funny that people thought he was more right wing and he kind of leaned into it because it provoked them yes he got a kick out how mad that made people um but he he also said that he agrees with a few things from each party and it doesn't make any sense that anyone would pick one party and that seemed to be where he really stood which is it doesn't make sense you know that like i have to be a conservative financially i have to be violently anti-abortion right uh and so you know he he would always say that he wasn't preaching he also would talk about that he he didn't seem to like comedy where people were just venting all their emotions and their pain which i always thought was funny because we all love richard prior right and so but that was a funny thing with him where he said it's all about the joke i'm just trying to make you laugh and so even the you're not sure because he's just trying to get you yeah he does but then you go looking for the opinions i mean it's a good thing about the film is that you're you do go hunting for intent and feeling and what did he really believe even if you can't ever figure it out um you know you mentioned larry sanders earlier larry sanders and the ben stiller show are turning 35 next year um cable guys turned 30 this year uh 40 year old virgin turned 20 last year even train wreck was over 10 years old like are you do you do you think about the body of work and and like legacy and those things and because you know you've had obviously a very big impact over the last 40 years on american comedy uh i was saying to someone yesterday you get to a certain point where you go if i die the real will be good you know if they had a little real like a like a special sad you know the thing on the emmys you know there'd be some good jokes yeah sure so that's a big accomplishment like and they'd be different it would end with martin star turning on the tv by himself for sure yeah yeah yeah but um it's funny because i don't know so much of it is driven by insecurity and uh the lack of self-esteem which is a real engine for i gotta make another one that didn't make me feel solid so and so it's kind of positive and negative because you shouldn't feel that way about yourself you should be able to appreciate that some things made people happy uh but i relate obviously on a much lower level i relate but recently i had to re-watch uh knocked up and this is 40 because they're preparing the 4k versions wonderful great news so i had to watch uh both of them and i hadn't watched them since the day they came out and it's not really on purpose you know i'll look at an instagram video or something and and i'm not even sure why i don't it's it's not like a theory or anything i'll you know i i'll watch the movies i produced more so i'll watch step brothers all the way through every time i i see it but for some reason i'm just like is it because you think you would have done something differently or is it because you think you would have done something differently or is it because you think you would have done something differently or you don't or is it too personal it's almost like going back in time and having to like experience something good good and bad mainly good but just i don't know it just feels very powerful and emotional uh so my instinct is to not do it which is probably dead wrong it's a dumb instinct uh so i had to sit through both uh in the same day and it was hilarious because i'm watching and i'm just cracking up i'm just so hard because to me they're perfect because everything in it is what would make me laugh it's like if if like someone from outer space made a movie that would like if ai knew me so well that every joke would make judd laugh yeah and i just sat there laughing and i had literally forgotten 80 of it like i didn't know what was coming in terms of the jokes and i was so amused by how funny everyone was just as an observer that everyone had like the eye of the tiger yeah like no one looks like they're walking through it no one looks like this is movie 30 and they're cashing the check they all look like it is life or death comedy time yeah whether it's you know leslie or sandler or seth or craig robinson just whoever you know you're like god damn are they rocking it right now and i felt a distance from it where i could appreciate like look how funny heigl is when i think that when we were watching those movies we felt that same level of like You talked a lot at that time about the way that you would direct and throwing lines at people and being you know more open to things unfurling in real time and then when we became aware of that as viewers then we almost like we felt like we were watching that happen in a way in a way that didn't interfere with our enjoyment of the movie but you know you're working on a movie that's coming out next year like do you still have the same relationship to directing do you still do things the same way how does it operate now yeah the movie i'm just finishing up is called the comeback king and i wrote it with glenn powell and it's about a country music star in free fall and it was funny to do it with glenn because glenn hadn't made a movie that way and he's a great writer and so you know i said you know we're going to work really hard on the script but every day we're going to shoot the script and then we're going to toss it and do both and it was fun watching him acclimate to that because he was amazing at it but to see the letting go of this isn't a one plan shoot right it's like we're going to shoot the scene then we're going to loosen it up and then we're really going to loosen it up and we're going to just see what feels right because you know as soon as people are on the set it feels different than when you're in your room in your underwear and as soon as they start talking you're like oh now i know what he would say and so i wanted to be able to you know tap into that yeah to take advantage of it yeah and then you hire people uh who you have a feeling that they have a lot to give to it you know so you know kristen miliotti is in the movie and madeline klein and and they're funny and and they have a lot to do they they think of that i would never think of you know i'm always i'm always aware of you know i'm not kristen miliotti how she's going to react to glenn powell in this funny romantic scene uh is going to be interesting and i probably can't even anticipate it so i have to talk to her about it and rehearse with her and let her play in addition to the thing i thought she would do interesting what um what happens when somebody isn't good at it you don't have to say any names but i'm just kind of curious like how do you figure that out when someone can't roll with it well hopefully they don't have a really big part i haven't had it with someone who's got a huge part uh because usually we can tell yeah you know sometimes you might get a day player where you go oh i thought that would hit harder than it did but yeah but it's rarely in a moment you know that's essential but also sometimes the day players come in and they're so funny yeah um you know in this movie there's a comedian uh who's uh from england named and every word out of his mouth he's he's like tearing down the house and he's he's a you know i mean he's originally you know from china and and he he's just very gifted but also does it has never done it before so he doesn't he doesn't have that stress because he's never made a movie and have it come out and been judged so he's in that perfect place of pure inspiration and it's really fun to see someone just take off like that where you go oh this is this is like a mclovin melissa mccarthy you know christmas plus situation where people love this person and they have no idea who he is that's exciting um we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen do you do you watch a lot of movies these days besides your own i watch uh i watch uh yeah i think i probably do watch a lot of things i'm trying to think what is the last great of everything movies tv anything just watch a called Mind Over Murder on HBO Max. That was a multiple-parter, not just a group of people who all, except for one, like six people, confess, and they didn't do it. And it's just fascinating. I mean, it's funny because there's so much crime on TV, and I watch so much of it. Do you? But I also know that it's like knocking out our ability to get all of the things we want, like Errol Morris movies and things like that. But they are endlessly fascinating because it's human behavior. Right. And so at night, sometimes we'll watch Dateline, and we'll go through the list of the Datelines to see which ones we've seen, which is almost all of them. And then we're trying to decide who we want to see murdered tonight. Like, oh, I don't want to see that kind of person murdered. Let's see a grandpa get murdered. But yet, every once in a while, somebody does something incredible. And I'm looking forward to this. The Nathan Fielder Oppenheimer movie. Have you seen it? I've seen it twice. Yeah. It's in your wheelhouse. Yeah. It's in everyone's wheelhouse. It's the thing you're describing, the human behavior thing, and also comedy. And so maybe more documentaries like that. Judd Apatow, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. That was fun. Thank you to Judd Apatow. Thanks to our producer, Jack. Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for his production support. As I said earlier, next week, Whale Fall, Sense and Sensibility, Best Picture Power Rankings. Got to make some room. I want to introduce another idea around the power rankings, by the way. Okay. I want to start doing cross-offs. Movies that we are eliminating from contention. They're out? Yeah. They're voted off the island? Yeah. Can we get some sort of props? Yeah. What do you say? Can we? What kind of props? I don't know. Something where I could, like, actually visibly throw the name, you know? Oh, look at that. Off the table? I'll take a look at the budget. You don't want to cross it out? You want to throw it out? Well, we don't have the telestrator yet. Yeah. What's up with that? You want to get some whiteboard? I can't speak. Yeah, sure. Whiteboard. We'll figure something out. Should we do the whole All of a Sudden episode on a whiteboard? That would be awesome. We should actually do that. That's a good idea. We're, like, we're standing and we're. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We might have to have lav mics. Okay. Maybe people will finally be able to see my legs. That'll be a huge thing. They can see them now. That's true. They can see everything. Okay, bye. Bye. Ha, ha, ha. Results will vary. Experian. That's why she shops at BJ's Wholesale Club, saving up to 25% off grocery store prices. Beef jerky. Microwave meals. Laundry pods. Even they can't screw up. Home of the save. Open soon. Limited time offer. New members only. BJ's. Home of the save.