Nathan Fielder on Filming Elizabeth Holmes: 'She Seems So Genuine'

Nathan Fielder says he lived through weeks of "cognitive dissonance" while filming Elizabeth Holmes and her partner Billy Evans — and the result, "You Can See Everything," screened to a packed, gasping, laughing New York Film Festival audience on Wednesday night.

The three-hour documentary, co-directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, premiered as a surprise at the Telluride Film Festival weeks ago, drawing rave reviews and early Oscar buzz. It records the 34 days before Holmes began her 11-year prison sentence for defrauding Theranos investors. Holmes has maintained her innocence since stepping out of the public eye, and the film marks the first time she has spoken publicly at length in years.

Holmes and Evans invited Fielder and Oppenheim into their home 34 days before the sentence began. The production came together through a chain of coincidences the directors recounted in a post-screening Q&A that carefully avoided the film's many spoilers.

Oppenheim had cold-emailed Fielder after learning he had watched part of "Some Kind of Heaven," Oppenheim's documentary about a Florida retirement community. The two became friends. A few years ago, they visited the Magic Castle in Los Angeles, where a magician asked the audience for a celebrity's name for a close-up trick. Someone suggested Elizabeth Holmes.

That name jogged Oppenheim's memory: the Theranos founder had reached out to A24 about someone documenting her life. Fielder, who had read the 2018 book "Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup," was "fascinated" by Theranos' downfall and set up a meeting with her via A24.

"When I met her, I remember having this weird experience where she seems so genuine at times. But then I'm like, 'no,' and clocking and tracking my thoughts and being like, 'Okay, I know she's a liar.' It was a weird mental thing," Fielder said. "From there, we were like, 'Can we roll the dice on something if they were open to having cameras in?'"

They were. A24 gave the small crew license to "pull the plug" if the directors could not find a story.

The story found them. "It wasn't until we started shooting that moments would happen — some of them are in the film — and then after Lance and I would talk about what we thought happened there," Fielder said. "We'd completely disagree on what something meant to us and what we thought was happening. Then we were like, 'Oh, this is really interesting. If we can't agree on what's happening, there's something here.' And our curiosity sort of just like drove us from there."

"Every person that worked on this movie was going through a similar feeling of cognitive dissonance," Oppenheim added. "We would unpack the day's events, and no one could agree on the seemingly mundane moments that would transpire. Everyone had a different point of view. So Nathan and I started thinking, 'If we can just try and get out of the way of this and capture this and attempt to bring people as close to that experience of being there as possible, then maybe there's an interesting project to be made out of this.'"

The film's first teaser went viral for a close-up of Holmes telling Fielder: "I don't have anything to deceive you on. Of course I'm not deceiving you. I'm engaging with you as a human being. Why would I deceive you? There's no reason for me to do that." The full trailer went further, showing Fielder moving in with Holmes and Evans around the clock, sitting on their bed and filming Holmes as she cried during an interview.

"I cannot tell you how weird it was that we were there," Fielder told the New York audience, which laughed. "Truly, to this day, we're still like — anyways, sorry. I wouldn't think I'd be the person you would want for your final period. I'm a nice person, I do believe, but I'm not the most comforting. You know what I mean? I think you know."

Asked by the moderator why Holmes and Evans chose him, Fielder had no answer. "She said, 'First and foremost, we see this as a human story,'" he recalled. "It's so hard to understand where they may have been coming from, but maybe there was a sense that inviting someone who was like a friend of theirs, no one would take that seriously. I don't know, it's so hard to speculate."

Oppenheim compared the experience to Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film "Stalker," with its mystical zone that grants innermost desires. "The laws of reality and everything that we thought was going on outside just evaporated, and no one could agree," he said. "I feel like our brains were scrambled. We were also unsure for so long if we even had anything that was worthwhile to make and put together."

The film is a milestone for both directors. Fielder broke out with the Comedy Central series "Nathan for You," then blended documentary and elaborate scripted scenarios in HBO's "The Rehearsal" and created, wrote, directed and starred in Showtime's "The Curse." "You Can See Everything" is his feature directorial debut. Oppenheim released "Primetime" last week, starring Robert Pattinson as "To Catch a Predator" host Chris Hansen, and previously directed "Spermworld," "Ren Faire" and "Some Kind of Heaven."

After the credits, the directors asked the audience to preserve the film's surprises. General audiences will get their chance when "You Can See Everything" opens in theaters on Oct. 16.