{"id":898087,"date":"2026-10-28T23:34:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T23:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/898087\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T23:34:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T23:34:13","slug":"you-can-see-everything-nathan-fielder-lance-oppenheim-on-its-twists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/898087\/","title":{"rendered":"You Can See Everything: Nathan Fielder, Lance Oppenheim on Its Twists"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t[This story contains spoilers for You Can See Everything<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

\n\tLess than two months ago, the world did not know the existence of You Can See Everything. In the time since, the A24<\/a> production has opened<\/a> as one of the most successful documentaries<\/a> of all time at the North American box office and made a strong case to become the first documentary to ever be nominated for the best picture Oscar. The three-hour film, helmed by Nathan Fielder<\/a> (The Rehearsal) and Lance Oppenheim<\/a> (Primetime), has captured the zeitgeist in its combination of extensive, intimate access to its subjects; its newsmaking revelations; and its audacious formal choices, from the dynamic cinematography to the structural twist that defines the movie\u2019s back half.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s also been a product of true discovery for audiences: Ever since its secret screening<\/a> at the Telluride<\/a> Film Festival over Labor Day weekend, You Can See Everything has generated deafening buzz while keeping its biggest surprises hidden.<\/p>\n

\n\tViewers went into cinemas likely knowing that the film would depict the final month of Elizabeth Holmes<\/a>\u2019 life with her husband, Billy Evans<\/a>, and their children, before the start of her 11-plus-year prison sentence for fraud. But the surreal nature of Holmes and Evans\u2019 dynamic, both with each other and with Fielder (who appears on camera), could hardly have been anticipated. Ditto the final act\u2019s flash-forward that finds Fielder and Oppenheim\u2019s access to Holmes, now incarcerated, slipping away \u2014 leading to the introduction of Amanda Seyfried, who won an Emmy for her portrayal of Holmes in Hulu\u2019s The Dropout, to help them complete the film and re-enact key scenes and conversations from the time spent together.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn one of their first public Q&As since You Can See Everything\u2019s theatrical release, Fielder and Oppenheim joined yours truly at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival<\/a> for a wide-ranging conversation reflecting on those big surprises \u2014 while still clearly processing the years-long saga of making a film deep in the bubble of a \u201creal-life human optical illusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tElizabeth Holmes in You Can See Everything.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of A24<\/p>\n

\n\tYou guys had a seven-person crew moving into their household. How did you think about the way you were going to shoot this and capture this? I know whether Nathan would even be on camera was a conversation, too.<\/p>\n

\n\tLANCE OPPENHEIM When we first started this, we didn\u2019t think Nathan was going to be on camera. It was Elizabeth and Billy: When we were filming in the early days, they kept asking questions of Nathan. It almost felt like they wanted him to gravitate from behind the camera, in front of it. So it happened sort of organically. One of our operators, Jonathan Mitchell, who\u2019s worked with Nathan for a long time, just panned the camera to Nathan, and I was watching on the monitor. I actually thought maybe this could be useful, in a way \u2014 if Nathan was becoming this accidental investigator of these everyday moments, he could try and pull Elizabeth from whatever version of reality she was living in and try and pull her back into the one that we were in.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first stint of it was seven people. I usually shoot with one camera, with David [Bolen], and on this, it didn\u2019t work at all because we kept missing these moments, especially when Nathan would ask a question \u2014 if we were panning from Nathan to Billy or Elizabeth, we would lose the first nonverbal reaction of what happens on somebody\u2019s face when a question is posed. Nathan was like, \u201cThat\u2019s unacceptable.\u201d No, he wasn\u2019t saying that. (Laughs.) But he was like, \u201cWe\u2019ve got to get that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNATHAN FIELDER For something like this, where you\u2019re evaluating honesty and sincerity on someone\u2019s face, their response even before they answer me is so important, in terms of trying to gauge if someone\u2019s honest or not, or just what\u2019s going on with them. \u2026 Because they would move around the house, it was a process of trying to continuously incorporate the things we were missing. We needed to pull the cameras back more, and we only had two operators for three cameras in that house; it was only two to three people maximum besides me and Lance in that house at any given time. We had the wide [shot] that would cover the whole house, and then we had these zoom lenses that could also go wide, so that we could cover anything that was happening and [we] could zoom into a tight [shot] from really far away.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen what started happening is, before we were even rolling, they\u2019d start talking to us. They\u2019d try to catch us off camera and be like, \u201cOK, this is what we\u2019re doing today,\u201d or, \u201cDo you want to film this?\u201d We thought, \u201cWell, this is relevant because if they want something filmed, then that\u2019s their idea of what\u2019s going on.\u201d We were like, \u201cWe need those process conversations.\u201d We started coming in before they even woke up because they didn\u2019t lock the door of their house, and we\u2019d set up the cameras wide to cover the whole thing. You see it in the film when Billy\u2019s like, \u201cWe\u2019re going to the gym,\u201d or whatever. It\u2019s a totally different scene if you know he thinks that\u2019s something that would be important for this documentary \u2014 to film him at the gym \u2014 as opposed to it coming from us.<\/p>\n

\n\tOPPENHEIM Ironically for us, what felt new to us in some ways was embracing the oldest tenets of documentary filmmaking \u2014 like v\u00e9rit\u00e9 film. As we were responding to the situation where we had less and less access to Elizabeth, that led us to embracing other modes of filmmaking, like a director on camera or even where we go later on with the re-enactments. It\u2019s amazing seeing the way people are talking about the movie, saying it\u2019s this new formal thing, but I\u2019m like, \u201cOh no, this is actually the oldest. We\u2019re channeling all of the different ways that documentaries have been made.\u201d Ultimately, we\u2019re doing that because we\u2019re dealing with a real-life human optical illusion. That\u2019s who she is.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tLance Oppenheim, Nathan Fielder and David Canfield at the 29th SCAD Savannah Film Festival 2026.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJason Kempin\/Getty Images for SCAD<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019ve mentioned some healthy disagreements between the two of you, just about what was happening and how you were interpreting it. Let\u2019s take the \u201cwho\u2019s on first\u201d scene as an example: Nathan, what it was like to be there for a bizarre moment like that, and how would you two then talk about it in terms of how it would inform the movie? And how do you reflect on them now?<\/p>\n

\n\tFIELDER There were so many things that we were tracking all at once. Sometimes these little moments would sit in your mind for a bit, but we were there constantly for a month, so some we would sort of forget about \u2014 and then be reminded when we reviewed the footage in the edit. That \u201cwho\u2019s on first\u201d moment, everyone was like, \u201cWhat was that?\u201d We knew these moments that we couldn\u2019t make sense of were interesting because we would talk about them a lot. It\u2019s hard because you\u2019re just there and you\u2019re observing and you can\u2019t cultivate anything. You can\u2019t make anything happen. You\u2019re just documenting.<\/p>\n

\n\tOPPENHEIM There are also so many moments in this where Nathan would be like, \u201cI think you\u2019re guilty. Why are we here? Do you want us to leave?\u201d And they\u2019d be like, \u201cNo, no, stay.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFIELDER I didn\u2019t say that in the same sentence, hold on. (Laughs.) I did not say, \u201cI think you\u2019re guilty. Do you want us to leave?\u201d I said it very early on to her; I laid out so she knew how I felt. But yeah, we were conscious that this was a mother\u2019s last month with her children. If tensions would ever run high and we sensed that our presence wasn\u2019t wanted, I\u2019d say, \u201cLook, if you guys are regretting this decision, we\u2019ll pull the plug. We\u2019ll go.\u201d It wasn\u2019t a thing where we were saying, \u201cYou have to do this,\u201d or trying to convince them to be a part of this.<\/p>\n

\n\tOPPENHEIM It was the opposite.<\/p>\n

\n\tFIELDER We always were saying, \u201cWe will leave anytime.\u201d And they were very much like, \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOPPENHEIM \u201cStay. Stay for this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFIELDER That was part of the mindfuck of it all. Sorry for swearing. I don\u2019t normally swear in professional settings or even private ones a lot of times.<\/p>\n

\n\tOPPENHEIM Before we started shooting, Billy showed us a video \u2014 because he would sometimes video things on his phone, like just of him and Elizabeth on a couch. He\u2019d be like, \u201cLook at this moment.\u201d It\u2019d be a video of Elizabeth crying, and he\u2019s like, \u201cWe just watched Pride and Prejudice. This is so good.\u201d I\u2019m just like, \u201cAre these the type of moments that you are interested in having us show? What do you want us to see? What is the object of your guys\u2019 inquiry with this?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFIELDER Why us? Why are we there? I mean, I like myself enough, but I would not want me there for my last month of freedom, if that makes sense. What was also weird about it is we felt like there was some game going on that even we couldn\u2019t make sense of, but we were like, \u201cWell, let\u2019s just go along with this and see what comes out, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDo you feel like you have any more clarity on that now?<\/p>\n

\n\tFIELDER Fuck no.<\/p>\n

\n\tOPPENHEIM Seeing it with audiences is always really different for me. I feel like I end up having a completely different reaction to the movie. It\u2019s like it\u2019s this evolving Rorschach test. But I do feel like we witnessed something. We saw a pattern of behavior emerge over the time we had. Other documentaries I\u2019ve made, I\u2019ve spent a lot of time with people \u2014 years \u2014 but sometimes you don\u2019t really notice as much of a change. It felt like there were things that were going on, and there are times where I watch this movie and I feel like the behavior is totally unconscious and she\u2019s not aware of it. And there are times where I\u2019m like, \u201cNo, she\u2019s totally aware of it.\u201d It\u2019s hard to operate fully in the world of binaries. It\u2019s somewhere in between, somewhere deep, lost in the void or something.<\/p>\n

\n\tFIELDER This is an interesting time because there are a lot of reactions to this, and I have time to look at some stuff. There is this phenomenon that happens that is related to proximity. When you\u2019re in their bubble, you\u2019re in a different mindset than when you step out of it and you\u2019re in the world of everyone else. We weren\u2019t talking to anyone about this project; no one had seen it, we were just talking amongst ourselves for so long. And now the conversation is so all over the world, I\u2019m gleaning new things from just hearing what other people are saying. Also, it does feel like people bring to this a lot that\u2019s inside them. It\u2019s not just what\u2019s on the screen, or else everyone would have a consensus. There\u2019s something coming from people, individuals, and it\u2019s hard sometimes for me to separate that from what we\u2019re objectively looking at.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe should talk a little bit about the back half of the movie, as you were losing access to Elizabeth but decided to continue telling the story. How did you decide on the shape of it, and how did you know when to end it?<\/p>\n

\n\tOPPENHEIM We both were interested in seeing what was going to happen with the business. Nathan said to Billy, \u201cLet us know when you have something you can show us,\u201d and he\u2019s like, \u201cI\u2019ll have it in 365 days.\u201d It turned out to be two years instead of when he had initially suggested it would happen. But then it felt like once we were out of the bubble of San Diego and we were seeing Billy work on the thing, there were these questions that kept coming up for us. We wanted to go to even more people. We reached out, but so many people we tried to talk to that were out of the bubble didn\u2019t want to talk to us because they thought that Elizabeth was this toxic personality. So that led us to [Amanda Seyfried].<\/p>\n

\n\tFIELDER When we watched everything and put together that first half, even though something felt complete with her going to prison, the picture didn\u2019t feel complete because we were still having conversations where we were trying to make sense of it that were being informed by other stuff that happened off camera. We didn\u2019t know where we were going to go. And like Lance said, we reached out to a bunch of people and then when we reached out to Amanda, she was like, \u201cCome over, bring cameras.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOPPENHEIM We didn\u2019t know Amanda before this.<\/p>\n

\n\tFIELDER And when we eventually realized we had something complete, that was just a decision that was made in the edit. We felt like there was enough, or the conversations that were being informed by things that the audience wouldn\u2019t have been privy to were now part of the film. Once we felt like you guys had all the information basically that we had, it felt like, \u201cOK, this is sort of as far as we can go with it.\u201d We didn\u2019t even know if it felt complete. It just felt like the end of the road for this, a little bit.<\/p>\n

\n\tOPPENHEIM The Amanda piece \u2014 she maybe knew who Nathan was, but they\u2019d never met each other before. That first moment when we\u2019re in her apartment, that\u2019s the very first time any of us had really spoken with her in person, when she\u2019s watching the footage. She even says in the scene, \u201cI have no interest in doing this again.\u201d Then she started imitating her, and that suddenly led to us being like, \u201cOK, well, this is interesting.\u201d It almost felt like she had this unfinished business, this desire to do it again. That led us down a whole different path. She brought her own baggage into the process too. It was amazing. It\u2019s a testament to the way we made the film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[This story contains spoilers for You Can See Everything.] Less than two months ago, the world did not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":898088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[17979,165091,236,10167,136209,88,351907,43115,146344,76905,355314],"class_list":["post-898087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-a24","tag-billy-evans","tag-celebrities","tag-documentaries","tag-elizabeth-holmes","tag-entertainment","tag-lance-oppenheim","tag-nathan-fielder","tag-scad-savannah-film-festival","tag-telluride","tag-you-can-see-everything"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}