Elizabeth Holmes and Nathan Fielder Keep Us Guessing

The comedian Nathan Fielder came to fame as the creator and host of the Comedy Central series “Nathan for You.” The show followed Fielder as he devised outrageous schemes, ostensibly with the aim of helping various small businesses. What became clear, though, was that Fielder was less interested in helping business owners generate profits than he was in understanding the people ensnared in his plots. His next project, the HBO series “The Rehearsal,” was a similar offbeat portrait of offbeat people. At the center of both projects is Fielder himself, a documentarian whose motives can sometimes be hard to parse.

This week, Fielder’s first feature-length documentary, “You Can See Everything,” hits theaters. Co-directed by Lance Oppenheim, the movie shows Fielder embedding himself into the life of the disgraced Theranos founder and felon Elizabeth Holmes in the days leading up to her imprisonment for fraud. The film caused a big splash when it debuted at the Telluride Film Festival, in part because it presents Holmes, a mysterious and compelling cultural figure, through the eyes of Fielder, a mysterious and compelling filmmaker.

This week, the Times movie critic Alissa Wilkinson and critic at large Jason Zinoman, who covers comedy, join Michael Barbaro for a spoiler-free discussion of Nathan Fielder, his career, and why he might be the perfect person to tell the story of Elizabeth Holmes.

 

On Today’s Episode

Alissa Wilkinson, a movie critic at The New York Times.

Jason Zinoman, a critic at large for the Culture section of The New York Times.

 

Background Reading

• ‘The Real World’ and Nathan Fielder can both thank this cult filmmaker.
• ‘You Can See Everything,’ if you could only secure a ticket.

 

Photo: A24, via Associated Press

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

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