Elizabeth Holmes and Nathan Fielder Keep Us Guessing

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. I'm D.Stroen, and with YouTube Premium, I get ad-free videos, offline downloads, and so much more. Make sure y'all try YouTube Premium for too much free at youtube.com/premium. Trial eligibility varies, terms apply, and cancel anytime.

SPEAKER_2 (0:16)

Your team is on a deadline, but moving all your enterprise data will take time your business simply doesn't have.

IBM technology lets AI work with your data where it already lives. With an open hybrid cloud approach designed to build on your existing investments. It's another way IBM helps you put your data to work. Let's create smarter business. IBM. Visit ibm.com to learn more.

Alissa Wilkinson (0:50)

It's selling out everywhere.

SPEAKER_2 (0:52)

Is it?

Michael Barbaro (0:52)

Because I was debating with my wife yesterday. I was like, is this really a thing or is this like a New York Times?

SPEAKER_2 (0:58)

No, this is a thing.

Alissa Wilkinson (1:00)

I have heard strangers on public transit talking about it.

Jason Zinoman (1:03)

Friends with very little interest in movies mad at me for not taking them to the screen.

SPEAKER_2 (1:09)

All right. Save it for the episode.

Michael Barbaro (1:15)

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily on Sunday.

Every once in a while, through a combination of subject matter and clever marketing tactics, a movie becomes a phenomenon long before anyone can even see it. Usually, it's a star-studded blockbuster. Think of Oppenheimer or Marty Supreme. What doesn't normally come to mind is a three-hour documentary. But a few weeks ago, it was the anticipation of a documentary kicked off with a coy trailer.

Nathan Fielder (1:53)

Why would I deceive you?

SPEAKER_7 (1:56)

There's no, there's no reason for me to do that.

Michael Barbaro (2:00)

That touched off a cultural wildfire.

SPEAKER_8 (2:02)

All right. Okay, good shot.

Michael Barbaro (2:06)

And sent my colleagues, film critic Alissa Wilkinson and critic-at-large Jason Zinoman, racing to a secure screening room in midtown Manhattan in order to watch it. What they experienced.

Jason Zinoman (2:20)

My head is still sort of spinning.

Michael Barbaro (2:22)

Floored them.

Alissa Wilkinson (2:23)

I just feel like in these people, he sort of met his match.

Jason Zinoman (2:27)

It is emotional. It's romantic. It's wildly intimate for a documentary.

Alissa Wilkinson (2:33)

You get to the end and you're like, hang on, what have I been watching this whole time?

Michael Barbaro (2:39)

But maybe the most intriguing thing about the documentary, and really the source of all this hullabaloo, is who made it. The comedian Nathan Fielder, whose shows are known for blurring the line between reality and fiction, and the documentary's subject, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, whose career blurred the lines between reality and fiction. So today, I speak to Alissa and Jason about why this documentary called You Can See Everything is in their estimation a bonafide breakthrough. It's Sunday, October 18th.

Alissa, Jason, welcome to the Sunday Daily. Great to be here.

Alissa Wilkinson (3:32)

Great to be here again.

Michael Barbaro (3:33)

So I'm just going to start off by conceding that I have not seen the movie, You Can See Everything, that's going to be very much the center of this conversation. And so I just want to get out of the way, the ironclad pledge that we are all going to be making to each other, and most importantly, to the listener, that we are not going to spoil this film.

We're not going to tell you everything that you can see in this. Do we agree?

Jason Zinoman (4:02)

You can't hear everything.

SPEAKER_2 (4:03)

That's right.

Michael Barbaro (4:04)

I want an oral form, Alissa. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_2 (4:09)

Jason.

Jason Zinoman (4:11)

It will be hard, but I pledge.

Michael Barbaro (4:14)

We can also edit it if you falter.

But thank you for signing the oath. My first question, is this worthy of all of the hype and excitement that it has engendered in this world?

Jason Zinoman (4:30)

It's a very tall bar is the first thing.

Because it's hard to remember something that has generated this much hype. That said, I'm going to say unequivocally, yes, it does live up to the hype. It's unlike anything I've seen before.

Alissa Wilkinson (4:47)

I write a documentary column for the paper every week, so I think it's safe to say that I see more documentaries than most people, and this is unusual and excellent. I'm expecting this film to, and this sounds like hype, but I believe it to lodge itself in one of those greatest documentary categories.

I think that this film is not just about what it's about, but it's about documentary too, and that I think is an extra level that really makes it stand out in the field of many documentaries that come out every year.