What "You Can See Everything" Is Really About, with Wesley Morris

Nathan Fielder's new film has been presented as a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of notorious Silicon Valley scam Theranos. But this doesn't begin to describe the strategies and structure that make Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's collaboration so artistically wondrous (and journalistically frustrating). Wesley Morris — The New York Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning critic-at-large — helps us dissect (and SPOIL!) the most "culturally destabilizing" movie of the year. • Previously on PTFO: The Secrets of Nathan Fielder and Sportswriting, with Mina Kimes https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/OTUzMjBjNWEtODRkZC0xMWYwLWFjNDUtODMwM2EyYjVmN2U0 • Plus: Submit your confidential tips to Pablo https://www.pablo.show/tips (Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Apple Card.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out, brought to you by Apple Card. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  I think you're being poisoned by your journalistic impulses here, because you want an answer, and you're never gonna get one.

• 0:16Pablo Torre?

  Right after this.

• 0:19Speaker 02

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• 0:52Pablo Torre?

  I just heard something that completely shocked me, which is that 45% of girls and 32% of boys feel overwhelming stress from just being on social media. And together, 25% of both feel worse about their own lives. Researchers found teens who spend more than five hours a day on their phones are at double the risk for suicidal thoughts. Bottom line, teens and phones, don't mix. And with a daughter myself, I am constantly worried about when she reaches an age where we'll have to have the phone talk. But here's the good news. There is a solution, a company called Gab, which has solved the problem by doing something that no one else is doing. Their approach is tech in steps. Tech in steps works by providing safer phones and watches for kids with no social media,

• 1:37Pablo Torre?

  tailored to every age, offering the right device at the right time. From GPS tracking-enabled watches for younger kids to phones with parent-enabled apps for tweens and teens, each device allows kids to more safely grow their independence. You don't have to give your kid a device that was made for an adult. Get them Gab, which keeps them socially connected without social media. And right now, you can use our code to get 60% off a kid's phone that will make parenting easier and give you more peace of mind. That's why I am recommending Gab. Visit gab.com/ptfo and use code PTFO for an exclusive offer. That's G A B B. Ready to upgrade your PC? The Dell Top Tech Event is here. And you can skip the research because independent tech experts already did it.

• 2:22Pablo Torre?

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• 3:06Pablo Torre?

  Shop the winners now at dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  I just can't believe I get to sit in a room where Blake Griffin maybe just was. And just Blake Griffin, I just, you know.

• 3:30Pablo Torre?

  You're sitting in his ass groove.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  That's, oh my God. Oh my dream, Pablo making all kinds of dreams. But that's not my point about Blake Griffin. He's just one of those people who just makes the most with what he's got. He's one of those rare people who just understands the advantages that he has in life.

• 3:51Pablo Torre?

  I will also tell you that, it's funny, I was thinking about this. Why am I so charmed by Blake Griffin beyond his natural talents and his charm talents?

• 4:00Speaker 01

  He's charming.

• 4:01Pablo Torre?

  Why is he so charming? I think there's another level of his charm, which is the physical sensation of, "You should not care this much about what I do, about media." He's so interested in like stuff that the nerds do.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  No, well, this is the thing, this is the thing about making the most with what you got. Anyway, I just, um.

• 4:22Pablo Torre?

  That's not why you're here.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  That's not why I'm here. But I just wanted to say, like, what an honor to be breathing, breathing some of the air.

• 4:29Pablo Torre?

  Recycled carbon dioxide.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  That break, lift, that break, Blake, I can't even talk, I'm so in awe.

• 4:36Pablo Torre?

  He broke?

• 4:37Speaker 01

  He broke my mouth.

• 4:38Pablo Torre?

  Broke you?

• 4:39Speaker 01

  You know, Blake Griffin was breathing, I'm just, what an honor.

• 4:41Pablo Torre?

  He's the best.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  A pleasure.

• 4:42Pablo Torre?

  Love that guy.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  He's just, I mean, just also really good at being in commercials. Like, one of the few athletes who just makes sense in front of the camera.

• 4:50Pablo Torre?

  I think the audience now understands we both have a crush on Blake Griffin, and it's uncomfortable for everybody.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  It should not be uncomfortable, because they share it.

• 4:55Pablo Torre?

  Is this just a podcast about how much you guys like Blake Griffin?

• 4:58Speaker 01

  I mean, I do.

• 4:59Pablo Torre?

  The answer is yes, it is.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Not a whole show.

• 5:02Pablo Torre?

  Smash cut to one hour later. One hour later. I gotta set the scene. Because Wesley Morris, multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The New York Times, critic at large. I have just walked out of You Can See Everything, the film that everybody seems to be arguing about. And I have never been as excited to unload whatever it is I'm about to say to you that I am right now. So thank you for doing this.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  You're welcome. I think I share whatever, and I don't know what you're gonna put down.

• 5:36Pablo Torre?

  Same.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Happy to pick it up. I, some caveats.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  This movie is three days old in my brain.

• 5:46Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  I don't normally do things like this, but I'm gonna say, I am, I'm gonna, I'm not, y'all won't know that I'm holding back, but like, there's so much to talk about in this movie, to think about, to think through. I wanna, I wanna write something.

• 6:01Pablo Torre?

  This is not your written piece, this is.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  I know, I know.

• 6:05Pablo Torre?

  This is, perhaps in the spirit of the film, a bit of the making of.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Pablo, often, talking to you is, it supplants, it obviates the need for.

• 6:18Pablo Torre?

  Corruption.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Sitting down, it could be a corruption if I work for you. I don't need to type sometimes, because the talking is as satisfying. I've like gotten to the place that the writing probably was going to take me. So with that said, let us begin.

• 6:51Pablo Torre?

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• 7:35Pablo Torre?

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• 8:20Pablo Torre?

  So I wanna describe You Can See Everything as what I believe it to be. It has been advertised as a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. That is not what this is.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 8:34Pablo Torre?

  At all.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, no, yes, yeah, yeah, go on.

• 8:36Pablo Torre?

  This is a movie about how Nathan Fielder would make a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, all of which is directed by, co-directed by Lance Oppenheim. And the making of, I think, is just the key thing I wanna spotlight here, as we will spoil a whole bunch of stuff. We can't get around that.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Let's just start with what it means to spoil this movie, because I am a person who saw this movie knowing that Amanda Seyfried is in it. I knew it.

• 9:09Pablo Torre?

  Someone told you?

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Someone told me.

• 9:11Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 9:12Pablo Torre?

  Were you mad when they told you?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  I didn't know to be mad. I didn't know to be mad. It's a Nathan Fielder movie, anything can happen, right? Like, his whole project is, um, well, you're here because you didn't know what was gonna happen. Right? So I, that didn't matter to me going in.

• 9:29Pablo Torre?

  So Amanda Seyfried?

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Seyfried, yeah.

• 9:33Pablo Torre?

  The pronunciation of her name is also a joke in the film. But she portrayed Elizabeth Holmes in the Hulu series. And so she has been, and this is crucial to the film that we're here to talk about, sort of the face of her in Hollywood.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 9:47Pablo Torre?

  And so she shows up in a key way.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Knowing that she was going to appear just enhanced the time spent with this movie in her absence. And I'm saying in her absence because the way she functions is almost as a moral, ethical, and emotional reframing experience.

• 10:11Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Right?

• 10:12Pablo Torre?

  So just to set up the premise of this, it's about a month out from Elizabeth Holmes.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  34 days, yep.

• 10:19Pablo Torre?

  Going to federal prison, and Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim and their crew show up in this, turns out to be rented house in San Diego. And it's about the time they spend before she checks in to prison. And once she does, it feels like there's another movie. And in fact, because the movie is two hours and 55 something-ish, it does feel like, when Amanda shows up, the actress, like, it's the beginning of another film.

• 10:51Pablo Torre?

  We're now doing something that has not only reframed the thing we just saw, but also is beginning, perhaps, to reveal what we're actually here to talk about.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  You know, like a lot of people, this trailer got sent to me, um, being like, oh my God, this is gonna happen. And I watched it, and I was like, all right, fine.

• 11:18Speaker 03

  I'm not that person. I can promise you that.

• 11:24Speaker 03

  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.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  Why would I deceive you?

• 11:36Speaker 03

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

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Okay. But the all right, fine, was in part not a Nathan Fielder concern because I suppose if anybody's gonna

• 11:55Speaker 01

  look into one of these tech startup Silicon Valley enclaves, let it be him.

• 12:04Pablo Torre?

  Yep.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  I also feel like we're at this really depressing moment. You look at the lineup and you're like, well, this is great. The thing that we care most about is Mark Zuckerberg and the OpenAI guy.

• 12:18Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, Sam Altman.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  And, I mean.

• 12:20Pablo Torre?

  You're right.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  And Elizabeth Holmes.

• 12:22Pablo Torre?

  I hadn't put that all together, but this is our time.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, but also there's an Elon Musk documentary.

• 12:29Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, it's a good project.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  And, you know, there's a new Danny Boyle movie about the explosion of Rupert Murdoch's journalism career in the in the 60s. And this is, by the way, the second wave of the of this interest, right? Because there was an entire series of television shows and limited series about these same people or some of these same people.

• 12:54Pablo Torre?

  Including the one that figures in.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Including, including The Dropout, which is the film that Amanda Seyfried stars in that becomes the the hinge point for this movie's

• 13:11Speaker 01

  sort of philosophical dimension.

• 13:15Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  I mean, obviously, they're going to be teaching this film. It's it's worth studying because it's got so many sort of documentary world cliches that it is thinking about and and exploring without even saying as much, right? Like, do you pay your subjects? Huge, huge sticking point, like, like a, like a thriller level event in this movie.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Intimate subject director intimacy.

• 13:51Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  I mean, this movie is almost exclusively about that. How much of the director do we need to see? Why are we looking at the person making this movie? Couldn't we have done this without his direct participation? No, of course, we couldn't have.

• 14:07Pablo Torre?

  And also, and also, relatedly, how much are you leaving out of this? That the journalistic record had elsewhere established with such clarity that might undermine the particular angle and the perhaps advantage that you are seeking by exploring this particular perspective? One of the things this film is not about, as we established earlier, is Elizabeth Holmes and her story. And Theranos. It's just not. In part, it it touches on it, but just to establish what I think is a popular strain of argument. People are like, well, is she, is she as much of a fraud as we thought? Is she a?

• 14:49Speaker 01

  From this movie?

• 14:51Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  This is how people are talking about it?

• 14:52Pablo Torre?

  There's a, there's a revisiting of the, how do we feel about her? Is she an all out liar? How much of a fraud is she?

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Oh, wow, that's deep.

• 15:01Pablo Torre?

  Well, and I just want to remind people, whether you read the reporting.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  John Kerry is like, I've settled this.

• 15:09Pablo Torre?

  And he did.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  The legal system has settled this.

• 15:12Pablo Torre?

  So to that point, in Bad Blood, John Kerry is, you know, he's talked about this, threatened with litigation on a daily basis for months by Elizabeth Holmes. It was what he calls a ruthless cover up of a breathtaking fraud, and she was at the controls. The US Attorney's Office, 2022.

• 15:30Pablo Torre?

  Elizabeth Holmes, this is established, sent out inaccurate results, this is me quoting the government now, inaccurate results to patients being screened for cancer, to women monitoring their pregnancies, and to one victim who was led to believe she had the precursor virus to AIDS, among many other examples. And then elsewhere, the SEC points out that, yeah, she created fake financials, boosting revenue to 108 million when it was a little more than 100,000. She falsely claimed the technology was used on the battlefield in Afghanistan. She admitted in court that she personally affixed the logos of like Pfizer to reports that would falsely indicate those companies had endorsed Theranos. She's a fucking scammer, full on scammer. That is not.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  This movie's not about that.

• 16:10Pablo Torre?

  And and perhaps you could argue, man, you guys didn't do enough to say that, but I find that so much less interesting.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  It's been adjudicated.

• 16:17Pablo Torre?

  Exactly.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  She's going to prison.

• 16:19Pablo Torre?

  You should also say that we work in media.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:23Pablo Torre?

  And this is a, this is a film about how to make media.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Hmm, say more about that.

• 16:31Pablo Torre?

  Well, everything that we explore here is about

• 16:38Pablo Torre?

  what do you believe, what are you disclosing?

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:42Pablo Torre?

  Who are you manipulating? What are your ethics around any of it? And who do you trust? And that's what we do journalistically.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  I think that this is also part of what makes this movie fascinating, which is that it is simultaneously obeying rules that it is bending, breaking, challenging at every point, while also asking its subjects and confronting its subjects, its two subjects, Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans, with the rules they're breaking and the lies they're telling. This is a movie

• 17:21Speaker 01

  that is so straightforward on the one hand, filmmakers move in to the to the home of their subjects and just watch what happens. Period. Truly, period.

• 17:30Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  There's a countdown, you know, we know we arrive on date 34.

• 17:37Pablo Torre?

  Three days, you see it.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  And then see her off to prison. Now, within that very simple setup are like thousands of choices, right?

• 17:48Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  There's so many decisions that have been made to to bring this movie to us. Some of them, I don't even know if choices are right. They're more like things that happen that the filmmakers use.

• 18:04Pablo Torre?

  So I I'm gonna pivot your word of choice to the degree that I think is more true. I think they're all strategies. I think in this film, you have a bunch of people who are, for a while, withholding the degree to which they are strategizing.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Mr. Oppenheimer, Mr. Fielder, and this, and Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans.

• 18:30Pablo Torre?

  All of them.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:31Pablo Torre?

  All of them. Everyone who has the ability to is, is manipulating each other in some direction. And I don't even say that to be, again, scolding. I I just think you see this over the course of the film, and they actually admit it over the course of the film.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  The thing that's important to say here is that the opening shot of this film, and this is, this is, I mean, I'm getting chills thinking about it. But this film opens with Billy Evans laying down. He's talking on the phone. But it also seems like he might be in some kind of compression chamber or something, like a tanning bed. It's just that the shot is so tight that we don't have a context for where whoever this person is on the phone. Because, by the way, I do not, I did not know anything about this man. I didn't know he existed. I don't know there were babies. I don't know anything about this woman's life.

• 19:28Pablo Torre?

  Same.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Because, you know what? Pablo, I did not care.

• 19:31Pablo Torre?

  Same.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  I didn't care.

• 19:32Pablo Torre?

  Frankly, same.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Because.

• 19:34Pablo Torre?

  I am stunned by how much I care now because I didn't before.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  I didn't care, didn't know anything about this woman's life beyond what the, what the, with the podcast, The Dropout, and the film, the Hulu series, the very not great Hulu series starring the the nonetheless wonderful Amanda Seyfried.

• 19:52Pablo Torre?

  We'll get back to it.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  So he's lying down, taking this call, basically establishing that that the the reason that they've agreed, he's telling someone on the phone that, you know, we want the chance to humanize Elizabeth Holmes because, you know, classic, the media sucks, they get it wrong, their facts are wrong, they're out to get us, witch hunt, fake news, yada, yada. There's a cut. I mean, maybe the call hasn't ended, he's still on the phone, but there's a cut to a wider shot. And you see that he actually is lying down on his back. And in the background is Elizabeth Holmes handling a child.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  And you're like, okay, that is not a major, that is not an agent. I thought it was an agent who who I thought was on the phone or a manager or something or a publicist.

• 20:49Pablo Torre?

  Well.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  And as it turns out, Billy is at three of those things and about eight, eight other things.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  I'm like, okay, the straightforwardness is clear. These people have invited this team into their homes. Who knows what they know about the people they've invited? Why'd you choose these two guys, especially Nathan Fielder? But that's, well, I mean, I guess we can talk about that later, but they've invited them in. They're now inside the house, making a movie that these, that that Billy and Elizabeth think is going to exonerate, no, but.

• 21:27Pablo Torre?

  They're thinking that it's gonna help.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Help, well, the way having two kids before you go to prison might help, not to be too cynical about it.

• 21:34Pablo Torre?

  Work out the timelines, right? And you can have a very persuasive case for strategy across the board.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  I like that this is the word we're going to be coming back to throughout this conversation.

• 21:46Pablo Torre?

  And again, I I say this as someone who knows something about the choices and how they become strategies. What are you telling your audience? What are you not? How are you doing this fairly? What are the things, the handcuffs on you that perhaps only a commitment to disclosure and ethics can bind?

• 22:08Pablo Torre?

  But they are doing this, I think, because before she goes to prison, they have a shot at changing, nudging, helping the public understand Elizabeth Holmes as she wants them to.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  I'm like, okay, so this was meant to be a commercial, essentially. Because think about the era of nonfiction that we're in, right? Like, we're in an era of documentary filmmaking in which the subjects are the directors, right?

• 22:38Pablo Torre?

  We see it in sports all the time.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  The subjects have the control.

• 22:42Pablo Torre?

  They all agree on how they see this story.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. Everybody's on the same page. The director has been hired to be on that page. And so I think they're operating with one cultural assumption, right? Billy Evans and Elizabeth Holmes. But Lance Oppenheimer comes, you know, I don't know anything about his education. I don't know where he, I don't know what his criterion situation is.

• 23:13Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  But he and Nathan Fielder have, they're coming from a completely different cultural universe. And they have seen the Errol Morris. They have seen-

• 23:26Pablo Torre?

  This is really important.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  They have seen, I mean, the Mazels work, right? They understand-

• 23:34Pablo Torre?

  That, that, an auteur-

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:37Pablo Torre?

  The director's vision-

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Michael Moore is, you know, Ross McElwee's Sherman's March.

• 23:43Pablo Torre?

  We, we tell the story-

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:45Pablo Torre?

  And everyone else, perhaps at their most controversial points, perhaps including the audience, you don't get to know what we don't want you-

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:56Pablo Torre?

  -to understand.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  The first time, I don't know about when you saw it, but the first time the audience cracks up is one of the first cutaways to Nathan lurking.

• 24:09Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  His presence, because you know, we don't really know what the formal conceit here yet, we don't know what the language is gonna be. That, that Nathan lurking thing, that's not necessarily nonfiction filmmaking. That's paranoia thriller, right? That is 80s horror movie. And Nathan's lurking is funny because it's out of context.

• 24:35Pablo Torre?

  But it's, it's, it's a signal-

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Yes, it's a signal.

• 24:39Pablo Torre?

  That something else, this guy's a character now.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  But all you need to know, period, is that now we're, now this person is not only a character, but he's a voyeur. The, the director is a voyeur. He's got a gaze.

• 24:55Pablo Torre?

  He's creeping around.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  And he's just in the corner, like, looking at Billy and Elizabeth have a conversation. They are severely mic'd. This lurking isn't necessarily necessary.

• 25:08Pablo Torre?

  It's a signpost for something else about what this film's trying to do.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes. That is part of the strategy. But what are the stakes?

• 25:19Pablo Torre?

  So I, I want to establish, because I was also curious, what are the stakes? How do you take this, this story that's been previously reported and invade it, or be invited in, and then decide, how do we set up these questions? These standards of success? And, and there are a couple things that they narrow. And I'll just say them because I think it's, it's, it's useful here.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:47Pablo Torre?

  One is this question around, will Elizabeth Holmes admit that when she said that the Theranos device can do any test-

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Oh, sure, semantics.

• 25:56Pablo Torre?

  She was lying as opposed to saying, well, at some point, it could eventually, it has the capacity to, versus, this is the who's on first scenario, which Nathan Fielder brilliantly plays for her and Billy.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  It's Abbott and Costello doing their-

• 26:12Pablo Torre?

  This is a sports show, it's important to reference, this is about baseball.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Yes. They're doing who's on first.

• 26:19Speaker 04

  That's what I want to find out. I want you to tell me the names of the fellows on the St. Louis team. I'm telling you, who's on first, what's on second, I don't know who's on third. You know the fellow's names? Yes. Well, then who's playing first? Yes. I mean, the fellow's name on first base? Who? The fellow playing first base for St. Louis? Who? The guy on first base? Who is on first?

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Nathan explains it to Elizabeth Holmes, who does not get the joke. But essentially, it isn't so much, it, it isn't, she doesn't get it, and it's painful how she doesn't get it. But then the, the first turn, well, okay, have we seen Billy's [BLEEP] at this point? We've seen Billy shower naked.

• 26:53Pablo Torre?

  By now, we have.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  So that's the first turn.

• 26:56Pablo Torre?

  We should, we should establish that the sudden cut to Billy in the shower-

• 27:01Speaker 01

  After an act, he's like, we haven't, we're doing a really bad job of like, explaining Billy, right? To the extent that he can be explained. Billy is what I would describe very, very reductively as a, as a finance bro.

• 27:14Pablo Torre?

  Tech bro, finance bro type guy.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Golf bro, tall, kind of generically handsome. Like, you know, if you found Charlie Kirk attractive, you'd probably find Billy Evans attractive.

• 27:29Pablo Torre?

  And this figures in later into the film.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  And-

• 27:31Pablo Torre?

  Charlie Kirk.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  There's a moment where he comes from exercising, he gets in the shower, and the camera essentially watches Billy shower. Billy is allowed, in the name of, of raw nakedness-

• 27:46Pablo Torre?

  Of journalism.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  You know, just truth, you get to see, you get to see me shower, you know, with no cuts.

• 27:53Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, well-

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Well, there is a cut. He, he is, he's cut. Uh, thank you for pointing that out, non-homosexual, because I'm like-

• 28:03Pablo Torre?

  Hey, man, I'm the son of a urologist.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  I just, oh, the trick, yeah.

• 28:05Pablo Torre?

  This is all true to me.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  I just like, okay, yeah, they did it.

• 28:09Pablo Torre?

  There's a whole thing with why they did it, and, and what does that mean? And how does that reflect on Nathan's-

• 28:15Speaker 01

  I understand one reason to do it, though.

• 28:18Pablo Torre?

  Yep.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  And the reason to do it pays off at the end of the movie. But I think in that moment, what you're realizing with this sort of thriller dimension, because every shot of Nathan, for about the first 20 minutes, is, is as this lurking presence in the background of Billy and Elizabeth and their children's home life. We understand that Nathan is both a creep, he's playing the role of a creep, he's present in a creepy sort of way. But he also, fundamentally, that's the first tonal shift, or like thematic shift to me,

• 29:00Speaker 01

  that like, like Nathan is a kind of adversarial presence in this home.

• 29:06Pablo Torre?

  Well, he's, there's also the scene when they're standing outside, and Billy is explaining how he met Elizabeth. And Nathan is interrogating him, and they're both, again, tight close-ups, as so much of this movie is. And Nathan is pressing him on how crazy it seems to Nathan, and also to the audience who are in alignment, that he would fall for a woman he did not recognize was Elizabeth Holmes, who had a bandage on and sunglasses and a hat, and he himself has money via his family. And he was like, you know, this ladies' man who has other girlfriends, and he decides, I'm gonna fall in love with her. And Nathan is effectively deeply disbelieving-

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, but-

• 29:48Pablo Torre?

  -of, of, of his story.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  The amazing thing about his disbelief is something else that pays off, like, by the time you get to the end of the movie. This really is, I mean, I, I'm just gonna say the thing that's very obvious, but like, this is, I mean, it's obviously a love story, and I don't even know how, how aware Nathan is of this. And this is when I'm, when I, when I wanted to kind of debate you about this question of strategy. I think Lance Oppenheimer and, and Nathan Fielder and their team have complete control.

• 30:21Pablo Torre?

  They have so much control.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  I really was willing to be naive here. With respect to these questions of truth, I mean, I've done zero journalism on this movie, but, you know, we learn at some point in an offhanded comment that he's going through a breakup, Nathan Fielder.

• 30:40Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  And I think this is a person who is looking for something that's not the thing he got to that house to find.

• 30:53Pablo Torre?

  You think he was genuinely into her.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  I think that the thing that happened to like, Henry Kissinger and every other person that came into her life at some point during the OG Theranos days-

• 31:08Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  -happens to him. And the reason to call bullshit on Billy's story, right, is that-

• 31:17Speaker 01

  I think Nathan is thinking, well, bull [__] Billy, because no man could ever fall in love with Elizabeth that way. That's not how you fall in love with her.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  How you fall in love with her is prolonged exposure and deep eye contact.

• 31:33Pablo Torre?

  This movie is all about eye contact.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  If this woman is wearing sunglasses and a hat.

• 31:37Pablo Torre?

  That's such a great take by you.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  You're not getting even 1% of the Elizabeth Holmes experience. I, Nathan Fielder, call bull [__]. You know what? I don't even call bull [__]. I say, you're not worthy of this woman, but I want to come. This brings me back, sorry, to the Who's on First. And I might start crying thinking about it because, I mean, and I, which is wild because, again, I don't care about this woman. But this movie, the person in this movie, I did find myself concerned for. So he shows her Who's on First. She doesn't get it. But it's not just that she doesn't get it. She, you know, she doesn't get that what she's watching really

• 32:25Speaker 01

  is a, is a relationship. Abbott and Costello, famous relationship, great American relationship. All these guys do is fight. Their love language is fighting. She does not understand that what she's watching is an argument. She thinks that this guy doesn't understand what this guy's trying to say.

• 32:45Pablo Torre?

  Okay, sure, when you diagram the sentence, that's what it is, but no, ma'am, it's a [__] fight. But it's not that she doesn't get that. It's that Nathan has to explain the joke to her. He kind of has to explain how comedy works to this woman. And then Billy amazingly is like, you know what, babe? He's right.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  You're like a unique, special, you know, tender, fragile thing. And you just don't see the world the way everybody else sees it. And, you know, the whole of American comedy history, everybody gets Who's on First. But you know, like the thing that makes you such a [__] treasure, babe, is that you don't, you don't, you don't get the greatest American comedy bit of all time. You're just, you're just so special. So you've got these two men. She's sitting between them. She's in a man's sandwich.

• 33:41Pablo Torre?

  And there's a shot where she's watching and there is an arm that is like scratching her back. And for a second, when I saw it, I was, the second time, I was like, whose arm is that? I was like, oh, it's Billy's, but it's also just.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can't, you can't tell.

• 33:53Pablo Torre?

  You can't immediately tell. So there is the triangle and the physics of that.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, but she, that, that to me is not a triangle. It's a sandwich. It's a press. It's a vice.

• 34:06Pablo Torre?

  And that's why you're concerned for her.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  I sat there and I thought, okay, this is no longer a movie about a woman who defrauded a bunch of people. This is a movie about a woman dealing with men.

• 34:19Pablo Torre?

  Well, so it absolutely is that. And the thing that I add to it with my perhaps endless reserve of cynicism is that she wanted the sandwich.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Oh, Pablo, what the [__]?

• 34:32Pablo Torre?

  She's Elizabeth Holmes. God [__] damn it.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  All right.

• 34:37Pablo Torre?

  I.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  I accept that.

• 34:38Pablo Torre?

  And so, and by the way, and by the way,

• 34:43Pablo Torre?

  I don't know if, I mean, let's put it this way. She has every incentive in her strategic approach. She has every incentive to adopt the strategy of, I'm gonna say, I don't get it. I don't know this. I'm a little baby. I don't know what Abbott and Costello is.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Wait, stop it. That's not what she does. What she does is like, she is truly.

• 35:08Pablo Torre?

  Oh, she is an excellent.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Is it happening to me right now?

• 35:12Pablo Torre?

  I think she might have.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Is it happening to me right now?

• 35:15Pablo Torre?

  By the end of this episode, we'll know. Right now, we're all in the air.

• 35:27Pablo Torre?

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• 36:00Speaker 05

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• 36:13Speaker 01

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• 36:30Speaker 02

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• 37:08Speaker 01

  You know, the thing I keep coming back to that this, that doesn't even come up in the film is what's in the podcast about the way she creates the voice, right? And she deepens her voice because she hears somewhere like a masculine sounding voice is likely to draw more investors because business people will take you seriously.

• 37:29Pablo Torre?

  Authority.

• 37:30Speaker 06

  We've done some work with people at Hopkins who have developed and demonstrated that in blood, you can see the onset of pancreatic cancer 17 years before a tumor forms.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  She concocts a voice, right? So we already know that the, that there's, that performance is an aspect of the Elizabeth Holmes experience, right? She not only deepens her voice, she starts dressing like Steve Jobs.

• 38:02Pablo Torre?

  [__] karaoke.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, well, she does Steve Jobs, Nathan Fielder, right?

• 38:08Pablo Torre?

  Hmm.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Right? And I think, I think that, I mean.

• 38:13Pablo Torre?

  A rehearsal of her own.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  She has been doing performance art for money the whole time.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  And yet I'm at the like benefit of the doubt stage, right? Where I'm watching a person

• 38:30Speaker 01

  really sit with the fact that she's unequipped

• 38:36Speaker 01

  for regular life. Honestly, the first turn is the egg beating moment where he takes the bowl.

• 38:42Pablo Torre?

  So, so let me, let me explain this for a second. Because this is another sort of inkblot test. It's the test of, okay, Elizabeth Holmes is with Nathan Fielder and Billy in their kitchen. And she is very lightly beating some eggs.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  She'd not stop it.

• 38:59Pablo Torre?

  Okay.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  You make eggs.

• 39:01Pablo Torre?

  I have.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  To Billy's, to somebody's point, I mean, I watched her do it and I'm like.

• 39:06Pablo Torre?

  She wasn't, she wasn't good anywhere.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  What is in that bowl?

• 39:09Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so, so.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Cause she is like very wobbly stirring this big ceramic bowl, like she's so, oh, God, I guess it's time to make the eggs. I, I don't know what, oh, I might fall. And Billy finally is like, oh my Jesus [__] Christ, lady, give me the bowl.

• 39:29Pablo Torre?

  And so to me, when I saw this the second time, my thought was, that is her getting Billy to take the bowl.

• 39:43Pablo Torre?

  Wesley has taken off his headphones and is fortunately collapsing onto the floor.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 39:50Pablo Torre?

  So I'm that kind of, perhaps I'm a paranoid investigative reporter.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 39:56Pablo Torre?

  But this lady, this lady knows how to deal with men, not always successfully. Not always successfully, but she has a strategy, Wesley. She [__] has a strategy. And she's been in, and she'd been in an abusive relationship by all accounts with Sunny, her, her, her co-executive at Theranos. And she has gone through some real stuff that I do not diminish in any way in her life. At one point, her dad casually from the sky mentions, everything changed after she was raped. And they never follow up on it and you're left to do some Googles afterwards. And at the same time, in the yes and of this story is also perhaps because of,

• 40:41Pablo Torre?

  she is deeply manipulative and knows how to handle men with a strategy, even if it lands her in [__] prison. She's trying, man. She's trying, in my view.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Oh my God, Pablo, what the [__]? Okay, so, okay.

• 40:58Pablo Torre?

  Maybe, maybe, I can be convinced, but this is, you're hearing me think through this.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  This is where we have to bring on

• 41:08Speaker 01

  the now, I mean, just legendary screen performer.

• 41:14Pablo Torre?

  It's time.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Amanda Seyfried.

• 41:18Pablo Torre?

  Dude, so she shows up and I know it was like in your theater.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  It was gasps. I mean, it's funny. I just, I mean, it was a wonderful thing to, I mean, I'm glad I knew because I didn't know when it was gonna happen, but I'm like, oh, it seems like this is, this seems like a pretty good time to bring her on. I mean, the audience can see that it's her, cuz he makes Billy, he makes Elizabeth in Billy's company watch the dropout and-

• 41:47Pablo Torre?

  It's truly organic to what this film has been, which is part of the brilliance of having her show up.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Yes. Watch, Elizabeth, can you please watch Amanda Seyfried play you in this Hulu series, for which I believe she won an Emmy?

• 42:03Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Elizabeth Holmes can't do it. It's too much for her.

• 42:06Pablo Torre?

  She begins and then she says-

• 42:08Speaker 01

  She just can't. It's hard. I mean, and I can't imagine if somebody-

• 42:11Pablo Torre?

  Oh dude, that part, that part-

• 42:13Speaker 01

  It's unthinkable to me.

• 42:14Pablo Torre?

  Seems the most plausibly sincere to me, that scene perhaps of all of them.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:19Pablo Torre?

  But the strategy with Amanda here is brilliant. Amanda is presented with Nathan's issue. Elizabeth Holmes is now in prison and things have happened before they started rolling even, or when cameras were not around, that he wants to show the audience, it turns out.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:41Pablo Torre?

  And of course, Amanda seems to organically and spontaneously, question mark, say, "I've always thought about what it would be like to portray Elizabeth Holmes after the trial."

• 42:57Pablo Torre?

  And soon, indeed, she would.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Pablo, you are sparing nobody. It's very interesting, like-

• 43:04Pablo Torre?

  I just don't know how to dial my cynicism down, man.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Again, I'm still at, I'm still at, I'm still at one. I'm still at stage one with this, right?

• 43:12Pablo Torre?

  It's just, it works so well.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Which is wonder. My, my stage one is wonder.

• 43:15Pablo Torre?

  And I, I, I, my, my perhaps questions about strategy are informed by how wondrous it is.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I think he's trying to control her, Amanda Seyfried, right? Like, but he can't, and it's crazy to me. The only person here to question, as it turns out, eventually combat, um, aid and a bet along the lines of therapy, morality, ethics and art, is an actor.

• 43:55Pablo Torre?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  But an actor takes direction. But for most of Amanda Seyfried's relationship to this movie, she's, you're not gonna let me say this, but I'm gonna say it anyway.

• 44:16Pablo Torre?

  I'll, I'll, I'll allow it.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  She's not being directed.

• 44:20Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so this is where I actually agree. I think she's a loose cannon.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yes, she is the one person who cannot be controlled.

• 44:28Pablo Torre?

  And the question I have, and by the way, I think this is the question I have at every level of how they made this, is when do you recognize there's a strategic opportunity? Cuz I think she is organically this way.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Wait, what do you mean by that?

• 44:40Pablo Torre?

  So when you're Nathan Fielder or Lance Oppenheimer, and when they are presented with a loose cannon, who also happens to have won awards for her portrayal of Elizabeth Holmes, and she has takes immediately, like, Nathan, you should break up Billy and Elizabeth.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  These aren't, okay, okay, okay, hold on.

• 44:57Pablo Torre?

  Like off, again, whether it was said 60 minutes in, or immediately after they show her the footage, it happens real early in our encounter-

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 45:09Pablo Torre?

  With Amanda.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  But these guys know, I mean, how do I put this? Like, it's crazy because we've been thinking this the whole time, and what she is, another thing in addition to therapist, ethicist, moralist, um, she's a reality, she's a reality check.

• 45:34Pablo Torre?

  She is a, she is in some-

• 45:35Speaker 01

  And she's a proxy for us.

• 45:36Pablo Torre?

  Yes, that is what, so when I saw this the second time, I'm like, oh my God, the brilliance of her as a loose cannon is that she is the actor and is going to have all of that argument-

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:47Pablo Torre?

  And weight attached to the concept, which they do argue about in the most crucial, arguably, part at the, at the end. And she's also saying the things that the audience-

• 45:57Speaker 01

  We've already been saying, we've been saying them to each other.

• 45:59Pablo Torre?

  They, Nathan and Amanda show up to meet Billy and the kids.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Oh, this is, this scene.

• 46:05Pablo Torre?

  And this scene is just crackling with, with electricity, because immediately you're like, clocking the awkwardness of like, how does a person who has never talked to Elizabeth Holmes or Billy, with Elizabeth now in prison, show up at the house?

• 46:23Speaker 01

  The effrontery.

• 46:25Pablo Torre?

  And suddenly, we're in situ, and clearly time has elapsed, and suddenly, Elizabeth Holmes is on the phone.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Yes, calling from prison.

• 46:36Pablo Torre?

  Billy receives the call. One of Amanda's questions, actually, to Elizabeth is, "Did you know that I would be here?"

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Oh, this answer.

• 46:42Pablo Torre?

  And she goes, "I don't know."

• 46:44Speaker 01

  No, she said, "I don't know if I knew."

• 46:47Pablo Torre?

  "I don't know if I knew."

• 46:48Speaker 01

  "I don't know if I knew."

• 46:50Pablo Torre?

  Strategy. Um, anyway, so, so Elizabeth and Amanda are on the phone, and Amanda keeps on saying, "You have a beautiful family. Your family's beautiful." And there's awkwardness.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  I'm, like, actors don't typically, especially when the portrayal is scathing, as scathing as this portrayal of her is, right? You don't, I mean, part, she's partially punishing herself in some way.

• 47:14Pablo Torre?

  Okay, and so what she ends up saying, squeaking out, is, uh, a compliment.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, "I love you. You're great," or something like that.

• 47:22Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I don't remember the exact adjective now, but it's like, "You're wonderful."

• 47:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the thing, it's the thing-

• 47:28Pablo Torre?

  It's the thing you say at a Hollywood party.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 47:30Pablo Torre?

  And you're like, "Oh no, my unconscious nervous system activated. I just started complimenting people. Even the woman that I scathingly portrayed to Emmy Award-

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Winning effect, yes.

• 47:41Pablo Torre?

  -effect in recognition, and it turns out, eventually resentment. Because I wanna speed through some of this, because there is this scene in which now Nathan, Amanda and Billy are at a table, and Billy is now sniffling in ways that I'm just like, "What's going on with Billy?"

• 47:59Speaker 01

  The sniffling, the sniffling.

• 48:01Pablo Torre?

  Billy is giving-

• 48:02Speaker 01

  He's also puffier.

• 48:03Pablo Torre?

  We're concerned for Billy.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  I mean, no, we're not, no, we're not, no, we're not.

• 48:06Pablo Torre?

  We're, we're clinically intrigued.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  We're wondering, what's up with Billy?

• 48:11Pablo Torre?

  Billy's just very energetic and he's sniffling a lot. It's okay. What we do learn is that Billy has been operating Elizabeth Holmes' Twitter account and has power of attorney. And Amanda reacts with, the way you did, by falling on the floor. It's like, what? She's alive? She's, why? And at this point, Billy then goes on to criticize her Twitter account, cuz she had tweeted something about Charlie Kirk, and then Billy-

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Being a hateful person was, I think, the tweet.

• 48:39Pablo Torre?

  That's what she had said to Billy, and Billy says with pride that he is a fan of Charlie Kirk, and it gets to like Thanksgiving dinner. We're now like doing that.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes, yes. But Nathan, the entire time, is at a tennis match.

• 48:54Pablo Torre?

  That's it. He's, he's watching, turning, head pivoting, and it's delightful and really tense.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think though, it's funny, because what's happening here is that the actor

• 49:16Speaker 01

  is playing a version of the role that maybe some part of her wishes her subject had played in the, in, in the other relationship somehow, you know?

• 49:27Pablo Torre?

  I think, I think there is something-

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Like, or standing up on behalf of this person, right, who she just got off the phone with, who's not with her children, but is in prison.

• 49:38Pablo Torre?

  And at this point, by the way, I do wanna speed through more, because Amanda, as a person who has these views that are perhaps informed by her work as Elizabeth Holmes, and as just a person, a woman, a human being-

• 49:56Pablo Torre?

  I'm speeding at great peril, Wesley. To the point that Nathan visits Elizabeth Holmes in prison. And he comes back and Amanda is presented in front of a roaring fireplace. This-

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Transcript. Or, I'm sorry, skarript. Skarript.

• 50:21Pablo Torre?

  That, that is Nathan's presented memory. And what we are presented with as we watch it is what has the vibe on one hand of reporting. Here's my interview. You're not allowed to bring, as someone who's been to prison in Texas for journalism, you're not allowed to bring watch, pen, pad of paper, anything. But he brings back a script and how accurate it is, how precise, we don't know. But this is presented as context.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  But we do know that when they're running their lines by this fireplace,

• 50:58Speaker 01

  he offers a sticking point.

• 51:00Pablo Torre?

  So to build to it, Amanda is reading Elizabeth critique and effectively blame her for a lot of the bad things that have happened to Elizabeth Holmes. And Amanda says to Nathan, resentfully, in order to respond to Elizabeth, it's not our job to teach people things as an actor in an adaptation. Amanda has claimed this is fiction, not nonfiction. It's a character inspired by-

• 51:31Speaker 01

  The show, the show, the show.

• 51:32Pablo Torre?

  The show, the Hulu show. She also says, it's [BLEEP] TV, you know.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's quite interesting. I mean, this is how you know that she's the, she's a rogue agent here because she-

• 51:45Pablo Torre?

  This one felt real.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  She's with this woman's family. And so she just doesn't have the language to make a case for why what she's doing is in any way different from what her subject has done.

• 52:00Pablo Torre?

  And, and there is a thing that they, Amanda and Nathan, work through together in which they wind up crossing out a word on the transcript. The word changes from "it" to the word "something."

• 52:15Speaker 01

  And in the moment, it feels, it feels like, like a crucial distinction.

• 52:20Pablo Torre?

  Yes, but the point is that the meaning shifts.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's important and they agree to change it.

• 52:26Pablo Torre?

  The point is, we see as an audience, Nathan's memory is fallible.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:32Pablo Torre?

  And now you see them trying to make it more true.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 52:37Pablo Torre?

  And-

• 52:39Speaker 01

  But he's doing this collaboration with an actor.

• 52:43Pablo Torre?

  And you're interweaving her reenactment as they are reading the script and editing it, which is again, just like a really well-done piece of art.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  But you have to, there's one thing that's important to say about this intercutting between the rehearsal-

• 52:59Speaker 01

  and the performance. Which is that I think, to me, it's one of the great movies about acting. Something in this woman needed to take that call from Emma Stone or Nathan Fielder or Lance Oppenheimer, whoever, whoever rang her phone. I think the actor is kind of looking for the same thing that the subject is looking for.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Except she might be looking for it in some way

• 53:35Speaker 01

  from the art form somehow.

• 53:38Pablo Torre?

  In that spirit, I want to take us to a scene that felt like it was perhaps the story here. And before they do that thing we just described in front of that roaring fire, Nathan drives up to this horse farm, or it seems, or a ranch or something. She may live on a farm. She says to Nathan, "I'll reenact anything. You know how many people believed that I was her." And Nathan says, and I wrote this one down, "The point isn't to convince people that this is her. It's to convey what happened..." Dot, dot, dot, accurately. And do you remember what happened next? Because I forgot until I saw it the second time.

• 54:23Pablo Torre?

  What happens, Wesley, as the word accurately is sort of like muttered by Nathan Fielder,

• 54:31Pablo Torre?

  is that a nearby horse farts.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Farts, yes!

• 54:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:37Pablo Torre?

  And that fart felt directed at me personally.

• 54:42Pablo Torre?

  The guy with the nodes who's going on about journalism and accuracy. And he's like, "The point is actually to fart on the, the performance of accuracy."

• 54:56Pablo Torre?

  And I just can't help but be frustrated by and jealous of that out. The out of, "We're here as artists to challenge whatever it is."

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think you're giving too much-

• 55:12Pablo Torre?

  Or by the way, maybe it was just like the greatest time fart I've ever seen on film.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  No, I, I mean, look-

• 55:18Pablo Torre?

  Which maybe, I don't have the reporting on that.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  But again, like to me, not as, I mean, a part of the strategy, sure. Also, like very specifically a choice, right? Didn't need to, they didn't have to keep that. But keeping it, it just creates this other level of, it just adds to the origami, the sort of moral, ethical, formal-

• 55:45Pablo Torre?

  Nesting doll.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  Artistic origami of this project. I feel, um...

• 55:54Speaker 01

  I, I'm, I'm, I'm not sure what I do and don't believe at all.

• 56:11Speaker 07

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• 56:28Speaker 07

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• 57:19Speaker 01

  I've been calling this a culturally destabilizing event. Because everybody who has seen it, who's ever watched anything, read anything,

• 57:33Speaker 01

  been to a press conference, or been in a relationship, right? Been in a rela-, this is the most important thing to me about this movie, is been in a relationship. What you get to say is true is always kind of in flux because is the question whether or not it's true or what is the truth or the lie in service of, right?

• 58:05Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  I feel like we, like it just calls into question itself and therefore our relationship to it.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  I feel almost foolish not being you right now.

• 58:26Pablo Torre?

  Thank God you're not.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  In some ways-

• 58:27Pablo Torre?

  Thank God you're not.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Because I, I-

• 58:33Speaker 01

  I don't know what not to believe about this thing. And I wanna believe what I'm supposed, like, quote, "supposed to believe," right? Which makes me, which brings me closer to you, right?

• 58:45Pablo Torre?

  Well, I wanna bring us to the last thing in the film. But Amanda asks Nathan.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  I gotta sit back.

• 58:53Pablo Torre?

  Oh, man.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  Because this, this is deep.

• 58:57Pablo Torre?

  Amanda asks Nathan if he covered up anything from their experience together in prison, which she ends up reenacting, but this is them now talking after. If he covered up anything that was deceitful, that seemed as if Elizabeth was being deceitful in order to protect her, dot, dot, dot. Why? Because you care about her. Nathan responds, "I'm not really putting my feelings in this," dot, dot, dot. "I'm just trying to be accurate." And instead of a horse fart, what you get is tape. You get this footage.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  The movie tells. The movie tells.

• 59:39Pablo Torre?

  You get footage of what Nathan had previously said in the film he would not do, which was swim in the ocean with Elizabeth Holmes. And there they are, Nathan Fielder and Elizabeth Holmes, in the water together, swimming. And Amanda Seyfried smiles and says, quote, "It's very complicated."

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:04Pablo Torre?

  And that's the end of the movie, buddy.

• 1:00:07Pablo Torre?

  And so, what did we find out watching this movie?

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  You go.

• 1:00:14Pablo Torre?

  I think as Nathan's reliability as a narrator is undermined, as has everyone's reliability as a narrator in this movie been undermined, I think Elizabeth Holmes, in the end, gets something like what she wants.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  I really wanna believe, I'm, after one viewing of the mind, that I feel like I understand what's, what's true and what's not true. But that's foolish.

• 1:00:51Pablo Torre?

  Wow.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  That's foolish.

• 1:00:52Pablo Torre?

  This is, this is, I, I-

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  This is the destabilization to me, right?

• 1:00:55Pablo Torre?

  I feel, at the end here, Wesley, I do feel, I mean, frankly, I do feel somewhat destabilized. And what I am circling is that as we go to your favorite place, a movie theater, and the lights go down, and we're sitting there, watching something that we don't know what to think of quite yet, what I'm wondering, as a parody of myself, is whether democracy is dying in this darkness as well.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  Oh, God. Uh.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Wow, what a place to go.

• 1:01:35Pablo Torre?

  No, I mean, it's just, I, I, I, I loved watching it and hated how much I'm thinking about it. And I'm just like, is this the difference between journalism and watching a movie and having a great time?

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  Uh, maybe, but I think that the, I think the, I think you're being poisoned by your, by your journalistic impulses here, because you want an answer, and you're never gonna get one. You know? You're just, you're, it's, it's unanswerable. And for, for as much as I can sit here and just be like, "I think I know." I don't really know, and that's, that's, that's the beauty of the art of this movie. I think that the thrill of this movie is gonna be our shifting relationship to it, right? Should we be the type of person who goes back to it? Because there's something really essential about,

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  we wanted to make her more human, but really what it's exposed is this thing in us. This thing in us that wants to understand who and what we are to each other. And that, that's what you can see everything is about. Lie to me.

• 1:02:48Pablo Torre?

  Lie to me.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  Lie to me real good, daddy.

• 1:03:00Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.

• 1:03:28Speaker 07

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