You Must See ‘You Can See Everything.’ Plus: Judd Apatow!

We’re not deceiving you: This is the movie of the year. Sean and Amanda open today’s show by reacting to the first trailer for Greta Gerwig’s much anticipated ‘Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew,’ discussing the news that Zendaya will star in Alex Garland’s next sci-fi film for A24, and also breaking down how the show will cover a handful of fall movie releases. Then, they dive incredibly deep into Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s three-hour documentary on Elizabeth Holmes, ‘You Can See Everything.’ They briefly discuss the film in a spoiler-free conversation and give it the utmost recommendation possible. Then, they go (as best of memory) beat-by-beat of the film and dissect all of its wonderfully captivating and fascinating twists and turns. Finally, legendary comedy filmmaker, showrunner, producer, and documentarian Judd Apatow joins the show to talk about his two new documentaries: ‘Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story,’ and ‘Norm: The Tale of Norm MacDonald.' (0:00) Intro (1:25) ‘Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew’ trailer reaction (12:33) Zendaya to star in Alex Garland’s upcoming science-fiction film (14:16) How we’re covering upcoming movies this fall (18:34) ‘You Can See Everything’ (35:37) SPOILER WARNING (1:50:25) Awards and box office chances (1:57:49) Judd Apatow joins the show! Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Judd Apatow Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:15Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Finacy.

• 0:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 0:17Sean Fennessey?

  And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about seeing everything. Today on the show, we are diving all the way into You Can See Everything, directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's new documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. That is one way of describing the movie, at least. Another way is to call it "a form-shattering examination of celebrity, nonfiction, science, power, love, and epistemological truth." This is simply one of the most fascinating, entertaining, and provocative movies of the year. We will talk about all of it on the show. Later in this episode, I will be joined by Judd Apatow, legendary comedy filmmaker, showrunner, producer, and documentarian. Judd has not one, but two new docs on Netflix this month. The first, which is now available to watch, is Norm, an intimate portrait of the late Norm MacDonald, one of my favorite comedy voices of my lifetime.

• 0:59Sean Fennessey?

  The second arrives next week. It's called Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story, which charts the complex and fascinating life of another brilliant comedy mind. Judd has never been on The Big Picture before, so he had a great time talking about his doc work, his history as a comedy filmmaker, his next big movie with Glenn Powell, and a lot more. Judd is a fantastic interviewer and a comedy historian, so stick around for that. But first, some movie news, including the Narnia trailer, right after this. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Ads. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first but didn't live up to the hype? Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions, reach, and reacts. But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not-so-great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that: bullspend. Instead, why not invest in what looks good to your CFO?

• 1:44Sean Fennessey?

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• 2:11Speaker 02

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• 3:35Speaker 04

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• 3:42Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, The Magician's Niece is here.

• 3:45Amanda Dobbins?

  The plumber's daughter?

• 3:45Sean Fennessey?

  The plumber's daughter sits before us. We have a trailer for Greta Gerwig's new film.

• 3:50Amanda Dobbins?

  We do.

• 3:51Sean Fennessey?

  Narnia: The Magician's Nephew. And I have been... This almost felt like waiting to speak with you about Digger.

• 3:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, really?

• 3:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, where I was like, I wonder what Amanda is gonna think of this trailer.

• 4:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, in grand Big Picture tradition, I watched it approximately two minutes ago. But in this case, in my defense, it was not because I was, you know, doing other things, living my life, pursuing hobbies, but because I did see the trailer on my phone, actually via your Instagram story, started to watch it, then realized that a horizontal trailer on the vertical setting of my phone was not the ideal way to watch anything, and I stopped. And I waited until I could then watch it fullscreen on my laptop, which is, I'm sure, how, you know, the inventors of cinema and Greta Gerwig intended it.

• 4:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so let's talk about what we thought about the trailer, and then after that, I'm gonna share some feelings about the way that we consume trailers, per your note about you.

• 4:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 4:50Sean Fennessey?

  So, um, this, of course, is the first story in the C.S. Lewis chronology.

• 4:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Everyone just waiting with bated breath for your thoughts on how we consume trailers.

• 5:00Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, they absolutely are. That's why they're listening. What did you think of this trailer?

• 5:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, the Stairway is directed right to me, even though it would seemingly be just directed at Rock Dad's, but Stairway's very big in my house right now.

• 5:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, Stairway to Heaven, the Led Zeppelin song, which is, which soundtracks this trailer.

• 5:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Are people listening to this review of a trailer without watching the trailer themselves?

• 5:25Sean Fennessey?

  Of course they are. People are entering this space with no context. They're firing it up and going, "What's going on in movies? I'll check out what Amanda and Sean have to say about the latest movie news."

• 5:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I appreciate that, but I also want more for everyone, you know?

• 5:38Sean Fennessey?

  Well, this is broadcasting. We provide context for everything.

• 5:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Here we are. 42 on Netflix. Anyway, Stairway, yes. Everything else, I mean, I just, I do not like CGI worlds. I just don't like CGI worlds. It doesn't matter who's making them. It doesn't matter what the story is. I would say the visual aspects of this that are imagined, that have that video game quality, are not to my taste. I think I knew that that was going to happen in one way or another as soon as this project was imagined. And obviously, I've just seen a trailer on a laptop. I did not see the full movie in IMAX, but we've been talking a lot about identifying what is your taste and what is not your taste. This is just, that aspect of it visually is not my taste. So I was a little bummed by that.

• 6:22Sean Fennessey?

  Remind me again, you didn't read these books growing up, or you did?

• 6:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I haven't read The Magician's Nephew. I did read Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe. And I had a full paperback set of these books, or at least that series. I'm not really sure where The Magician's Nephew fits in chronologically. And I also had to go to a school, I went to a school where you had to read the Old and the New Testament, so, you know, I'm steeped in some of this.

• 6:48Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 6:48Amanda Dobbins?

  You didn't know this?

• 6:49Sean Fennessey?

  How did that go?

• 6:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Some of it stayed with me, literarily.

• 6:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 6:54Amanda Dobbins?

  And some of it I've rejected.

• 6:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, one of the things that has really come to the surface with the news of this adaptation is that I don't think I fully realized that Greta was a person of faith, that this, and that, you know, that these novels, obviously, are very much an allegory for Christian faith. And that's really fascinating to wend into what I think is gonna end up being the biggest Netflix movie of all time, whether it's the highest grossing or the most watched. We'll see, but it seems like it's a very expensive proposition. I really like this trailer for one simple reason. I just think that Greta clearly has a take on the movie.

• 7:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 7:28Sean Fennessey?

  And the take is to move the storyline 50 years into the future, to post-war England, to include a kind of rock and roll, rock opera-centric vibe to the filmmaking. It looks a little bit like if Todd Haynes tried to make Lord of the Rings, and there's something appealing to me about that. I agree with you about the CGI. I think a lot of that stuff is, looks sort of almost unfinished to me. And it's in real contrast in this story, unlike a lot of other stories like it, because the stuff that takes place in the real world of England at that time, I thought looked quite good.

• 8:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 8:02Sean Fennessey?

  And so, I'm not thrilled about that. The question I've been asking myself since watching it is, what is the alternative when making a movie like this? And I have read The Magician's Nephew recently, and so, in my head, as I was reading it for the first time, I never read the book before, I was thinking of many of the worlds that the two children go to as more forest-like, for lack of a better word.

• 8:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:29Sean Fennessey?

  And maybe they would be fantastical in certain ways, and there would be these kind of thrilling, phantasmagoric moments with the White Queen, but I don't think I envisioned them as like, this kind of blur of objects floating all over the place.

• 8:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. Or outer space. In many, there's, I mean, there are kind of a space movie, video game reference to a lot of them.

• 8:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 8:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I think I was hoping for the Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson-style interpretation, which is using an incredibly beautiful part of the natural world on Earth to represent an imagined world.

• 9:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. To me, that doesn't automatically make it good, though, and I'll tell you how I know, because I just recently watched the Chronicles of Narnia trilogy of films that came out in the 2000s.

• 9:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 9:15Sean Fennessey?

  And they're not good. They're shot in real places, but the story isn't, like, the film is not well-made. It's not well-told.

• 9:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally. I think just to the point of what, how to realize a world that is imagined and only on the page. And, you know, again, as I said, CGI would not be my choice.

• 9:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Yeah. The other alternative, obviously, would be to, even if you don't set it in the natural world, to just use more practical effects, you know, to just create more, like, more puppets, I guess, more things that...

• 9:44Amanda Dobbins?

  We've been on a puppet run this year.

• 9:46Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I just watched the new VHS, and there's a whole segment that is, the Jim Henson Creature Shop, like, helped to create. It wasn't a great segment, unfortunately, but yeah, there is a, we're in a puppet moment. I'm pretty torn on this. The, my other take on it is related to the point that you were making, which is, when we were kids, and you would go to the movie theater, and you would watch the trailers, that was the first time you would see the trailer, on the biggest screen imaginable, with loud music. And this movie has licensed Stairway to Heaven, which has never been licensed in any movie or television show, ever. And I'm sure they paid an extraordinary sum of money to Page & Plant to get this song in the trailer, I think, and it effectively

• 10:28Sean Fennessey?

  conveys at least her idea of the movie, you know, the sort of majesty and rock god vibe that they're going for. But I watched this on a laptop. You watched this on a laptop. I then went and watched it on a large television after that, just to get a little bit more of the vibe. But we complain about movies on Netflix all the time because of the compression and the way that they look, and the way that they, the audio is very rarely as good as you want it to be. And so, it feels weird to be consistently judging trailers, especially those that are not meant to be seen this big, in this way. And so, maybe I'm just giving a little grace to Greta Gerwig, whose movies I like, although there was a similar reaction to the Barbie trailer, you may recall. People were like, "What the fuck is this?"

• 11:10Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 11:11Sean Fennessey?

  Though that movie was made very practically.

• 11:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. And once you saw it on a big screen, you could tell. Also, you know, the, the response to the Barbie trailer online...

• 11:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Had many layers.

• 11:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 11:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Before you added in Hillary Clinton, so.

• 11:27Sean Fennessey?

  Right, right. Cause that's a story about a woman getting, what happens to her?

• 11:33Amanda Dobbins?

  In Barbie or Hillary Clinton? Let's move it.

• 11:37Sean Fennessey?

  Different pod, yeah, different pod. What happens to Barbie at the end? She goes to the gynecologist?

• 11:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, yeah. Well, she goes to Century City. Which when I was recently in Century City and I was like, you know what? That was funny. It was a good joke.

• 11:49Sean Fennessey?

  Great ending. Um, Narnia The Magician's Nephew comes to theaters February 12th.

• 11:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:56Sean Fennessey?

  Will this movie be a big box office hit?

• 11:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I have no idea. I was watching this and thinking, oh, it's a children's movie, which isn't obvious, but because of Greta Gerwig, because of Barbie, because of, you can, it is, it is coded and energetically, it was communicated to me that this is for children, which is wonderful because I want good things to take my child to. So I started doing the math of like, is this gonna be too scary for my four-year-old, but probably will go anyway because he'll just stand up and yell, stairway. I hope it's in the actual film. And, um, so in that sense, like a kid's movie that people, that, that is made with effort, that people wanna go see,

• 12:42Amanda Dobbins?

  there's some possibility. I believe February 12th is Super Bowl weekend because the Super Bowl is on Valentine's Day, which is another thing. It's also going up against, you know, Valentine's Day people, whatever they're doing.

• 12:55Sean Fennessey?

  That's not something you participate in?

• 12:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I do, though. Don't you feel a little lame now, like getting a babysitter for Valentine's Day proper?

• 13:03Sean Fennessey?

  Um.

• 13:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I do.

• 13:05Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, I guess I haven't really thought about that. Why? Just because you're feeling like you're in a different era of your life?

• 13:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I'm just kind of.

• 13:10Sean Fennessey?

  Has the romance gone away? What do you, what do you mean?

• 13:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I'm just like, are we really gonna spend this much money to do? It's, you know, it's kinda like, it's New Year's Eve. It's like a holiday for newbies, you know? And like, we're married, we can do it another time, but are we actually gonna be observing Valentine's Day on Valentine's Day?

• 13:26Sean Fennessey?

  I know what you mean by that. Um, yeah, okay.

• 13:28Amanda Dobbins?

  But also, this is the M. Night Shyamalan Nicholas Sparks weekend, I believe?

• 13:33Sean Fennessey?

  Is Remain all? I thought Remain was the fifth.

• 13:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, so they're doing it early and they're just advertising it as Valentine's Day.

• 13:38Sean Fennessey?

  This is like Resident Evil coming out September 25th. Yeah, I think Remain is the fifth.

• 13:41Amanda Dobbins?

  They are saying this Valentine's Day in the trailer, but you are right. That is February 5th. Um, so.

• 13:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think you're right about the kids movie thing, and I'm glad you pointed that out. I was on another text chain with some friends talking about this trailer and a lot of people are like, I'm pretty concerned about these visuals. Um, and my, my response was what you just said. I'm like, this is a movie for eight-year-olds.

• 13:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 13:58Sean Fennessey?

  You know, and I'm sure it'll be a movie for 40-year-olds who read the C.S. Lewis novels growing up and have a big emotional attachment to them.

• 14:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Or who have eight-year-olds.

• 14:05Sean Fennessey?

  Or who have eight-year-olds. Um, will not surprise you to learn that my daughter was like, put this on right now.

• 14:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:12Sean Fennessey?

  This is the most important thing that's ever happened to me. Um, and also Aslan, the, the lion, that's like, that is not only a god to C.S. Lewis and to Greta Gerwig, but also to my daughter. So.

• 14:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Have we decided on a Halloween costume yet? Is it too late for the lion?

• 14:25Sean Fennessey?

  Now we've pivoted to like a fairy. I don't know. Every day is a new idea.

• 14:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, since it's a weekend, it seems like there could be several options. Yeah.

• 14:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we also have multiple events that day. So because of that, well, maybe we'll cycle through some of our options. I haven't figured out my costume yet, though I'm strongly considering Elizabeth Holmes. Um, so, yeah, we'll see about The Magician's Nephew. Uh, a little bit of news that just broke this morning.

• 14:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:53Sean Fennessey?

  Zendaya to star in Alex Garland's new sci-fi movie for A24. Not the movie he's making right now, which is an adaptation of Elden Ring, the video game, but his next movie after that, which I guess starts shooting next year. You say what?

• 15:07Amanda Dobbins?

  She has cool taste and I like that she's doing these things, even if I have a mixed record on Alex Garland's, uh, directorial work.

• 15:17Sean Fennessey?

  I don't. He's a genius. One of my favorite living filmmakers. Uh, this is very exciting. This is very exciting. This is, this generation of actors is doing everything I hope they would.

• 15:28Amanda Dobbins?

  They're cool.

• 15:28Sean Fennessey?

  This is so exciting. I mean, come on.

• 15:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:31Sean Fennessey?

  She doesn't have to do that.

• 15:33Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 15:33Sean Fennessey?

  She could go make a stupid franchise movie and she could be like, all right, well Spider-Man's slowing down.

• 15:39Amanda Dobbins?

  So she's fine.

• 15:40Sean Fennessey?

  Fred Astaire, come on.

• 15:41Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true. I'm excited. I know. I'm excited.

• 15:44Sean Fennessey?

  The kids are doing great. This is such a relief.

• 15:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Two thumbs up.

• 15:48Sean Fennessey?

  This show is gonna go on maybe three or four more episodes after the X-Men movie, you know?

• 15:52Amanda Dobbins?

  So this is gonna shoot in 2027?

• 15:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 15:55Amanda Dobbins?

  So are you thinking?

• 15:57Sean Fennessey?

  I think the Elden Ring movie is 2028, so maybe this is like coming later that year or in 2029. I don't know.

• 16:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm, I'm just trying to project how long we're doing this.

• 16:07Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, well, we'll see. I mean, maybe, maybe actually what this could be is, it could be a much more stripped-down movie since he's got a huge production of Elden Ring going. So maybe it'll be like a more of an Ex Machina kind of film.

• 16:17Amanda Dobbins?

  That would be wonderful.

• 16:18Sean Fennessey?

  And then he can squeeze it in between the release of Elden Ring, which unfortunately for you, I think will also feature a lot of CGI.

• 16:25Amanda Dobbins?

  It's an adaptation of a video game.

• 16:27Sean Fennessey?

  It is, yeah.

• 16:27Amanda Dobbins?

  It's okay.

• 16:28Sean Fennessey?

  I've never played it though, and I think, I don't wanna say anything about what I think it is, cause I don't know what it is.

• 16:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 16:33Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I wanted to give the, the listeners at home an update on how we're gonna be trying to cover movies for the rest of this month too, cause it's been a little confusing even for me. Um, I had some big plans for what to do, when to talk about these things. I was talking to Eileen last night, cause she's now seeing two movies in two consecutive days. And she's, so she's seeing, uh, you can see everything in five hours.

• 16:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 16:53Sean Fennessey?

  And then she's seeing, um, she's seeing Digger tomorrow, but she was like, should I see Digger or La Bola Negra? And she was kind of stymied because she could, La Bola Negra is not wide wide. Like, it's not in like every regal theater, for example, but it's in some AMC theater.

• 17:08Amanda Dobbins?

  So you said, go see Digger before it, uh, is removed from theaters and begins its Academy screener campaign extraordinary, which, like, listen, that is happening.

• 17:19Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, my God.

• 17:19Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really, really intense.

• 17:21Sean Fennessey?

  I was telling you.

• 17:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I know, but I, I, I wonder if we're almost gonna boomerang because this is so intense now.

• 17:27Sean Fennessey?

  People will be like, too much?

• 17:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, people are like, no, no, no, Digger is like a masterpiece, the most important thing I've ever seen, you know, 45 nominations.

• 17:34Sean Fennessey?

  Neil Young said it's the greatest film ever made.

• 17:37Speaker 03

  That was awesome.

• 17:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. So.

• 17:40Sean Fennessey?

  Neil Young is the fucking man.

• 17:42Amanda Dobbins?

  So are we gonna come back around to like, hmm, interesting, some points were made, but I don't know if this is the, the best thing ever?

• 17:49Sean Fennessey?

  I.

• 17:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I am also like, once, that, once the movie we're about to talk about gets out in the world, once some other movies that we've seen get back in the world, but I, you know, the, the Digger Hive, you guys are doing the work.

• 18:01Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 18:02Amanda Dobbins?

  You are doing your work.

• 18:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 18:04Amanda Dobbins?

  And as I said to a friend, you know, you gotta have a reason to get up in the morning, so I'm glad they found it.

• 18:09Sean Fennessey?

  Completely. Thank God for Neil Young continuing to wake up every morning to work on behalf of Digger. Um, she's seeing Digger.

• 18:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 18:17Sean Fennessey?

  And, and that, that is related to what I was trying to set up here, which is that we'll cover La Bola Negra a little later. It is officially in movie theaters, a, a good number of movie theaters around the country, but not a lot of movie theaters. Um, and I think it's gonna have a pretty long lifespan in movie theaters, but we'll probably more likely cover it when it hits Netflix.

• 18:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 18:35Sean Fennessey?

  Um, so that we can have, I, what I think is a movie that is worthy of a big, long conversation.

• 18:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. That said, we would encourage you to go see it in a theater. It is a movie that deserves to be seen on the largest screen possible for not, a number of reasons, but there is a, just, there's a scale to it.

• 18:52Sean Fennessey?

  Agreed.

• 18:52Amanda Dobbins?

  So.

• 18:53Sean Fennessey?

  Um, related to that, the original intention was to cover Fjord on the show this week. And I was confused and I'm still a little unclear on how much Fjord is going to expand. Uh, it's in three theaters in Los Angeles right now. I don't know if it's going to more over time. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But I did, what I didn't wanna do is another movie that I think is worthy of big discussion and has already provoked a lot of debate already. Um, but I, I don't wanna do that, cause that's annoying, I think, for the listeners when they can't see it, the movie at all. And it's not, I don't even know what the horizon of release is for that movie, so maybe we'll just table it until we know when it is.

• 19:29Amanda Dobbins?

  And it would be a very text-based discussion of what is actually in the movie and how it is shown and the questions raised. So there, there would be no frame of reference, unlike our spirited Narnia trailer breakdown.

• 19:40Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. Well, everyone can, can check in on that.

• 19:42Amanda Dobbins?

  It is a little confusing that Fjord, the, the release schedule for Fjord.

• 19:47Sean Fennessey?

  I don't get it. I don't know. I'm not sure I follow.

• 19:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, you and I were speculating that, that's a neon film. It won the Palme d'Or and has, was tipped for Best Picture from the, the very beginning, but now it sort of feels like Neon is putting its resources elsewhere.

• 20:00Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. Well, I mean, it's got artificial.

• 20:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 20:03Sean Fennessey?

  And so, you know, now it does feel like a lot of, and they have other films, obviously, but it does feel like some of that energy is going over there. The other thing that is, um, coming out this weekend, this weekend is The Devil's Restoration, the Ken Russell film that I had a chance to see at Cannes. Chris and I will talk about that on the show at the end of next week. So when we do our annual horror episode, The Devil's is in many ways a horror film, so we will get into it there. Whale Fall.

• 20:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 20:27Sean Fennessey?

  And Sense and Sensibility are out this weekend. They're both being covered on the show on Monday.

• 20:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Correct.

• 20:32Sean Fennessey?

  Tuesday, I guess. Um, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, the new John Turturro film directed by Noah Seigun, and Misty Green, Chris Rock's movie, we'll talk about at the end of this month. But all of these movies are either in theaters or expanding this weekend. And so we have yet another weekend where there's just a ton to see, a ton of options. And yet, I think there's only one movie to see this weekend if you can see it.

• 20:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, correct.

• 20:55Sean Fennessey?

  That movie is You Can See Everything. So I'll give you some details on this movie before we dig into it. Uh, directed by Fielder and Oppenheim, as I mentioned, the film stars Elizabeth Holmes, Nathan Fielder, Billy Evans, and others.

• 21:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, okay.

• 21:09Sean Fennessey?

  We're gonna have a brief, non-spoiler discussion of this movie.

• 21:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 21:15Sean Fennessey?

  And then we will spoil the fuck out of it because it is impossible to talk about.

• 21:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 21:20Sean Fennessey?

  In full, and you and I have not discussed this movie yet.

• 21:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess that's true. No, we had one text conversation about one aspect of it.

• 21:29Sean Fennessey?

  Did we? Okay, I need to remember that. Uh, the story of the movie, I'll share with you. Thirty-four days before she's sent to prison, notorious Silicon Valley founder Elizabeth Holmes invites a skeptical film crew to document her every move. What begins as an intimate portrait of an enigmatic felon soon becomes a mind-bending, three-year journey into the abyss. Now, for those listening at home who don't know anything about Elizabeth Holmes.

• 21:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 21:52Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I'll provide some context.

• 21:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Sean, tell us some facts.

• 21:56Sean Fennessey?

  Elizabeth Holmes founded the blood testing company Theranos in 2003. She raised $700 million, up to $9 billion on false claims that its proprietary machines could run a wide range of tests using only a few drops of blood. The company secretly relied on conventional third-party commercial equipment and manipulated results. In January of 2022, a federal jury convicted Holmes of conspiracy to defraud investors and three counts of wire fraud. In November of 2022, she was sentenced to 135 months in federal prison. That is effectively where the movie starts. Now, Elizabeth Holmes, you might be thinking to yourself, gosh, I've seen the Alex Gibney documentary. I read John Kerry's Bad Blood. I watched the Hulu series The Dropout.

• 22:39Sean Fennessey?

  How much more Elizabeth Holmes do I really need in my life? Is she really worthy of a three-hour documentary all these years later? And I would say, maybe not, but that's not entirely what this is. So I'll start by asking you.

• 22:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 22:56Sean Fennessey?

  What did you think of You Can See Everything?

• 22:58Amanda Dobbins?

  So this is the movie of the year, right?

• 23:00Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty clearly.

• 23:01Amanda Dobbins?

  For, at least from the perspective of this podcast and the things that we're interested in. And I think it's the movie of the year for two reasons. One, just because of what it accomplishes as a film and an exploration of its subjects, which are Elizabeth Holmes, Nathan Fielder, documentary filmmaking, the nature of truth, quote, unquote, how we speak to each other as people, and, and many other interesting questions that bubble up as you watch it. I think the other way that it is the quote, movie of the year, which is different than my favorite movie, though this is one of my favorite movies of the year, is just that

• 23:40Amanda Dobbins?

  it is very much of this moment of movie, both of movie making, but also societally and what it says about where we are as a country and as people who spend time on the internet, certainly.

• 23:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 23:58Amanda Dobbins?

  But then also, you know, it's released, the surprise quality of it, A24, really just like finding the heat once again. This particular class of filmmakers led by Nathan Fielder, but also Lance Oppenheimer, you could put the Safeties in there, I think, Emma Stone and Dave McCrery as producers. So it's just, it's kind of located everything that is big and exciting and surprising and new about movies right now.

• 24:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's, um, it's, it is all those things. Like it is a very, clearly a very buzzy movie that has been well marketed and well handled. I shared on the show, my experience of seeing it for the first time at Telluride, which I found to be like, an utter delight and mind blowing in such a fun way. And for the most part, I think the surprises of the movie, you also, were not revealed to you beforehand, right?

• 24:46Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 24:47Sean Fennessey?

  And so it's, it's hard to communicate about the movie. And I'm quite curious to see what the reception of the movie, how different it is when the, when the cat is out of the bag. And I would imagine that by the time this episode is out, the cat will be out of the bag, about some of the choices that the filmmakers make. But I echo your thoughts entirely. I think this is, uh, it's very rare for a movie to metastasize a feeling in the culture to the sense that you, we don't feel like we can trust anything anymore. And as someone who's been obsessed with documentary for a very long time, I don't spend enough time thinking about what its goals are and what its purpose is. And this is a movie that is entirely concerned with the idea of what is the truth?

• 25:31Sean Fennessey?

  And is there such a thing as an objective truth? Especially when it comes to human failure and human frailty. And it's a movie that is about a person who we think of as a con person, a con woman. And.

• 25:45Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's a movie about a woman and not a man, which is really interesting.

• 25:48Sean Fennessey?

  It is a movie about a woman, but made by a man with a very particular sensibility around the truth and, and human failure.

• 25:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:57Sean Fennessey?

  And all of Nathan Fielder's work feels like it has been working towards this. But this movie also strips out, I think, a lot of the artificial convention that he builds around his projects. And I think this is really where he and Oppenheimer's collaboration.

• 26:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 26:14Sean Fennessey?

  Becomes, makes it more special. And I'm such a Nathan Allegiant, I think everything he's done is like, at worst fascinating, and at best, among the smartest and most creative thing that we have in movie and TV and film culture. But Lance is a real documentarian. He's a proper documentarian. And so his filmmaking skill and style colliding with what Nathan wants to do, when getting this really intimate look at the Holmes family and Holmes' story, and then everything that transpires after that, makes this just a special stew. And there's not a lot of examples of this, where you've got two distinct creative figures.

• 26:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 26:51Sean Fennessey?

  Who were like, hey, we have some stuff in common, but we have some stuff that is different. What if we worked together to execute on a project like this? And so I, in that respect too, I think it's like a wonderful, like a sign of the future. Like, I would love to see more people try to do something like this.

• 27:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. It expands the Nathan Fielder project while also engaging with it and exploring what it means to have watched all of those things. I do feel like I've had a lot of conversations with people who say like, the Nathan Fielder of it all makes me very anxious. I can't really sit through that stuff. I can't bear it. And I don't think that the project is in that tone, because you have, you know, Lance and his team as intermediary, and also kind of studying that tone itself.

• 27:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 27:38Amanda Dobbins?

  So you don't have to be a disciple of Nathan Fielder in order to enjoy this. I mean, it's, it's a bigger tent, but also, if you know the work, then there is a, a level of richness to it.

• 27:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, I can, I can definitely affirm that. So there's something interesting about it that happens in the opening moments of the movie that is not really a giveaway of any sort, before we start really digging into the text, which is that the film opens in a very traditional documentary, documentary style, very Verity style, where the first thing that we see is Billy Evans, Elizabeth Holmes' husband, talking on the phone.

• 28:10Amanda Dobbins?

  But I think not legally, because of money reasons.

• 28:14Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, they're not actually married?

• 28:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Are they actually married? I don't know if they are.

• 28:17Speaker 05

  I never heard them specify that.

• 28:18Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think that they probably are not, because.

• 28:22Sean Fennessey?

  Their, their finances are kept separate, yes. They, they're together though, and they have a family together.

• 28:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 28:28Sean Fennessey?

  They have children together. And he's on the phone speaking. And then we see Holmes with her child through her son's crib, and she's behind bars. That's like the first time we see her. Very purposeful choice. And the film starts to play out in the first few minutes, and we think that this is going to be a pure fly on the wall doc about how these people are living in these final 34 days before the family's broken apart. And then there's a cut to Nathan Fielder, who is standing about 10 feet away from the family in the living room, looking on quite like faux malevolently.

• 29:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:08Sean Fennessey?

  Like a figure of doom. And the score shifts and, as I was watching this for the first time, and I've now seen it twice, I was like, okay, this is gonna be a Nathan Fielder thing. Like, we're, we're doing the rehearsal, season three. And I wasn't against that, but I was like, okay, this is, and the movie, I think, actually continues to set you up for what it thinks you think it's gonna be. And then it kind of drains that, because to your point about this not being just like another Nathan Fielder thing.

• 29:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:38Sean Fennessey?

  His, the way he comports himself in this film, as he becomes a major participant in speaking to Elizabeth and Billy and the other people who appear in the movie, he's not really performing in the way that he usually does. He's not going for laughs. He's not doing that like very purposeful, awkward, if I say this to you, what weird response will I emit from you? Like, he actually is working more as a journalist or like a detective in the film.

• 30:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:07Sean Fennessey?

  In a way that I wasn't expecting, which I think is what you're saying, is like, complicates the movie in such a great way, where I'm not sure if we're getting the real Nathan, but we're getting a different Nathan, that I thought was like a brilliant choice on the filmmaker's part.

• 30:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, and there's even one scene where you can, where he, the character, is kind of introduces himself into the scene and to the narrative of what you're watching. And I, I remember thinking, okay, so this, a normal documentary filmmaker would not do this, would just observe the moment, keep the camera running, and that would be enough. And the, the moment itself is very telling. But it reveals something about Nathan that he inserts himself into it, and also reveals something about the structure of the film. And so you're already thinking about documentary choices. But you can also tell that it's not quite a character.

• 31:00Amanda Dobbins?

  There is something impulsive about the moment, so you also know that you're getting a different Nathan than the rehearsal.

• 31:08Speaker 05

  I would just like to add something, which is that at the screening Amanda, you and I were at afterwards, Lance and Nathan gave a Q and A with Bill Hader. And they said that the original plan was not to have Nathan so in front of the camera. And they kept feeling Elizabeth pulling him in and pulling him in to a certain point where they just gave away.

• 31:27Sean Fennessey?

  They said the same thing at our Q and A, and he's basically said that they, that Billy and Elizabeth would just turn to him and ask for his point of view on something while they were making the movie, and that that invariably kind of drew him into the conversations, which is interesting. I just want to say, I was talking with a friend of the show recently, and that friend suggested, maybe we should be skeptical of everything here.

• 31:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 31:51Sean Fennessey?

  In a way that maybe I hadn't fully thought about, and that there, there may be even more construction going on, even more artifice going on than we realize. But I will just say, for the first time that I watched it, I received it as documentary. Like, I received, there, there are parts of it, obviously, that extend well beyond that, that we will talk about. But I didn't feel like I was being put on when I was watching the movie. What, did you, how do you feel about that?

• 32:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think that I was, I guess I watched it as self-aware documentary. I was aware of the construction, and there are a few choices that they make in the edit to make you aware of the people behind the camera and their involvement, and not, you know, not just Nathan himself. And so I think Nathan, to me, is a character throughout. And it's funny, that moment where you cut to him the first time you see him, and there is this kind of like overly foreboding score, but in my head, reflexively, the Curb Your Enthusiasm score just started playing, because like, there is a moment of humor in it.

• 33:00Amanda Dobbins?

  And I do think that the filmmaking communicates some sort of structure and something that, and, and choices.

• 33:07Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's designed, but is it fake? I think is the question that I'm asking.

• 33:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 33:10Sean Fennessey?

  Like, the person was insinuating to me that like, some of this might be fake.

• 33:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that they staged it.

• 33:15Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not sure that I saw it that way.

• 33:18Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, I'm not sure why I didn't, but I think because some of that self-awareness that you're describing makes me think that that would be really elaborate. The other thing is that, I'm not sure that Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans would be able to operate successfully inside of a fake environment. I don't know that they really.

• 33:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Or, or are they operating inside a fake environment all of the time?

• 33:38Sean Fennessey?

  Well, right. Could they operate in someone else's fake environment? I guess is the question, you know?

• 33:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, but, you know, as Jack pointed out, that the fact that they are constantly pulling Nathan into the narrative themselves, you know, suggests a level of awareness. And, I mean, and, and that is one of the ultimate questions of this, this entire project, right? It's like, what is purposeful? What's manipulation? Who's in control? And the movie definitely kept me guessing on that throughout.

• 34:08Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think about Elizabeth Holmes?

• 34:11Amanda Dobbins?

  What do I think about Elizabeth Holmes? So she's roughly my age and

• 34:17Sean Fennessey?

  You guys have a lot in common.

• 34:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Thanks so much. So, thank you. One of my friends, one of my best friends, you know, her went to high school with Elizabeth Holmes. And so anytime she was in the news, my friend would always text me and say,

• 34:31Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I know. Oh.

• 34:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. She would always say, I knew she was a fake because she was only in honors chemistry and not AP.

• 34:40Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 34:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I

• 34:42Sean Fennessey?

  What a kill shot.

• 34:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is a kill shot and also is just all I've ever thought about whenever she comes up. But so I was in New York, working in magazines for the, the first round of Theranos and the, and all of the photographs, including the very famous one that is referenced in the documentary. And I was actually working at Glamour when she was a woman of the year and was scheduled to receive the award on the night that John Kerry U published his first.

• 35:10Sean Fennessey?

  That night.

• 35:11Amanda Dobbins?

  That night. Yeah. And so if memory serves, we didn't really know what to do. And then I believe that the only person who would present her award was Jared Leto. So, um, I, listen, I'm pretty sure I'm right on that.

• 35:25Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. That's a great story. I've never heard that.

• 35:26Amanda Dobbins?

  People, people can correct me.

• 35:28Sean Fennessey?

  Did you interact with her at all?

• 35:29Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I didn't. I was assigned to some other woman of the year that year. I can't remember who.

• 35:34Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. Interesting. You can't remember her name.

• 35:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is just to say that I've consumed a lot of Elizabeth Holmes content from all different areas as, you know, as a person watching this story in real time, who doesn't know anything about science, is a journalist who is confronting some of that, like what's true and what's not here. And also just how are we going to present this to the world? Even, you know, I was just adjacent to it and I did watch the dropout. So I do think that she is a character of our generation.

• 36:11Sean Fennessey?

  No question.

• 36:12Amanda Dobbins?

  And so I was interested, it just in a plain documentary about her, especially from Nathan Fielder and Lance Abitam. I was like, oh, okay. If you guys want to do this, I, sure. I, I would love to know more.

• 36:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I, I'm very similar. I didn't work at Glamour and I didn't encounter her in that respect, but otherwise same. I, I thought she was, I'm not sure that I thought she was fascinating, but I certainly thought that story was fascinating. And I didn't listen to the podcast and I didn't read the book, but I did watch the doc and watch the television series. And I think she's representative of kind of web tech founder 2.0 syndrome. And we're in, we're in kind of 3.0 now, you know, we're in the Sam Altman era of this sort of thing, but she precedes him. She's not Steve Jobs and she's not Bill Gates, but she is, she was literally working in the, in the image of those figures and try aspiring to be just like them. And there's always people who reach high and fall hard.

• 37:08Sean Fennessey?

  And she's a classics version of that Icarus story.

• 37:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And it is also, it was 2015, I believe, the end of 2015. So we are in scammer 2.0 era. And we are also in the Donald Trump is running for president, but he can't possibly be president. Right. Phase of, and then fast forward.

• 37:28Sean Fennessey?

  Innocent time.

• 37:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. But, and like, and a time where we didn't understand the world that we were living in, where people like Elizabeth Holmes could thrive.

• 37:36Sean Fennessey?

  I think that sets her up really well for what this movie is attempting to do because, you know, she was convicted of some of the charges.

• 37:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 37:45Sean Fennessey?

  But not all of the charges. And that's very important to her and Billy in terms, and they clearly have some things that they really want to get across to Nathan and Lance in the making of the movie. And I think this is probably the time to say that we're going to start to spoil the movie.

• 38:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I think we did a pretty good job.

• 38:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. This is, I, I could not agree more with the movie of the year sentiment. It's certainly among my five favorite movies I've seen this year.

• 38:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 38:09Sean Fennessey?

  I've seen it twice now. The second time was very different and I can talk about that as we get into it and how, in terms of how I received it and what I liked more or less or whatever. But it is a hearty recommendation from both of us to check out the movie. We will spoil it now, so do not complain because there are some stuff in here that you're going to want to see for the first time without knowing it. Okay. Three, two, one. Here we go. There's something really interesting about the truth aspect of the movie because one of the key turning points very early on in the film is we see in bed Elizabeth and Billy reading a New York Times profile by Amy Chozek that has been written about Elizabeth Holmes.

• 38:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 38:49Sean Fennessey?

  And there's a very particular moment where there's a quote in the piece that says, "At one point, I tell her that I heard Jennifer Lawrence had pulled out of portraying her in a movie. Holmes replied almost reflectively, 'They're not playing me. They're playing a character I created.'" Now, both Billy and Elizabeth sees on this moment, but Billy a little bit more aggressively than Elizabeth. And Elizabeth seems confused, like that's not something I said. But then Billy starts imagining what he believes she did say. And then they start taking issue with the entirety of this profile that's been written.

• 39:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 39:29Sean Fennessey?

  And they say they've recorded tapes.

• 39:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Cause their crisis team told them.

• 39:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Yes.

• 39:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I believe that Risa Heller is name checked, at least. There's a Risa. Yeah.

• 39:39Sean Fennessey?

  Would make sense that that's the person who was consulting with them on how to handle her pre-prison experience. But this quote and the nature of reporting becomes this kind of stand in for the big question of, is Elizabeth Holmes a lying fraud? Or is she a person who is just sort of like railroaded by a series of powerful men and people or in competitors and people who wanted to take down a strong, young woman with a big idea that could change the world? And it's a really interesting and skeptical movie about journalism as well, I would say.

• 40:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 40:19Sean Fennessey?

  In terms of the way that she's framed.

• 40:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, also trying to do journalism itself and finding the act of journalism very hard. And ultimately subjective, which I think any real journalist would tell you that it, that it ultimately is. You try to get as close to the truth as possible. You try to lay out real facts. And there, and there are still facts in the world, but how you put them together, it really depends on the person.

• 40:46Sean Fennessey?

  It does. There's something interesting too about Holmes at this stage of her career. We've talked about this a lot because of the work that your husband does and because of the work that we've done over the years. There is a difference between a brokered profile and an act of investigative journalism. And Elizabeth Holmes was kind of the subject of both over time.

• 41:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 41:02Sean Fennessey?

  In this case, this is really more of like, her team probably sees the New York Times profiles and opportunities to kind of like humanize her and redeem her before she goes to prison. The Times may have a more skeptical point of view, but there's also been so much reporting about what she's done. She's literally gone to trial. We never hear from the New York Times reporter in this movie.

• 41:20Amanda Dobbins?

  And the New York Times reporter is not named in the movie, which I noted.

• 41:23Sean Fennessey?

  Probably purposeful.

• 41:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I assume legally.

• 41:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. But ultimately that person never provides the notes that were taken from the piece, nor do Holmes and Evans provide the supposed audio recordings.

• 41:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 41:36Sean Fennessey?

  Of the interview. And so I just, I latched on to this part of the story so deeply because I've done, just done this work before. And I've done, I've written profiles where I've relied on my notes and I've written profiles where I've relied on the audio recording. And neither is a hundred percent accurate is what I would say. Like even the way that you frame contextually.

• 41:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 41:55Sean Fennessey?

  A quote. And the movie is also, in addition to being this kind of fascinating portrait of all this stuff, it's like, it's a movie about language and the way that we use language to deceive each other or the way that we can be misunderstood by not clearly communicating. I think about this all the time on the show. So I feel like I say something on the show and people are like, you said this. And I'm like, I didn't say that, but you hear what you want to hear, right?

• 42:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. They're fixating also on the, the I in the sentence. They, they identify, they're playing a character I created and they say, they say, maybe you said they're playing a character they created. But they have one very specific linguistic, but you know, important, because it changes the meaning of the quote complaint that could be clarified by tapes. And they were say over and over and over and over again, that they recorded all of the

• 42:42Sean Fennessey?

  We've got the tapes.

• 42:42Amanda Dobbins?

  We've got the tapes. They never produced the tapes. At the very, at the very end, the tapes were never produced.

• 42:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 42:50Amanda Dobbins?

  So, you know, then you're like, you, there is, it's plausible and it could even be proven. And they're making like a decent point, but also they don't have the evidence. So what are you supposed to, no, neither side has the evidence.

• 43:06Sean Fennessey?

  It clearly animates Fielder's imagination around this because he is looking for any opportunity in either direction to say, someone's working against her and she's not receiving any kind of empathy in this experience, or here's a smoking gun.

• 43:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:24Sean Fennessey?

  I, this just confirms what everyone thinks, which is that you're duplicitous, that you are working only in service of yourself. And then you're always constantly claiming that you're being, you're Cassandra, right? That you're, you know, you're not to be trusted. And so

• 43:39Amanda Dobbins?

  No, Cassandra is right.

• 43:41Sean Fennessey?

  Is it that no one believes Cassandra?

• 43:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:43Sean Fennessey?

  Sorry. Cassandra, who's, what's the opposite of that? Boy who cried wolf?

• 43:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, I think so. I think that that's a major part of, is that social reckoning?

• 43:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. That's right. That's why I'm thinking of it.

• 43:57Sean Fennessey?

  We see also like the artifice starts to appear where there's a moment where Billy and Liz are still mic'd.

• 44:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:04Sean Fennessey?

  And they go and have a conversation in another room. It's really the only time that the documentary does this.

• 44:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Because at some point Billy and Liz become aware and ask them to start cutting the mics.

• 44:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 44:14Amanda Dobbins?

  But in this one, they're having a conversation and they're also having a conversation about what's being shown because Liz is working on a memoir throughout the beginning and so she has her laptop and she's kind of trying to cover it. And so the conversation is about Liz saying they were trying to film, or they were filming what I was writing, but I don't want my memoir as a part of this. But I don't, the whole point of this project is that I'm supposed to be revealing, you know, to, to show that I'm, have nothing to hide, that I'm not duplicitous. And, you know, Billy takes the other side of you got to stick up for yourself and you got to decide what you want and you don't want.

• 44:55Sean Fennessey?

  In pretty short order, it's clear that Billy is going to be a much bigger part of this movie than I ever would have imagined.

• 45:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 45:00Sean Fennessey?

  And that he is a very interesting character, to say the least. In the aftermath of that secret conversation where they sort of de-mic about five minutes into it, Billy kind of takes center stage in the doc. He, it's clear that he sort of runs the household in a lot of ways. It's clear that he is a kind of protector figure for Elizabeth Holmes, that he is clearly a bit obsessive, that he shares a kind of unbroken eye contact oddity in terms of the way that he like communicates and interacts with people.

• 45:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Zach Woods would play him in the fictionalized version of this.

• 45:33Sean Fennessey?

  Very much.

• 45:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Very well, I think.

• 45:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. There's a moment where, you know, the movie starts to become this kind of series of personal encounters between Nathan and the two of them in their own home while they're tending to their children or having other people or taking Zoom calls. And at a certain point, Nathan's like, what are we going to do next? And Billy's like, well, I'm going to the gym. You can come with me if you want. And in my head, I was like, why the fuck would we go to the gym with this guy? Who cares? Again, a very important moment in the movie because this is a person who would love to be filmed while working out. And that also, I think you can see Nathan kind of coming to an understanding that we're going to show everything.

• 46:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:13Sean Fennessey?

  Up to and including Billy in the shower.

• 46:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:16Sean Fennessey?

  Full frontal.

• 46:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh huh.

• 46:17Sean Fennessey?

  In full.

• 46:18Amanda Dobbins?

  It's so funny how, I mean, that is a very funny and quite, and literally as well as emotionally revealing part of the shower, but of the film. But I looked at it and I was like, all right, so there you go. Cool. And both you and my husband have like really fixated on this part of it.

• 46:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's such a huge choice. In fact, I saw the movie a second time and

• 46:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't really care that much about it.

• 46:37Sean Fennessey?

  I ran into Matt Bellany and Craig Horbeck outside because they were seeing it for the first time. And Matt was like, the big question is why the dick in the shower?

• 46:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:44Sean Fennessey?

  You know what I was like?

• 46:45Amanda Dobbins?

  But this is kind of, this is sort of a summation of like the philosophy behind dick pics in general, which is like, the people receiving them, the women at least, like, don't really care. We don't understand. But the men are like, this is the most important thing I can send you.

• 46:58Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's, it's related to the Nathan experience though, for me. To me, I see it through the prison. Because Nathan throughout all of his work, and this isn't the only kind of recurring theme that will come up, but he is always like kind of the beleaguered man, the lesser than, the less masculine.

• 47:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 47:15Sean Fennessey?

  A man who's intimidated and also very lovelorn in a lot of ways. And he keeps kind of circling back to like Billy's success with women. He has a conversation with Billy about meeting Liz for the first time and he's got a lot of, like a lot of serious questions.

• 47:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 47:34Sean Fennessey?

  About the nature of their meet cute. And he seems suspicious. He's clearly

• 47:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, sure, because they did meet after Elizabeth Holmes was, if not, I don't believe she had been through the legal process yet.

• 47:44Sean Fennessey?

  But she'd been disgraced effectively. Yeah.

• 47:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. So, pretty thoroughly.

• 47:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And, you know, all of this stuff is all working together. The conversation that they're having about their meet cute at a party where Liz is wearing a hat and she's got a band-aid on her face and he didn't know who she was. He didn't know who she was. And we start to become really suspicious of Billy in general, that he seems like a bit of a huckster figure. We learn that his, he, because Nathan directly asks him about it, that he comes from some wealth, some personal wealth. And then he's a very ambitious person who's trying to make a name for himself in some ways. And so he has kind of latched on to Elizabeth Holmes, so much so that they're in a, in a, in a relationship together. They have a family together. And the flip side of this is that the movie also seems quite fascinated by what could also be described as like, they're very pure and

• 48:30Sean Fennessey?

  true love story. And where is the line between obsession, need?

• 48:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:37Sean Fennessey?

  What decisions you make when you have a family?

• 48:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:41Sean Fennessey?

  And like how you like commit in a way? This part of the movie is so interesting to me and it's not the most, it's not the stuff that's going to get the headlines, but watching it a second time, whatever it is between Billy Evans and Elizabeth Holmes, actually I feel like is maybe what fascinates Nathan the most, even beyond his own personal interactions with some of these people.

• 49:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 49:02Sean Fennessey?

  Because there are times when you're looking at these two people and you're like, this is the phoniest, most bullshit relationship of all time.

• 49:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 49:08Sean Fennessey?

  And then there are other times, especially because of the way that they're filmed, where you're like, this is a real family that loves each other.

• 49:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 49:15Sean Fennessey?

  Despite all of the absolute weirdness of their lives. And so I really liked the movie as this kind of like push-pull between those two dynamics.

• 49:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I think, to me, the movie is, I agree that what's going on between them was kind of like this central question because in some cases, or in, from some perspectives, what's going on between them ultimately answers. If you could understand it, then you could understand everything that's going on.

• 49:43Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 49:43Amanda Dobbins?

  In, in this situation, you could understand the questions that the movie asks and wants to answer. I do, it's funny, like all of the family stuff, they do seem like they love each other very much. I was affected by it very, very differently, which was just, like, I found it incredibly sad. And they're, they're, the film, to its credit, but also maybe to its manipulation, but then also maybe to Elizabeth Holmes' manipulation to agree to do it in the first place, is very aware that you are watching a family and two small childrens and this tiny chunky baby who is nursing Elizabeth Holmes, like

• 50:23Amanda Dobbins?

  with Elizabeth Holmes all the time, and then is just kind of like slung over her shoulder in the last time that they're going to be together, like as children.

• 50:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's a huge part of the question of the movie.

• 50:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 50:35Sean Fennessey?

  Is why has this family in this, the most vulnerable moment of their lives, agreed to allow film crew and celebrity Nathan Fielder into their lives? Nathan, to his credit, seems to be baffled by the decision to allow the family.

• 50:50Amanda Dobbins?

  And asks.

• 50:51Sean Fennessey?

  You know, them into their lives.

• 50:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Asks several times. Like, do you want me to go away? Do you guys want a minute? Are you sure that you want us here? This is your last time before you're going to prison for 11 years. That's her sentence.

• 51:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Yeah. And there's, sometimes we see them together when they're talking about their work and they're throwing a lot of buzzwords around and they're talking in jargony fashion. But in the way that the film is cut in this very kind of excited way where there's one montage in particular where it seems like they're kind of building Theranos 2.0 out loud.

• 51:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. At some point during that, and I've only seen the film once, but during that montage, I thought to myself, is the reveal going to be that they figured out the technology? I was like, oh, is the reveal that actually Theranos is real and they fixed it? And like, congratulations, the world is saved.

• 51:37Sean Fennessey?

  Well, they're speaking with such excitement and such confidence that at first it couldn't seem like an inside insight. Wow, are these people actually pretty smart? And then the reveal is actually like, well, this is, they're con, they're con people in a way. You know what? They're aspirational.

• 51:50Amanda Dobbins?

  They're honors chemistry.

• 51:51Sean Fennessey?

  Sure. Yeah. They're trying to build something. And the truth is that many people, which is cited by one of the scientists who appeared later in the film, who have big dreams and big ambitions, they start saying what they can do before they can do it.

• 52:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 52:04Sean Fennessey?

  To kind of manifest something.

• 52:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 52:06Sean Fennessey?

  And that, you know, if you looked at Elizabeth Holmes in a more generous light, you could say, well, she was pushing us towards an inevitable future that we need to fight for. I don't believe that, of course.

• 52:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 52:14Sean Fennessey?

  But the movie kind of also jostles with that concept. The one thing I just wanted to say quickly about Elizabeth and Billy too, that I find interesting is like, you see this in a lot of relationships. Two people who are obsessed with each other, but maybe don't understand each other, but they're obsessed with the idea of being with that person? And that they then like compel themselves to be in that relationship forever? I find that very interesting. I see this all the time, like subjective, from my own subjective perspective.

• 52:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. Yeah.

• 52:39Sean Fennessey?

  But I, there were times when I'm watching the movie where I'm like, Billy really loves this person. And there are other times where I'm like, Billy is the biggest bullshit artist in the history of time.

• 52:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 52:49Sean Fennessey?

  And he just wants as much attention as he can possibly acquire. So he'll do anything he can, including taking care of two children by himself after his wife goes to prison.

• 52:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:59Sean Fennessey?

  To prove the point that he needs and desires this level of attention. And I love that the movie jostles with that. This isn't even like the most interesting stuff in the movie per se, but my mind is going to it as we're talking through it.

• 53:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Though, you know, I've found the things that I keep thinking about are like the shots of the kids.

• 53:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 53:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Which are like used very purposefully. And then I start wondering, okay, but does, did, did they know that that would be affecting to me? And is part of this campaign here of, look, you're, whatever you think about, you know, prison or Theranos, you're separating like a young family.

• 53:33Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. Also, again, this is based on one movie and the footage that was chosen. But I'm like, I don't, Billy seems like a good dad.

• 53:41Amanda Dobbins?

  He's offering Nathan Fielder waffles and bagels on a regular basis, which is very, very funny.

• 53:45Sean Fennessey?

  Very dad coded.

• 53:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Um. You don't offer people waffles.

• 53:50Sean Fennessey?

  I have a waffle maker.

• 53:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you? When was the last time that you used the waffle maker?

• 53:54Sean Fennessey?

  For guests, never. Uh, my daughter and I made waffles a month ago. Oh. Mickey Mouse waffles.

• 54:00Amanda Dobbins?

  That's very cute. We just do frozen waffles because I'm real mommy, not other mommy.

• 54:05Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think Alice knows frozen waffles exist.

• 54:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 54:07Sean Fennessey?

  And she won't learn yet. Uh, on the flip side of this stuff is there are moments like the egg egg beating sequence, which recurs a couple of times, a moment where Billy, uh,

• 54:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Electric.

• 54:19Sean Fennessey?

  Elizabeth Holmes is preparing to make maybe waffles. We don't know. She's, she's beating some eggs in a bowl.

• 54:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 54:24Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe to make scrambled eggs and Billy, who's talking a lot in this three person conversation, takes the bowl of, of cracked eggs away from Elizabeth and starts beating it the way that he believes it should be beaten.

• 54:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 54:37Sean Fennessey?

  And Nathan, you know, master of the awkward encounter that he is, asks why Billy has taken the bowl away from his wife while she's beating the eggs. And Elizabeth attempts to deflect by saying like, oh, he doesn't think like in a kind of a kind way that I know how to do this.

• 54:52Amanda Dobbins?

  He's, he, I don't remember who answers first, but his answer is because I wanted her to be able to focus on talking to you. And she explains, he wants me to beat them more quickly because then it adds, she has almost like a scientific, like the, the science of cooking explanation. And it makes them taste better is, is what she says.

• 55:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 55:14Amanda Dobbins?

  And.

• 55:14Sean Fennessey?

  But it's his OCD that is drawing that and his need for control.

• 55:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Is it his OCD? Is it his just basic domineering? Let's do it my way. And I say that.

• 55:25Sean Fennessey?

  There's a collision between those two ideas.

• 55:26Amanda Dobbins?

  And I say that as someone who truly understands the impulse to watch someone doing something, whether it is like my husband chopping herbs or my son putting on his shoes and to reach and just do it myself.

• 55:36Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 55:37Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, cause like, no, can we just?

• 55:38Sean Fennessey?

  So you're more of a Billy is what you're saying.

• 55:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Can we do this? Okay.

• 55:42Sean Fennessey?

  Um, you know, all of these moments are revealing, and then we see them like a second time because of where the movie is headed. Um, and you tell me when you think we should get into that because what I did was after I saw the film a second time, I just raced home. And I was just like, I'm going to try to write down as much of this movie as I can remember because every incident feels valuable. And in fact, many of these incidents are recreated or discussed in real time in the movie. And so.

• 56:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, but not yet in the movie.

• 56:07Sean Fennessey?

  Not yet in the movie.

• 56:07Amanda Dobbins?

  You're still getting, I, I mean, I do think that there is something ingenious and essential to the experience of the movie as an almost two hour, if not like traditional documentary, but very, here is what is going on with Elizabeth Holmes. You think that you're just in a, in like the experience of being with them for the last 34 days. And your questions are about, why are you letting us see this? And what do you want me to see? Uh, both Elizabeth Holmes, Nathan Fielder, you know, what is everyone involved? Want me to take away from this? And then the movie like quite literally engages with those questions.

• 56:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. So before we get into the engagement, it's a, it's a tale of two halves.

• 56:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:53Sean Fennessey?

  The first hour and 20 minutes is inside of this home, which I should say is in San Diego and Del Mar, a home that they're renting before eventually she has to go.

• 57:00Amanda Dobbins?

  On the beach.

• 57:01Sean Fennessey?

  On the beach, before she has to go to Texas, um, where she'll be in federal prison. But there's a moment where, um, Elizabeth's parents come to the house and visit one day. And this is where Nathan being in the movie is so crucial because he can become this kind of interlocutor interrogator of anybody who crossed paths with them.

• 57:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:19Sean Fennessey?

  And one of the more upsetting moments in the movie I found was this conversation that he has with her father, where he talks about, Nathan asked him very frankly, like, why do you think this has happened?

• 57:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Cause he's already asked Elizabeth that. He said, where do you think all this went wrong? Why do you think you're in the position you're in? And she's like, I, I don't know. I wish I could understand. If I could, I could fix it. Uh, and then he asked her dad the same question and he says, well, she was raped. And so that's where, that's how all of this happened.

• 57:52Sean Fennessey?

  Which is just devastating.

• 57:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:54Sean Fennessey?

  And, and the bluntness with which he delivers that verdict, but like, and like, maybe it is true, but maybe it is too boiled down to ever understand like someone's psychology in such a simple way. But like, the fact that he says that on camera to Nathan, I don't, I'm not, I still don't know what that reveals about the dynamic of their family and Elizabeth's psychology.

• 58:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Because he is also, her parents are, are not, you know, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. They are, they're obviously of a different generation. They're very buttoned up.

• 58:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 58:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Very traditional. I think, uh, Nathan, very soon after that, in just kind of like a classic whiplash moment is like, so you worked at Enron, right?

• 58:34Sean Fennessey?

  Um, so good.

• 58:36Amanda Dobbins?

  So, which I, which I think is factually true.

• 58:38Sean Fennessey?

  So it is true.

• 58:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And, but so you're watching him try to keep up with the entire narrative around like his daughter and this person who he has raised, but then has then gone into the world, become a sidepost for an entire generation of, and an entire way to talk to each other. And that has also, he's been given talking points about like, no, this is like our version of what we think's going on. And you're almost just watching a man who just like, it's like too much, you know, to, to fully digest and process and interact with.

• 59:20Amanda Dobbins?

  And the way the parents are filmed, the rest of the time, they are, they're not really engaging. They're just observing kind of in a way, uh, that to me telegraphs regret and dismay.

• 59:33Sean Fennessey?

  A lot of the, a lot of it is the filmmaking choice.

• 59:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:35Sean Fennessey?

  That montage I mentioned earlier of them kind of developing Theranos 2.0 together. The parents are present for that moment and, you know, they train the camera very closely on their hands and the way that they're kind of like,

• 59:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:47Sean Fennessey?

  You know, calming each other, but also stressed and kind of like need to have movement without actually communicating. And that, by that conversation that, that Nathan has with her father, clearly kind of narrativizes it, like puts words to this idea that Elizabeth is a person who keeps falling in with these kind of like manipulative dominant, in some cases even, um, abusive, older male figures.

• 1:00:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:00:13Sean Fennessey?

  You know, and that, um, is it Sonny Balwani? Is that his last name?

• 1:00:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I believe so.

• 1:00:17Sean Fennessey?

  Um, who was her longtime partner, both in the Theranos company and romantically, and who was also charged with crimes. And, you know, who she puts most of the blame for the, the, what she's convicted of on him.

• 1:00:29Amanda Dobbins?

  And he was convicted of all of the charges that, uh, he, he faced.

• 1:00:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. But then as we're watching the movie and we're seeing the way that Billy has a kind of domineering quality and the way that he has like simultaneously maybe fallen into her trap, but also taken over at the same time. And the convoluted power dynamics that are going on between them.

• 1:00:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, then it, and then it becomes, for me at least, what is the nature of the trap? And there are two specific sequences that are incredibly memorable. One, the can versus capable conversation. And then the who's on first.

• 1:01:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:01:07Amanda Dobbins?

  That I would like to talk about in great detail.

• 1:01:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's essentially what comes next, which is that there is a semantic discussion of a quote that Nathan plays out loud for Elizabeth during one of many conversations that he's having with her throughout the movie.

• 1:01:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Sean Fennessey?

  They're all kind of finely cut together. Um, but this.

• 1:01:23Amanda Dobbins?

  But they are also, they are at least telegraphed as in the course of daily life, Nathan says, okay, I'd like to like, sit down and have a conversation with you. I'd like to interview you rather than just kind of doing my observation thing. So they've, they've sat down at a table together and he wants to ask her some questions.

• 1:01:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And so one of the questions that he asks her is about a quote that she gives around the Theranos technology that says that they've developed a device that can run any test.

• 1:01:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Sean Fennessey?

  And that this is the primary focus of, um, her legal troubles and that this is the, this is where the defrauding comes in. And it becomes this long semantic discussion about what it means to run any test versus run every test.

• 1:02:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:13Sean Fennessey?

  And the implications that are made by changing one or two words in the delivery in a, in a journalistic setting or in a public forum. And Holmes eventually busts out all of the tools that she has, like all the, you know, broken down pieces of Theranos device to explain literally to Nathan how it might work and what she meant by what she said. And they kind of effectively, like, she does sort of convince him a little bit that she's been misunderstood because maybe she doesn't have, because of the way that her mind works, the ability to differentiate the nuance in her claims.

• 1:02:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:02:53Sean Fennessey?

  And we don't quite know. So Nathan is kind of like chewing on this and he's trying to figure out, is he being scammed in real time by the way she's talking? Is it possible that she is like, I think there's a lot of questions of, um, there, there's no other way to say this than to be frank about it. Like, is Elizabeth Holmes on the spectrum in some way?

• 1:03:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Sean Fennessey?

  That she maybe doesn't have the ability to communicate, or she isn't communicating in the way that we are receiving her information. And that if there is this kind of loss of, um, this inability to connect properly, where two people are not saying to each other what they think they should be saying to each other, then is that enough? That someone's life should be destroyed because of their ambition? And this becomes like kind of a, a central.

• 1:03:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:34Sean Fennessey?

  Intellectual question of the movie. And the way that Fielder chooses to animate it is so funny. And it's such a perfect, like, you need a comedian to do this, to make this work.

• 1:03:45Amanda Dobbins?

  The only thing I want to note about the other scene is that before she gets the device out, she is, he's asking her broad questions about Theranos and she is referring so heavily to printed notes in front of her.

• 1:03:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:03:59Amanda Dobbins?

  In such a, and the camera trains on the notes and trains on her looking down and then looking up. And I don't know what to take from that, whether I'm supposed to take that she doesn't know what she's talking about and so she needs notes, or whether she's in such legal peril that, and has been crisis managed into an enter of her life, or she's just nervous, or to the point that we're about to, she doesn't know how to communicate. And has some awareness that she has, the way that she instinctively wants to communicate is not getting through to people.

• 1:04:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Though she doesn't seem to have enough of it to circumvent any of her other problems to be discussed in the, the scene, which I'm glad you think is funny. I found it incredibly sad. I think it is, it's so illuminating and so like I.

• 1:04:44Sean Fennessey?

  Well, okay. I, to me, I found it to be a little shattering certainly, but also.

• 1:04:49Sean Fennessey?

  Really important.

• 1:04:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:50Sean Fennessey?

  Because as a longtime Nathan fan. Nathan's, I think a lot of his comedy and sort of the brilliance of the way that the schemes in his mind work is this kind of unspoken feeling where we're like, is Nathan on the spectrum a little bit? Like, is his inability to communicate or connect with people in the way that he wants to? Is it, is that sort of his superpower, the way that you hear that described for people who are on the spectrum?

• 1:05:16Sean Fennessey?

  And in this scene where he plays the famous Abbott and Costello, who's on First comedy routine, he is dropping all of his comedy artifice. He is like actually genuinely curious.

• 1:05:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:30Sean Fennessey?

  And whatever the performance of the Nathan Fielder character is, has like officially gone away. And he's like, I thought of something while we were talking the other day.

• 1:05:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:38Sean Fennessey?

  This is the most famous comedy routine of all time. I'm gonna play it for you.

• 1:05:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:05:42Sean Fennessey?

  And they watch, uh, did you watch Who's on First as a kid growing up? Did you, were you familiar with this bit?

• 1:05:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of course. No, because I think to most people, or at least people who spend their time caring about words, then, and, and I think that's another thing to note here is that we're not doctors. We don't even have to like talk about spectrum or whatever, but that Elizabeth Holmes has a numbers mind and a science mind, or at least wants you to think that. And neither she nor Nathan Fielder follow what is traditional societal norms, which is where Nathan's success in comedy comes from and where her issues come from. Right. So, yeah, no, of course I knew about it and I know it's like, it's a reference as a, um,

• 1:06:31Amanda Dobbins?

  it's not just a comedy routine, but a shorthand for like miscommunication.

• 1:06:35Sean Fennessey?

  Completely. Um, I'm sure I'm like many people growing up, but my dad loved this routine. Loved Abbott and Costello. I watched this over and over again. So when he busted it out, I think I immediately knew what he was doing, um, which was showing you that

• 1:06:49Sean Fennessey?

  gaps in linguistic understanding can sometimes lead to extraordinary misunderstanding. And Elizabeth Holmes knows that it's funny, or that it should be funny.

• 1:06:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:07:00Sean Fennessey?

  But Nathan, very pointedly, after they watch it, asks, asks her why it's funny. Why, why people think it's funny? And she does not know.

• 1:07:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:08Sean Fennessey?

  Or at least she says she does not know.

• 1:07:10Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think he even asks her, what is the name, what is the name of the baseball player on First?

• 1:07:16Sean Fennessey?

  She does not know.

• 1:07:17Amanda Dobbins?

  She says, I don't know. Yeah.

• 1:07:19Sean Fennessey?

  She doesn't get it. And I, I don't think that's a performance. I don't know if it's a performance, but I don't think it's a performance.

• 1:07:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I also responded that it was not a performance, that it was like an astonishing and ingenious act of,

• 1:07:33Amanda Dobbins?

  psychological insight, not even psychological, I guess, just internal insight as well as like amazing journalism. Like, oh, this can actually, so much of this can be explained so clearly.

• 1:07:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. It is him using the Nathan Fielder strategy, but not doing the character.

• 1:07:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:52Sean Fennessey?

  Which is where he presents people with a way to kind of draw information out of them by giving them the opportunity to like discuss what they think something means. And it's fascinating and it's also a great insight into Billy, who, um, attempts to be this sort of like uniter peace broker person in this moment where he's like, I'm so glad you've done this, Nathan. This is why Elizabeth is so special. It's because she's different.

• 1:08:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:18Sean Fennessey?

  She thinks differently. This isn't, she doesn't quite understand this in the way that you might imagine, and that explains this big problem that we're having.

• 1:08:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. He's like, I think this is really perceptive.

• 1:08:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:08:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it's a really good point.

• 1:08:29Sean Fennessey?

  And he's really smarmy. And you, we, at this point, we pretty much don't like him. But like, also maybe he's right a little bit. You know, like there is kind of something going on here where you're like, could she be a con woman and also innocent? Like, I honestly don't know.

• 1:08:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. I, I, same. I don't know. But, but this moment does isolate for me. I was just like, oh, you know, and sorry to say Billy is right just in this one instance, but like.

• 1:08:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:55Amanda Dobbins?

  There is something different about her. There, there is something that is not just ambition and, you know, maybe she's not pathological, as I understand the definition of pathological, that there is, there's something else going on.

• 1:09:12Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:12Amanda Dobbins?

  That I don't quite understand, but that also makes me feel like there, there is a misunderstanding.

• 1:09:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You felt sympathy for her in this moment.

• 1:09:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, totally. And also she is nursing a child.

• 1:09:24Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:09:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Literally while all of this is happening.

• 1:09:26Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, there's a whole like postpartum thing too, that is not even explored, that you could like very easily, if you wanted to say, well, also at this time in her life.

• 1:09:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:34Sean Fennessey?

  With all of this pressure that she's feeling about going to prison and being separated from her family. Plus she's like, I mean, how old's that baby? Six months old? Less?

• 1:09:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:42Sean Fennessey?

  Then they watch the dropout together, the Hulu show.

• 1:09:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:45Sean Fennessey?

  And it's clearly just too much for Elizabeth Holmes.

• 1:09:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:09:48Sean Fennessey?

  They watch a few scenes. It's for, it's edited tightly together. And particularly a scene between her, uh, her character and Sonny, um, is very painful for her and she kind of falls back and stops watching.

• 1:10:03Sean Fennessey?

  And we're getting, the days are counting down. Like we're getting down to the final days of this experience. By this point, Nathan has already moved in. He lives at this house in San Diego.

• 1:10:14Sean Fennessey?

  We see that montage of them rebuilding Theranos. And then we have yet another conversation between Liz and Nathan on the deck. Where

• 1:10:27Sean Fennessey?

  they're talking in depth and she is not breaking eye contact, hardly blinking. And she's trying to be as sincere and persuasive as possible to get him to believe that she does not believe that she ever did anything wrong. And he asks her point blank, have you ever lied?

• 1:10:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:45Sean Fennessey?

  And it seems like she honestly tries to answer, I've never lied. And he starts to say like, not even like, somebody's going to an acquaintance's party that you didn't want to go to, like you never lied about that? And she's like, a bit dumbfounded about how to like, answer this question. Cause it's like, is she worried that she's gonna be indicted for anything she says? Or is she actually a person who wouldn't know how to lie? I gotta say, my wife is one of those people who's like, I don't know how to lie. Like she doesn't really like, she gets anxious.

• 1:11:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:11:16Sean Fennessey?

  And so I was trying to figure out like, again, with Holmes, I'm like, is, was this true?

• 1:11:22Amanda Dobbins?

  And then she's sort of, she attempts to redefine what he means by lie. The concept of a white lie is introduced and she's like, well, you know, and then that, but a white lie is something that you would use to like smooth social interactions, which is also, you know, like a frequency to which she's not like totally attuned.

• 1:11:40Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 1:11:41Amanda Dobbins?

  As evidenced by What Happens Next, which is the single most incredible thing that I've seen on, which is then she goes to the beach.

• 1:11:48Sean Fennessey?

  Well, one thing, I just want to point out one thing that happens, which is that this conversation is interrupted by Billy and the kids.

• 1:11:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:53Sean Fennessey?

  Because they want to go to the beach. And the movie creates this series of moments where just as Nathan is getting to the bottom of something, somebody comes crashing in and interrupts. Sometimes it's a conversation with Billy, sometimes with Liz. But the, it's like, it's almost like a sitcom style editing where like every time we're about to reach some meaningful understanding.

• 1:12:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Cue the curb music.

• 1:12:13Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly. And so they go to the beach and Nathan stays on the deck. And seemingly while she's on the beach, she texts Nathan. You can totally see everything.

• 1:12:27Amanda Dobbins?

  And you, the frame of the shot is that you can see her in the background of Nathan is on the deck. She's on the beach in the background because they have a lovely beachfront home that they've rented. And you could see her on her phone. She's not in focus. And then he gets a text message. And he's like, you just watch it happen.

• 1:12:48Sean Fennessey?

  He's trying to figure out what it means, how he's supposed to respond.

• 1:12:50Amanda Dobbins?

  So weird.

• 1:12:51Sean Fennessey?

  And he gives her the thumbs up. And then we, they cut to a shot of her looking at the phone and almost like affirming the thumbs up. It's like, there's just, this is a house full of very strange people.

• 1:13:04Amanda Dobbins?

  It's true.

• 1:13:05Sean Fennessey?

  This is a very bizarre social environment that we're watching in real time. And, you know, movies very rarely make space.

• 1:13:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:13Sean Fennessey?

  For this kind of strangeness at length.

• 1:13:14Amanda Dobbins?

  There was something so like freeing and beautiful about that though, to me, because don't you feel that way all the time? Every day you just wander around and like people make choices and do things and you're like, why are you doing that?

• 1:13:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's go.

• 1:13:30Sean Fennessey?

  You treat me that way very often. Yeah.

• 1:13:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, you wouldn't not text me from like 15 feet away on the deck while I was at the beach. And then like do a thumbs up, but you wouldn't, you wouldn't say anything like that, you know?

• 1:13:43Sean Fennessey?

  I wouldn't say you can totally see everything.

• 1:13:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, you're the Nathan in this, obviously.

• 1:13:48Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 1:13:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, but there is just something, I really do walk around feeling like everybody's just crazy all of the time and I don't understand why they do it. And this validation that's not me and that there are just really, really weird people out there, appreciate it.

• 1:14:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. The movie is really good about that. Um.

• 1:14:08Sean Fennessey?

  Eventually, the final days arrive. There is a long drive to Texas. The movie starts to get quite sad, where everything is really dawning on Holmes that like she is going to prison. Nathan is sitting with them in like their awkward final hours, drinking cold brew. Once they arrive in Texas, he keeps saying, do you guys want me to get up? See, like you can go have sex and.

• 1:14:30Amanda Dobbins?

  And then there is a break and then he says, how was it?

• 1:14:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:14:34Amanda Dobbins?

  When he sees them again.

• 1:14:35Sean Fennessey?

  Her reaction to that too is fantastic. People will have to see this movie.

• 1:14:39Amanda Dobbins?

  But that also, I mean, that scene, I've been thinking about it for many reasons, but he does again, try to do like a Nathan type thing. He has a gag gift ready for her that he presents. But his heart isn't in it because of.

• 1:14:55Sean Fennessey?

  It's in front of her parents.

• 1:14:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Which he also acknowledges and he's like, normally I do this, but this is not really appropriate. Like, I'm sorry. And you know, even, you know, you wonder whether that is sort of like a meta-awareness performance, but it is a very interesting creation or examination of the Nathan character in that moment.

• 1:15:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:15:13Amanda Dobbins?

  And then she says, I left some milk in the fridge for Ivy and starts crying. And that was when I was just like, oh.

• 1:15:20Sean Fennessey?

  It's very sad.

• 1:15:21Amanda Dobbins?

  It's incredibly sad.

• 1:15:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:23Amanda Dobbins?

  And the, and the tears are genuine, even if the decision to put all this in front of cameras is to make me feel sympathetic. In that moment, I was like, wow, this is brutal.

• 1:15:33Sean Fennessey?

  Or were you just being taken in by the sociopath?

• 1:15:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I, maybe.

• 1:15:37Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, the movie consistently confronts you with moments like this.

• 1:15:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:40Sean Fennessey?

  Because this moment happens and eventually, you know, Nathan and Holmes have this final conversation outside of the car, where she essentially is like, it's gonna be okay to him before she gets into the car and drives away and they go to prison. And I gotta say, when I was watching the movie at this point in the movie, I was like, well, where do we even go from here? Like, this is over. Like, you've lost access to Elizabeth Holmes. This was interesting and I'm glad I watched it.

• 1:16:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:08Sean Fennessey?

  I wouldn't say I was like overwhelmed by how great I thought it was. I thought it was a very fascinating portrait of a person at a critical moment in their lives and also a kind of desaturation of the Nathan Fielder experience in a way that I really liked. And then it cuts to two years later and almost exactly the halfway mark of the movie. And we're back in Texas and Nathan is visiting Billy. And something feels different. We see that Billy's got like a Komodo dragon that is wandering around the house. We can hear the ambient sounds of the kids. Again, there's a lot of Lance Oppenheimer's filmmaking stuff going on here with the kind of curious roving camera in places you wouldn't expect. The sound design where you're picking up a lot of audio

• 1:16:50Sean Fennessey?

  in, in outside spaces that really provides this sense of like discomfort, I would say, while you're watching. We see Billy on a gun range.

• 1:16:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:00Sean Fennessey?

  And, you know, we've been hearing for years about people moving to Texas, no state tax, getting away from the government's intrusions into their lives. And like, he kinda seems like he's becoming one of these guys.

• 1:17:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, though he is in Texas because her crimes were committed in Texas.

• 1:17:16Sean Fennessey?

  That's the other thing.

• 1:17:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, because Enron, that's right. So that's where she was. And so that's where she is in prison.

• 1:17:23Sean Fennessey?

  So we start to see like the venture that he's building up on her behalf. And there's a fascinating interview with one of the scientists he's working with, which is now oriented around lasers in an attempt to rebuild Theranos. And Nathan is attempting to get information about why this, he thinks this, the scientist thinks Theranos didn't work the first time around. Billy interrupts the interview. He comes between the cameras and Nathan and he's very mad that questions are being asked, that he doesn't want portrayed in the documentary. And then Nathan becomes very agitated by Billy attempting to control the documentary. And then we can really see that like, this is gonna become the frictive component of the rest of this movie is who's gonna have control of this movie.

• 1:18:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:02Sean Fennessey?

  We then also see that Billy is in contact with a man named Ryan L. Hosseini, who is, I don't know if you've seen these billboards up in Los Angeles, but the Elizabeth Holmes billboards with a website called justblood.com on them. And apparently this is a guy who's developing a similar technology, a blood testing device of his own, who believes Holmes was innocent and railroaded, but also he's involved in some sort of like experimental theater, telling her story and take, you know, grifting off of her fall. And Nathan is very disturbed by all of this and Billy is kind of letting it happen and maybe even consulting with this man.

• 1:18:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:18:40Sean Fennessey?

  And Billy's.

• 1:18:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Like meeting him in parking lots.

• 1:18:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And Billy's grift is coming to the fore.

• 1:18:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:47Sean Fennessey?

  I would say. His business doesn't seem that credible.

• 1:18:50Amanda Dobbins?

  No. And then I just have to say the sound editing in this, the amount of sniffling. It is quite audible and

• 1:18:59Amanda Dobbins?

  suspicious.

• 1:19:03Sean Fennessey?

  And then there's a hard cut.

• 1:19:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Sean Fennessey?

  And

• 1:19:09Sean Fennessey?

  we see Amanda Seyfried.

• 1:19:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:12Sean Fennessey?

  Who is the star of The Dropout.

• 1:19:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:19:14Sean Fennessey?

  And she's sitting on a couch in her home.

• 1:19:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Her New York City apartment, I believe. I saw that one, that Architectural Digest tour.

• 1:19:21Sean Fennessey?

  Was it the apartment and not the ranch?

• 1:19:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought I recognized it as the New York City apartment and then later they go to the ranch. I could be wrong.

• 1:19:29Sean Fennessey?

  I wanna dox her here.

• 1:19:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, it was in Architectural Digest.

• 1:19:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it was in the film.

• 1:19:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:36Sean Fennessey?

  And

• 1:19:39Sean Fennessey?

  Amanda and Nathan are sitting together and they're watching the footage that he has captured, all of which we've already seen in the movie.

• 1:19:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:46Sean Fennessey?

  So some of the most memorable scenes, like the egg beating sequence, for example, or the sequence of watching scenes from The Dropout, Amanda Seyfried is watching. And, you know,

• 1:20:00Sean Fennessey?

  I've been talking about this about her like over the last five years where I'm like, this is really one of the most interesting celebrities that we have because she seems like she's extremely comfortable with a level of candor that most celebrities are not. And I don't just mean about being like politically outspoken or things like that. She just seems like a little kooky in a very entertaining way.

• 1:20:18Amanda Dobbins?

  But also perceptive and paying attention and game.

• 1:20:21Sean Fennessey?

  She's smart.

• 1:20:22Amanda Dobbins?

  She's in Instagram comments, you know, like she's a poster.

• 1:20:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:25Amanda Dobbins?

  She's a little bit of.

• 1:20:27Sean Fennessey?

  She's getting involved in a way that like, you're not supposed to get involved. And so when she shows up, there's something very like, at the Telly Ride screening where nobody knew anything about this movie, there were gasps. People were just like, oh. When we saw her in a way that was so fun.

• 1:20:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:41Sean Fennessey?

  And, and she, I would say she lives up to the billing in terms of what she does in this movie.

• 1:20:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, though you, but you don't even know. So when you see this, you think that they've just are scrambling for a way to flesh out the end of it. And they're like, we don't have access to her anymore. And so we're gonna show Amanda Seyfried. They're watching on a laptop. And her earrings look so great. If someone could ID those, that earring stack for me, it would really. But I just got my ears pierced, so I was like, that, that's what I want.

• 1:21:07Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:21:08Amanda Dobbins?

  But you think you're just watching some sort of filler. And she has some, and they have a conversation about it. And it is a good conversation. And it's almost like in the conversation, they're once again finding the third act of the movie and they realize like, oh, this person, this person has some insights. They have something that she could bring.

• 1:21:30Sean Fennessey?

  She's our pathway to figuring out how to continue this story in a lot of ways. And it's in part because she is this incredibly perceptive person. So when she's watching the footage, she's like, and she's talking about this on camera.

• 1:21:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:39Sean Fennessey?

  She's like, oh my God, Billy, like who would ever wanna, you know, no woman should be with a man like that.

• 1:21:45Amanda Dobbins?

  She's like, you gotta find some dirt on him. So they break up.

• 1:21:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:49Amanda Dobbins?

  She says that just like, which is true and instinctive. And she also like very naturally puts herself into the position of the, there is suddenly a like, a woman, you know, perspective on this film, which is, which is, which is important. And she is right. No woman would wanna see another woman with a guy like that. Like red flag central immediately.

• 1:22:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And, and she's totally activated by the material that she sees. And then she starts talking about how she's becoming intrigued by playing Elizabeth Holmes again. Now, for Amanda Seyfried, who's like an Academy Award nominee and is like a big movie star, you know, was in The Housemaid last year. The Dropout is the thing that she has gotten the most acclaim for. She won an Emmy for it. She, that show was a big hit. And I'm not sure if it's the, you know, everybody's seen Mean Girls. She's been in a lot of successful stuff. But it could be the role that she's most closely associated with. And you can see the kind of like fertile and hungry mind of an actor being like, there's another chapter here that is so interesting. And I will say, she does put herself in some positions

• 1:22:53Sean Fennessey?

  to be extremely like heroic and lovable in this movie and also in some positions where she does not look that great. She looks thin-skinned. She looks a little bit like compromised because of some of the decisions that she's made in a way that I find is really is a credit to her that she would allow herself to be included in this way.

• 1:23:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally. And she's immediately engaging with one of the questions of, of the film and particularly her involvement in it, which is that she was like, did I do something wrong by participating in this? And who did I, if I did, who did I wrong? And what are my responsibilities as an artist? What are my responsibilities as an artist versus this project as a documentarian? Or, you know, it's, what are my responsibilities as a person, a woman? And she is defensive of herself while also. Definitely engaging with the questions because once again, she's a poster.

• 1:23:43Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:23:43Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's, it's cool. She's so game of like from the outset and you can feel on that couch that she's just gonna go for it, which then leads to just some things I never thought I'd see on screen.

• 1:23:55Sean Fennessey?

  It also just clearly animates Nathan.

• 1:23:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:57Sean Fennessey?

  Nathan is just like so excited by how excited she is to be doing this and they agree to go to Texas together to go to visit Billy. And he kind of clearly softly lets Billy know that maybe, you know,

• 1:24:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:11Sean Fennessey?

  he's become friendly with Amanda and maybe she'll come along. But um, they go visit Billy and the kids in Texas um, to find out what, what the status of everything is that's going on in their lives and also to give Amanda an opportunity to confront Billy, it seems, or at least get more information. And at first, the scene is so remarkable in so many ways. But at first, you feel like she's been completely cowed where she's like,

• 1:24:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:34Sean Fennessey?

  this is a nice guy with his, these beautiful little kids.

• 1:24:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:24:37Sean Fennessey?

  And Elizabeth Holmes calls on the phone.

• 1:24:39Amanda Dobbins?

  You only get.

• 1:24:40Sean Fennessey?

  And she's so embarrassed that she's there.

• 1:24:41Amanda Dobbins?

  You only get two minutes from the, like, call from prison and so they, she doesn't want to get in on the family time and the kids are like, hi mommy, how are you? Like on the speakerphone and they're treating it as such like a normal part of day to day life. This is how they are as a family now. And, but it's also obviously quite sad and she's a human being. So she's like, oh, I don't wanna, you have a beautiful family, your kids are very special, is what she's saying on the phone. And then.

• 1:25:05Sean Fennessey?

  Even the way she's talking to her kids, I'm like, oh, that's how you talk to like your friend's kids.

• 1:25:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:10Sean Fennessey?

  You know, where you're like talking about their pajamas and you know, like what they're drinking and all that, all that stuff.

• 1:25:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 1:25:16Sean Fennessey?

  She's clearly, very clearly a mom.

• 1:25:19Sean Fennessey?

  But then 30 seconds later, when Elizabeth Holmes gets on the phone and she's like, did you know I would be here? And she's like, I think I kinda knew or I kinda didn't know. And she's kind of waffling.

• 1:25:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe she says, I'm, I don't know if I knew.

• 1:25:33Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:25:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Right? Which, you know, which Amanda Seyfried immediately seizes on.

• 1:25:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:25:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's like, I don't know if I knew, what does that mean?

• 1:25:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:25:43Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, instincts in the moment and that's also just fun, like watching the scenes and she's very much an audience stand in, but she's also showing you how this all works in real time.

• 1:25:53Sean Fennessey?

  But and also an active participant.

• 1:25:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:54Sean Fennessey?

  The first thing she does is she calls Nathan over, who couldn't hear what was being said on the phone and says, this is what she just said to me. And so she, the movie kind of flips into this like buddy cop detective story, where the two of them are trying to figure out what's really going on. After they get off the phone later, they're eating takeout with Billy.

• 1:26:11Amanda Dobbins?

  It's after bedtime, yeah.

• 1:26:13Sean Fennessey?

  And they're drinking wine together and the cameras are trained on them.

• 1:26:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Just wanted to note, like, there was definitely both red wine and a lighter rosé at some point, which just like, that is our number one Amanda, right there.

• 1:26:24Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, yeah, I mean, you have an Amanda cohort, Amanda, you know, she seemed like she had a couple of drinks and she's getting in the mix with Billy and their conversations. Then we learn a bunch of stuff during this sequence. We learn that um, Billy hasn't been late in 899 days.

• 1:26:36Speaker 05

  Pamela, Pamela Anderson.

• 1:26:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, he's been, he's been spending some time with Pamela Anderson.

• 1:26:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:42Sean Fennessey?

  Which they think is hysterical. Actually, Nathan thinks it's hysterical and absurd, but Amanda Seyfried immediately knows what he means by that.

• 1:26:50Sean Fennessey?

  That he's been posting as Liz on X.com.

• 1:26:55Sean Fennessey?

  He thinks he's great in bed, which Amanda Seyfried immediately undermines in like the most obvious way of like, I faked it with every guy I've ever been with, which is like,

• 1:27:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:04Sean Fennessey?

  a tale as old as time. And Billy looks like stunned. He's like so, he's so hurt by the suggestion.

• 1:27:10Amanda Dobbins?

  This is also when like, so they are positioned around the table where Nathan is like kinda at the head of the table in the middle and he's just sitting there like, magic is happening and I also don't know what's happening and I'm no longer, I'm just gonna sit here.

• 1:27:24Sean Fennessey?

  It's just reaction shots of him.

• 1:27:25Amanda Dobbins?

  They're really good.

• 1:27:26Sean Fennessey?

  They're working on a Liz hologram. She'd been photographed previously in the film, earlier in the film. And so there's an attempt to use AI to kind of regenerate her so that she can participate in the family's house.

• 1:27:39Amanda Dobbins?

  But also possibly in business projects.

• 1:27:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:43Amanda Dobbins?

  It's, it's very confusing what's going on.

• 1:27:46Sean Fennessey?

  We learn that Billy has power of attorney. We also learned that um, he's not afraid to punch back at Amanda Seyfried. And is extreme, as they start getting into it a little bit over some of this, especially the outrage that she has about him posing as her on social media, that he says, I wouldn't be taking advice from you, certainly not about social media, because she had just been dragged for some comments that she had made

• 1:28:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:28:09Sean Fennessey?

  in the previous couple of days. And then they're really start getting into it. We learn that Billy is a Charlie Kirk supporter.

• 1:28:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yep.

• 1:28:14Sean Fennessey?

  We learn that um, he is somebody who believes he is well resourced and good at strategizing around how to take people out. He's very unclear about what he means by that.

• 1:28:25Sean Fennessey?

  And Billy kind of pulls the mask off.

• 1:28:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:30Sean Fennessey?

  And he seems like a real shithead.

• 1:28:32Amanda Dobbins?

  And it like, and Amanda provokes him to pull the mask off, that he's been able to keep on around everybody else, but she keeps pushing, she keeps asking questions. And she even says something on their way to Texas or before about, just like, no, I'm gonna come. I'm, people talk to me differently than they would speak to you. And she is quite right.

• 1:28:51Sean Fennessey?

  Hundred percent right. And they get so much out of Billy that Nathan never could. And he seems like a really unseemly character after this conversation.

• 1:28:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Absolutely electric scene.

• 1:29:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's one, it's phenomenal.

• 1:29:01Amanda Dobbins?

  And I mean, and to, she's like to Amanda's enduring credit, like it does not seem at all scripted. You know, I'm now thinking about our, our friend who is like, can you trust what you see? But in this moment.

• 1:29:13Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know how you would do that.

• 1:29:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Because you're even cutting to Nathan Fielder, who's like, wait, what am I watching here? Like, what's happening?

• 1:29:18Sean Fennessey?

  Billy would have to be a world-class actor to make that be an imagined sequence.

• 1:29:22Amanda Dobbins?

  But also, I mean, such respect to her for just staying in the moment.

• 1:29:27Sean Fennessey?

  She is though, I mean, she does, she's defensive.

• 1:29:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:30Sean Fennessey?

  You know, she really is like, you can see he's getting under her skin.

• 1:29:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Of course.

• 1:29:33Sean Fennessey?

  Like he's really bothering her with some of the things that she, and there are times where she doesn't have like, she doesn't always have the like boom, gotcha response. Like she gets him at first and then he says a couple of things where she's just like, oh, whoa. And then I, you could almost feel her mind turning over with like, not what have I gotten myself into per se? But like, am I complicit in something that maybe I hadn't fully considered?

• 1:29:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:29:54Sean Fennessey?

  Before this? And that plays out as we go further into the film. One thing I just wanted to note about Billy that is so funny, and this is maybe just the way he's portrayed, but he's always eating or consuming something. And to your point about the sniffling, it's like, he's eating pizza, he's eating dumplings, he's drinking a Spindrift, he's drinking a cold brew, more cold brew later on in the movie.

• 1:30:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:09Sean Fennessey?

  He's just like.

• 1:30:10Amanda Dobbins?

  The, the eating kind of undermines my assumptions from the sniffling, but you know, still.

• 1:30:15Sean Fennessey?

  He's a consumer though.

• 1:30:16Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really, really, really noticeable.

• 1:30:18Speaker 05

  It's very suspicious.

• 1:30:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:19Sean Fennessey?

  Wouldn't be stunning.

• 1:30:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. They're in, that energy is there.

• 1:30:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. After this meeting though, it becomes clear that um,

• 1:30:28Sean Fennessey?

  Amanda will be recreating her role as Elizabeth Holmes for the purposes of this film. And there are a number of ways in which that plays out.

• 1:30:38Sean Fennessey?

  One of the ways is that as Nathan starts to describe certain things to her about conversations that were had between he and Holmes that were not filmed.

• 1:30:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:47Sean Fennessey?

  We then have them recreated for us with Fielder and Holmes.

• 1:30:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:30:52Sean Fennessey?

  And Billy, who is portrayed hysterically by Christopher Abbott, the actor.

• 1:30:55Amanda Dobbins?

  That's the, that's really, really incredible. That was a full guffaw in the theater for me.

• 1:31:00Sean Fennessey?

  So the way he is revealed and he enters from off screen is just fantastic. But one of the conversations is about um, you know, around whether, whether or not, how much she knows about what's transpiring here. And Fielder shows Seyfried a clip of Holmes saying that she doesn't know that, she does, she, she doesn't believe she's being financially compensated for this documentary.

• 1:31:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:25Sean Fennessey?

  Right? And.

• 1:31:26Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not even, it's not that she doesn't believe it. She says, I'm not benefiting financially from this, so why, you know, wouldn't I do like XYZ? She almost introduces it into the conversation.

• 1:31:39Sean Fennessey?

  Nathan then recreates the entirety of a business meeting that transpired between Elizabeth, Billy, two executives from A24, Nathan and Lance.

• 1:31:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, Lance plays himself.

• 1:31:52Sean Fennessey?

  Lance plays himself very well.

• 1:31:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Good job.

• 1:31:56Sean Fennessey?

  In which they negotiate certain terms of the deal. And the meeting opens in a Beverly Hills home, apparently, with Elizabeth reading from her memoir, which she did not want portrayed in the movie.

• 1:32:10Sean Fennessey?

  Um. Which sounds horrible. I mean, it's just so terribly written.

• 1:32:14Amanda Dobbins?

  The reactions of everyone, wow, that was so beautiful.

• 1:32:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, very funny. And then the cut back to Amanda Seyfried, he's just like, what? All that stuff is great. They're sitting outside at this point, apparently at Seyfried's ranch. And then, I was gonna say Amanda goes upstairs, but Elizabeth Holmes goes upstairs because she hears her baby crying to go take care of the baby. And then after that, Christopher Abbott playing Billy Evans then asks for financial participation in the documentary. And then this becomes a crux point because that's not something that Nathan Fielder wants or Lance Oppenheimer wants. They want to make a real documentary. But then Billy has some points about how there are other films where this is the case, where the participants are able to be included financially. A24, we learn eventually agrees to this.

• 1:32:58Sean Fennessey?

  And Nathan and Lance do go forward with the project, but then there becomes this big question of what did Elizabeth Holmes know? Was she a conspirator in this deal? Or not? Or was she just a person who is

• 1:33:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:33:13Sean Fennessey?

  yet again aligned with another duplicitous male in her life?

• 1:33:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Is she being taken advantage of? Or is she part of the architect of this?

• 1:33:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:33:21Amanda Dobbins?

  It's notable, so this meeting happens before everything we see in the first half of the film. But they are in Los Angeles at a friend's house, presumably taking meetings in order to facilitate this project. So, I mean, that's, you know, an important

• 1:33:37Sean Fennessey?

  Who else did they meet with? I'd love to know.

• 1:33:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:33:39Sean Fennessey?

  I'm sure other filmmakers, so I wouldn't be surprised to learn.

• 1:33:44Sean Fennessey?

  You know, eventually, that dynamic between them is wonderful, where Seyfried is trying to figure out, is Holmes guilty of something? Is she a victim of something? Nathan confronts Billy about this back in, I believe, are they in New York or is he going back to Texas? It's unclear. The movie starts moving very fast at this point. We're kind of in the home stretch of the film. And then, after he confronts him, Billy is pretty honest with him, even though he seems really smarmy at this point, about how, why he's keeping things from Elizabeth and what he needs to do to kind of keep the train on the tracks of all their projects.

• 1:34:16Amanda Dobbins?

  It seemed like they were in like a soulless Austin office park at that point.

• 1:34:20Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe it was at the WeWork.

• 1:34:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, it is, because there is the Mad establishing shot.

• 1:34:23Sean Fennessey?

  Which again, another like, the rise and fall of the web tech 2.0. And then we have a cut and Nathan is in New York and we learn that he's going through a breakup and he desperately needs to get in touch with Elizabeth Holmes. He really wants to speak to her. He has not been able to speak with her. He's alone, sad and disconnected. He's staying in a hotel. And he writes her a letter. And in the letter, he communicates how alone and sad he's feeling, but also how he's thinking about her and he has some questions for her and he wants to connect.

• 1:34:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Because he's concerned about her relationship with Billy and how much she's being taken advantage of. And does she know of these things?

• 1:34:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:34:57Amanda Dobbins?

  He is, or at least the character of Nathan within the narrative of this film, has taken on the most sympathetic view of her.

• 1:35:05Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. He's being drawn, magnetized into her

• 1:35:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 1:35:10Sean Fennessey?

  space. He hears from Billy about this, who doesn't want her to talk to him.

• 1:35:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:15Sean Fennessey?

  Because he demands context for what the nature of the call is. He then says that he doesn't want her to get in trouble. If he records that conversation, we don't even know if that's really true, but he suggests that she could be shipped to another facility in Arizona.

• 1:35:28Amanda Dobbins?

  The warden is not playing ball and I don't want to move to fucking Arizona is a real And it's so interesting how Billy is handling all of this with like, a mixture of a very corporate smarm. Even the, I really need some context for this. All of this is handled in that sort of like, like bloodless HR speak.

• 1:35:50Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 1:35:51Amanda Dobbins?

  With threat engineered. And then Arizona is the only time you hear the real Billy, like breaking through.

• 1:35:56Sean Fennessey?

  It's true.

• 1:35:58Sean Fennessey?

  While staying in the same hotel room, eventually Liz calls.

• 1:36:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:01Sean Fennessey?

  And when she calls, he does not record the conversation, but it's clear that it's been transcribed because the next cut is to Amanda Seyfried in a studio recording the audio with Nathan.

• 1:36:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:11Sean Fennessey?

  And he's sort of giving her notes

• 1:36:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:13Sean Fennessey?

  on how to do the performance, pull back from the mic a little bit, slow down, take that again.

• 1:36:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:36:18Sean Fennessey?

  And the artist comes to the fore.

• 1:36:20Amanda Dobbins?

  This, so then it becomes, you know,

• 1:36:23Sean Fennessey?

  It becomes a meta-narrative about what is the nature of what's been said, you know?

• 1:36:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 1:36:28Sean Fennessey?

  And like the exact issue that he's been trained on her early in the film, he starts getting caught in the slipstream of his own memory about these interactions that he's having with her. And, you know, she draws him in pretty well and she's very empathetic and she's very warm and she's like coaching him on like, you're gonna find somebody, you're gonna be happy. And she's shifting the attention away from herself and onto him in a way that is

• 1:36:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:36:52Sean Fennessey?

  con person move.

• 1:36:55Sean Fennessey?

  And so, the whole thing is fascinating.

• 1:37:00Sean Fennessey?

  Fielder, after this conversation, decides that he has to go visit her. And this is the final set piece of the movie. So he is gonna go visit her in prison, using the information that he knows about how Billy operates and on what the visiting day is and how he can get there and have some alone time with Elizabeth Holmes to confront her about what he believes Billy is doing and just to get maybe even some closure

• 1:37:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:37:19Sean Fennessey?

  on this story that he's been trying to tell. And so, the way that that sequence is represented is a full-blown recreation,

• 1:37:29Sean Fennessey?

  effectively the dropout part two, that is a meeting with Elizabeth Holmes in the prison in Texas. And it's intercut with a conversation between Fielder and Seyfried, in which she's reading the script that he has written for her to perform. So we get this real-time interrogation of his memory of meeting with Elizabeth Holmes in prison with her asking questions about it. And then we are watching her perform what Nathan has written for her. It's a real mindfuck.

• 1:37:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:59Sean Fennessey?

  It's wonderful. It's like, to me, it's like the apotheosis of the Nathan Fielder project. I was like, this is, and it is not confusing.

• 1:38:07Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:38:08Sean Fennessey?

  It's totally cogent. It gives you a lot of room to think about what's actually happening. It's suspenseful. It's fascinating. I'm not sure that we really like learn anything, but Seyfried, in the performance,

• 1:38:25Sean Fennessey?

  totally embodies Holmes.

• 1:38:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:28Sean Fennessey?

  We don't know how accurate a representation it is. I tried to do for this movie what Nathan does for the conversation, which is I just raced home and just like wrote down everything I could possibly remember. So it's not gonna be a pitch-perfect, accurate representation of their discussion. But it feels like it could be close because a lot of what Holmes is doing is she expresses tremendous frustration with Amanda Seyfried about the way that she portrays her and the way that the makers of the show

• 1:38:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:38:53Sean Fennessey?

  portrayed her on the show. And Seyfried is reading this in real time and getting super defensive and sad and looking for the words to find a way to exonerate herself from the feelings that she's having. And she doesn't quite get there.

• 1:39:04Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:39:04Sean Fennessey?

  And that, to me, is an incredible insight into this whole project.

• 1:39:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, to me, the insight also that the Holmes character, at least in Fielder's recollection, is so fixated on the dropout. And she even says, you know, in prison, it's just the, like, someone came up to me and said, you're a bad person. I saw that TV show. And that the TV show has overtaken, honestly, anything else that negative that has happened to her in terms of her lot in life.

• 1:39:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:39:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Which, you know, says then an amazing thing about the recreations that they're doing and also this project.

• 1:39:39Sean Fennessey?

  It's astonishing. They pivot the conversation into Nathan trying to discuss with her. I mean, there's a lot of wonderful little details about like getting her snacks. You know, she looks longingly at someone else eating food and she wants to have some food, so he gets food for her. And the kind of like the way in which they're connecting with each other, that she is connecting with him. And then he starts confronting her about all these things that Billy's doing. She seems completely nonplussed. She's unbothered. She trusts him completely. And then she pivots the conversation into the nature of their love. And the way that their love is intertwined with like, what she thought faith was supposed to be is actually that God is just their love. And that like they're building monuments to each other. And all of this stuff that we've also heard Billy say on the other side.

• 1:40:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:20Sean Fennessey?

  That she trusts him implicitly and that they're connected in a way that we will never understand. And it doesn't seem untrue. It doesn't seem, they may be deluded, but it doesn't seem like a lie.

• 1:40:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:35Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm like fascinated by all of this. You can see Amanda Seyfried in real time is kind of like, what? Does this mean? Like, how could they possibly be so enthralled to each other? Or like, and then Nathan, you can almost feel him feeling like maybe he failed in his quest to get to the bottom of what was really going on with this person, with this couple, with this most stage of their life, with the nature of all these big ideas

• 1:41:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:41:02Sean Fennessey?

  that are at the forefront that we're talking about here.

• 1:41:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Amanda asks at some point, like, are you protecting her? Is that why you don't want to commit to XYZ? So it's, I mean, it's so beautiful that she is also there as the interlocutor for the audience. And for anybody else who's like, what, why, why aren't we answering these questions?

• 1:41:21Sean Fennessey?

  But then there's this other thing that's kind of swoops into the movie that has always been there the whole time, that is an absolute feature of every Nathan Fielder project, which is that he portrays himself, often comically, but also with a bit of sadness, as a very love-lorn, alone person.

• 1:41:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:38Sean Fennessey?

  Who's always looking for connection and romance in the female figures and the stories that he's telling. You don't need to know that when you watch this movie to see that the movie is sort of telling you like, did Nathan also become ensnared in Elizabeth Holmes's?

• 1:41:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:41:54Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, you know, like her tractor beam? And Amanda Seyfried is also realizing in real time that maybe he did. And she's questioning him about it. And then

• 1:42:07Amanda Dobbins?

  But also, the tractor beam's not for him, as he learns, because in his recollection of the Elizabeth Holmes conversation in the prison, she's just only talking about Billy.

• 1:42:17Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. And then Billy eventually arrives.

• 1:42:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:42:20Sean Fennessey?

  And there, the family is reunited in the prison, and they're gonna have some time outside together, and Nathan leaves.

• 1:42:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:27Sean Fennessey?

  And then, the film closes with two very memorable images. The first is Elizabeth in her jumpsuit in prison with the kids playing, and she's being tracked from outside the gates. And then she sits down with Billy as the kids play together, and they are the picture-perfect family behind prison bars.

• 1:42:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:42:47Sean Fennessey?

  And then a second cut to Nathan and Elizabeth swimming in the ocean together back at the home in Del Mar. And I just want to say, the score that Ari Belusian does for the movie, especially on all of the beach sequences, is so reminiscent of the score from The Master, the Johnny Greenwood score. Specifically, the instruments that he's using, like the block and the sort of like the chime sounds. And this is sort of atonal music, and it does feel a bit like The Master, where you've got like two people who like are in love with each other, maybe, or maybe one of them is manipulating the other one.

• 1:43:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:43:22Sean Fennessey?

  And it felt like such an echo to me of that kind of a story. But that Fielder and Oppenheimer would choose to end the movie on this moment.

• 1:43:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:32Sean Fennessey?

  Where is it Fielder imagining?

• 1:43:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:34Sean Fennessey?

  A happiness with this con person? Is it the potential for true love? Is it a representation of like, what could have been? Is it the last time Elizabeth Holmes was ever free? Like, you could leave so many things into it.

• 1:43:46Amanda Dobbins?

  She's also, she's leading him through the water, and I think that that scene is the conclusion to a conversation that's showed in the first hour, which is about how she wants to go to the beach, and he says, "I'm afraid of cold water." And she's like, "I'll help you." And then she is kind of grabbing his hand. It's so funny, though, because in my, I forgot that shot. It's very affecting, but in my mind, the last shot is the shot through the prison.

• 1:44:06Sean Fennessey?

  Of the family.

• 1:44:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Of the family.

• 1:44:08Sean Fennessey?

  Right. Which is how the movie opens, is her in prison.

• 1:44:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:44:11Sean Fennessey?

  And that she's been imprisoned, and is it her fault, or is it someone else's fault? And then we see it again, she's in prison. But that's not the way that the movie ends. And then, the movie does become a movie about Nathan.

• 1:44:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:44:20Sean Fennessey?

  And not about her, and not about Billy, and not about Amanda Seyfried. Phenomenal choice. Phenomenal. The second time I saw it, because the first time you watched the movie, there's so much information, and I give you so much credit for having such a grasp of the material, like having seen it over a week ago.

• 1:44:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, you have, you have a script here, not like a script, but you, you're, this is very useful, much like the notes were useful to Elizabeth Holmes in that scene. But it is funny also, what stays with me and what I remember is very different than the emphasis that yours is. When you sent me this script, no mention of the kids.

• 1:44:55Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:55Amanda Dobbins?

  No, written down. And I was like, that's what I've been thinking, you know? And it was funny, the things that stayed with me, and you're right for the movie, and the movie is very much about Nathan, and it ends on Nathan. But to me, in my head, the movie ended with that shot through, of seeing her family through the, through the prison gates. I don't know whether it's a happy ending. I don't know, to me, well, you know, and even that's it, here's the perfect family, and they're like, they're all together, and it's a perfect love.

• 1:45:26Sean Fennessey?

  For Nathan, it's not. For them, it might be.

• 1:45:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. But again, I don't know whether I believe it. And so, you know, the question of what am I supposed to believe, and is she being taken advantage by more people, including maybe the filmmakers, though I don't think that she is, because she, you know, was participating in this. But it raises the questions of, is this person in control, or is this person not in control of anything? I still don't know where I stand.

• 1:45:53Sean Fennessey?

  The movie is called You Can See Everything.

• 1:45:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:55Sean Fennessey?

  But I think the movie is about how we can't really understand anything. And I-

• 1:46:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not saying that I don't know as a criticism. I'd say that's one of the exciting things about the movie, and one of the movie that the question's asked. But I just, I interpret it very, not very differently, but the emphasis points, to me, were very different.

• 1:46:12Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it speaks to me specifically, because I've spent my entire life and career being a person who's like, I understand.

• 1:46:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:46:19Sean Fennessey?

  You know? And I'll, let me explain it to you. Like, that's my whole personality. So, to be presented with things that complicate that and shatter that so deeply is just really exciting. And also, just that it, like you said at the beginning, it speaks to the act of trying to make a documentary. The purpose of this is to reveal something. And we learn a lot, but do we really get to the bottom of anything? And I don't know if this was true at your screening, but at mine, Nathan and Lance, Nathan in particular, was like, I still don't really know what we did or went through.

• 1:46:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:53Sean Fennessey?

  And like, what it means. And I'm still working through that. And to your point about the children, I don't know if Lance and Nathan will come on the show, I hope they do, but I wanted to ask them how they felt about including the kids. And whether or not that was a decision even that they would consider, like, trying to get between Elizabeth and Billy and say, like, are you sure that you want to do this specifically?

• 1:47:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:47:17Sean Fennessey?

  Because it's such a fraught circumstance with going behind, going into prison, and, you know, like what their lives are gonna be like for, and now what their lives are gonna be like after this movie, which is obviously gonna just make a huge impact on the culture.

• 1:47:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:47:29Sean Fennessey?

  And a lot of people are gonna see it. I told you, I like moderated a conversation between Lance and Nathan when I was in New York for the movie. And, you know, the people who were in the screening were like the most famous people, you know? It was just like, this is gonna be a huge deal.

• 1:47:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:42Sean Fennessey?

  And it's gonna put her right back in the center of the world for at least a period of time. And I do, I feel for those kids. Like, I don't, I don't feel great about that, you know? Like, but by the same token, I was like, they seem like good parents, you know? Like, there's something really fraught about all this.

• 1:47:57Amanda Dobbins?

  They're go, they're visiting every Saturday, and they were playing in the lawn, you know? It's, and the kids seem-

• 1:48:04Sean Fennessey?

  They know how to talk to her on the phone, like, they clearly talk all the time.

• 1:48:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally. They have a routine, this is their routine, this is their way of knowing their moms. So, it's, they seem okay.

• 1:48:15Sean Fennessey?

  Such a fascinating thing.

• 1:48:17Amanda Dobbins?

  And then the decision to include them ultimately was the parents, because I don't even think that they could be featured without a release.

• 1:48:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:48:24Amanda Dobbins?

  So, then you begin to wonder, if I feel bad about it, why do I feel bad? Do I feel bad because I don't think the kids are okay? Or do I feel bad because I feel like I'm being had by these people?

• 1:48:36Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. I mean, maybe they're being used as props, or maybe their kids will be just like them, you know? There's no way to know. It's an amazing choice to pursue this. You know, Fielder said that, this started in 2023.

• 1:48:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:48:52Sean Fennessey?

  And that the story that Lance has been telling is that they went to the Magic Castle together. Did he tell this to you guys?

• 1:48:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:49:01Sean Fennessey?

  And they were in the close-up magic room, which is one of my favorite rooms in all of Los Angeles, the close-up magic room in Los, the Magic Castle. And I've, another chill I felt after I'd watched the movie, they're telling this story. And one of the magician who was performing in the Magic Castle called for the name of a famous person, so that they could perform their next trick related to that person's name. And someone called out Elizabeth Holmes. And then that led to a conversation between Nathan and Lance, and then they had both heard that Elizabeth Holmes was maybe shopping around for the chance to make a documentary like this. And that led to them making this movie together. But specifically, the choice of her for both of these filmmakers, who I think are both, can be quite humane and can also be quite cutting about humanity. In a lot of Lance's docs, you see people in a very raw way.

• 1:49:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:47Sean Fennessey?

  But using her as the microscope into all of this stuff that we talked about at the top of the episode could not be more perfect.

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• 1:51:22Sean Fennessey?

  You know, we haven't really talked too much about the filmmaking, but the filmmaking changed a lot. It's amazing. It's like a three camera setup in the house. It seems like originally they were trying to make it like a pure Lance movie with this like really deep focus shot on anamorphic.

• 1:51:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:51:34Sean Fennessey?

  And then they had to change it to be a little bit more like the way

• 1:51:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:36Sean Fennessey?

  Nathan would do it with a lot of coverage.

• 1:51:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, Lance said that they realized that a few days in that they just were missing everything that they wanted and they just completely changed their idea. I mean, he worked on this with David Boland, who is his cinematographer on all of his projects. And it looks really good. That's another thing. Our Q and A was with Bill Hader, who was just like, hey, why does this look so good? How did you do this?

• 1:51:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I mean, it looks like a land stock to me. Like they all really look good. They're really, they have this really like profound, deep, subjective gaze on the characters that they're looking at. But he also, you know, he does these great kind of Altman-esque slow zooms throughout the movie where you can hear something happening and some, but you're watching something else on the screen and the kind of the conflict between those two ideas or the synchronicity of those two ideas. Lot of shot, reverse shot, lot of like, we're over Nathan's shoulder, we're over Elizabeth's shoulder. If you feel like you're in the middle of a conversation and that is very intimate. You know, Elizabeth Holmes's face is just kind of captivating. She's just a great subject for the camera, you know, that unbroken stare and that the, she never gives away the game. There's no irony. There's no sarcasm. There's no bitterness. She is just an open subject.

• 1:52:40Amanda Dobbins?

  She's not looking for an out.

• 1:52:42Sean Fennessey?

  Nope.

• 1:52:42Amanda Dobbins?

  She doesn't find, it's, it's almost like she doesn't experience awkwardness, which does also seem to be Nathan Fielder's superpower at times, which is

• 1:52:51Sean Fennessey?

  Making people feel awkward.

• 1:52:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:52:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:53Amanda Dobbins?

  But also then just not breaking eye contact or, or wanting it out of the conversation.

• 1:52:59Sean Fennessey?

  No, completely. It's like, um, it's the immovable force versus the unstoppable object.

• 1:53:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I think people who interview for a living, including my husband, would tell you that that actually is the secret to being a good interviewer and asking question is living with the discomfort and that, you know, that most interviews, especially like in the podcast era, just don't really want to give you the discomfort because no one wants to sit through it. But if you just sit there, someone's going to fill the silence.

• 1:53:28Sean Fennessey?

  It's true.

• 1:53:29Amanda Dobbins?

  You just have to endure the silence.

• 1:53:30Sean Fennessey?

  There's a huge difference between the video, audio version of that and the written version of that.

• 1:53:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:53:37Sean Fennessey?

  And this is interesting because Nathan leans into the awkwardness in the, in the filmed version of that, you know, which is very rare, as you say.

• 1:53:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. What a, what a movie.

• 1:53:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Absolute banger.

• 1:53:51Sean Fennessey?

  Really, really cool. I think is rewarding on second viewing because you're not as like wowed. I will say it plays a little bit more durational for sure because there's a lot less like, oh, wow, happening in the moment, but you can really focus on the choices that they're making in the edit, which makes the movie more impactful. Amanda Seyfried, legend forever.

• 1:54:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Can she be nominated for an Oscar for this?

• 1:54:14Sean Fennessey?

  Let's talk about it. Let's talk about what this, what's going to happen with this movie. It's opening in 800 theaters.

• 1:54:22Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's probably going to go to 1500 in the following week, if I had to guess. That's just a guess.

• 1:54:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I hope so.

• 1:54:26Sean Fennessey?

  And then it's a real, proper wide release movie. It has a chance to be one of the most successful documentaries roughly of the last 10 years. We had a period in the 2000s, you know, some of the Michael Moore movies are really huge. I don't know if it's going to quite get to that level, but it is like a true word of mouth sensation style movie. Let's say for the sake of conversation, it gets to somewhere between 25 and $50 million. That'll make it one of the biggest docs last of the century.

• 1:54:52Sean Fennessey?

  She should be eligible. She is eligible for supporting actress.

• 1:54:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:55Sean Fennessey?

  She's giving a performance.

• 1:54:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:57Sean Fennessey?

  I think she'd probably be nominated more for what she achieves when she's not acting in the movie in a way, where her finest work is as a person experiencing the circumstances of this story, but her acting is also brilliant.

• 1:55:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. I'm, has there ever been a documentary? What are the rules of, what are the rules of acting within the confines of an Oscar nomination?

• 1:55:21Speaker 06

  I don't think she can get nominated. I'm not, do you think she can?

• 1:55:25Amanda Dobbins?

  According to the rules?

• 1:55:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, like the Academy's rules.

• 1:55:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Well, let's pull them up.

• 1:55:29Speaker 06

  I'm looking, I'm looking at them now. I'm trying to figure this out specifically.

• 1:55:33Sean Fennessey?

  I thought that it was, there was word that she could be. I thought that that had been reported. This is interesting. I'm learning here that Amanda Seyfried publicly denied being involved in the project. They're really trying to hide this one.

• 1:55:45Sean Fennessey?

  If she can't be, that's interesting. I would say that's a mistake.

• 1:55:52Sean Fennessey?

  Performing in a recreation is absolutely a performance.

• 1:55:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:56Sean Fennessey?

  There's a bigger, there's a bigger question here too, about how the doc branch will receive this movie versus whether or not people will perceive this to be a best picture candidate.

• 1:56:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought Matt Bellamy made it the great point that this could very easily go into best picture and not in best documentary. For one reason, because there are 10 best picture slots and only five documentary, but also the documentary branch is particular, shall we say, and resistant to celebrity documentaries in all forms.

• 1:56:28Sean Fennessey?

  If I had to put money on it today,

• 1:56:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:30Sean Fennessey?

  I would say that that is what happens. That it does not get in a doc and that it has a like a legitimate, strong chance to be a best picture nominee because of the amount of attention and excitement that the movie is going to generate. I couldn't be wrong. A documentary has never been nominated for best picture in the history of the Academy Awards, but this is something beyond a documentary.

• 1:56:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I completely agree. Also, I think the last five years that the Oscars are changing so rapidly that everything, everything is on the table. I think it'll happen. I don't think it'll happen in documentary. And then, and then maybe they'll finally reconfigure what's going on in that branch.

• 1:57:04Sean Fennessey?

  That would be a fascinating confrontation with that. You know, you mentioned the 824 thing and it's like they've got the debut, they've got Club Kid, they've got, um, what's the, the invite? They've got a lot of contenders. I genuinely feel like this movie is at the front of the line.

• 1:57:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I think so. I mean, some of that is recency bias right now that we're just like, we're in the season and we're what, three weeks out from primetime, which is also a hit. And you know, Robert Pattinson coasting on all of this goodwill and press into a best actor. We could see it.

• 1:57:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:40Amanda Dobbins?

  So, uh, I think this and the invite are probably still tied. I can't tell whether people over 55 are going to like this. Like, I don't know whether my dad, sitting down, my dad, who is like a very sophisticated film goer, is going to quote unquote, get it.

• 1:57:59Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 1:58:00Amanda Dobbins?

  We'll find out.

• 1:58:00Sean Fennessey?

  The other thing to consider is that Nathan Fielder is a very specific flavor.

• 1:58:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:04Sean Fennessey?

  And if you're not, you don't have to be all in, as you said earlier, to, to get this, but even still you're on the ride with him the whole time. He is your true guide through the movie. So if you don't love him, then it's not going to be as effective because he does, he, he lives in a kind of awkward, cringe comedy space, for lack of a better phrase, that not everybody loves. But I think as an interrogation of celebrity and truth and a, a big national news story, that this holds a lot of appeal.

• 1:58:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:34Sean Fennessey?

  Broadly. So yeah, man, we'll see what happens.

• 1:58:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Good job, everybody.

• 1:58:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you guys did it. You can see everything. You can see everything in the movie theater. Any, any closing thoughts?

• 1:58:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm so mad if people listen to this without seeing the film first.

• 1:58:51Sean Fennessey?

  People do it all the time.

• 1:58:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I just, I don't approve.

• 1:58:54Sean Fennessey?

  The, uh, audience for the social reckoning episode was unusually high relative to the engagement with the film at the box office.

• 1:59:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:59:03Sean Fennessey?

  The same is also true of the Digger episode, so.

• 1:59:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Like I said, we get a lot of looky loos.

• 1:59:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Did we say that, so Billy, did we talk about the cards at the end?

• 1:59:13Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, no.

• 1:59:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Because

• 1:59:14Sean Fennessey?

  Good point.

• 1:59:15Amanda Dobbins?

  So at the very end, uh, it is revealed, as we discussed, that the, the New York Times stands by its story, but never produced evidence of the quote, nor did Billy and Liz, um, that shortly before the film was released, Billy renounced his profit participation in the film. At our screening, they shared that Billy had still not seen the film. And I'm just curious where, how that's going to go. I mean,

• 1:59:47Sean Fennessey?

  He's been posting about it on Elizabeth Holmes's account.

• 1:59:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I have seen that.

• 1:59:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You know, in many ways, one of the lessons of this movie is that this is wonderful for him. It makes him more famous.

• 1:59:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:59Sean Fennessey?

  It makes him more, uh, well-known in a certain kind of way, which is clearly something that matters to him. He can speak about his political ideas and his ideas on the future of tech more easily because he will be the subject of a great many interviews in the aftermath of this movie. The way that he handles it versus the way that the subject of Lance Oppenheimer's other movie, Chris Hansen handles it will be interesting.

• 2:00:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:24Sean Fennessey?

  There's this new tactic when you become the subject of like an unflattering portrait in the media of like responding to it in a way, in a very grand eloquent way of being like, and now it is my time to reveal my verdict on the thing about me. I suspect we'll get the same thing from Billy.

• 2:00:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but with like more of a shit poster flavor, I would believe.

• 2:00:45Sean Fennessey?

  Would it, would AI Elizabeth Holmes video be surfaced to respond to the contents of the movie? That seems totally plausible, given what we see in the movie.

• 2:00:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, we live in hell, as evidenced by this film.

• 2:00:55Speaker 06

  I just tried reading as much of the Academy's specific rule set to every award and I can't find any language that is for this specific issue. So I wonder if it's like uncharted territory, gray area kind of thing.

• 2:01:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so, but I think that's good for Amanda.

• 2:01:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, for sure.

• 2:01:13Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, even better. Even better if we have to have some sort of like rules of engagement discussion around what is and is not a performance in a film. I look for, it's great for us as well. Okay. Thanks for listening. Let's go to my conversation now with Judd Apatow.

• 2:01:32Sean Fennessey?

  For the first time, Judd Apatow is here. Very nice to see you.

• 2:01:34Speaker 02

  Sorry, I'm sorry it took so long.

• 2:01:36Sean Fennessey?

  No, that's okay. Long Island brethren. So we share that. Huntington Station.

• 2:01:40Speaker 02

  Dad moved to Huntington when my parents got divorced.

• 2:01:44Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 2:01:44Speaker 02

  And there was like this old, maybe it was an

• 2:01:47Sean Fennessey?

  Elementary school and they turned it into condos. So it was like my dad lived in a classroom. Wow, my dad left Huntington when my parents got divorced. So we traded dad space. Let's, let's, let's talk about your movies because you have a, you have two, two docs right now. And I'm, I'm fascinated by like your pivot to this. I think it's, I think these are your fourth and fifth full length documentaries. More, it might even be like. I was gonna say about comedians. Oh, yeah, yeah. So you know, obviously you've got the Ava Brothers film and you've made the film about the, our beloved Mets. But like comedians, I know when you were a teenager that you sought them out and interviewed them. Exactly.

• 2:02:28Sean Fennessey?

  And, and now it feels like on this side of your life, you're sort of doing a similar act. I know, I just realized that recently that maybe I'm mirroring the time when I was 16 with just more, you know, money to do it, you know, with cameras and budgets. What draw, what's still drawing you to them? It's a good question because when I was a kid, I just so wanted to know how it worked. And I was looking for a way to talk to people directly. So, you know, when you watch a star on TV or if you love comedy, you know, you think, God, it would be so fun to talk to John Candy. So it was almost like I was manipulating this high school radio station that we had to meet people.

• 2:03:09Sean Fennessey?

  Cause my friend, Josh Rosenthal, he would do it with musicians and he would go, you know, interview R E M in like 1983. And he was like, you should try to do that with comics. And back then, you know, there was, you know, there was no internet. There wasn't a lot of long form interviews happening. So if you called up and wanted to talk to Jay Leno and he's just playing rascals in New Jersey, he doesn't mind giving you an hour, even though you're a child. And so most people said, yes, like 50 people. And I would just say, you know, how do you do it? How do you get on stage? How do you write jokes? How do you direct? I interviewed Harold Ramus, right? As he was prepping National Lampoon's Vacation. He was literally in his office prepping, which is so weird now, when you think about it.

• 2:03:54Sean Fennessey?

  And he just, you know, walked me through everything and people would be so nice. And then years later, after I dropped out of film school, I realized I had learned more talking to these people. Although now I do realize I did learn things at film school. Every once in a while I'm like, oh yeah, that's from when I took Sid Fields class. When you were, I mean, were you 15, 14? Yeah, 15, 16, 17. Were you nervous in those environments? Um, a little bit, but I was kind of like a lunatic, I think. You know, I think like when you're young, maybe you're genetically programmed to figure out how you're going to survive in the world. And it's funny because I, just finishing up a documentary about Billy Strings with my friend, Chris Wiltshire.

• 2:04:38Sean Fennessey?

  We're directing it together and you know, he's, you know, one of the great guitar players in the world, bluegrass, but he can play everything. And I was thinking that, why am I interested in this? And I think it's also because he had this slightly, you know, driven aspect to him of like, I need to survive and I need to skill. One of the things that I really like about the comedian documentaries is that you seem very interested in their humanity, like who they were as people. Yeah. And you explore them in different ways in these two movies. But when you were a teenager, did you feel like you were thinking about these people as people? Or just these sort of like ends towards understanding something you were obsessed with? Yeah, I don't think those interviews were emotional.

• 2:05:21Sean Fennessey?

  It was really like, what was Saturday Night Live like in 1975? I mean, I hunted down almost all the original writers from Saturday Night Live. So I'm interviewing, you know, Don Novello, who did Guido Sarducci and James Downey and all those people. And, but I didn't know to ask them about their lives and their feelings because I didn't know what life was. I was just a kid. So I, so I probably couldn't even make the connection that, oh, this pain in your life led to that. And when people would open up, I didn't really know how to handle it. And I always remember interviewing Harry Anderson, the, the, the great comic magician, con man from Night Court. And he started talking about his childhood and I don't even know if this is true,

• 2:06:06Sean Fennessey?

  but he started talking about his mother turning tricks and this rough childhood. And lately I'm like, was he making all that up because I was a kid and it was just funny to shock me? But let's assume it, it was true. I didn't know how to have the conversation about how did that affect you? And that's what I'm interested in now. So if I talk to Maria Bamford, I want to know how her life made her this brilliant comedian. So which of these two came first, Norm or Maria? Maria came first. You know, I always wanted to do something with Maria Bamford. I wasn't sure what it was. You know, in the beginning I would try to get her to, you know, write something or think of a movie idea. And she never would do it.

• 2:06:50Sean Fennessey?

  And then she had her TV show, Lady Dynamite. And one of the episodes is about me trying to get her to make a movie and her refusing. Because she just, you know, she walks her own path. And so then in my head, I thought, maybe she should do like a one woman Broadway show where she takes the best of all of her jokes and tells her life story. And that would be pretty amazing. And then one day I thought, I think it's a doc. I think it's a doc. And I called my friend Neil Berkeley, who did the Gilbert Gottfried documentary, which is amazing. And I said, let's, let's try to make a doc with Maria. I'm going to call her and see if she'll let us. And I called her and I said, could we come over tomorrow and just start?

• 2:07:31Sean Fennessey?

  And she said, you can come over, but you have to bring me $500. And I said, why? And she goes, because nothing ever happens and my time is valuable and it's a way of showing myself respect. And it's kind of a beautiful notion. Yeah, of course. And also, you know, a veteran of the bullshit of show business. Totally. So we, you know, we went to her house. We just started shooting. We, no one was financing it, which is kind of how you had to do it because we didn't know what it would be. We wound up following her around for three years. And I gave her the money. She was very happy to get it.

• 2:08:10Sean Fennessey?

  And then in the middle of our first conversation, the doorbell rings and it's C V S delivering all of her antidepressants. And then she started just going through her antidepressants and what they do. And it just started this conversation, you know, about comedy and, you know, mental health challenges. And then while we're following her around, just so many massive life events happened. And she, she handled them so gracefully and with such strength. So on one hand, we're telling a story of how hard it's been for her. But then you, you know, you get to see in real time how much she's evolved and how strong she is. So, you know, it ultimately becomes very hopeful and inspiring.

• 2:08:52Sean Fennessey?

  You know, just hearing you pitch the idea of her doing a one woman show in which she puts her best foot. You have such a great producer's mind, but I feel like with documentary, the approach to producing it, you just have to be much more open to just things unfurling. Like, how do you think about balancing the kind of polish of show business that you really understand with the ethic of documentary? I, I just said, there are certain documentaries I always loved. So I'm sure they're in my head, like the devil and Daniel Johnston, you know, something like that. It's a very good comp for this movie. Yeah. I mean, I think that's one of the great ones of all time. I love the Scorsese documentaries about George Harrison and, and Bob Dylan. That was another big inspiration for the two part doc where you could take the really deep dive.

• 2:09:34Sean Fennessey?

  Cause a lot of the problem with docs about artists and performers is they're too short. Because, you know, you just can't cover Mel Brooks 99 years, now 100 in two hours. Right. And, and I think Scorsese was the first person to go, I need almost four hours to cover Bob Dylan. And we were all happy about it. And so not all of our movies are two parters, but we've done that with George Carlin and Channing and Mel. And, and then you can really slow down and get a sense of people. Yeah, there's something interesting about those first three where obviously Mel is still with us, but the other two feel very retrospective. And there's sort of like, it feels like you're trying to piece together what those people meant to you and what they mean to the history of comedy.

• 2:10:19Sean Fennessey?

  Whereas Maria is still working, you know, is still an active comic. Like, did that change the way that you thought about portraying her or what kind of, how to put her on screen? Yeah, it's completely different because I didn't know her that well. I just knew her from, you know, doing comedy with her over the years. And I didn't know what we would find. So you're trying to be sensitive to just taking it in. And then over the years, you start going, oh, I think this is what this is about. But you don't know in the beginning. In the beginning, it's just history and I wonder what'll happen. So you think, well, we'll follow Maria around. Maybe she'll work on a new act and we'll see how it develops.

• 2:10:59Sean Fennessey?

  And we'll intercut this story of how you write a set with, with her history. And then very early on, it became clear Maria wasn't going to let us do that. Like, like that's not kind of how she works and, you know, the way she writes, you know, she doesn't want us paying attention to the creative process. So she wasn't like, yeah, I'm going to do all my new jokes here and here and here. She kind of was like, that doesn't feel right. You know, so then we're finding ways, mainly Neil to like go around the country and, and see her work. And then it becomes something completely different, you know, which is she was dealing with, you know, several, you know, very important deaths in her family.

• 2:11:43Sean Fennessey?

  She was affected by the Altadena fires and we got to see, you know, as it happened. And it's very moving and it becomes unexpected and you feel very close to her. And the funny thing about it is, you know, she's talking about intrusive thoughts that she has. These OCD, OCD and intrusive thoughts, which basically means where you might be driving in your car and you can't stop thinking about, it would be terrible if I hit a chipmunk. That to her expands another 25 levels. Right. And I think when I watch it, when people watch it, I think most people think I'm like Maria.

• 2:12:24Sean Fennessey?

  Like I have those or I have depression or I have something. And she may be a larger version of it, but I'm really relating to these like daily mental struggles, you know, that I go through. And so that's something that was also surprising to me that it became very relatable. Yeah, you didn't perceive that before you started making the doc, that that would be. That it was about me. That's usually what happens. All the work is. You know, on some level you go, why am I fascinated with this person who's having mental health struggles? I'm not depressed. I don't want to know the answers for how to survive. How does she feel about it? Cause it's very, you know, her, her work is also vulnerable and she has like a real kind of meta consciousness. I think about how she's portraying something that she's struggling with.

• 2:13:08Sean Fennessey?

  But watching yourself in such a raw way, especially going through, as you said, these sort of like tornado of personal events that that have happened to her during the making of the film. Yeah. Does she, can she watch it? She does, and I think she loves it and I didn't know is the truth. She, you know, she's written books about these stories. She's basically told all these stories in comic form and her standup. So the idea of her telling the true story and then showing how it became art was a big part of this. But to her, it's kind of funny because what she says at least is, well, I lived it. And it's not even that interesting to me. You know, she like laughs, she, she doesn't like say that's devastating. She's just like, yeah, that happened. Yeah, that happened to me. Yeah, I remember it. Yeah.

• 2:13:53Sean Fennessey?

  So you're just showing me something that I went through. Also no self consciousness about it is interesting too, because you'd feel like some people would feel just a little awkward about sharing those things, but maybe that also doesn't. Well, her whole thing is about sharing all of it. Right, right. And you, you really want to get someone that wants to do it. I think that sometimes you see these documentaries and they're clearly PR pieces. If anything like, that's what Popstar was about. The movie that, you know, The Lonely Island did. Incredible movie, yeah. It was about a certain type of Justin Bieber-esque One Direction documentary that was just a fluff piece. And so, you know, their idea was what if that went terribly wrong and everything went wrong while you were making the fluff piece? Right.

• 2:14:33Sean Fennessey?

  And so I'm always looking for people that will tell me the truth or a family that will allow me to go deep. You know, Kelly Carlin, George Carlin's daughter, she said, my dad would hate this if you didn't go all the way. And Shanley's cousin and the people from his estate, you know, were, were comfortable with, you know, telling that story. But I think most of the time there's someone saying, you can't. Or there's a person saying, I'm uncomfortable with that piece of information. And it's very rare that you have, you know, the ability to be completely honest. And I think I've gotten very lucky with that. I want to talk about Norman relationship to this specific question, but is it better, worse? How different is it with you do or do not have a personal relationship with a subject when you're making a film about them?

• 2:15:20Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I'm not sure because I think the people that know them could maybe judge how we did. So with the George Carlin documentary, you know, his daughter Kelly, who's amazing, was very, you know, involved and became a key part of telling the story. So she was really happy with what the story was, but so, but I don't know. You know, with Shanley, I kind of know how I did. Right. Because I was close with Gary. With, with George, I hope we did it well. And I'm glad that, you know, the family thinks that we did. And yeah, it's, it's different because it's also, I'm trying to figure out someone that I don't have observations from, from life. Right. With Gary, I had some observations, some turned out to be correct, some not. But I had a lot of experience with him.

• 2:16:04Sean Fennessey?

  And, you know, with Norm, I didn't know Norm that well, but I knew him for a long time. You remember when you first met him?

• 2:16:12Sean Fennessey?

  How I met him was he just moved to town and this would be around 89, 90, I think. And I saw his HBO half hour special. I think they were called one night stands. And I was just blown away. I just thought, this is the funniest guy and this attitude and just all of it. Everyone's like, you just, you just fall in love with the comic. And I was always coming at it as a fan. I just, you know, love finding someone that I enjoy more than anything. And I remember taking the tape out and showing my roommate, Adam Sandler, because I was just so excited that this guy was this funny.

• 2:16:53Sean Fennessey?

  And I had him watch for a while and he's got great taste in comedy and he just went, I don't care. I'm trying to get famous.

• 2:17:01Sean Fennessey?

  So yeah, let him go do his thing. I got work to do.

• 2:17:05Sean Fennessey?

  And then of course he became the biggest Norm fan and he's in all the movies and they toured together. Of course. But I was, you know, very excited, like this is one of the greats. And then that's kind of how I was as a kid. I would see a comedian on TV and I would track them like they were athletes or something. Yeah. And, and so then Norm and I get hired to write jokes for Roseanne. And this is like right around the national anthem era, the peak of Tom and Roseanne. And I had written some things for Tom and now Roseanne liked these specials I wrote and some jokes for Tom. And so me and Norm, you know, went over to her house and, you know, we would go there like, and not many times, like on a Sunday and sit at a table like this.

• 2:17:50Sean Fennessey?

  And Roseanne would bring out like a stack of legal pads with joke ideas. And she just starts going through these concepts, like, you know, one of the concepts was this. Because then we would have to turn it into a routine. She's like, I want to do a bit about how it's better to suck dick than kiss ass. Cause when you suck dick, it's like, it's a, it's a deal. It's a negotiated deal. I will do this and you will do this for me. But when you kiss ass, you're doing it with the hope that they'll give it to you.

• 2:18:25Sean Fennessey?

  So then, you know, we would. She had a special comic mind. Brilliant, amazing. And it was truly like the peak of her powers because it was right at the, you know, it was like the Beatles in 1964. The show booming, yeah. She was so funny. Yeah. But we're young and, you know, we're trying to write for a 40 year old woman. And Norm was so great that very quickly she just said, I'm going to put him on the TV show, Roseanne. And so now he's gone and I'm doing it by myself for the next year. And, and then maybe within the year he got hired by Saturday Night Live. And, and was doing update shortly after that. So his thing really took off. Were you in touch with him at all after that period?

• 2:19:09Sean Fennessey?

  I ask, cause like my experience of him is so represented in the film, which is so mediated by just watching him in short form. Yeah. You know, that like our, our relation, like I'm, I'm like so many people my age, just such a massive fan of his. I just the most influential, funniest person. Yeah. And, but, you know, when, when he passed, everybody was just like, what I do is to comfort myself. I just watch him on YouTube. You know, we all had that experience. But if you, you were crossing paths with him and watching him kind of work behind the scenes without the persona forward. But did you guys keep up in that period? Well, Adam, you know, left to do Saturday Night Live. You know, one day he's like, I'm going to Chicago to audition for Saturday Night Live. And then two days later he was like, I'm moving out. And so I'm in the apartment alone. Adam left all his stuff.

• 2:19:53Sean Fennessey?

  He literally didn't even take his stuff. Like I still have his driver's license and his wallet from 1991. And I would go visit Adam and see Norm over there and then hear from Adam how everything was going. And I wasn't like a big part of that scene, but I certainly was like trying to watch and, oh my God, Springsteen's on. And then I'd fly in to watch the show. Sure. I remember seeing Bonnie Raitt. I remember all the, all the people who were the musical guests, like, uh, what was that band that sang Groove is in the Heart? Oh, uh, D Light. I saw D Light. Sure. But I remember going to see Adam and then Norm was there. And I said, hey, Norm, you want to write some update jokes? Cause we used to write jokes together.

• 2:20:38Sean Fennessey?

  I'll help you write some update jokes, thinking that's his job. And so we go in his office and shut the door and there's some newspapers and we both are just looking at the newspapers. Maybe I pitch him a thought and literally after like two minutes he goes, hey, Judd, can I leave?

• 2:21:01Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm like, Norm, I'm trying to help you. I thought you'd need jokes for update. And he's like, I want to leave.

• 2:21:09Sean Fennessey?

  That's perfect. In terms of trying to capture him, like you make a, it's, these two docs are very different. Yes. It's kind of structurally, stylistically where this is, there's no talking heads. It's entirely archival. Why did you do that? I think the idea was that you were not going to really figure out completely who, who Norm was. And even his closest confidants are not going to tell you. Yeah. And even they probably couldn't really make it clear and probably don't fully know. Just because he was a fascinating person. And, you know, even like everyone that went on the road with Norm, you know, they all loved Norm, but they would still say, I don't quite get it. Like what all the motivations and levels are.

• 2:21:53Sean Fennessey?

  Because he was so smart, but in a devilish way, sometimes didn't always tell the truth, was provocative. And so it was, it was hard to know exactly who he was. And so the thought was, well, we're not going to crack that code, but we could make a documentary that shows what Norm put into the world. And maybe by arranging that, you would get like a sense of who he was. And that's what Norm says about his novel, which is it's not true, but hopefully it adds up to something even more truthful. And so that's what we did. And as, you know, we researched, we found that Norm would

• 2:22:34Sean Fennessey?

  talk about himself, but it would be like all over the place. Like, you know, he says something to Marc Maron on WTF that feels truthful. And then you would listen to like an interview from morning radio in Maui. And for some reason, Norm opens up for an hour to just some random morning crew. And so, you know, piece by piece, we could figure out maybe what he was thinking at times. You know, he was sick for nine years with cancer and only told a few people. And if you look at all of his work over those nine years, you can see what's on his mind. And he's doing jokes about cancer, but it's

• 2:23:15Sean Fennessey?

  happening to other people. And, and you're seeing that he's opening up and he's becoming this more spiritual person, more loving person, but he's not telling you why it's happening. Hmm. The movie is really interesting because you frame him so well. And like, it's a sort of a literary device as an unreliable narrator, like where we literally don't know from moment to moment, if what he's saying is true about whether he has siblings or what experiences he had, or like very specific things that seem like they would be verifiable. And yet, he has this kind of like Mark Twain quality, character quality to him, which is just so unusual in contemporary times. Because nobody is a mystery. Everybody is just in your face all the time. Like, they're so willing. So I'm kind of curious, like,

• 2:23:57Sean Fennessey?

  did you feel like you were, were you withholding what you felt to be truths that you know, in order to create like an interesting perspective on him? No, because I don't think that even while I made it, I got an enormous amount of new stories or insights. You know, sometimes when you make a documentary, you find out things you didn't know, shocking things. You know, when the George Carlin documentary, Kelly talks about like being in bed and her dad being like on drugs and laying with her and talking to her. And some of it is very like unsettling. Yeah, yeah. But with Norm, I did talk to all of his friends. I definitely like did the research to try to get more insight. And I kind of landed at, Norm was just this kind

• 2:24:42Sean Fennessey?

  of brilliant, funny, strange, mercurial guy who loved jokes, who loved being a part of comedy, and loved his family above all else. And at the end of the movie, you see this footage we found of him with his mom and his son. Incredible. And you've never seen him more at peace, or happier. And, and I just thought, oh, that's Norm. You know, he has other gears. So it wasn't like all this other stuff came up that revealed this other thing. It was, it was, it seemed to me simpler. Hmm. Do you have like, is there effectively a team of archival producers who are hunting for any living material of him that exists? And then how are you guys going through it

• 2:25:25Sean Fennessey?

  and figuring out how to construct something like this? Because it's so different from camera on Maria, and then we'll use what we get from Maria to sort of stitch together a narrative. Yeah, it's, I mean, there's like six months or more where we're not even starting, where people are just looking. The funny thing with Norm is, you know, I went online and I said, hey, if anyone has any Norm stuff, send it to me. And people had videos and photos with him. And some people had stories. The first thing we did is, you know, I said, okay, let's print every tweet he ever made, and read them, and see what was in there. It was like 25,000 tweets, because he would watch golf and do play by play for three hours. It's like, he didn't care if he lost all of his followers, because he was just

• 2:26:09Sean Fennessey?

  doing this thing that would just, you know, stuff up your feed. And then, you know, we had a whole team of people transcribe every episode of his interview shows. And then at some point, you need a group of people to read everything and recommend, because, you know, I can't watch 300 hours of stuff. So you have to spread it out, know what, what in those tweets do you think is worth us paying attention to? And then, you know, they might go, here's a thousand to look at. And then that process is happening. But literally last week, I saw a clip of Norm I had never seen before, that was really funny and bizarre, that I thought, ah, I couldn't, I didn't get that in. Do you have a favorite Norm joke?

• 2:26:52Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, I think about the old ones, because it's when I really came to like love what he was doing. And I don't know what, you know, the words were, but he had that bit about how no one talks about the Doberman anymore. Everyone's afraid of the pit bull, but what about the Doberman? Yeah, that's really great. I was wondering, because you're making these movies now, I feel like for the previous 10 years, you were seen as like the ambassador to and the explainer of comedy, of contemporary comedy. You've had such amazing success making comedy movies and television shows, that people always come to you and they're like, what's

• 2:27:36Sean Fennessey?

  going on? What does it all mean? Where does it stand? But I also feel like maybe in simultaneously, you're trying to chart it more sociologically or historically with the docs. Like, do you see it as part of a process, or like a mission that you're on in some way? I mean, it's just instinctual. I, you know, I'm a real, I'm really into like pop psychology. You know, I'm obsessed with, you know, therapy ideas. And it's partly, you know, started with Shandling, just, his whole thing was like, why do we behave the way we behave? And that's what The Larry Sanders Show was about, just getting to the core of, of people and their motivations, and, you know, what, what life experience led them to wear the mask that they wear. And that's what Shandling has always talked

• 2:28:21Sean Fennessey?

  about, that, that just everyone is wearing a mask and is putting on some kind of character. And it's very rare that they're completely honest and the mask comes off. And that's a little bit what all these documentaries are about, is, you know, how people of all kinds use art to make life okay, or to answer questions, or to heal themselves. And, you know, I've done that in, you know, writing movies, you know, like Funny People, or This is 40, or, you know, King of Staten Island, where it's the same process. And with the documentary, you're just dealing with what exists. And you're looking at a real person. You know, so if I'm, you know, writing with Pete Davidson, you know, where even though it's fictional, we are just sitting down going, how are you doing? And how did you

• 2:29:05Sean Fennessey?

  get here? And what do you think is going to happen next? Like, how can you heal? You know, what would it take? And that's a big question whenever I work on a screenplay with someone else, I just say, what do you think your problem is? And what would it take for you to get it and make a change? Those movies are so interesting, Funny People and This is 40, because they are so transparently personal in so many ways. A lot of the choices that you make, who stars in the films. And then it did feel like you made a kind of a transition to looking for other vessels to help figure out maybe some of your own stuff, but also tell their stories. I'm just kind of curious, like, why you made that decision to start working with people like Amy or with Pete to make movies like that?

• 2:29:47Sean Fennessey?

  Well, at some point, you feel like you've really mined your vein for the things that trouble you or built you. And you're just waiting for more stuff to happen, to have another one of those. Yeah. Yeah. And also, sometimes you write something, like I wrote a movie, you know, around COVID time, and I worked on it for years, and then it just fell apart. And you go, oh, that would have been the next one like that. Oh, okay. And I just, you know, for a bunch of reasons, I couldn't get the whole package together. Why does that, that's another thing that I think people maybe would be confused by, because you're you. Yeah. So why would a movie that you're working on, that is very personal, like, why would a movie like that fall apart?

• 2:30:27Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it was, it was probably a little edgy, because it was about comedy and why certain things are funny, and why certain things are offensive. And, and it had a very specific casting idea, that when that fell apart, it literally couldn't be made without the person. Got it. And I couldn't crack, because I had just tailored it so specifically. Yeah. And, and that happens every once in a while, and you realize, oh, I just lost years. So I'm usually balancing, working with people, writing my own stuff, and then certain things happen. And if nothing's happening, I'm also making documentaries, and I'm just kind of going with the flow. Did you feel like you were able to tap into some of those ideas and feelings through

• 2:31:12Sean Fennessey?

  Norm? Because that's something that he obviously, at times, Yeah. he would explore stuff with bits that was on the edge, that made people really uncomfortable. And then he always kind of managed to dance through the raindrops a bit, because he was so revered for his, like, his wit and his intellect. But I don't know if that was something that kind of drew you to that, too. I think unconsciously, you just think, why would I want to talk about Norm for years? And you don't, you don't really sit and ponder it, you just know you want to. And then in the aftermath, you go, why didn't I even do that? I mean, we all love Norm. But to spend years thinking about Norm, is that what most people are doing? Yeah. And then it has to be personal on some level, to go, I want to understand that

• 2:31:54Sean Fennessey?

  mind and that humanity. And, you know, it's funny, I did a show with Norm a couple of years before he died. And it was at Largo, and I do a show there once a month, and it's always for a different charity. And Norm was there, and I hadn't seen him in a while. And had a great talk. And, and then he went on stage, and he did this set. And, you know, he was funny as, as always. And then at the end of the set, he gets very emotional and you could see it. It looks like he's like beginning to cry. And he says something along the lines of, you guys are so great, but I now I gotta go over there. But you guys, I like it here, but now I gotta go over there. And then he says, I don't know what to say. I love you.

• 2:32:39Sean Fennessey?

  And he walks off and you know, we're all kind of blown away also because we don't know he's sick. And that might've been part of it where you want to know, how did he get there? And so that's the last moment of the documentary. Because it is an arc towards love in some way, you know? And George Carlin had that as well. You know, in most of the docs, you see people, you know, you go through your life and you're crazy and you're trying to get ahead. And you have all these battles and some things go well, some things are terrible. But on another level, you're having the spiritual journey to figure out, you know, what is the point of all this? And hopefully for most people, the point is connection and love and, you know, being there for other people and finding your purpose.

• 2:33:24Sean Fennessey?

  Carlin and Norm are such interesting contrasts in styles because, you know, I also loved obsessed over Carlin and listened to every record and watched every special. And, you know, he, it felt like as he was getting older, he was getting angrier and more ferocious and more unsparing in his comedy. And Norm, as you say, like something softer kind of entered the frame. And I'm curious like what you make of that. Like what's more consistent with comics that you've observed over time? Well, the funny thing about George Carlin, you know, according to his family is while he was getting darker, he was getting lighter in life. So he wasn't the bitter guy. Yeah. But he would go on stage and go, it's a big club and you're not in it. Yeah. And he saw something.

• 2:34:08Sean Fennessey?

  And what's interesting is when we were making the George Carlin documentary, me and my partner, Michael Bonfiglio, you know, we were like, should we make this montage of current visuals? Over him talking about America, the American dream and this famous routine. And we're like, is it too political? Is it too much our politics? And we, we thought, no, I think we should do it because he's talking about something very specific that seems to be occurring. Which is this idea that the whole idea of the government caring about you is an illusion. And you don't even know what the real reasons for anything is. And they're very happy for you to have sneakers with lights on them. Yep. That's what you'd say.

• 2:34:51Sean Fennessey?

  Like you have two political parties and 36 flavors. I always think of if you're pre born, you're fine, but once you're born, you're on your own. Like that's one of those things that he had so many insights like that. Well, all these words too, he was always talking about like these Orwellian words, even just like Trump saying, let's call it super intelligent. Like, you know, he was very, you know, aware of that before anyone talked about it. Yeah. And I think that he got some comfort in giving up. Now, we don't really know what his full intentions were because my instinct is by telling people, the system's not fair and you don't even care. And you're not going to do anything about it.

• 2:35:35Sean Fennessey?

  It is a call to arms, but it's like a mocking you call to arms. Challenging you. Yeah. Yeah. Like, see, no one cares. Don't even pretend you care. Yeah. But I think down deep, he wished everyone cared because he was a hippie. Yeah. Well, you'd watch him on Larry King sometimes and you feel like he would remove that a little bit and would be like Frank, but kind of doing the material, but not as jokes. And it was much, it was more nuanced in that way. But it's just fascinating to put them side by side because they're both, I feel like stand in similar, they're in similar standing where people are just like, I don't know how this person did this. But that one was so dark and one was, became more light. So. Or, or they're both equally dark in a certain way. Right. I mean, you know, George Carlin was talking about a certain kind of corruption, which is now laid bare for all of us to see.

• 2:36:19Sean Fennessey?

  So he would have said, all your politicians are ripping you off. It doesn't matter what side they're on. And then we look at and go like, yeah, the Democrats trade stocks too. Yeah. You know, that's the most painful part of George Carlin is he, he attacks both. Oh, yeah. And he, he indicts the entire system. And, you know, there is an aspect with Norm that is dismissing the system. And when he was asked about his politics, he said, he thought it was funny that people thought he was more right wing. And he kind of leaned into it because it provoked them. Yes. He got a kick out of how mad that made people. But he, he also said that he agrees with a few things from each party and it doesn't make any sense that anyone would pick one party.

• 2:37:03Sean Fennessey?

  And that seemed to be where he really stood, which is that it doesn't make sense. You know, that like, I have to, if I want to be a conservative financially, I have to be violently anti-abortion. Right. And so, you know, he, he would always say that he wasn't preaching. He also would talk about that he, he didn't seem to like comedy where people were just venting all their emotions and their pain. Which I always thought was funny because we all love Richard Pryor. Right. And so, but that was a funny thing with him where he said, it's all about the joke. I'm just trying to make you laugh. And so even the opinions, you're not sure because he's just trying to get you. Yeah, he does, but then you go looking for the opinions.

• 2:37:44Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it's a good thing about the film is that you're, you do go hunting for intent and feeling and what did he really believe? Even if you can't ever figure it out. You know, you mentioned Larry Sanders earlier. Larry Sanders and the Ben Stiller Show are turning 35 next year. Cable Guy's turned 30 this year. Forty Year Old Virgin turned 20 last year. Even Trainwreck is over 10 years old. Like, are, do you, do you think about the body of work and like legacy and those things? And because, you know, you've had obviously a very big impact over the last 40 years on American comedy. I was saying to someone yesterday, you get to a certain point where you go, if I die, the reel will be good.

• 2:38:24Sean Fennessey?

  You know, if they had to do a little reel, like a, like a special sad, you know, thing on the Emmys, you know, there'd be some good jokes. Yeah, sure. So that's a big accomplishment. And they'd be different. It would end with Martin Starr turning on the TV by himself for sure. Yeah. But it's funny because, I don't know, so much of it is driven by insecurity and the lack of self-esteem. Which is a real engine for, I gotta make another one. That didn't make me feel solid. So, and so it's kind of positive and negative because you shouldn't feel that way about yourself. You should be able to appreciate that some things made people happy. I relate, obviously, on a much lower level, I relate.

• 2:39:06Sean Fennessey?

  But recently I had to re-watch Knocked Up, and this is 40 because they're preparing the 4K versions. Wonderful. Great news. So I had to watch both of them and I hadn't watched them since the day they came out. And it's not really on purpose. You know, I'll look at an Instagram video or something and, and I'm not even sure why I don't. It's, it's not like a theory or anything. I, you know, I, I'll watch the movies I produced more. So I'll watch Step Brothers all the way through every time I, I see it. But for some reason, I'm just like. Is it because you think you would have done something differently or you don't feel, or is it too personal? It's almost like going back in time and having to like experience something good, good and bad, mainly good.

• 2:39:48Sean Fennessey?

  But just, I know it just feels very powerful and emotional. So my instinct is to not do it, which is probably dead wrong. It's a dumb instinct. So I had to sit through both in the same day. And it was hilarious because I'm watching and I'm just cracking up. I'm just laughing so hard because to me, they're perfect because everything in it is what would make me laugh. It's like if, if like someone from outer space made a movie that would, like if AI knew me so well, that every joke would make Judd laugh. And I just sat there laughing and I had literally forgotten 80% of it. Like I didn't know what was coming in terms of the jokes.

• 2:40:30Sean Fennessey?

  And I was so amused by how funny everyone was, just as an observer, that everyone had like the eye of the tiger. Like no one looks like they're walking through it. No one looks like this is movie 30 and they're cashing the check. They all look like it is life or death comedy time. Yeah. Whether it's, you know, Leslie or Sandler or Seth or Craig Robinson, just whoever, you know, you're like, god damn, are they rocking it right now? And I felt a distance from it where I could appreciate like, look how funny Heigl is.

• 2:41:03Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I think that when we were watching those movies, we felt that same level of like, you know, you talked a lot at that time about the way that you would direct and throwing lines at people and being, you know, more open to things unfurling in real time. And then when we became aware of that as viewers, then we almost like were, felt like we were watching that happen in a way, in a way that didn't interfere with our enjoyment of the movie. But you know, you're working on a movie that's coming out next year. Like, do you still have the same relationship to directing? Do you still do things the same way? How does it operate now? Yeah, the movie, I'm just finishing up, is called Comeback King and I wrote it with Glenn Powell. And it's about a country music star in Free Fall. And it was funny to do it with Glenn because Glenn hadn't made a movie that way. And he's a great writer.

• 2:41:46Sean Fennessey?

  And so, you know, I said, you know, we're going to work really hard on the script, but every day we're going to shoot the script and then we're going to toss it and do both. And it was fun watching him acclimate to that because he was amazing at it. But to see the letting go of, this isn't a one plan shoot. Right. It's like, we're going to shoot the scene, then we're going to loosen it up and then we're really going to loosen it up. And we're going to just see what feels right. Because, you know, as soon as people are on the set, it feels different than when you're in your room in your underwear. And as soon as they start talking, you're like, oh, now I know what he would say. And so I wanted to be able to, you know. Tap into that. Yeah. Yeah, to take advantage of it.

• 2:42:27Sean Fennessey?

  And then you hire people who you have a feeling that they have a lot to give to it. You know, so, you know, Kristen Milletti is, is in the movie and Madeline Klein and, and they're just so funny. And, and they have a lot to do, you know, that they, they think of that I would never think of. You know, I'm always, I'm always aware of, you know, I'm not Kristen Milliotti, how she's gonna react to Glenn Powell in this funny romantic scene is gonna be interesting, and I probably can't even anticipate it. So I have to talk to her about it and rehearse with her and let her play, in addition to the thing I thought she would do. Interesting. What, um, what happens when somebody isn't good at it?

• 2:43:06Sean Fennessey?

  You don't have to name any names, but I'm just kinda curious, like, how do you figure that out when someone can't roll with it? Well, hopefully they don't have a really big part. I haven't had it with someone who's got a huge part, uh, because usually we can tell. Yeah. You know, sometimes you might get a day player where you go, oh, I thought that would hit harder than it did, but, but it's rarely in a moment, you know, that's essential. But also sometimes the day players come in and they're so funny. Yeah. You know, in this movie, there's a comedian who's from England named Jin Hau Lee, and every word out of his mouth, he's, he's like tearing down the house and he's, he's a, you know, I mean, he's originally, you know, from China and, and he, he's just very

• 2:43:51Sean Fennessey?

  gifted, but also does, has never done it before. So he doesn't, he doesn't have that stress because he's never made a movie and haven't come out and been judged. So he's in that perfect place of pure inspiration. And it's really fun to see someone just take off like that, where you go, oh, this is, this is like a McLovin, Melissa McCarthy, you know, Christmas plus situation where people love this person and they have no idea who he is. That's exciting. We end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they have seen? Do you, do you watch a lot of movies these days? Besides your own? I watch, uh, I watch, uh, yeah, I think I probably do watch a lot of things. I'm trying to think, what is the last great of everything, movies, TV?

• 2:44:36Sean Fennessey?

  Anything. Just watched a documentary called Mind Over Murder on HBO Max. That was a multiple parter, not just a group of people who all, except for one, like six people, uh, confess and they didn't do it. And it's, it's just fascinating. I mean, it's funny because there's so much crime on TV and I watch so much of it. Do you? But I also know that it's like knocking out our ability to get all of the things we want, like Errol Morris movies and things like that. But they are endlessly fascinating because it's human behavior. Right. Uh, and so like, you know, at night, sometimes we'll watch like Dateline and we'll go through like, we go through the list of the Datelines to see which ones we've seen, which is like almost all of them.

• 2:45:21Sean Fennessey?

  And then we're like trying to decide like who we want to see murdered tonight, like, oh, I don't want to see that kind of person murdered. Let's see a grandpa get murdered, you know?

• 2:45:30Sean Fennessey?

  But yet every once in a while, somebody does something incredible. And I'm looking forward to this, uh, this, uh, um, Nathan Fielder. Yes.

• 2:45:42Sean Fennessey?

  Oppenheimer. Yeah. Movie. It's, uh, it's in your- Have you seen it? I've seen it twice. Yeah. It's in your wheelhouse. Yeah. It's in everyone's wheelhouse. It is, it's the, it's the thing you're describing, the human behavior thing, and also comedy. And so maybe more documentaries like that. Judd Apatow, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. That's fun.

• 2:46:05Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you to Judd Apatow. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders. Thanks to Lucas Cavanagh for his production support. As I said earlier, next week, whale fall.

• 2:46:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:12Sean Fennessey?

  Sense and Sensibility, Best Picture power rankings. Gotta make some room. I want to introduce another idea around the power rankings, by the way.

• 2:46:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:46:21Sean Fennessey?

  I want to start doing cross-offs.

• 2:46:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Ah.

• 2:46:24Sean Fennessey?

  Movies that we are eliminating from contention.

• 2:46:26Amanda Dobbins?

  They're out?

• 2:46:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:27Amanda Dobbins?

  They're voted off the island?

• 2:46:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Can we get some sort of props?

• 2:46:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, what do you say?

• 2:46:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Can we?

• 2:46:31Speaker 05

  What kind of props?

• 2:46:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know, something where I could like actually visibly throw the name, you know?

• 2:46:37Speaker 05

  I'll look at-

• 2:46:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Off the table?

• 2:46:38Speaker 05

  I'll take a look at the budget.

• 2:46:40Sean Fennessey?

  You don't want to cross it out? You want to throw it out?

• 2:46:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, we don't have the telestrator yet.

• 2:46:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, what's up with that?

• 2:46:46Amanda Dobbins?

  You're gonna get some whiteboard?

• 2:46:48Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, sure, whiteboard. We'll figure something out.

• 2:46:51Sean Fennessey?

  Should we do the whole all of a sudden episode on a whiteboard?

• 2:46:54Speaker 05

  That would be awesome. We should actually do that.

• 2:46:56Sean Fennessey?

  That's a good idea. Where like we're standing and we're-

• 2:46:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:46:59Sean Fennessey?

  You might have to have lav mics.

• 2:47:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:47:01Sean Fennessey?

  Can set, maybe people will finally be able to see my legs. That'll be a huge thing.

• 2:47:05Amanda Dobbins?

  They can see them now. They can see everything.

• 2:47:08Sean Fennessey?

  Everything.

• 2:47:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, bye.

• 2:47:09Sean Fennessey?

  Bye.