‘It’s a deeply human thing to say,’ Antonoff said about Macklemore’s pro-Palestine remarks
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Sir Tom Jones started his global tour in the UK and Europe over the summer and is now in the US
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The Grammy-winning producer worked with Winehouse on several tracks including Rehab, You Know I’m No Good and Valerie
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‘30 Rock’ actor Cheyenne Jackson launched the Instagram campaign to help fellow SAG members qualify for health insurance
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Hit ABC competition series is currently airing season 35
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As it turns out, dictation exercises are not just for schoolchildren. On Oct. 27, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians — from diaspora communities abroad to service members on the front lines — will take part in an annual tradition: listening, writing, and testing their mastery of the Ukrainian language.
Organized
The latest episode of Maher’s ‘Club Random’ podcast was recorded prior to the president’s 1,300-word rant
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Three-part series follows the couple and their 80-strong team as they transform Cromlix, the five-star hotel where they married in 2015
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If there’s a Wikipedia page about yourself, you must be famous—some kind of celebrity—or an expert in your field, or a figure who’s made a prominent contribution to human history or culture. But what happens when that page is nominated by Wikipedia editors for deletion? In a quirky tech story for Wired, Duncan Fyfe reports on the strange experience of being told you’re just not notable enough.
There is, when you look for it, a careless and cocky tone that can creep into the verdicts of Wikipedia editors who have been doing the job for a long time. “This guy is a nobody. Delete him.” “I’ve got more followers on Instagram than he does.” “All we have here are stand-up comedy, opinion columns, being a guest or collaborator on some non-notable podcasts … This is more or less every twentieth person who lives in NYC.”
Danny Trejo’s son has claimed his 82-year-old father had no idea who conservative commentator Ben Shapiro was before he agreed to star in The Daily Wire’s upcoming Minneapolis movie. The same may or may not be true for fellow Hollywood stars including James Franco, Rob Lowe and Jonathan Majors, writes Kevin E G Perry
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Is Nathan Fielder interested in making something innovative and great, or does he only really care about making money?
That's technically the question You Can See Everything, the new A24 documentary co-directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, asks about its subject, Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder and convicted fraudster currently in federal prison.
As the documentary progresses, however, it's a question one increasingly asks about Fielder himself.
You Can See Everything was billed as an intimate look at the day-to-day life of Holmes, her romantic partner Billy Evans, and their two children, in the days before she reports for her 11-year prison sentence.
In truth, that only describes the first half of the three-hour-long film, in which Fielder and his camera crews are embedded in Holmes and Evans' cramped San Diego beach house in the month preceding her incarceration.
In part one, we truly do see everything, from Holmes making breakfast for the kids and talking to lawyers about last-minute appeals to Evans showering naked.
All the while, Fielder obsessively explores in his own meta-comedy style a question many have asked about Holmes: Were the lies she told about Theranos' diagnostic machines merely a scam to rip off investors? Or had she actually convinced herself that these falsehoods were at most white lies in the service of a great and revolutionary technology on the cusp of becoming a reality?
Then, after 90 minutes of this exploration, Holmes checks in to prison, and Fielder's primary subject disappears from the film. The focus then shifts to Evans and whether or not he's solely responsible for a new unethical scheme Holmes has found herself enmeshed in.
In a Fielderesque reenactment, it's revealed to the audience that Evans conditioned the documentary's access to him and Holmes on the couple being paid a percentage of the film's profits.
Any ethical documentarian would have to say no to this ask.
Subjects being economically disinterested in the films they're appearing in is what separates real documentaries, which are supposed to accurately portray real life, from fictional films and public relations puff pieces.
Incredibly, however, Fielder, Oppenheim, and A24 eventually agree to Evans' demand for a cut of the film's profits.
Once this crooked bargain is made, You Can See Everything then shifts to exploring whether Holmes was aware that she'd be profiting from the film or whether this was a deal the domineering Evans secured without her knowledge.
Fielder tells us that he believes the answer will shed light on whether Holmes actually sees herself as a world-changing inventor or whether she really is just out for the money.
Fielder eventually makes this point directly to Evans during an on-camera confrontation and in a reenactment of his unfilmed meeting with Holmes in prison. By accepting payment for the documentary, the two are undercutting their case that Holmes is more than a wealth-obsessed fraudster, he tells them.
And by forfeiting their rights to back-end profits, they can make the audience more sympathetic to their case that Holmes did have motivations beyond a paycheck.
As a humble viewer, I confess I found this investigation somewhat boring. For starters, it seemed obvious to me that Holmes was in on the scheme to get paid for the documentary from the beginning.
Moreover, it's all kind of beside the point. Once the deal to pay Evans was inked, the documentary has been irrevocably changed into an elaborate rip-off. The only question remaining is whether the subjects or the audience will be the ultimate sucker.
When Fielder pointedly pushes Evans and Holmes to surrender profits they're contractually entitled to, he's no longer a disinterested filmmaker exploring the couple's psyches. He's an economically interested party pressuring business partners to back out of money they've been contractually promised or else risk extreme embarrassment in the film he's making.
If Fielder fails to convince the couple to surrender their rights, moviegoers are left with the knowledge that a portion of their ticket revenue is benefiting a convicted fraudster.
If the director does succeed in his pressure campaign, it means that there's more profit to go around for the makers of the film.
A documentary about conmen itself becoming a con would not be an uncharacteristic Fielder bit.
His projects frequently feature a deliberate, escalating blurring of the lines between art and reality. See, for instance, the second season of his show The Rehearsal, in which an investigation into airline pilots' mental well-being culminates in Fielder becoming a licensed 737 pilot while waiting on an autism diagnosis.
Something similar can be said for the connection between the themes in the documentary and co-director Oppenheim's recent feature film Primetime about the making of the reality show To Catch a Predator. That movie was also about how TV producers can script reality and invent crimes all for the benefit of a show that's allegedly meant to merely document them.
You Can See Everything pulls off something similar. Its investigation into Holmes' motives leaves one seriously questioning the filmmaker's probity. Perhaps that makes it a genius bit of meta commentary on the unreality of documentaries.
Ultimately, it doesn't really matter. There's no getting around the fact that Fielder made a crooked bargain to get his documentary made and then used his power as a director who did, in fact, see everything to screw people out of money they had been promised.
One can imagine that the victims of Holmes' Theranos scam will find You Can See Everything a frustrating film to watch. At the end of the day, this woman defrauded them of hundreds of millions of dollars. Her precise motives for doing so probably aren't all that interesting to them.
I certainly feel a similar way as a paying viewer of the unethical travesty that is You Can See Everything.
The post Nathan Fielder Made a Dishonest Movie appeared first on Reason Magazine.
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Why do we love learning about the evil normal human beings can do?
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Koenig reprised his role as Chekov in all six original-cast Star Trek films
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Sitcom aired its final episode in 2015
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