Director Lance Oppenheim on Making 'You Can See Everything' with Nathan Fielder | IndieWire Toolkit

In this in-depth conversation for the IndieWire Toolkit, filmmaker Lance Oppenheim unpacks the creation of You Can See Everything, an extraordinary documentary project chronicling Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes prior to her 11-year prison sentence. As Oppenheim explains, the genesis of the film was an unlikely partnership with Nathan Fielder, initiated after Oppenheim cold-emailed Fielder about viewing data^1:35 showing Fielder had only watched 60% of his film Some Kind of Heaven. The two bonded over cinema, leading to hangouts, creative brainstorming sessions, and even participating in a Toastmasters club^3:05 in New York.

The documentary project coalesced unexpectedly after an outing to Hollywood's Magic Castle, where Oppenheim and Fielder caught wind of a rumor that Holmes had approached A24 to document her final free days. Fielder made a call to A24, negotiating a unique arrangement allowing them to fish creatively with a kill switch^6:20 so they could abandon the project if nothing materialized. Oppenheim and Fielder rapidly combined their respective trusted collaborators, including cinematographers David Bolen and Jonathan Mitchell, sound mixer Richard Carlos, and longtime editor Adam Locke-Norton, heading down to Del Mar to film inside Holmes and Billy Evans's home with a tight crew of seven^8:15.

Production immediately ran into philosophical and technical hurdles. On the very first day, Oppenheim's preferred single-camera anamorphic setup proved unworkable, missing critical interactions as the subjects moved. Moreover, Oppenheim and Fielder frequently found themselves in sharp disagreement over basic reality^9:50, watching identical mundane interactions yet drawing opposite conclusions. This cognitive dissonance prompted them to abandon anamorphic for a three-camera documentary setup^14:55 with long zoom lenses and an Alexa body running 4:3 aspect ratio, allowing them to capture micro-expressions without intruding.

Throughout weeks of shooting up to 16 hours daily, Holmes remained nearly impossible to penetrate, offering almost no crack in her persona even under intense close-ups. Meanwhile, her partner Billy Evans exhibited an ambivalent rhythm of pushing the camera away and pulling it back^24:15. Oppenheim describes Fielder as an accidental investigator and master bullshit detector^18:20 who brought an empathetic, humanistic curiosity rather than a sensationalist tabloid approach, resulting in an intense examination of truth, performance, and perception.