SPOILER ALERT: The following article contains details about storylines and characters/actors in A24‘s documentary You Can See Everything.
Ever since its super-secret onetime screening at the Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day weekend, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim‘s brilliant, near three-hour Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything has been one of the most talked about films of the fall season — if not the entire year.
Now, after this past weekend’s sensational opening in about 800 theaters, where it grossed $15 million-plus to become the highest-grossing debut in under 1000 theaters in more than two decades (and the biggest non-music documentary opening since Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004), it is white hot and bound to accelerate.
With all that in mind, it is never too early to start talking Oscar, even for a film that might break the mold for a documentary in several categories, and uniquely a possible acting nomination.
A24 held screenings on Saturday at the DGA for members of the documentary branch, and on Sunday afternoon for its official AMPAS screening at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater, where an estimated 530 people showed up — one of the best turnouts this season. That screening drew lots of audible reaction to the film’s twists and turns, as well as enthusiastic applause during end credits and for directors Fielder and Oppenheim, who appeared for the Q&A afterwards (which I moderated). I am told the packed Saturday DGA screening was similarly enthusiastic.
Pundits are already speculating on the movie’s Oscar chances in the Best Picture category, where no documentary has ever been nominated before. But I have to say there never has been one quite like You Can See Everything, in which Fielder and Oppenheim see, well, everything about disgraced Theranos founder Holmes, who invited them to document her life just a month before reporting to prison.
Fielder, whose works include HBO’s The Rehearsal and Comedy Central’s Nathan For You, often blurs the line between reality and fiction but here puts himself in the center of the story in order to see a side of Holmes like never before. If you ask me, what he achieves here is as robust an example of strong journalism, however gonzo, as many more traditional documentaries. It is an important point since the AMPAS Documentary Branch is not known for thinking out of the box and generally rejects any film with connections to the entertainment side of things. The reaction though from Academy screenings (there was a previous one at the Academy Museum shortly before the film played the New York Film Festival) indicate we may be into a precedent-shattering moment.
In addition to Best Picture — which oddly may be an even more realistic goal than Documentary Feature, which has drifted more international in scope recently — You Can See Everything deserves strong consideration for Best Directing, David Bolen’s exceptional cinematography, Ari Balouzian’s haunting music and Adam Locke-Norton’s editing, the latter particularly impressive since he had 700 (!) hours of footage to shape into a 2-hour and 54-minute movie.
As for the category that would really be earth-shattering? Best Supporting Actress. The studio and filmmakers have been successful (save for one trade critic who gave it away instantly in Telluride) in keeping the identity of the Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning star who shows up in the second half of the film after Holmes reports to prison. One pundit actually had her lead his list of possible nominees by saying “Redacted” and then the name of the film. Clever.
The appearance is an astounding twist and should be enjoyed by audiences just discovering the film for the first time, so I am not going to reveal just what happens. But in the interest of talking all things Oscar here, I will refer to whom we are discussing. And in fact, [SPOILER ALERT, second warning!], Amanda Seyfried was on the press line at Saturday’s Academy Museum Gala being coy and evasive when asked by reporters about Holmes and/or her participation in the film (Fielder and Oppenheim were also at the gala). Seyfried of course played Holmes and won an Emmy for the TV film The Dropout. How she figures into this film — well, you’ll have to go see it. But ever since I saw the movie at Telluride I have wondered: Could there ever be someone nominated for acting in a documentary, and if so, could it be her?
At Telluride I even popped the question to A24 sources who were already looking into that possibility. They still are in the process, but I am told they believe she is eligible and are definitely mulling the possibility of campaigning her. There is nothing in Academy rules for actors that suggests documentaries are verboten, only “uncredited” performances are Seyfried and the others are fully credited at the end of the film, and in fact IMDb has just begun listing her (and others on camera in the film including actor Christopher Abbott and Fielder) on their official page for the movie.
I am told A24 is exploring other awards possibilities as well, even though the Golden Globes and SAG-AFTRA’s Actor Awards explicitly rule out documentaries in their competitions. To get into consideration at either of those you would have to petition to change the rules; I hear there is some sort of effort to try to do that for SAG-AFTRA, but deadline for submissions is November 1 and the guild would have to upend their rules — not likely. The Critics Choice Association on the other hand has already nominated You Can See Everything for its separate Critics Choice Documentary Awards ceremony taking place November 8. It is up for five awards including Best Documentary Feature, but there is no performance category (other than narration). The CCA confirmed to me that despite the separate ceremony, all documentaries, and by extension performances in them that apply, could be nominated for Critics Choice Awards.
No actor has ever been nominated for appearing in a documentary in the 99-year history of the Academy Awards. The closest I could find might be Maria Bakalova in 2020’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, but in that movie, which is not a documentary despite featuring some real-life people (can you say Rudy Giuliani?), Bakalova is playing a character and not herself.
For that matter, no actor has ever been nominated for an Oscar in a movie in which they play themselves. The closest was ironically this year’s Wild Horse Nine Best Actor frontrunner John Malkovich, who played himself in 1999’s Being John Malkovich. Though that film was up for three Oscars, he was overlooked for a nomination though he was SAG-nominated as part of the ensemble cast; he actually was named Best Supporting Actor by the New York Film Critics that year and was runner-up with the L.A. Film Critics. A critics organization like those could also be the way I see a realistic Seyfried march to the Oscars gaining steam.
Stay tuned.