"Communication broke down" during production of You Can See Everything, according to Nathan Fielder

Speaking during a Q&A moderated by actor Bill Hader, Fielder and Oppenheim clarified that Holmes had originally reached out to A24 to potentially produce a documentary about her story, and that Fielder and Oppenheim landed the assignment despite neither Holmes nor Evans knowing who either filmmaker was. Holmes’ familiarity with Fielder amounted to a Nathan For You clip she’d seen on YouTube, while Oppenheim said Holmes’ partner obligingly watched his 2020 documentary Some Kind Of Heaven only to say it didn’t have “a very compelling opening.” Despite the rock-steady arrangement, in which strangers with cameras camp out in the home of a convicted fraud and her family (Fielder, Oppenheim, and their crew moved into Holmes’ San Diego residence in 2023), communication between the parties has since broken down, according to the directors. 

“Neither of them have seen the film,” Oppenheim told Hader. “Elizabeth is still incarcerated; Billy hasn’t seen it,” which he attributed to a “strained” relationship between Evans and the film’s crew. Fielder revealed that, in the production’s final stretch, Evans attempted to “exert a level of control over the process that made it very hard to engage with him,” and that the situation made things “uncomfortable” for the filmmakers and their producers at A24. “I think we sort of had to stop—I think communication broke down basically, and we’ve been in that, like, state for a little bit,” Fielder said. “So it’s been challenging in that way.”

Indeed, shooting a documentary about truth and deception, in which the filmmakers share living space with the subject and her family (including her children), would be an emotional and professional challenge for anyone. Oppenheim called this totally not unhealthy experience—which found them scanning the Holmes residence for hidden recording devices—”a conspiracy thriller” of their own design that left them and their colleagues “paranoid.” “I still am not sure to this day, like, what I experienced, and it’s one of the reasons I’m excited for it to come out and more people see it,” Fielder said. “It was just a small group for so long, and I actually think maybe it being out there, everyone can help me understand what I went through a little bit—or what we all went through.” You Can See Everything, if that is indeed what you want to do, when the film hits theaters on October 16.