You’ve probably never heard of him or have been following his rise to fame. Before he became one of Hollywood’s most unique and creative individuals, Nathan Fielder attended business school at the University of Victoria (UVIC). Since then he has built a career doing things most business schools would probably advise against. Things like opening a coffee shop called Dumb Starbucks or turning an outdoor clothing company into a vehicle for Holocaust education. Both ideas came out of his show Nathan for You, where he put crazy business concepts into practice.
Now the Vancouver comedian and filmmaker has made a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. You may remember her from such great cons as Theranos, the company that promised to revolutionize blood testing and instead became a multibillion-dollar fraud scandal, and the reception has been extraordinary. Vulture published Alison Willmore’s review under the headline “Nathan Fielder Has Made the Movie of the Year.” As of October 18, You Can See Everything holds a 99% critics’ score and a 98% verified audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
It’s not just drawing critical acclaim, it’s drawing big crowds. The film earned an estimated US$15 million across the U.S. and Canada in its opening weekend, playing in just 855 theatres. The biggest opening for a non-music documentary since Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004.
You Can See Everything, which Fielder co-directed with Lance Oppenheim, opened October 16. The project begins 34 days before the Theranos founder goes to prison and develops into a three-year story. It brings someone who has spent years exploring persuasion, performance and self-deception into the orbit of a woman whose public image helped sell a spectacular business failure.
From Point Grey to business school
At Point Grey, Fielder performed in the same school improv group as Seth Rogen. Imagine trying to predict where those two careers would go. One would become a globally recognizable comedy star. The other would convince people to participate in increasingly elaborate situations while looking like he regretted starting the conversation.
After high school Fielder then took a more practical route and studied commerce at the UVIC, graduating in 2005. That background became part of the premise of Nathan for You.
The business degree was real. The advice required considerably more scrutiny. The Comedy Central series, which ran from 2013 to 2017, placed Fielder in the role of an adviser helping businesses with ideas that became more absurd the longer he pursued them. Dumb Starbucks, a coffee shop dressed almost exactly like the real thing with one additional word attached, was among the most famous.
Anyone who works in marketing can appreciate how funny that premise is. Our industry spends plenty of time dressing up ordinary ideas as breakthroughs. Fielder took that confidence to ridiculous extremes, then did the work to make the ideas happen. The uncomfortable part was watching people try to decide whether he might actually have a point.
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The joke came back to Vancouver
Remember Summit Ice, the outdoor clothing brand launched through Nathan for You, directed profits toward Holocaust education? In March 2017, Fielder brought a pop-up shop to East Broadway, announcing a US$150,000 donation from the company’s profits to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.
The event offered people a chance to exchange a Taiga jacket for a Summit Ice jacket. The venture had emerged after Fielder learned that Taiga had published a tribute to Holocaust denier Doug Collins.
Only Nathan would take an idea developed for television into an actual clothing business supporting an educational institution here at home.
A career built on taking the premise further
With HBO’s The Rehearsal, Fielder expanded the scale. The series uses actors and carefully constructed simulations to let people practise situations before facing them in real life.
It’s an appealing offer if you’ve ever replayed a difficult conversation in your head. In Fielder’s hands, it also raises an obvious problem: how much can you prepare before the preparation becomes its own ordeal?
Then came The Curse, co-created with Benny Safdie and starring Fielder, Safdie and Emma Stone. Its story of a couple making a home-renovation show pushed his work further into scripted television, with the same interest in the distance between the image people project and what they actually do.
The new Holmes documentary puts those interests into another setting. Fielder has earned an audience willing to follow him into a project without being entirely sure what kind of experience he’s offering.
Vancouver’s Hollywood royalty
When people talk about Vancouver’s Hollywood royalty, Ryan Reynolds and Seth Rogen are usually among the first names mentioned. I think it’s safe to say that Nathan Fielder belongs on that list. He’s taken a different path, building a career around ideas so strange they’re difficult to explain until you’ve watched them. Now he’s drawing audiences to a nearly three-hour documentary about Elizabeth Holmes.
His career stretches from a Point Grey improv group to Comedy Central, HBO, a series with Emma Stone and an opening weekend with US$15 million in ticket sales. Somewhere along the way, he also got people lining up on East Broadway to exchange their jackets.
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