EDITOR’S NOTE: This story contains spoilers for “You Can See Everything.”
Since Joanie Montgomery saw Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s documentary “You Can See Everything” last weekend, there’s been one moment that hasn’t escaped her notice: a photo of Fielder wearing briefs and swimming in the ocean with his subject, Elizabeth Holmes. “It was very intimate and he looked really beautiful,” said Montgomery, a 33-year-old Philadelphia-based drag artist who plays Diva Baby. “I need him so much. I don’t know what else to say.”
Fielder and Oppenheim’s word-of-mouth sensation took pop culture by storm, making millions at the box office, earning near-universal critical praise, and generating a ton of media coverage, as well as Oscar buzz. And yet, one of the most surprising and surreal things to emerge from the film’s release – at least for those who found Fielder’s lanky presence utterly awkward and strange, consistent with his earlier work – was the vocal contingent of viewers who came away thinking he was a certified stud.
“I was blown away by the film, but I also now feel a deep affection for Nathan Fielder,” said Dallas, a 28-year-old writer living in New York, who asked, like others in this story, to be referred to only by her first name. “I walked out of the theater thinking, ‘I have competition because I want to sleep with Nathan Fielder and everyone here wants to sleep with Nathan Fielder.’
On social media, others who saw “You Can See Everything” spoke of their subsequent desire to see everything by Fielder. On TikTok, women praised him for being “confident yet calm…confident without bravado” and for appearing “cuddly.” Others have said that all the heterosexual men confused by reactions to Fielder prove they will never truly understand the complexities of the female gaze.
“There’s a lot of things going on in his mind. Like, there’s this whole control room, thinking carefully about what he’s going to say,” said Sophia, a 20-year-old student at the University of Toronto. “I think it’s really, really attractive.”
This film is not the first time that Fielder has been declared something of a sex symbol. When he released “The Rehearsal” in 2022 on HBO, New York magazine The Cut wrote about Fielder’s “strange sex appeal,” noting his specific blend of intellect, vulnerability and control. At the same time, the Daily Beast reported on Fielder’s fandom, with devotees praising his voice, his competence and his willingness to demean himself on camera. “There is something attractive about a person whose appeal is so raw, so innate, so against all odds, that you have to spend time understanding what it is,” wrote Marianne Eloise.
But while T-shirts featuring Fielder’s face have been available for several years now, the unique cultural moment enjoyed by “You Can See Everything” has unlocked a legion of fervent new fans. That includes Dallas, who said she arrived at her Wednesday night screening with no real feelings for Fielder, but left with a new object of affection. “The film is extremely close-up shots of everyone’s faces for three hours straight, and so it was almost this illusion of what it would feel like to be near him or to be in the room with him,” she said. “I found myself Really love this feeling.
In addition to the way the film is shot, viewers have described a palpable sexual tension or chemistry that underscores the film (and even its short trailer) between the film’s main subjects: Fielder, Holmes, his romantic partner Billy Evans, and actress Amanda Seyfried. The film is full of long moments of silence, intense stares, and gentle teasing and probing among the four that may seem particularly electric to some viewers. In one sequence, Evans showers naked for Fielder and his team. In another, Seyfried and Fielder chat intimately by the fire.
“I couldn’t really delve into the other themes of ‘who’s playing who’ because I just wanted them all to kiss,” Montgomery said. She noted a sequence in which Fielder comes to stay with Holmes and Evans, only to learn that there is no mattress for him. To her, it almost seemed like a suggestion that the documentarian join the couple in their own bed – which he actually did. do at one point, as they all watch Seyfried as Holmes in “The Dropout”. “It was hard for me not to imagine them all naked,” Montgomery said.
“Her interactions with Elizabeth are just very engaging,” Sophia said. “Basically, they have sex without physically touching each other, if that makes sense. It’s just the way they talk to each other, their chemistry.”
Fielder isn’t conventionally attractive, concedes Breca, a 26-year-old bisexual man living in Pennsylvania, but the filmmaker’s salt-and-pepper hair and stubble nevertheless did something for Breca. “He always looked middle-aged, even when he was younger, so he kind of grew up that way, which I think made him more attractive,” Breca said.
Co-director Oppenheim would agree. “I always told him, ‘You look so beautiful in that.’ And I was like, ‘I love being so close to your face.’ I’m so tight on your face right now and you look great,” Oppenheim told GQ. “And he was like, ‘Man, you could see my blackheads and my pimples and all that.’ I would tell him, “You look great. In fact, I think it makes you look better. He is a very unconventional hyper-masculine man.
There are also unique elements to Fielder’s personality — or, at least, the character he plays on camera — that make him catnip to some. Montgomery, for example, said she was drawn to her “borderline autistic condition.” I don’t know what“, while Dallas said it was his “beautiful artistic sensibility” and his success.
But, in the age of the Manosphere and manipulative pickup artists, others have suggested that the sexiest thing about Fielder in “You Can See Everything” might be much simpler: He seems to be actively listening to the women in the film. “We are so emotionally starved collectively that someone who can ask a question and pay attention to the answer is like manna from heaven,” reads one such article on X. “All women are sexually attracted to Nathan Fielder right now because he made a movie where he listens to people talking.”
However, not everyone is on board the Fielder train, with some finding him too goofy or claiming that his fans are simply looking to woo someone nerder than them. But “You Can See Everything” has, if nothing else, enhanced Fielder’s sex symbol status given his last major production, the 2023-2024 TV series “The Curse,” saw him playing a character with a micropenis.
Through representatives for A24, Fielder (perhaps understandably) did not respond to a request for comment on this story, although he has hinted in the past that he wants to inspire desire in his audience. In 2022, Fielder told comedian Kate Berlant, perhaps a little facetiously: “I can say that my number one goal every time I perform is to have sex. »
This should be music to the ears of new fans like Dallas, who said he broke his rule about speaking to the press for this story. “I’m making an exception because I would like Nathan Fielder to read this and contact me personally and go from there,” she said. “I’m in love.”
Gn entert
