You probably walked out of You Can See Everything, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s new Elizabeth Holmes documentary that has everyone abuzz, with a million questions: Did A24 really agree to that? Is the world unknowable? What was with the lizards? And among them may have been this passing thought: I would nominate Amanda Seyfried for an Oscar. Wrapped up in the film’s themes about authenticity vs. performance, Seyfried’s appearance in the second half of the film is what takes the whole endeavor to the galaxy-brained conclusions that has audiences completely captivated.
But you probably didn’t consider that a Seyfried Oscar campaign could actually be a reality: Last week, Variety reported that A24 will indeed campaign Seyfried—who portrayed the Theranos founder in YCSE’s scripted reenactments while Holmes was in prison—for Best Supporting Actress, one of the 11 categories in which the film will be submitted for March’s Academy Awards. After opening wide on Friday to a staggering second-weekend box office increase and continuing to garner rave reviews, You Can See Everything seems primed to—in true Nathan Fielder fashion—make the impossible possible with a one-of-a-kind Oscars run.
But are we sure we aren’t just caught up in the Fielder frenzy? Let’s start with the obvious question about Seyfried’s campaign: Is this allowed?! You Can See Everything is a documentary! Nonetheless, Variety’s report stated that Seyfried is, in fact, eligible—under the Oscars current rules, any performer can submit for an acting award as long as they’re credited in the film, which Seyfried is. Nothing in the rulebook explicitly disqualifies documentaries. (Precursor awards aren’t as likely, but they’re not out of the question: The Golden Globes and Actor Awards state that they only recognize scripted features, but Seyfried could possibly petition for an exception.) Still, despite the many great non-fiction performances to grace the silver screen, the art of being yourself has never been recognized by the Academy. And that’s not just for documentaries—no one has ever been nominated for playing themselves in anything. (Sorry, John Malkovich, Kevin Garnett, and Nicolas Cage.) There are holes to be poked in that statistic, however: Many interpret Diane Keaton’s Oscar-winning role in 1977’s Annie Hall to be autobiographical, down to the name of the character; and Harold Russell was a veteran and non-actor who was cast in 1946’s The Best Years of Our Lives to play a character based on his own experiences in World War II, and was awarded with a statuette. But both Keaton and Russell were still technically credited as characters rather than as themselves—that minor distinction is what could serve Seyfried’s campaign. She’s in YCSE’s credits as Elizabeth Holmes, essentially reprising her Emmy-winning role from The Dropout in the film’s scripted scenes. That appears to be A24’s line of thinking in choosing to pursue her campaign as well: Variety also reported that Fielder—who only appears as himself in the film, including in the scripted reenactments—could also be eligible for a Best Actor nomination, but the studio won’t be campaigning him.
But Seyfried does also appear as herself in the film—which raises multiple questions: What exactly will the Academy be evaluating about her performance? Will the nomination solely be for her portrayal of Holmes? For my money’s worth, Seyfried’s most impressive scene is the one where she, out of character, goes toe-to-toe with Billy Evans at the dinner table, aghast when he reveals that he holds power of attorney over his partner. (Which reminds me—what the heck would Seyfried’s Oscar clip be?!) But these questions about where performances begin and end are directly interrogated in the film itself. A nomination for Seyfried would be engaging with the very themes that are making You Can See Everything a massive hit—the confusion about her eligibility for the award may very well be a feature of her campaign, not a bug. (More on that later.)
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Still, all of that doesn’t address the single most glaring issue with Seyfried’s campaign: Her appearance halfway through YCSE is a major spoiler, and has deliberately not been advertised in the film’s marketing. In accordance, she’s been giving cagey interviews about Holmes while the trades are publishing clunky headlines to avoid mentioning her. (I apologize on behalf of this country’s metropolitan areas to anyone who encountered a poorly concealed spoiler before You Can See Everything even hit their local multiplex.) Despite Variety’s confirmation that A24 will be campaigning her, her name is not currently listed on the studio’s awards site alongside YCSE’s other potential nominations, perhaps to keep the spoiler under wraps.
Is it possible to go on an awards run for a movie you can’t even talk about? I’d venture to guess that the singularity of Seyfried’s nomination would only add mystique to her campaign—YCSE’s twists and turns are what make it so rich for dissection, and it’s impossible not to get swept up in its mysteries. That same thing could happen for Seyfried’s campaign—its unique circumstances may just make Academy voters that much more intrigued by it. Plus, with the rate that audiences are flocking to theaters to catch the documentary before getting spoiled, an inflection point may arrive when her involvement in the film can be discussed more openly.
Apart from Seyfried’s campaign, You Can See Everything has another chance to make Oscars history: No documentary has ever been nominated for Best Picture before. And only a handful have even been nominated in a category outside of Best Documentary Feature. In the Academy Awards’ first decades, there were a few atypical nominations as the categories were still being worked out—most notably when the 1948 documentary The Quiet One earned a Best Original Screenplay nomination, presumably for its scripted commentary—but ever since then, docs have largely been kept out of the general field categories.
Criticism was directed to the Academy’s treatment of the genre when Hoop Dreams was shut out of the Best Documentary category in 1994 despite its widespread acclaim. Roger Ebert then reported the flawed process by which documentary nominations were determined: The documentary committee would hold screenings of hopeful nominees where members could wave flashlights at the screen when they gave up on a movie. Ebert said Hoop Dreams was shut off after only 15 minutes. Later, in researching his 2005 book The Big Show: High Times and Dirty Dealings Backstage at the Academy Awards, Steve Pond found that Hoop Dreams was actually screened in full, but was ultimately slighted by the committee’s heavily skewed voting system. Regardless, the nomination process was overhauled following the controversial snub, and though docs have snuck into some broader categories since—2021’s Flee, for instance, was the first film to ever receive all three nominations for Best Documentary Feature, Best International Feature, and Best Animated Feature—there hasn’t been a real push for a documentary Best Picture nod (let alone anything in the acting categories). Even Michael Moore’s Palme d’Or winner Fahrenheit 9/11—currently the highest-grossing non-music documentary of all time—was withheld from submission for the 2004 Academy Awards because Moore wanted to air the film on TV within nine months of its theatrical window, which was against the rules at the time. (Wait until they hear about CODA!) Perhaps a more apt comparison to You Can See Everything, though, is actually the Borat films, which also blended fiction and non-fiction elements (Rudy Giuliani surely remembers that well). Over two movies, the series received two screenplay nominations and an acting nomination, but wasn’t exactly considered (or marketed as) a documentary the way YCSE is.
Variety currently predicts that You Can See Everything will land nominations in five categories, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Director for Fielder and Oppenheim. Gold Derby’s odds, which are compiled from various prognosticators, have the movie making the cut for Best Picture and just on the outside looking in for Supporting Actress and Director, with its chances still surging.
You Can See Everything is looking less like a fun hypothetical Oscar player, and more like an actual contender. This is an opportunity for the Academy to wrestle with the form of documentary filmmaking just as the movie itself does. The exclusion of documentaries from many of the general field categories over the Oscars’ 98-year history seems to imply that the Academy has long considered them to be something different from movies—that being rooted in reality disqualifies them from comparing artistically to narrative features. But the tension between reality and fiction is intrinsic to the best of the genre—it’s why legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman preferred to call his films “reality fictions,” “reality dreams,” or, more simply, “movies.” The presence of a camera inherently affects the behavior of the people in front of it, and the people behind it make choices about what to capture and edit—same as any other movie. These themes are vital to You Can See Everything, of course, and they’re clearly resonating with critics and audiences. That’s what’s leading them to interpret Seyfried’s performance as just that—a performance, and an Oscar-worthy one, at that—and the film as a clearly artistic achievement. With these abstract themes connecting so widely, it’s easy to see how the Academy could be compelled by them as well.
You Can See Everything’s awards push is also cresting at the same time that two other key storylines that could shape awards season are developing: the fall of once seemingly probable awards players, and the speculation about Obsession’s campaign. The latter has been a lock for an Inde Navarrette Best Actress nod since the Gen Z–focused horror flick—directed by 27-year-old Curry Barker, who got his start on YouTube—released to massive box office returns earlier this year, and its staying power has it hanging around the Best Picture race as well. Gold Derby currently has the film nabbing the 10th slot in the category, just below You Can See Everything. Crucially, that puts both films above festival circuit fare like Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth!, which doesn’t come out until December but was met with only mildly positive reviews at the New York Film Festival; and Palme-winner Fjord, which emerged victorious at a weak Cannes and hasn’t elicited significantly strong reactions otherwise. Not to mention the DOA Best Picture campaigns for Digger, The Social Reckoning, and Michael due to negative reviews—all three are also out of both Gold Derby’s and Variety’s top 10s.
This is the logical culmination of a changing Academy—and Hollywood—redefining what an Oscar contender can look like over the past decade. Diversifying the voting body has resulted in more nominations for international features and films directed by women, of course, but it’s also opened the Oscars up to different genres and filmmakers more broadly. Recent Best Picture nominees like Drive My Car, The Substance, and even Anora don’t exactly fit cleanly into the stereotypical concept of an awards player that prevailed in the previous decades. This shift has only been amplified ever since the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 Hollywood strikes threatened the future of the theatrical experience, and led the Academy to recognize a number of films that brought people back to multiplexes regardless of their “prestige” credentials, like Top Gun: Maverick, Barbie, and Sinners. Last year’s Best Picture race epitomized the sensibilities of the 2020s Academy when it came down to Sinners, a gory vampire flick that killed at the box office early in the year; and One Battle After Another, the biggest movie yet from a beloved auteur who had never gotten his Oscars due. The two pulled away from the most traditionally Oscar bait-y contender, Hamnet, which quickly fell out of the running for the Academy’s top prize.
Recognizing You Can See Everything—and, perhaps, Obsession—would signal a significant continuation of the Academy’s attempt to meet audiences where they are, even if it means making a few nominations that are completely unprecedented. These are original movies people are packing theaters to see and, more importantly, they can’t stop talking about them. Both films would certainly face an uphill battle in actually winning the Best Picture statuette—The Odyssey is still the odds-on favorite—and the Academy’s attempts to evolve usually come with some growing pains. But the fact that something as left field as You Can See Everything may have a real shot at awards consideration shows that the Oscars are still earnestly trying to widen their scope. Why would they deceive us?
