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Nathan Fielder’s Surprise Call From Elizabeth Holmes: ‘I Trust You’

A few months ago, Nathan Fielder’s publicist sent me an unexpected email: Would WIRED be interested in Fielder for a fall cover of our magazine? The answer, before we even got a reason, was yes. The reason, it turned out, was that Fielder would soon release a project that was so top-secret, I’d need to sign an NDA to even hear about what it was—let alone watch it. I signed, I heard, and then I saw, counting myself among the few dozen people who’d screened You Can See Everything before the film debuted in the first days of September as a secret addition to the Telluride Film Festival.

几个月前，内森·菲尔德（Nathan Fielder）的公关人员给我发了一封意想不到的邮件：《连线》（WIRED）杂志是否有兴趣邀请菲尔德担任秋季刊的封面人物？在得知原因之前，我们的回答就是肯定的。事实证明，原因在于菲尔德即将发布一个高度机密的项目，我必须签署保密协议才能了解其内容，更不用说观看了。我签了字，听了介绍，随后观看了影片。在9月初这部电影作为特柳赖德电影节（Telluride Film Festival）的秘密加映片首映之前，我是全球仅有的几十名看过《你所见皆一切》（You Can See Everything）的观众之一。

If you’re a human being with internet access, you know that the buzz following Telluride was nothing short of an online thermonuclear event: Reddit forums exploded; best-in-class memes were born overnight; every journalist on planet Earth, including the staff at WIRED (who had no idea their boss was NDA’d to hell, and seemed confused when I ordered them repeatedly not to contact Nathan Fielder’s publicist), pined, pleaded, and jockeyed for access to the film. Or, even better, for access to Fielder himself. The notoriously inscrutably performer, after all, has become a cult hero for his ability to turn human discomfort into high art.

如果你是一个能上网的人，你一定知道特柳赖德电影节之后引发的轰动简直是一场网络热核事件：Reddit论坛炸开了锅；顶级的模因（meme）一夜之间诞生；地球上每一位记者，包括《连线》的员工（他们不知道自己的老板签了严苛的保密协议，当我反复命令他们不要联系内森·菲尔德的公关时，他们显得很困惑），都渴望、恳求并争相获取这部电影的观看权。或者，更好的是，争取采访菲尔德本人的机会。毕竟，这位以难以捉摸而闻名的表演者，因其将人类的不适感转化为高雅艺术的能力，已成为一位邪典英雄。

He built a coffee shop called Dumb Starbucks, creating an international news event in the process. He built an entire fake bar so that one man could practice having a difficult conversation with a friend. He trained to be a commercial airline pilot—lunacy!—and flew a 737 filled with passengers (the Miracle over the Mojave), in what can only be described as the most transcendent moment of television I’ve ever seen. For a certain genre of viewer, Nathan Fielder is a comedic god among us mere mortals.

他曾开设一家名为“愚蠢星巴克”（Dumb Starbucks）的咖啡店，并由此引发了一场国际新闻事件。他曾建造了一整间虚假的酒吧，只为了让一个人练习如何与朋友进行一场艰难的对话。他甚至接受了商业航空飞行员的培训——简直疯狂！——并驾驶着一架载满乘客的波音737（莫哈韦沙漠上的奇迹），那是我所见过的电视节目中最超凡脱俗的时刻。对于某些类型的观众来说，内森·菲尔德就是我们这些凡人中的喜剧之神。

He’s also, not surprisingly, rather particular. Fielder was going to do the cover of WIRED; then maybe he wasn’t. A week went by. Our features director and I didn’t sleep. Then we were a “go.” Great! For a few days, at least, until things got dicey again. This kind of back-and-forth is a normal part of booking celebrities. But given the secrecy, the buzz, the Nathan of it all—the stakes for WIRED were high. I told several people in my life that I hated Nathan Fielder. Then we were on again. I told several people in my life that I loved Nathan Fielder.

不出所料，他也是个相当挑剔的人。菲尔德原本要上《连线》的封面；然后可能又不上了。一周过去了，我们的专题总监和我彻夜难眠。接着，事情又“敲定”了。太好了！至少维持了几天，直到情况再次变得棘手。这种反复无常是预约名人的常态。但考虑到保密性、热度以及内森本人的特质，《连线》面临的风险很高。我曾告诉生活中的几个人，我讨厌内森·菲尔德。然后我们又恢复了合作。我又告诉生活中的几个人，我爱内森·菲尔德。

You might be wondering: If I found Fielder’s pre-interview agita so stressful, why didn’t we just scrap the cover entirely? Maybe see if Aaron Sorkin was still available, or some other guy involved in some other tech-adjacent fall movie. There are plenty.

你可能会问：如果我发现菲尔德在采访前的焦虑如此令人压力倍增，为什么我们不干脆取消封面拍摄？也许看看艾伦·索金（Aaron Sorkin）是否还有档期，或者其他参与秋季科技类电影的人选。这样的人选有很多。

The thing is, You Can See Everything is a singularly astonishing film. I’d go so far as to say that it’s among the best I’ve ever seen. Codirected by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, it begins as a strange, captivating, occasionally hilarious 34-day psychological dance between Fielder, Elizabeth Holmes, and her partner Billy Evans before Holmes’ incarceration, and subsequently morphs into something so beguiling and brilliant that it’s futile to try to describe.

问题在于，《你所见皆一切》是一部极其惊人的电影。我甚至可以说，它是我看过的最好的电影之一。该片由菲尔德和兰斯·奥本海姆（Lance Oppenheim）共同执导，影片开篇讲述了菲尔德、伊丽莎白·霍姆斯（Elizabeth Holmes）及其伴侣比利·埃文斯（Billy Evans）在霍姆斯入狱前那段为期34天、充满诡异、迷人且偶尔令人捧腹的心理博弈，随后演变成一种难以言喻的迷人与卓越，任何描述都显得苍白无力。

After screening You Can See Everything in early September, I thought about the movie every single day until I saw it again a few weeks later. I’m still rolling it around in my brain. When a small handful of WIRED staffers screened the film before Fielder’s cover shoot, we spent hours afterward debating facial expressions, relationships, and even the meaning of single sentences. We agreed on very little, other than that Fielder—notorious for his meticulous building of worlds—seemed to have finally stumbled into one much stranger than anything he could have conjured.

在9月初观看《你所见皆一切》之后，直到几周后我再次观看，我每天都在思考这部电影。我至今仍在脑海中回味它。当少数《连线》员工在菲尔德拍摄封面之前观看该片时，我们事后花了几个小时讨论其中的面部表情、人际关系，甚至是单句台词的含义。除了达成一点共识外，我们几乎没有其他一致意见：以精心构建世界而闻名的菲尔德，似乎终于闯入了一个比他所能构想出的任何世界都要离奇得多的世界。

When I ultimately sat down with Fielder for a conversation in late September, any lingering irritation at his pre-interview jitters instantly fell away: For all of his overthinking, lines in the sand, and apparent ambivalence to press, Fielder presented as considerate and genuine. Over nearly an hour and a half, Fielder—in trademark New Balance sneakers and nondescript men’s apparel, a Summit Ice windbreaker in tow—slumped casually on a sofa, seemed to mull my questions earnestly and in good faith, and did the best he possibly could to answer them.

当我最终在9月下旬与菲尔德坐下来交谈时，对他采访前焦虑所产生的任何残留不满瞬间烟消云散：尽管他思虑过多、界限分明，且对媒体表现出明显的矛盾态度，但菲尔德表现得体贴而真诚。在近一个半小时的时间里，菲尔德穿着标志性的新百伦（New Balance）运动鞋和普通的男装，带着一件Summit Ice风衣，随意地瘫坐在沙发上，似乎在认真且诚恳地思考我的问题，并尽其所能地回答它们。

Verbal communication, Fielder repeated several times in our conversation, isn’t always easy for him. It’s a quality that’s often put to good use in his work, and his blunt demeanor makes Fielder particularly effective in the role of truth-seeker vis-à-vis Holmes and Evans. The same can’t be said for a sit-down interview, which made my conversation with Fielder all the more endearing in the moment; at least, I told myself, the man was really trying.

菲尔德在谈话中多次提到，语言交流对他来说并不总是容易的。这种特质经常被他运用到工作中，而他直率的举止使他在面对霍姆斯和埃文斯时，作为真相探寻者的角色显得尤为有效。但对于面对面的采访来说，情况并非如此，这反而让当时我和菲尔德的谈话显得更加可爱；至少，我告诉自己，这个人是真的在努力。

Our time together concluded at 2:17 pm; I’d been warned beforehand that Fielder had a Zoom meeting at 2:15 pm sharp. “I’m trusting you,” his publicist told me before leaving us alone to talk. I took the entreaty seriously, practically shoving Fielder out of the room as soon as I realized he was running late. This lovely, thoughtful man has a meeting! Days later, a thought gnawed at me: 2:15 pm is an odd time to start a meeting. On a Sunday, no less.

我们的会面在下午2点17分结束；我事先被告知菲尔德在下午2点15分准时有一个Zoom会议。“我信任你，”他的公关人员在留下我们单独交谈前对我说道。我认真对待了这个请求，一旦意识到他迟到了，几乎是把菲尔德推出了房间。这位可爱、体贴的人还要开会呢！几天后，一个念头困扰着我：下午2点15分是一个奇怪的开会时间。更何况还是在周日。

I couldn’t shake it. Had the publicist looked me in the eyes and lied? Had Nathan? I considered asking them outright. I’ve never been one for ambiguity, and a journalist craves nothing more than to know what’s real. Then again, people make things up all the time. They present different versions of themselves to different people, obfuscate and perform, and they do it in little ways and sometimes bigger ones. Did it really matter if he’d left for a real meeting or the excuse of one? And hadn’t I spent enough time letting Nathan Fielder make me feel crazy?

我无法摆脱这个念头。公关人员是看着我的眼睛撒谎了吗？内森也是吗？我考虑过直接问他们。我从来不喜欢模棱两可，而记者最渴望的就是了解真相。话又说回来，人们总是编造事实。他们向不同的人展示不同版本的自己，掩饰和表演，有时是小事，有时是大事。他离开是因为真的有会议，还是仅仅以此为借口，这真的重要吗？而且，我难道没有花足够多的时间让内森·菲尔德把我搞得像个疯子吗？

In the end, I decided that this time it was better not to know. It was better just to trust. And after a second talk with Fielder a few weeks after our first conversation, I learned that Elizabeth Holmes might feel the same way.

最终，我决定这次最好还是不要知道真相。最好还是选择信任。在我们的第一次谈话几周后，我与菲尔德进行了第二次交谈，我了解到伊丽莎白·霍姆斯可能也有同样的感受。