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Amusing to consider that YCSE will probably be nominated for Best Picture, but not Best Documentary. The doc committee generally loathes anything that's perceived as being outside the "conventional norms of documentary filmmaking" box. Which surely explains their fear and loathing of Errol Morris.

I've been wondering about this. It does seems to have gotten worse in the past decade or so (it's not THAT long since The Act Of Killing and The Look Of Silence both got nominations), but on the other hand it may be so massive a success that they feel awkward not giving it a nod.

A lot of people proving how badly they need to go to True/False next year.

I am putting dibs on the corner table at Ragtag now

Interested in why you say it’s not a documentary. I get that all documentarians come at it with a bias and a desire to entertain, at some level. But this seems … other.

Oh it is! The guy saying it’s not is wrong.

I don’t expect a Theranos whistleblower to be an expert in nonfiction cinema any more than I am in medical testing, but John Grierson defined documentary a century ago as “the creative treatment of actuality” and that’s still a good place to start

I think a lot of people that already knew that Holmes was a truly pathological liar watched this movie thinking that it exonerated or humanized her, probably missing the entire point of what it’s doing, and thus missing what it’s documenting

It might help to reframe it as not “how did Holmes get away with it,” but rather: “how did all the mostly very stupid and evil old men who bought into Theranos decide to buy into Theranos”

one thing that genuinely thrills me about YCSE (while also beguiling me somewhat) is how many viewers with no grounding in the slipperier edges of nonfiction seem to be intuitively grasping what it’s doing