Over the long Labor Day weekend, the film world seemed to be talking about only one thing: The super-secret, unannounced screening of You Can See Everything, the new Elizabeth Holmes documentary directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim at the Telluride Film Festival.
While Fielder is well-known from his former Comedy Central show Nathan For You, and more recently HBO’s The Rehearsal, perhaps you’re not quite as familiar with Lance Oppenheim’s work.
Oppenheim is known for projects highlighting quirky subjects or events. His Ren Faire HBO miniseries captured the bizarre power struggle behind a Texas renaissance fair. In 2020, Oppenheim’s Some Kind of Heaven pulled back the curtain on life at The Villages, the country’s largest retirement community.
Oppenheim was uncovering oddball situations and people from an early age. As proof today we bring you his short, No Jail Time: The Movie. Directed by Oppenheim when he was 21 and attending Harvard, the short distributed by The New York Times, visits the Sentencing and Post-Conviction Film Festival: a gathering of lawyers who heap praise upon the most impactful and effective short films presented to judges to reduce jail time for their clients.While the world waits to see just how crazy things get when Fielder and Oppenheim team up, here’s a look at Oppenheim’s early solo work uncovering the quirky unknown: