Nathan for me: In search of Nathan Fielder’s lost film | Canada Voices

Seventeen years ago, long before the TV shows, before the awards and certainly before any critical acclaim, Nathan Fielder made a movie.

The synopsis for Love and Cameras in America, the Canadian comedian’s feature debut, sounds perfectly Fielderian: “What happens when a man with virtually no experience making movies and no interest in politics is sent to make a documentary about the 2008 United States presidential election?”

The answer is a mystery. It’s not on Netflix, Disney+ or any other streaming service. There are no used DVDs on eBay, no screenings at local independent theatres. In a testament to its obscurity, the documentary doesn’t even register on Fielder’s Wikipedia page.

The film, in other words, is lost.

This might seem like trivia. Nearly two decades and two Trump inaugurations later, who cares about anything that happened during the 2008 election? But as Fielder’s profile has grown, so has the significance of this gap in his filmography – not because of the movie’s content, but because he’s the one who made it.

Fielder’s bizarre brand of comedy, which often blurs the boundaries of fact and fiction – think Borat, or The Colbert Report – has matured into a biting critique of reality TV and the online-attention economy. He’s grown into an internationally recognized celebrity, and one of Canada’s greatest comedians. His fans are rabid and adoring, and critics have written countless essays deconstructing his work.

For years, amateur scholars in the field of Fielder have scoured the internet for Love and Cameras in America. On Reddit, the social-media forum, someone offers up a brother-in-law who knows Fielder – “not well,” they caution – and may be able to inquire. There’s even an X account demanding the film’s release. (Follower count: 12.)

My own quest began years ago. I no longer remember when I first learned of the film, but I eventually found myself e-mailing the CBC about it. Like everyone before me, I failed to track it down, and tried to put it out of my mind.

But the puzzle remained, and blossomed into an obsession. This was no longer about seeing the movie, but about the mystery itself.

Where was Love and Cameras in America? What happened?

Nathan Fielder, born in Vancouver in 1983, made it big with Nathan for You (2013-2017), his first TV show, a reality-comedy where he gives small-business owners in Los Angeles advice of questionable value. (During each episode’s introduction, he explains he “graduated from one of Canada’s top business schools with really good grades.”)

Since then, Fielder has amassed a list of acting, directing and producing credits establishing him as a comedy powerhouse. There’s The Curse (2023-2024), a scripted parody of home renovation shows in which he stars opposite Emma Stone; The Rehearsal (2022-present), a categorization-defying reality series exploring, at least at first, whether it’s possible to rehearse your way past your anxieties; and How To With John Wilson (2020-2023), an impressionistic show produced by Fielder in which the titular New York filmmaker assembles stream-of-consciousness video essays on everything from scaffolding to the availability of public restrooms.

Before his American celebrity, Fielder made a name for himself with the CBC. He got his first break in 2007 on This Hour Has 22 Minutes, the long-running news satire show based out of Halifax. He hosted “Nathan On Your Side,” a segment aping consumer advocacy shows. In a piece on getting better sleep, Fielder dozes off halfway through an interview with a sleep researcher.

Fielder’s ties to 22 Minutes, combined with a few references to the national broadcaster in the scant online mentions of Love and Cameras in America, are my first lead. I conjure a vision of a banged-up DVD tucked away in a cavernous government warehouse.

Not so fast: A CBC spokesperson dashes my hopes, confirming the film isn’t in their archives.

Another early lead is an October, 2008, news story about a coming “U.S. election special” hosted by Fielder on the Comedy Network, now known as the CTV Comedy Channel. The timing and subject are right. Perhaps this is Love and Cameras in America by another name? That’s also dead end: An official for Bell Media, which owns CTV, tells me the company no longer holds the rights, so it can’t screen, broadcast or distribute the special.

Ed Conroy, the operator of Retrontario, an outlet specializing in forgotten Canadian content, has made a career of surfacing rare media – and even he thinks the search is a lost cause.

“I’ve been asked by a lot of people about that,” he says. “Unfortunately, I don’t have it, and I think it’s impossible to find. A lot of American people have been looking for it, and it’s clearly disappeared. It’s truly lost media.”

(I tried to speak with Fielder six times for this story. I never made it past his PR team.)

My googling surfaces another clue: Love and Cameras in America screened at the Atlantic International Film Festival in Halifax in 2009. It even won an award! (In an e-mail, the festival’s programming director says they don’t have a copy, though she does send over a scan of the film’s description from that year’s program.)

A review in a Halifax alt-weekly, which covered the festival, is the only account of the documentary’s content anywhere on the internet. It hints at the movie’s Nathanness: Instead of the typical stable of sedate scholars, the review mentions Melissa, the CutCo knife salesperson; Daniel, the awkward college student; and Ashley, a budding love interest. The writer tells me she gets e-mails from Fielderheads “a lot,” but doesn’t have a copy.

The film’s IMDB page lists several production staff in addition to Fielder. There was executive producer Michael Donovan, two writers and a small team of cinematographers and producers. Donovan left Love and Cameras in America’s production company five years ago and pulled a disappearing act of his own; I find no useful trace of him. The rest of the team either don’t respond, or say they don’t want to talk.

Except, that is, for Mark Mullane.

When I cold-call Mullane, I reach him in his car, on the way to an appointment.

“I’m a boring real estate agent now,” he says. He laughs when I tell him I’m hunting for Love and Cameras in America. “I’ve got lots of good stories for you,” he teases – but no, he doesn’t have a copy.

Mullane, who is based in Dartmouth, N.S., was hired by a friend, one of the film’s writers. He was a secondary cameraman and field producer, meaning he was responsible for nothing, but did everything.

He confirms the movie wasn’t a CBC project, but the crew wasn’t opposed to leaving interview subjects – often sober, political science-types – with the impression the public broadcaster was involved. “I certainly said the word ‘CBC’ many times during the shoot,” Mullane says.

The documentary was shot in a “run-and-gun” style, without a fixed script. Fielder began every interview with softball questions and slowly, sometimes over the course of hours, built to a punchline. For an interview with an economist, he used an easel pad – those large, flippable paper sheets used in schools and conference rooms – to do “some kind of crazy math.” On another shoot, during which he guest lectured at a university, he burst into song.

Arguably, Mullane’s most important job was talking down anxious, perplexed interview subjects – often while inside their home.

“If it goes off the rails, you’re stuck there,” he says. “You have to pack up your gear and pack up the tripods and the lights, and if something’s gone wrong, someone’s gonna be in your face asking you what the hell this interview was.”

Whenever that happened, the crew always reverted to the same line. “We would say, ‘We just met him, he’s got an unorthodox interview style, for sure, but he’s on the CBC’ – which is totally true – ‘and we’re doing this documentary. We don’t know what he’s gonna make out of this thing. But it’s all above board.’”

Mullane’s second most important job was fighting the urge to laugh.

“When you’re there and you’re doing it, it’s fine. And when you get out, you’re driving away, you’re just like, ‘Okay, we did that. I did that. I can’t believe that you just stopped that interview, turned around and took a piss on that tree in front of that guy.’”

He couldn’t tell me much about the film’s more ordinary characters, like Ashley, the love interest. By the time she entered the story, he’d already left the production.

Most nights, the crew would retreat to a bar, usually the Galaxy Hut, an institution in Arlington, Va., the Washington suburb where they were staying. Fielder often stayed behind to work.

“The guy works extremely hard,” Mullane says. “He edited all his own pieces on 22 Minutes, did them all himself – and that was the early days. I don’t know how much control he’s relinquished over the years, but I saw the work that he put into things, and he wasn’t really interested in having the 17 beers with us at the Galaxy Hut.”

Mullane has seen much of Fielder’s other work, and says Love and Cameras in America is “definitely” an important part of the oeuvre. “I would love to see it come out and have its day,” he says.

He leaves me some parting advice: Find Michael Donovan, the film’s elusive Nova Scotia-based executive producer. He’ll have a copy.

There are, it turns out, a lot of Donovans in Eastern Canada.

Having failed to find Michael Donovan during my initial search, I switch to a volume approach using the phone book. I start calling any and all Donovans I can find in Atlantic Canada whose first names are Michael or Paul – Michael’s brother, who also works in film and is similarly private. I strike out again and again. An entry for a “Paul Donovan” leads me to Ingonish Beach, in northern Nova Scotia.

“There’s two Paul Donovans,” a woman, Joanne Donovan, explains patiently. “It’s a pretty small town. The other guy, we call him Karate Paul.”

“Karate Paul?”

“He’s retired. He looks like Santa Claus now, big white beard,” she says. “He used to be a black belt years ago.”

“So he was a karate instructor?”

“He was. Is that who you’re looking for?”

It is not.

“And my Paul Donovan is an electrician, and there’s another Paul Donovan in Halifax who does movies.”

“That’s the one I’m looking for!” I tell her.

When Joanne lived in Halifax, she got the occasional call for him, she says. Alas, she doesn’t have his number. She tells me she wishes she did – she’s an actor herself. “I did a two-hour, one-woman show, Shirley Valentine, that went all over Cape Breton,” she says.

I find the Michael Donovan by revisiting an earlier clue. The Atlantic International Film Festival’s program notes another executive producer, Floyd Kane. Some quick digital sleuthing nets an e-mail address. Kane’s assistant responds, and gives me Donovan’s contact information.

“You’re a hard man to track down,” I tell him when we connect over the phone.

“You seem to be an intrepid reporter,” he quips back.

A long-time producer with a soft spot for satire, Donovan founded DHX Media, the company behind 22 Minutes and Love and Cameras in America. He also won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2003, for producing Michael Moore’s hit film Bowling for Columbine. Donovan left DHX in 2019, and is now president of a production company called Oakland Road Films. He still executive produces 22 Minutes.

Donovan says he came across YouTube sketches by Fielder around 2007, and was struck by his pitch-perfect timing. He brought him onto 22 Minutes, but Fielder’s ambitions went beyond a recurring bit on the show – so the pair set out to get him his own.

“I went to George Anthony, who was the head of comedy at CBC at that time, and said he should have his own show. George Anthony did not agree with me that Nathan was a comedic genius,” Donovan says. “It was a difference of opinion, if you will.” Instead, Donovan and Fielder went across the street, to Bell Media.

Donovan, Fielder and Bell cut a deal: They would start with an hour-long one-off related to the coming 2008 U.S. election – in which Barack Obama would shortly make history – and use that as a springboard for a series. But after Nathan Fielder’s U.S. Election Special aired that fall, Bell passed on a series order. Hoping to make the most of the existing footage, they re-edited the material into Love and Cameras in America, but couldn’t find a distributor for the film. Fielder left for the United States shortly after that.

“A lot of the Nathan story is that he’s a poster-child for the inability of Canada to keep talent at home,” Donovan says, delivering what is clearly a well-practiced grievance. “If he had gotten a TV series in Canada, he might have stayed and continued to create in Canada.”

A few years later, Nathan for You was picked up by Comedy Central in the U.S. “There’s an element of tragedy here about that,” Donovan says.

When he first watched Love and Cameras in America, he thought it was “gold” – but, inevitably, he didn’t keep a copy. While he’d love to see it released, he also seems apprehensive.

“It’s a bit dated,” he says. The political scene in America was very different from what it is today. “It might seem like something from the Dark Ages – and a more optimistic time.”

I’m not so sure. To me, the timing sounds perfect. America has just wrapped up a highly divisive election cycle, often described as a final crucible for the country. Perhaps we all need a romp hearkening back to a simpler political era.

“Okay, I’m hiring you to promote this,” says Donovan, ever the satirist. “I’m sold.”

Thanks to Michael Donovan, I’ve learned why Love and Cameras in America went unreleased. But I still need to watch it.

I resolve to find out who owns the film’s rights in the hopes they’ll loan me a copy. Shaun Smith, a spokesperson for WildBrain, the successor company to Donovan’s DHX Media, tells me they no longer have the rights – a company in Quebec called Equinoxe Films does. Equinoxe’s president tells me he doesn’t own it – another Quebec company called France Film does. And the president of France Film tells me they’ve never heard of Love and Cameras in America. After I take all of this back to Smith, he reverses himself: WildBrain does, indeed, hold the rights to the documentary. Not only that – the master tapes are in the WildBrain vault! Unfortunately, they haven’t been digitized, and Smith implies that would be costly.

“Nathan Fielder is a wonderful comedian, but because WildBrain is focused on kids and family content, and since the film had a very specific subject (the 2008 U.S. election), it is not something that we actively distribute,” he says in an e-mail.

This might have been the end, if not for one final lead. I had found Ashley, Fielder’s romantic interest and the presumptive “love” of Love and Cameras in America.

Ashley Ratchford, an actor in Chattanooga, Tenn., met Fielder and the crew in 2008 while she was a grad student in Virginia.

“So, I have a copy,” she says – my heart rate spikes – “and I don’t know where it is.” Ratchford explains she’s been moving homes, and the disc is tucked away in an old CD case, packed into one of her many boxes.

“It’s something that I would not have thrown away,” she assures me.

Several weeks after our conversation, she messages to say she may have found it – my heart rate spikes again – then follows up a day later to say the disc has again gone missing in the postmove mayhem. “I feel like the universe is telling us something,” she says.

Ratchford has watched her copy several times over the years. “It’s a fun one,” she says. “I’m very proud to be a part of it.”

She’s also seen some of Nathan for You, which “felt very familiar,” she says. “In a way, I wonder if Love and Cameras in America was a spark of creation for him.”

“It does make you wonder why it’s being held so closely to the chest,” she continues. “Maybe it’s just one of those things where, now that he’s gone on and he’s found his thing, he’s moving forward.”

Ratchford has a point. Perhaps Fielder wants this thing gone.

For practical reasons, most of my investigation has been conducted over e-mails and phone calls. Fielder’s work, meanwhile, requires presence and patience – those hours-long interviews Mark Mullane told me about. I figure that at least once during this saga, I should take a page from his book.

One of the film’s writers, Chris Locke, is based in Toronto. I resolve to ask him about the movie in person. My chance arrives a few days later: Locke is doing a set at Comedy Bar in Toronto as part of Laugh Sabbath, a weekly revue. (Fielder himself was a member long ago.)

On a Thursday evening, I descend into the basement of the club, buy a ticket and take a seat in the second row. It’s a quiet night, a staff member tells me, so everyone has to move up front.

Tonight’s 90-minute show has five comedians. To my horror, each takes turns making jokes at the audience’s expense, and I realize I may be selected for “crowd work,” too. Sure enough, I’m soon a target. The man on stage asks me what I do, and I shift in my seat.

I’m a journalist, I say. He grimaces. I reassure him I’m not reviewing the show, and the bit goes nowhere.

Locke’s set closes out the night. I find him in the bar area, introduce myself and tell him about my mission. His body language becomes cautious, withdrawn. Clearly, I’m making this man uncomfortable. I keep it quick.

He offers me a single thought on the record: “You can quote me as saying I had a lot of fun,” he says. I never do find out if he has a copy.

During my search, I’ve often asked myself: What would Nathan for You’s Nathan Fielder do if he were in my position? Would he hire a private investigator, only to pivot to a meditation on how some things are best left forgotten? What about the Nathan Fielder of The Rehearsal? Would he produce his own knock-off film?

I message his PR team one last time. He’s not available, I’m told.

The thing Fielder does so well, and which has always drawn me to his work, is his ability to blur the line between reality and fiction and subvert what we expect of our entertainment. Each new project becomes harder to describe, tougher to categorize. Is it real? Is it artifice? Is it comedy? Is it even enjoyable at all?

As a journalist, I try to unearth records, speak with people and make connections. That formula, I’ve learned, points at some version of the truth. Fielder, meanwhile, gets there by putting people in unconventional situations and letting things play out. His discipline, like mine, is observational, journalistic.

In my line of work, the conclusion is often the point. In Fielder’s, it’s the process itself. That’ll have to suffice for my search, too.

That said: If you’re reading this, Nathan, I still want to see this movie. You have my number.