Filmmaker Brad Abrahams has just a little more than twelve minutes to try and make sense of David Dees, an artist who once painted Sesame Street book covers until 9/11 and doing his own research led the artist to discover that there was another world — at least in his world — beneath the reality that he knew. When this film finds him, he’s alone but surrounded — perhaps truly — by ghosts of everyone he’s known and a joke online, an artist of conspiracy culture in a world that either believes that Democrats eat babies or worries that climate change is about to make our horrible world that much worse.

Dees believed in every conspiracy theory, all at once, while also meditating, which kind of warped my brain, because so many religious see that as Satanic. But who can say? Kudos to this film for not simply shooting fish in a barrel and abusing its subject, basically allowing him to do that himself.

It’s hard to make a rational exploration of a man who believed that a Zionist cabal was moving his shoes. But this movie does a good job of things, even forcing its subject to confront the fact that the filmmaker who has been spending time at his house is Jewish.

Dees died from melonoma. This movie made me wonder why a man who raises bunnies, sings to elderly people and their families to give comfort when they are in hospice and meditates in a hope to experience universal love could be filled with such hate.

Do you see what I see? is playing with The Last Frankenstein during MidWest WeirdFest on Sunday, March 6 at 6:30 PM CST. You can get tickets and more information on the MidWest Weird Fest website. You can learn more about Do you see what I see? and see the movie for yourself at the official page.