Paul T. Goldman, Paul Finkelman, and Ryan Sinclair walk into a bar. The twist? They’re all the same guy: the main characters of Peacock’s surreal documentary series Paul T. Goldman. 

Paul Finkelman is the name you’ll find in government records, but for simplicity and sanity’s sake, we’ll call him Goldman. After all, that’s who Finkelman decides to become after he claims he was scammed by his ex-wife Audrey Munson (a pseudonym). Goldman comes to believe that Audrey is running a sex trafficking ring, and sets out to expose her treachery, first by speaking on news programs and then in The Paul T. Goldman Chronicles, self-published novels he writes under the pen name Ryan Sinclair. 

Director Jason Woliner’s camera follows Goldman as he gradually spins out what amounts to an extended universe of fan fiction starring himself. He paints himself as an international rogue who jumps out of planes and fights bad guys and has a really nice son named Johnny. (Johnny is real; the plane-jumping is not.) In reality, he’s a middle-aged guy who lives in a pretty sparse apartment and sells insurance over the phone.

There’s a reason that Google suggests “real” as an addendum when you search for Paul T. Goldman: This project is weird. But Woliner’s docuseries, at least, is real. 

Episode one of Paul T. Goldman, which was initially released on Peacock in January and is getting a digital rerelease this week, opens with a title card: “In 2012, a man named Paul T. Goldman tweeted at me. He said that he had an incredible true story to tell and had written a book about it. He asked for my help bringing it to the screen. This is his story.” 

That’s really how Woliner came to know Goldman: He checked his mentions. He was among dozens of directors Goldman had tweeted at, pitching the screenplay he’d adapted based on his own stories.

“I saw his video, read his book, and became very obsessed with him and this project,” Woliner tells Vanity Fair over coffee in Los Angeles. He became, he says, “a genuine fan,” hooked on Goldman’s increasingly wild e-books. Woliner investigated Goldman before he ever reached out to make sure that he was merely eccentric, and not genuinely dangerous. Who was this man, really?

“Part of the question was, when does living in a fantasy become harmful and bad?” Woliner says. “If part of his reality does not match up with what we can determine to be objective reality, what’s the harm? At what point does that become harmful? And where is it harmless? Daydreaming about revenge to someone who wronged you is mostly harmless, I think. Other things, not as much.” 

Woliner wasn’t the only one Goldman told about the screenplay he’d written based on his book in those early years, nor was Woliner the only director who eventually responded. 

“The actual day I reached out, I think, he tweeted another round of directors, and then disgraced filmmaker Brett Ratner responded to him.… Brett Ratner tweeted back, ‘send me the book.’ And I was like, Oh, shit, okay. So then I emailed him that day and I was like, ‘Well, I want to do it. I’m from Hollywood.’”

The project Woliner ended up making is not easily described. “I think part of why it took me 10 years to do is because I’m so bad at explaining it,” he says. “You just gotta watch it.”

The six-episode show follows Woliner and Goldman as they film an adaptation of Goldman’s novel Duplicity: A True Story of Crime and Deceit with a full cast of actors—with the exception of Goldman, who plays himself. It’s unscripted, except when it’s not. Occasionally, Goldman also bullies a reluctant Woliner into scenes, jovially but forcefully booting the actor who’s been cast to play Woliner. It’s hard not to squirm watching Goldman’s stilted delivery of scenes that he wholeheartedly believes are not only well-written, but justice-minded. At one point, he writes a scene where he blows up a boat carrying his ex-wife and her pimp. (Goldman had spun a narrative that she was running a sex trafficking ring, and wrote it into his fantastic story, though Woliner has said he determined that this “was probably incorrect.”) Another time, he gets into a gunfight in Moscow, diving across the scene while firing at bad guys. All the while, there’s footage of Goldman explaining his story in interviews with Woliner.