How To with John Wilson

Holy shit at that episode. I liked the last one a little better, but this was wild.

how in the world did he get that

I'm assuming when you are filming nearly all of your waking hours in NYC you are going to get some things.

one of the most explosively funny and deeply disturbing episodes of tv, i've ever seen. more please.

t/s TLC Tugger vs TC Tuggers

right?? i have so many questions

The guy must have a few years of video files stored with pretty intense metadata. There's definitely more than one moment showing "Before and after" shots from the same location that look like they're least a year apart from each other.

yeah that occurred to me with the shot of the lawyer's office and its "great view"

will never think of parasite in the same light again

https://filmmakermagazine.com/110494-i-dont-have-the-prosthetics-team-sacha-baron-cohen-does-john-wilson-on-his-hbo-show-how-to-with-john-wilson/#.X7LlBxY8aEc

no one:
absolutely no one:
the daughter of the foreskin guy in the other room trying desperately to stay out of camera range:
foreskin guy: who wants grapefruit seltzer

haha that moment was excellent, that poor girl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Y3WFWoSP8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgkdmSm721Q

there's like two dozen videos on the TLCTugger YouTube page, including ten "song parodies," a Downfall meme, an alex jones clip and two "Andrew Yang for a Better Wang" clips

also this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzKjvxS5QfA

http://i.imgur.com/R0x0YkA.png
http://i.imgur.com/XG8masN.png

i watched and enjoyed the first episode of this but it is very much "take three dashes of nathan fielder and add one dash of joe pera, blend and serve." i like both of those things but the vibe seems uncomfortably close. the visual jokes are the one unique element.

I don't know how intentional the similarities to Joe Pera are but yeah I thought the same

Those three definitely stand apart in my mind as a new wave of a certain kind of comedic voice, really the only three TV comedy people I'm interested in at this point tbh.

yeah that plus On Cinema

Fielder and Wilson have some overlap, Pera and On Cinema are their own things entirely imho

I don't know if I'm reading too much into the past few posts but in case anyone thinks Wilson is ripping off Pera, Wilson's been doing this for almost a decade now (link to his non-HBO material in the OP)

think it's more that this is the first era where a comedian like that could land a TV show on a major network

The Mandela people reminded me of the characters in slacker and waking life

the part where he uses a "memory trick" to recall his shopping list was brilliant

I don't know that I'd necessarily comfortably slot Wilson into "comedy," feels to me more borne out of a Les Blank path if anything. Think there's a lot of genuine humanity and lack of judgement in what he's doing, certainly more so than Fielder. I think the Joe Pera maybe holds on grounds of kindness

Not that it's not funny, it's incredibly funny, but I'd doubt that's his primary intent

xp yeah the more freewheeling Linklater seems like a good touchstone too

Damn this is good

This has brought my household great joy in a time that's low on joy

i don't think anyone is ripping anyone off. and i agree "how to" is much more fielder than pera. i just see similarities in the halting speech patterns representing intense social awkwardness and the narration explaining things to the viewer.

i feel like fielder, wilson and pera all seem linked to me bc they all have a comedic persona thats based on some level of naivete, where the comedy comes not necessarily from making fun of things per se but from just sort of looking at the world with fresh eyes

nathan for you is obv darker than the other two, but as has been often pointed out a lot of the time the comedy comes from people being nicer than we expect them to be, being too nice or overly accommodating of nathans horrible actions. theyre not necessarily an antidote to cynicism or whatever, but i feel like theres definitely a relationship to irony and cynicism in these shows that feels very different from a lot of other comedy in recent years

Something about last night's ep felt like it was more influenced by Nathan Fielder than the past few eps

Anyway loved it, loved the income tax neon sign, loved him showing up to the Long Island referee meeting in the wrong sport referee uniform, loved the shot of the little kid eating his own snot as John was talking about organic food

I was dying laughing at pretty much every second of the ref meeting sequence, incredible stuff.

I had very vivid feelings bringing back a lot of childhood memories of being in rooms like that and groups of adults like that, having to tag along with my dad to some boring meeting or potluck or something, having the general idea of "adults" demystified for me, learning that for the most part they were usually not interesting or cool or even very nice, pretty much the same as the kids I already knew in my elementary school class, just much larger. Amazing stuff. They even stole his whistle.

covering your furniture hasa new meaning or is that new.
Finally getting to see last week's one or the week before's

okay the thing he does where he records someone wincing and looking distraught and then does a voiceover claiming they're upset because the check was split unfairly is really funny to me

one of my favorite parts was the "2 guys...3 guys....4 guys...two three four" bit, mostly because that's a joke you'd never see on any other show

I died at “a reffle”

one of my favorite parts was the "2 guys...3 guys....4 guys...two three four" bit, mostly because that's a joke you'd never see on any other show

i was really hoping it was going to somehow lead up to "three cousins, a deli slicer, and a buncha bagels" in coney island

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBt5PAeWsAAMYbl.jpg

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-television/hbos-how-to-with-john-wilson-captures-the-weird-wondrous-new-york-city-thats-never-on-tv

a reffle

one of the reasons this couldn't work in the UK (most places in the west?) is that you have to get a waiver signed to broadcast someone's image on TV or at least you mostly do. I do find myself wondering about the logistics/legality and even the morality of some of the shots playing alongside the narration. I know I'd feel pretty humiliated and annoyed if I was, for example, the clearly exasperated guy in the baseball cap giving his friends the side-eye at the restaurant table while John's talking about resentments w/r/t splitting the bill.

I think all those people signed releases! Check that interview link upthread.

really? I find that almost impossible to believe. I'll check the interview out, thanks.

The How to Split the Bill episode makes me think about ILX a lot (and not just the tipping/splitting threads)

If I’m shooting people on the street doing something funny, either I or a field producer will go up to that person and tell them they were in a shot for a documentary show about New York, then we get a release. Pretty much everyone says OK, which was surprising to me—people respond surprisingly well to the news they’ve been filmed as long as you level with them and tell them exactly what the show is, like “Oh, I’m making an episode about small talk and you guys were having small talk on the street.” It’s innocuous when you tell them what it is, because people’s imaginations can run wild when you tell them they’ve been filmed. You have to put them at ease and let them know exactly what context you’re planning on putting it in. I’m confident that it’s to serve a larger, weird joke, usually on myself.

Feeling a lot of feelings after that finale but mostly just thinking about that slide whistle and how I really hope he gets another season

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCNsx_NyNOU

finale was one of the best episodes of television I've ever seen, what a masterful season

otm - i love how just as it was getting crushingly heavy at the end, he pulled it all back with the perfectly stupid "SHRIMP NIBBLERS ARE BACK" shot

omfg the finale

Sad I've finished watching it. The whole thing now feels like an elegy for the 21st century. As soon as I saw Mike in the last episode I was drawn to him. Not sure (genuinely) how I feel about his self-surgery being addressed in such a brief way. Googled and found him on Reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/HowToWithJohnWilson/comments/16hsben/my_thoughts/

I do love that the last episode of the show examines the idea of living eternally vs finding comfort in the fact that nothing lasts forever

kinda wonder how that guy came to be on the show in the first place, the episode makes it seem like John bumped into him in a food court, guessing that wasn't actually the case

This title makes it sound like he's got more stuff brewing...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwGWoqyQqTE

And here's something that was brewing, to premiere at Sundance:

The History of Concrete / U.S.A. (Director: John Wilson, Producers: Clark Filio, Shirel Kozak, Allie Viti) — After attending a workshop on how to write and sell a Hallmark movie, filmmaker John Wilson tries to use the same formula to sell a documentary about concrete. World Premiere. Documentary.

So it's a RomCon?

What finer romance.

!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oohRn36CWhs