How To with John Wilson

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

this is easily my favorite show of the year along with aew dynamite

protect john wilson's landlord at all costs

that Anatomy Of A Scene video is brilliant

Just finished the final ep. Love this show so much.

Really curious as to how long he was filming and then how long it took to comb through it all and stitch everything together. Know we got a glimpse of his daily cataloguing, but I assume there was some more sophisticated indexing going on there? Seems like a lot of patience, creativity, and work behind it any which way.

this is pretty good but nowhere near Joe Pera imo

Haven’t seen anything from Joe Pera to my knowledge but will rectify shortly

Wilson hits me intellectually and Pera hits me emotionally.
Though to be fair, that last ep DID hit me emotionally. Really nailed what the early days of COVID in the city were like.

Enjoyed the Mama thread in the last one.

“She’s the only person in my life that I never... vape around.”

this show is funny, but - and this is gonna sound pretentious and hyperbolic but I mean it - it's in a way that transcends comedy. or I guess more accurately, it's something peripheral to comedy. this dude is a street photographer first and foremost. contemporary street photographers, particularly the ones in Brooklyn but also all the ones through NYC or anywhere where this sort of documentation is successful on the instagrams and such, are always on the lookout for little visual jokes, things that are just naturally intrinsically funny in this universal zen way where captions can only weigh them down. so captions are foregone here in lieu of the narration which is the more traditional application of "comedy" in this show, and it's exactly what you'd expect of these Brooklyn-style instagram-perfect comedy-moment hunters. the narration adds this conscious layer of

eh forget it, I don't know where I'm going this with this. I just really like this show and it's exactly what I was hoping it'd be (post-comedy)

my brother-in-law and I were texting about it and he mentioned that my seven-year-old nephew had seen it and had commented "I don't understand it, but I like it too."

It’s a lot of things, yeah, and comedy is only one of the pillars.

This sounds dumb, but personally a lot of it reminded me of a time I took mushrooms and just walked around my city one Saturday afternoon. Hyper attuned to everything and things you’d typically filter out walking down the street became significant, absurd, and alien.

if you've ever spent several years roaming your city trying to be a street photographer doing pretty much exactly this same thing, wasting hour upon hour trying to find the best of the best so as to not waste anyone's time with your product, including all the requisite laborsome editing and all the mindfuckery that meta-processing entails, you too would feel like you were having yet another one of these mushroom-style trips, another rake of the filter

Hahah. Well... happy to be a tourist in that department and appreciative of those who put in the work and do it well so I can feel those things on my couch.

word! that's how I'm feeling this show too. it's v v good

Yeah my wife digs this show a lot but I think she’s only laughed once per episode

your wife sounds pretty hot

that Nathan Fielder anatomy video seems exactly like the kind of thing this show is a welcome antidote to. Levels of Irony accepted (sadly, not gladly) but, really, why would you make that film? I realise it's to make more people watch HTwJW but it seems to work against it in a very bad way.

just kidding dude, that's a joke like how Nathan did that whole nubile young men staying at his house bouncing on his trampoline creating content for his business joke thing in that cajunsunday posted. Nathan doesn't want to violate our tweens and I'm not interested in your wife

^ xpost btw

why not

Thought the Nathan anatomy video was pretty good and kinda the only way I could see that dude making a “promotional video”.

sir, if you'd like to take this conversation about your wife offline, just send me a webmail, we'll get it going I promise you

fuck! that was an xpost btw goddangit

can we keep these other people out of the john wilson thread who is actually good please

https://www.vulture.com/article/how-to-with-john-wilson-finale-interview.html

How is your landlord doing?
She’s good! I don’t know if I can tell you exactly what she’s doing because it might be a spoiler for season two. I haven’t been greenlit or anything yet, but just in case.

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

yeah that was amazing

finale was great. got me super emotional too

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

nathan is gonna look 55 in his early thirties

He's 37

my point exactly
you absolutely have to watch that video btw

yeah he doesn't look prematurely old he just doesn't die his hair the way everyone else in the biz does

wow this vid takes a pretty weird turn doesn't it

you gotta diversify

criterion release of john wilson when

"I feel like the other guys don't like me as much as you do" was a little too on the nose

Mama update https://www.instagram.com/p/CIgU4hSjCX2/

I finally watched the first episode Saturday night, it was great. I don't know what I was expecting, it definitely wasn't what I got but I loved it. I really liked the serious turn at the MTV spring break.