Before landing his own HBO show, John Wilson built a cult-following with the online series “How To.” Now, after more than 10 years and three seasons on HBO, the documentarian of the bizarre, mundane and macabre in (mostly) New York City is ending his series next week. He says HBO asked him if he wanted to make another season and he declined: He’s glad to be ending the show on a high note.
“I have a few ideas for what I want to work on next,” Wilson says. “But right now, I’m just really enjoying watching people react to everything we did.”
For the next week, Wilson is programming a series of his own favorite films at Anthology Film Archives, the downtown movie mecca founded by experimental film giants like Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage.
Gothamist's Ryan Kailath caught up with Wilson outside the Seagram Building in Midtown — the main character in one of Wilson’s selections — to talk about How To, the Anthology series, and more.
Kailath: I feel like even New Yorkers who really like movies might not know about Anthology, like it drops off the radar.
John Wilson: I really like Anthology. It has a really rich history of experimental filmmakers and I wanted to just continue that lineage somehow by … maybe placing myself within it. [Laughs.] I thought it’d give me more experimental film cred.
You’re screening a bunch of shorts that your crew made. Tell us about that.
When I started to assemble the crew for "How To," I wanted to handpick different artists that I was friends with to shoot and edit and kinda co-write it with. They made some of my favorite movies in recent memory and I just wanted to be able to showcase the work of all these amazing artists that work on the show.
The crew of friends you’re describing, your second unit – can you explain the mechanics of what that is and how you work together?
I shoot about three-quarters of the show. But I have about four second unit teams that go out every single day when I'm in production and just harvest as much strange B-roll as they possibly can. They usually have a scavenger hunt list of certain things, like insane accumulations of trash, or bottles of urine on the sidewalk.
And they can always fall back on the scavenger hunt list if they ever feel stuck. But there's usually enough street life to shoot that there's always something unexpected coming back to me at the end of the day.
Does your second unit ever come back with stuff and you think, wow, that's so much better than I could've done?
Yeah absolutely. My second unit is much better at shooting certain things than I am. I have a certain way that I view the city, but the amount of time that they have to spend on the street produces a certain kind of boredom. And only when you reach that kind of peak boredom do you then begin to reinterpret the space visually.
One of my favorite shots of the whole season was the very first shot in the restroom episode, of a man just laying down at the top of a set of subway stairs and the Empire State Building is perfectly framed in his crotch and it looks like an erection. I was just so in love with that shot.
You can only begin to see the city that way after you've walked the same streets hundreds of times, and you're just looking for new ways to excite yourself. That's so much of what the show was, making your own entertainment and finding ways to fall back in love with these spaces that you maybe got tired of.
Does John Wilson ever just get a cup of coffee, without bringing his camera? He does not.
Can I ask you a nerdy process question: What’s your file system organization like?
When I was making it by myself, I would sort all the footage into mood-based timelines. So like, this footage makes me feel sad, or this footage makes you feel happy. Or really rich colors, or cops, or people hugging.
But now I have a team of editors and assistant editors that meticulously log every single word on every awning … a description of every activity that was filmed, every gesture, and it's all put into a database that they can search and recall any image I need. It's like, oh, I need this shot of a man with an iguana on his head. And they pull it up immediately because myself and all of the editors have almost total recall of everything that's ever been shot.
Tell us about another movie you’re showing in the Anthology series.
This movie "Overnight," which is a behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of "The Boondock Saints," which is just such a disaster.
The director’s a jerk, the producers he’s working with are really awful When I’m out directing the show I always think about this movie, and remind myself that I need to accept input from everyone around me and have a genuinely collaborative environment
Should we talk about this building? We’re at the Seagram Building in Midtown.
Yeah. So "The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces" is this documentary by this guy William Whyte, and it studies the way that public space is used. He focuses specifically on the Seagram Building here on 53rd & Park.
You seem like kindred spirits. Generous, patient presentation of people, funny but not making fun…
Yeah I think about that movie constantly when I’m shooting, when I’m editing … tonally it’s really nice because it’s very anthropological, but he does editorialize in these little funny ways. I really want people to come out and see this movie because I think it’ll make you enjoy the city a lot more. It’s one of those movies I wish I made and there’s a little bit of it in everything I do, you know.
There’s a guy, Normal Bob Smith, who did a whole taxonomy of every single kind of character in Union Square. Exactly where the tourists are, where all the peeps are, because, you know, there are these very shallow steps which allow them to look up the skirts of women that are sitting on the steps. And the peeps all hang out by the lampposts. Stuff like that is just such candy to me.
William Whyte’s whole thing was people sit where there are places to sit. I'm constantly looking around for places to sit, comfortable places, places where you can just observe street life.
So with "How To" ending, how are you feeling?
I feel a little melancholy, but I’m just really happy with how the third season came out. This season is the best it could possibly be, and I think we're ending on a really strong note. But also — you haven't seen the finale, have you?
People may not be asking for more after they see the finale. [Laughs]. We'll see. It depends on what you can stomach.
I don't know if you saw the Instagram post on @stoopingnyc.
That was the fastest turnaround from episode to sidewalk meme that I've ever seen.
A day after the episode aired. I just felt so honored that someone felt like making a joke to whoever walked by on the street. I took a screenshot of it and I just thought it was so funny.
I was afraid that New Yorkers would dislike me when the show came out, because I was just walking around filming them. And I’m glad that New Yorkers like the show because the show is for people that understand the city intimately.
The film series “John Wilson Selects” runs through Tuesday, Aug. 29 at the Anthology Film Archives. General admission is $12.
