Clicks, Tics and Tangents

After John Wilson left Binghamton University's small experimental-film program — where, he says, "They don't prepare you for the industry at all; they prepare you to be, kind of, a self-doubting experimental filmmaker, which I was for most of my 20s" — his first job out of college was with an investigator.

"I would take all the private eye's footage," says the writer, executive producer, cameraman, director and narrator of HBO's How to with John Wilson, "and I would search for hours and hours and try to find the little incriminating moments."

More than a decade later, Wilson is a master at mining the minutiae of everyday life for incriminating moments of storytelling gold, as evidenced by the rave reviews HTWJW has received.

The six-episode first season is a series of essays — including "How to Make Small Talk," "How to Put Up Scaffolding," "How to Cook the Perfect Risotto" — that veer off into countless diversions, raise philosophical issues, share personal moments (and occasional male frontal nudity) yet always boomerang back to the original premise.

Every episode is like a wormhole into Wilson's brain, with misfires, tangents, revelations and verbal tics. When a sound editor cleaned up the audio during one mix, Wilson made him put back all the tics and clicks.

"I started doing this to get over so many weird things," he admits. "I had such social anxiety, I hated the sound of my voice — all of this stuff I wanted to throw on the canvas and just stare straight at, to become comfortable about it."

Wilson started posting his lo-fi, DIY how-to videos on Vimeo in 2011. It wasn't until 2018, thanks to a chance restaurant encounter with Nathan Fielder of Comedy Central's Nathan for You, that he found an accomplice to help take his work to another level.

"We struck up a conversation and had dinner together that night," Wilson recalls. "A few days later, we formed the pitch for the show. He put everything on the line. It's one of the nicest things anybody's ever done for me."

It's fitting that Fielder, an executive producer on HTWJW, was the catalyst. Both men's shows feature awkward hosts who are fearless inquisitors; they're unafraid of uncomfortable silences, open to tough questions and filmed looking for crazy experiences. They're also unlikely leading men who find beauty and pathos in the ordinary.

"I have a hard time starting conversations sometimes," Wilson confesses. "And the camera is this weird instrument that connects us in a way. Nathan, I think, saw a kindred spirit."

The Queens resident says he tries to go out with his camera in New York City every single day. "The landscape is going to look a lot different" in season two, he says. "But I am excited to document things that will only look like this for a short amount of time. I was kind of bummed out that I had to stop filming once Covid started, because I feel a responsibility to shoot as much raw footage in this environment as I can before this disappears."

Like a true New Yorker, Wilson adds a note of optimism amid the gloom. "But people are still active in New York. The spirit is still here. That's something that will never go."

Season one of How to with John Wilson streams on HBO Max.

This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, Issue No. 7, 2021