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It is arch and arty, a compilation of deceptively ordinary images and imaginative ideas. Just as Seamus Heaney once did, Wilson settles on scaffolding as a metaphor, though in this case, not for enduring love, but rather our desire for protection against imaginary dangers.
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(Wilson has said that he is followed by a team of people who get “almost everybody” filmed to sign release forms.) His distinctive voice holds it all together, in hesitant tones, full of ums, ahs and faux naivety, revealing facts, some statements dressed up as facts that may not be facts at all, and descriptions that are mundane or florid, depending on his mood.Įpisode two is about why there is so much scaffolding in New York City, and the added focus works better, although to call it focus is a stretch: this meanders through a job Wilson once had filming beef for an online shopping channel, a scientist who explains cellular scaffolding, the use of scaffolding in classic movies and a scaffolding convention in New Orleans, which reveals much lot about how lucrative the scaffolding industry can be. This has the effect of making it seem very intimate – as if there is no intermediary there at all – and occasionally uncomfortably intrusive. There are rare moments when he does appear, caught in a reflection in a mirror or window, as if he has dropped in on his own films by mistake. Wilson is ever-present in voiceover, though he is barely there physically. He goes on holiday to Cancún in Mexico and meets a man called Chris, who is there to party but later reveals much more about why he is in search of oblivion. A travel agent tells him all about her love life. (It reminded me of Miranda July’s It Chooses You project, from 2011, in which the artist//writer/performer/film-maker documented the people she met after responding to classified ads.) He attends a concert by a Red Hot Chili Peppers bagpipe tribute band the Red Hot Chilli Pipers, then tries to make friends by wearing their T-shirt.
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He buys a blood-stained rug from a man online, and hears all about his recently ex-wife. Wilson follows small talk to a point of discomfort, and then keeps going. This sets up the idea that this might be an artier Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends, but it soon deviates. Wilson follows him to Pennsylvania to watch him work. This man reveals that, in his spare time, he sets up fake internet profiles to trap child predators. He meets a professor of philosophy to ask a far-reaching question about the future of humanity, then poses the same question to a man attending a huge WrestleMania event. He films pets, plants and the actor Kyle MacLachlan attempting, and failing, to swipe his MetroCard on the subway. To investigate what small talk is, and why we do it, Wilson captures people on the streets of New York.
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The first episode, How to Make Small Talk, sets the tone, and in a way that is a shame because the second, How to Put Up Scaffolding, is much, much better and seems to have a clearer idea of what this project is going to be. It is extremely odd – I can’t think of another show like it – and oddly moreish. Each week Wilson takes an idea or prompt and tells a story in voiceover, using an extraordinary collage of footage taken from the streets of New York City, and beyond, to illustrate his points, either literally or symbolically. It is an HBO series, arriving here two years after it first aired in the US, consisting of themed documentaries by the film-maker John Wilson, though at times it comes across more like an art project with surreal comedy undertones. M uch to my initial disappointment, How to With John Wilson (BBC2) is not a guide to life by the Radio 4 presenter, though surely there is a market for that.