"How To With John Wilson" creator and director John Wilson breaks down how he turned an episode about bird watching turned into a conspiracy thriller involving the Titanic. He reveals the pain-staking process of finding a duplicate of his car, the ideal unsuspecting participant and the perfect location to stage an explosive climactic finale. He also shares a ton of behind the scenes footage, including a consulting call with Steven Soderbergh that morphed a conversation about The Cheesecake Factory.
Variety Making a Scene presented by HBO
Variety Making a Scene presented by HBO
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00:00 I got back in the car and I was like, "Okay, Bruce, we're about to blow up this automobile."
00:05 We're actually going to blow this car up.
00:09 For a moment I think he was afraid that it was going to be a murder-suicide, that I was
00:13 about to blow it up with both of us in it.
00:14 You should have told me this to begin with, because I wouldn't have went along with anything.
00:17 That sounds vile, man.
00:19 It must have been really scary for him.
00:22 Ha!
00:23 Hello, my name is John Wilson and I made How To with John Wilson.
00:42 And this is a scene that is worth analyzing.
00:46 The script looks crazy for a How To episode.
00:49 The script that we start an episode with is completely rewritten from the ground up by
00:54 the time we end up with the final script.
00:57 I had four or five teams of B-unit shooters going out and filming every single day while
01:04 I was doing the A-unit stuff.
01:07 Every day there was a scavenger hunt list of different items that you needed to catch
01:12 like Pokemon across the city.
01:14 But then I tell them if they see anything more interesting than what's on the list,
01:19 just go and do that instead.
01:20 For How To Watch Birds, I really wanted to do an episode that dealt with truth.
01:25 I was having a lot of difficulty with people not believing certain parts of the show when
01:30 I put so much effort into making sure that everything is real.
01:37 Guy you meet in the supermarket, was he just in the supermarket?
01:41 Yeah.
01:42 I'm kind of a purist in a lot of ways about making sure that the image is kind of real
01:47 and feels authentic.
01:50 And I had this kind of little telltale heart moment with this shot of a toilet that I faked.
01:57 You needed to have at least one day on a stage in order to get a tax credit for the show.
02:03 So you rented a studio and had them rebuild the whole bathroom from scratch.
02:07 That was really getting to me and I feel like that anxiety just began to bubble up while
02:16 I was making this episode about birds.
02:20 You thought that people would be really excited about it, but after it aired, the only response
02:24 was people asking you if it was actually real.
02:29 The episode started innocently enough just about birds.
02:33 I get pretty distracted pretty easily and I like to take the first detour that I can
02:40 once it's presented when I'm interviewing somebody.
02:43 So when someone started to talk about truth and how you have to be honest when you're
02:49 talking about a bird that you've seen, it started to make me think a lot about this
02:54 one shot that I had manufactured.
02:57 Instead of continuing to just cover that in a rug, I just wanted to pry it open and see
03:05 what could blossom if I admitted to the audience that I had faked the shot.
03:11 Maybe birding is the wrong hobby if everyone thinks you're dishonest.
03:16 99.9% of the show is real.
03:19 It's as you see it.
03:20 I realized that once I confessed to having faked the shot, that I would be able to go
03:27 as far as I want in that direction just within the parameters of this one episode.
03:31 I started to write this strange conspiracy thriller which involved a titanic conspiracy
03:39 theorist that I found after having a conversation with someone at a bar.
03:44 So the damaged ship was actually brought out into the open ocean as the titanic and sunk
03:48 on purpose.
03:49 The idea was to cash in on an insurance policy.
03:52 One of the authors of the book that I got about the conspiracy theory was this guy named
03:57 Bruce Beverage.
03:58 He had the most interesting name on the book and I just had production contact him and
04:03 ask if he wanted to be interviewed for this documentary about the titanic.
04:07 And he said yeah.
04:08 So as this is happening, I'm starting to write this kind of strange thriller that doesn't
04:16 really have an ending and I'm not really sure what it's going to turn into.
04:20 I started to think about what kind of trouble I could get in if I did try to expose this
04:25 titanic myth.
04:26 I had written like James Cameron into this script somehow.
04:30 James Cameron was originally the kind of shadowy figure that was sending me anonymous emails
04:36 and telling me to go to hotel rooms and stuff like that.
04:39 I kind of ended up cutting that out just to keep it a bit more vague.
04:43 The guy Bruce Beverage and I meet up in Pigeon Forge in Tennessee.
04:48 It's a very kind of freakish American roadside attraction place with upside down houses and
04:54 stuff like that.
04:55 There's also this massive replica of the titanic that was also a museum in Pigeon Forge.
04:59 So it was kind of the perfect place for us to go.
05:02 So is this like based off the Olympic or Titanic?
05:04 On those it's Titanic.
05:05 Oh, okay.
05:06 It wasn't hard to convince him to just keep hanging out.
05:09 I did have him drive my car because I needed to film him.
05:14 One of the only requests he had during it was a bottle of Malibu for him and his wife
05:20 to drink at night.
05:22 He was really excited to be part of anything.
05:26 We just found the absolute perfect person for this just by rolling the dice with whoever
05:33 had the most interesting name.
05:34 I go, "If I come down here, can I get a job at the museum?"
05:37 And he told me no.
05:39 They wouldn't hire me here.
05:40 I don't know.
05:41 Oh, geez.
05:42 So much of the writing of How To happens in real time.
05:45 So as Bruce was telling me about the Olympic and Titanic being these ships that were swapped,
05:53 I started to think about what it would be like to basically do the same thing but with
05:58 my car.
05:59 I really wanted to swing for the fences with this last season and do a lot of stuff that
06:04 I may have been a bit too bashful to ask for in the first two.
06:10 I've always been a huge fan of Steven Soderbergh.
06:12 I basically just wanted to meet him.
06:14 I figured the best way would be to ask him if he wanted to consult on the episode.
06:20 He's one of the first people I thought of because I wanted the second and third act
06:26 of this episode to have a very Soderbergh kind of flavor to it.
06:30 We sent him the script and he read it and then we hopped on a call and just talked about
06:35 it.
06:36 He really liked the script and I think didn't really have many notes on it but just gave
06:40 us some advice about using professionals when blowing up a car.
06:44 We spent most of the time talking about the Cheesecake Factory.
06:47 He was wearing a Cheesecake Factory hat and I had never been there.
06:50 I like your Cheesecake Factory hat.
06:52 He just started talking about how it's just such an efficient operation with such a big
06:57 menu and all that stuff, which is true.
07:00 I wish every organization and government agency or even another restaurant worked like
07:11 the Cheesecake Factory.
07:13 This thing just works.
07:14 I can see that translating to the way that he makes his work sometimes.
07:19 I went to the Cheesecake Factory shortly after our conversation and I got very sick.
07:24 I'm like, "How do you do all of this?"
07:28 We had to find a 1989 Volvo of the same condition and model number and everything to bring to
07:37 Tennessee to blow up in a parking lot.
07:41 We eventually get the car and bring it all the way out to Tennessee and we have it stripped,
07:46 we have it lined with explosives.
07:49 The other logistical problem that was even more difficult was finding the exact location
07:56 that we could shoot it in.
07:58 I had in my mind a motel that had a balcony that looked out onto a parking lot and we
08:08 needed that parking lot to allow us to blow up a car in it.
08:12 My team eventually found this flapjacks parking lot that had everything in it.
08:16 I think I faked a shot in one of my documentaries and I told someone that it was real and I
08:23 feel kind of guilty about it.
08:25 In the reality of the show, Bruce was the one person that knew my secret that I faked
08:31 a single toilet shot.
08:33 He then goes into this Oscar-worthy monologue about police corruption.
08:38 I used to be a police officer.
08:39 I know what that means.
08:40 How do you mean?
08:41 Well, sometimes you gotta fake some things.
08:44 It was just one of the most chilling confessions I've ever witnessed in person.
08:51 This is what's great about the format, which I really love, is that I don't mind setting
08:57 up strange situations that you don't realize are set up because whatever is happening within
09:02 them is real.
09:04 And that is the most important thing to me.
09:06 So when he's confessing about stuff he did as a police officer in Chicago, that is all
09:12 100% real.
09:13 And that's what I'm trying to get to in any environment that I try to enter.
09:18 I'm just gonna go check something out in the motel.
09:22 Okay.
09:23 So I go in and I film this one little scene where the door is ajar.
09:27 You walk in, but there doesn't seem to be any signs of life anywhere.
09:32 It's kind of a red herring to create enough distance between seeing Bruce in the car and
09:38 then seeing it blow up.
09:39 You're meant to think that maybe Bruce died in the explosion, and that I'm a homicidal
09:46 documentarian.
09:48 I realize that I don't need to hide this from him anymore because he's clearly confused
09:52 at this point.
09:53 Is this what you thought it would be?
09:54 No, I'm gonna ask you when you get the camera turned off again what the hell you guys are
09:59 really doing.
10:00 He was killing me that I couldn't be fully transparent with him.
10:03 It must have been really scary for him, especially the way I delivered it.
10:08 I got back in the car and I was like, "Okay, Bruce.
10:11 We're about to blow up this automobile."
10:14 We're actually going to blow this car up, or blow up a car, a duplicate version of this
10:21 car.
10:22 For a moment, I think he was afraid that it was going to be a murder-suicide, that I was
10:25 about to blow it up with both of us in it.
10:28 And I could kind of see that in his eyes for a moment.
10:31 But then I kind of explained that although our interactions have been authentic, there
10:36 has been this background process the whole time of this conspiracy thriller that is going
10:42 to culminate in this car exploding right now, because I wanted to commit some kind of insurance
10:48 fraud much like the Olympic did with the Titanic.
10:52 And he understood that immediately.
10:54 And his only question was something to the effect of, "Are you allowed to do that?"
10:59 You got permission to do that for somebody?
11:01 Yeah.
11:02 And how does that play in the world?
11:05 There's a bit of a Titanic switch.
11:10 I'm assassinated because I revealed that the switch wasn't real.
11:14 The stunt team, everybody was hiding behind the hotel the whole time, you know, and everyone
11:17 was really well hidden.
11:18 And then everyone came out just like a bunch of roaches.
11:22 We had the duplicate of my car lined with explosives that we then carried out into the
11:28 parking lot and removed my car.
11:31 We only had one shot to do this.
11:32 It's going to be action John until he gets to the point that we all decide.
11:38 Action Fletcher on the blood.
11:40 So much time and effort and secrecy had gone into making this happen in this exact order
11:47 to line up at this exact time, you know, just like so the lighting is right, everything.
11:53 Maybe what you really need now is just a little time to your...
11:59 Fuck!
12:02 It's just like such a miracle that it worked out.
12:04 I didn't realize that we hadn't told anyone staying in the motel that we were doing that.
12:10 So immediately this guy runs out, starts screaming at the crew, and he is so upset that we didn't
12:21 tell him that we were blowing up a car like next to his balcony.
12:26 But it was like far enough away and I think he was just being a little dramatic.
12:29 While I'm trying to get coverage of this flaming car and the fire department and all that stuff,
12:35 I have this man screaming not too far away from me who is really upset that his car alarm
12:40 went off.
12:41 All of the cops in the scene are actual cops and they just like were okay with acting for
12:46 me.
12:47 I thought that was really funny.
12:48 I thought they did a really good job.
12:49 Is there anybody in the vehicle?
12:52 Yeah, my friend Bruce.
12:56 I kind of just wanted to make a piece of work that you could point to and just be like,
13:01 look it's okay if there are manipulated elements in some kind of non-fiction work that you're
13:06 doing because there is no purity.
13:09 And even though this is a really cartoonish way to prove a point, the message is still
13:13 important to me that you shouldn't be too offended when you find out that something
13:18 wasn't exactly as it seems because that's how everything is.
13:22 The next time something seems too good to be true, just enjoy that you live in a world
13:29 where something like that is possible.
13:33 I really do feel like we got away with a heist after three seasons of How To.
13:38 I feel really fortunate that we were able to do that.
13:42 But I've always considered the work to be really cinematic and I kind of want to continue
13:49 to move in that direction but just in a slightly different format.
13:53 I don't like working with actors.
13:55 So I'm probably still working on fiction.
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