‘Are You Using This Camera Because You Don’t Want To Be With Us?’

Men making films and hiding in plain sight

Discussed: How To with John Wilson, The Rehearsal, Sherman’s March, “An Incomplete List of What the Cameraperson Enables,” therapy memes, Going Deep with David Rees

A few hours into my binge of the documentary show How To with John Wilson, I noticed Wilson’s use of the word “you” instead of “I.” “You go to a bookstore” he says over footage he shot while walking into a bookstore. 

At first it seems unusual, given that How To is entirely Wilson’s point-of-view of his own experiences. He holds the camera and films as he takes on everyday tasks—episodes include “How To Make Small Talk,” “How To Throw Out Your Batteries,” and “How To Watch the Game.” Occasionally his hand reaches into the frame to interact with something, mirroring the look of first-person video games. Wilson interviews people, but his is the voice we hear most, in an affectedly haphazard narration (his voiceover is full of “ums” and sentences that trail off comically) that gives the feeling of sitting with a slightly awkward friend as they flip through their camera roll. 

But as Wilson keeps saying “you” instead of “I,” a different feeling takes over. The viewer is no longer with Wilson, they are Wilson. His reality becomes our own, and his neuroses become ours, too. Simple chores look like terrifying obstacles. Basic socialization grows into a quest to avoid embarrassment. Curiosities build into obsessions. How To elevates the daily life of a soft-spoken, anxious thirty-something into the stuff of premium television—drama fit to stand alongside Succession and Game of Thrones. Moreover, it turns the viewer into the star of the show. No wonder soft-spoken, anxious thirty-something guys keep telling me to watch How To. I, too, am soft-spoken, anxious, and in my thirties. Watching How To feels like not being alone inside my own head.

The key to this connection is Wilson’s camera. It’s his way of entering into the wider world without ever fully connecting to it. “I'm seeing a camera, and I'm seeing you,” an interviewee tells Wilson in an episode about how to put plastic covering on furniture. Like most episodes of How To, the stated goal moves from a literal mission to a metaphor, and here, the guest is wise to Wilson’s maneuver. “There's almost like a film between the two,” the interviewee continues. “You’re always used to having some kind of protective mechanism.”  

In her essay “An Incomplete List of the What the Cameraperson Enables,” documentarian Kirsten Johnson runs through what a person filming gains through their action:

—Access and a reason to stay in worlds not of one’s own

—Permission to behave, ask, do in ways that are transgressive/outside social norms

—Complete distraction from one’s own life

—The creation of evidence of experience

—The chance to be closer or farther (through the lens) than is physically possible

—Emotional connection

—Trauma (vicarious, secondary, and direct)

—Enhanced influence and power

—Sense of invisibility

—Sense of invincibility

—Magical thinking

—Suspension of time

In his quiet awkwardness, Wilson seems like a person to whom the real world is one that is not his own. The camera gives him access to that world. How To isn’t just an outlet for the hours of footage Wilson obsessively collects, it is his excuse to film everything, to be the cameraperson, to talk to people, and to tell the audience about himself. “The more you talk to someone, the harder it is to hide who you really are,” he says in the first episode. Over the course of the show, Wilson shares details about breakups and explains the childhood incidents that drove him to become a documentarian. He opens up in a way that he makes clear is not easy for him. Because we experience the show as Wilson, we share in his revelation and connection. We are not the camera, we are the cameraperson. 

In style, How To brings to mind Johnson’s masterpiece Cameraperson (a film essay compiled of footage Johnson shot for other documentaries) and the films of Ross McElwee, a documentarian whose work is built around his meticulous recording of daily life. McElwee’s signature work, Sherman’s March begins with him going through a breakup just as he gets funding to make a documentary about the lingering legacy of Sherman’s March to the Sea. Instead of following through with his plans, McElwee records himself courting—and being rejected by—multiple women. 

Like Wilson, McElwee’s droll narration is well-timed to his visual montage (McElwee agonizes over “the prospect of meeting someone new” while showing clips of Scottish wrestlers). The presence of the camera is at times completely overlooked, leading to sequences that are stunning in their combination of drab and surreal, as when a preacher explains the end of days to one of McElwee’s romantic prospects while the prospect’s daughter calmly eats an ice cream sandwich in the background. 

At other times, the camera is the elephant in the room. A friend acting as matchmaker tells McElwee to put his camera down and live his life. “Are you using this camera because you don’t want to be with us?” she asks. McElwee doesn’t need to answer. He’s using the camera so he can be with them; it’s what gives him the strength to be present and, should he need it, an escape back into the invisibility of the cameraperson.

The attempt to use the camera to sidestep personal awkwardness is the core of The Rehearsal, a show created by and starring How To executive producer Nathan Fielder. In The Rehearsal, Fielder prepares elaborate and precise simulations of everyday life to help people prepare for difficult conversations or decisions. Fielder participates, too. “I’ve been told my personality can make people uncomfortable, so I have to work to offset that,” he says in the first episode to establish why life deserves a run-through. He eventually stages rehearsals for the rehearsals, and soon the simulations become a way for him to see the world—to ask the “what if” questions about life and to figure out how he comes across to other people. Fielder portrays his everyday life as lacking, and the show becomes his attempt to fill his life with meaningful connections. The camera adds a layer of protection for him. He’s experiencing life without directly living it.

Television has rarely embraced this level of complexity in nonfiction, opting usually for either Ken Burns-style documentaries, cookie-cutter true crime, news, or reality competition shows. One precursor to How To and The Rehearsal is Going Deep with David Rees, another show in which the star goes to extreme lengths to conduct the basic business of life—episodes include “How to Shake Hands” and “How to Pet a Dog.” The show builds on Rees’s book How to Sharpen Pencils, which turned mastery of the mundane into a holy quest for its author. His drive for perfection seems at once beautifully meditative in its repetitive practices and impossibly silly in its target. The understanding Rees seeks is like the clarity Wilson chases or the polish Fielder tries to put on his interactions. The three men step outside of the world and look at it very closely. Life’s absurdity is laid bare through the attempt to understand it. 

At this point, it’s tempting to cite a familiar meme: “Men will literally [insert grand action here] instead of going to therapy.” Men will literally make hours of a documentary instead of going to therapy. But that feels presentist at best and reductive at worst. When their shows are at their strongest, Fielder and Wilson are making art out of their empathy. They’re driven to relate to others, and that drive comes out in their filmmaking. Each show is at its weakest when the star’s dedication to a deeper search seems thin—when Fielder’s family simulation devolves into the actor playing his son staging an overdose or when Wilson “ums” and “uhs” over footage of dogs defecating. At these points, the hosts refuse to let go of the ability to dismiss their enterprise as just a joke. “Humor is my go-to,” Fielder tells the audience early in the show, but The Rehearsal is funnier as the premise grows more complex, and Fielder more invested. The comedy is made stronger by the emotional and narrative complexity. To say it was only for a laugh would embrace one-dimensionality and turn away from the empathy that the camera can provide.

A dismissal would also betray the trust the viewers have put into the creators. It would put the shows on the same footing as many reality shows, which operate on the cynical assumption that everyone is playing a part in order to find fame or win a prize. In her essay, Johnson also lists what a person being filmed gets from the experience:

—A chance to speak of things they have never spoken of and hence say things they never expected to say

—An invitation to think of a future when they will no longer be alive but what they say and do will be preserved in another form

—The chance to see him or herself as a subject (worthy of time and attention)

—The chance to imagine different outcomes

—A change of status in the community (family, village, profession)

—Increased risk to one’s own safety and/or reputation

—The creation of an image of self, the distribution of which one cannot control on a global scale in perpetuity

—The opportunity to see oneself from a different perspective

—A shift in perspective about which transgressions are possible

—Emotional connection with film crew

—Hope that being filmed can change one’s fate or might impact a situation in the future

The people who Wilson, Fielder, Rees, and McElwee talk to are generally friendly; they answer their interrogators’ strangeness with patience and openness. One man shows Wilson his bomb shelter—a disused missile silo stocked with ‘90s arcade games. An anti-circumcision activist is comfortable enough to be nude from the waist down for most of the time Wilson is in his home. Fielder’s subjects go along with his schemes. Those who give up only do so after reality becomes so warped that it seems they’re only around for Fielder’s gain. 

Perhaps all participants are only acting like this because of the camera—they’re hoping for the change in status Johnson describes, or they’re flattered by the request to be interviewed. Or maybe people are just as uncertain about how to behave as Wilson and Fielder are, and the subjects go along with the shows out of confusion, politeness, or for the break in their daily routines.

It’s these people who provide the real lessons of How To. Wilson is preoccupied with finding ways to connect, and with protecting himself in case everything goes wrong. But things generally don’t go wrong. The path is surprising and the adventure is uncertain, but we get through just fine. Watching How To, we realize we’re not alone. People are generally nice, if a little awkward. There’s nothing to be afraid of, except everything.