"I Am a Camera": John Wilson on Magic Tricks, Nathan Fielder and How to Make a Documentary

In a crumbling empire of ludicrous wealth and slop, filmmaker John Wilson keeps showing us what it means to be human — even (and especially) when that involves poop and/or circumcision. The director of "The History of Concrete" sits down with Pablo to contemplate how A. I. is forcing Hollywood's hand, what Nathan Fielder (and the Hallmark Channel) taught him about storytelling, and why art can live in peaceful conflict with the demands of reality and journalism. Plus: Tim Tebow in the Philippines, Dwyane Wade in an elevator... and balloon fetishists. • See "The History of Concrete" https://www.magpictures.com/thehistoryofconcrete/ (Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Apple Card.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out, brought to you by Apple Card. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Everything is real. The foreskin restoration device is real. I have one at my house.

• 0:12Pablo Torre?

  Right after this.

• 0:16Speaker 02

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• 0:45Speaker 03

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• 1:18Pablo Torre?

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• 2:01Pablo Torre?

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• 2:26Pablo Torre?

  Have you been doing other stuff today? Or is today otherwise a chill?

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Today, I just like, I don't know, had therapy.

• 2:35Pablo Torre?

  The original podcast.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. It does feel like, yeah. It's like a very, it's kind of an imaginary line between the two. Like, doing like podcast [BLEEP].

• 2:44Pablo Torre?

  I was inadvertently doing promo for my, for my film.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  No, exactly, yeah, seriously, it feels like that. But yeah, I'm glad you followed up and we could do this. Yeah, we could talk about whatever. What's that, you're doing taxes?

• 2:56Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, this is, this is from a previous episode. Do you know who Tim Tebow is?

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Hmm, sounds familiar.

• 3:04Pablo Torre?

  Played quarterback. I love that. I love that this is not something you would be intuitively, immediately aware of.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  No, no. I have such a massive blind spot there.

• 3:13Pablo Torre?

  No, no, but I love it, John. Because I've been thinking about you while also thinking about Tim Tebow, former star quarterback for the University of Florida and Denver Broncos.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:24Pablo Torre?

  And this is something that I have not said elsewhere on my show that people have been asking me if I'm gonna talk about. Tim Tebow, who is extremely Christian, spent his spring break in 2008 in the Philippines, where my family is from, where he was born as the son of missionaries. And the thing he was doing on spring break 2008 was circumcising children.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting. That he was personally doing that?

• 3:53Pablo Torre?

  There's a quote from his dad, Bob.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 3:58Pablo Torre?

  Quote, "I got a kick watching him. He did a great job, and he didn't look really nervous. I wouldn't let him cut on me, but he did well and helped where there was a need."

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know if I'd let him cut on me either.

• 4:11Pablo Torre?

  I don't know if I would.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  If you're passionate about it, I don't know.

• 4:14Pablo Torre?

  He's very passionate. This was happening at Uncle Dick's Home, a charity outside of General Santos City, founded by the Bob Tebow Evangelical Association. Once again, Tim's dad. For people who don't know why I would think of you while thinking about circumcision, could you begin to explain why that might be?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, for the uninitiated. I made a TV show for a few years on HBO that dealt with a bunch of different eccentric characters. And, you know, one episode was kind of about how to cover your furniture because I was dealing with a cat that was tearing up my couch. And as you explore a topic like that, you inevitably end up talking to anti-circumcision activists, you know, as one does.

• 5:03Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  It became a big part of the episode. And yeah, I ended up spending a lot of time with a guy that had designed a device to regrow your foreskin at home. And it worked.

• 5:16Pablo Torre?

  So a couple of things that I want to help people understand here is that when you say you spend time with a guy who had a device that would quote-unquote "regrow" your foreskin, you are describing one of the images that is most seared into my brain?

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Uh-huh.

• 5:32Pablo Torre?

  I imagine this has to be a thing that lots of people who love your show, How To with John Wilson on HBO, which ran for several years, like I do. This has to be high on the list of stuff they're like, hey, John, can we talk about the uncircumcision machine?

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's something people love to think about, love to talk about, I guess.

• 5:49Pablo Torre?

  The image.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, this, this guy, as he's demonstrating this to me, you know, he's, he's on his bed. He's, he's kind of, you know, I don't know what, daffy ducking. I don't know what you call it. He's nude from the waist down.

• 6:00Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I go Winnie the Poohing.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Winnie the Poohing, yeah, yeah, yeah. He has his foreskin kind of attached to his bed frame so that it's stretching it as he's sleeping. Or, you know, he's, he's showing me how it works while he sleeps. And, you know, he had an impressive skin. But it's kind of, I mean, it's, it's sad that after the episode aired, I thought it would be a huge boost in sales. But actually, he discontinued the product within a year or two after the episode came out.

• 6:33Pablo Torre?

  That was going to be my next question.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Last I talked to him, he was performing circumcision-themed music around England, busking.

• 6:46Pablo Torre?

  I was also gonna ask about this because in my memory, there was the guy who did the foreskin restoration music. And I just wanted to clarify, was that the same guy?

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, same guy.

• 6:58Pablo Torre?

  You do the sort of work where I am not sure if there are multiple foreskin restoration guys or if I am inventing that part.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was all one guy. Yeah, I know it's a bit of a fever dream to, to kind of drift, you know, through all the different themes and characters.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  But, you know, there are a lot of men like that, that are anti-circumcision, you know, and they are very vocal, and they, they protest. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm circumcised, but I don't, I, I don't, I don't know.

• 7:40Pablo Torre?

  That was my next, next question as a fellow circumcised adult.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  I'm not trying to regrow anything right now. I feel fine.

• 7:47Pablo Torre?

  I hadn't thought about it until the machine. And I was like, is this something that we should get in on?

• 7:53Speaker 01

  I never really thought about it that much until, you know, I, I met him. And I think he makes a really good point, you know, about genital mutilation. But I don't know. I like, don't really regret that I had it done to me. But, you know, I understand you can screw it up.

• 8:11Pablo Torre?

  I think that even in the hands of Heisman Trophy winners, it is a dangerous, it's a dangerous job to be tasked with.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it makes for good dinner conversation.

• 8:22Pablo Torre?

  I think that you probably have dinners that are unlike anyone else's dinners.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Well, we've had dinner a couple of times.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  It's been okay.

• 8:31Pablo Torre?

  This, this, this so far, I would say, is actually representative of those dinners.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, just give them something to talk about.

• 8:57Pablo Torre?

  I want to point out too, for people who have not seen How To, and I recommend that everybody does, for whatever it's worth, like, you do not introduce the audience to the foreskin restoration guy from a position of, let's all laugh at the foreskin restoration guy. You are actually presenting him.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  You might laugh, but that's, you know.

• 9:16Pablo Torre?

  But you're not condescending to him, and you're not mocking him.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  No, no, he's just like a guy, like anybody else, you know? And it's like, I get it, it's not something you see every day. But it's like, I, there is no definition of normal that sticks. And to pass judgment on anybody else removes you from the equation, in a way, as if like, you don't have your own [BLEEP].

• 9:39Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I should point out that I also found myself mostly laughing at you while I watched your work.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  I don't know, I like to center myself within the movies, like, when appropriate, just to kind of like, ease some of the tension. Because like, I'll show a circumcision guy, but then I will, I will admit something really personal, or kind of, that was mortifying to me at one point. And, you know, I'm genuinely working through that psychologically, as I'm working on this stuff. And it, it's a way of kind of making everyone relate with the material, in a way, just like, as a species.

• 10:12Pablo Torre?

  Yes, I was watching your, the film that is out now in theaters, that I love.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, The History of Concrete.

• 10:22Pablo Torre?

  I love The History of Concrete.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Thank you, yes, it's very good, everyone should see it.

• 10:25Pablo Torre?

  That's right. Have you gotten better at pitching it?

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Oh, jeez, no, it's still very tough. I feel like it's just one of those things where, I know the power that word of mouth has. If someone tells me, oh, you gotta watch this thing, I'm usually like, if I, you know, trust the person, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna watch it, I'm so bored. But Concrete, you know, I think there's a bit of a, you know, there's a bait and switch there. I think the title was deliberately very challenging.

• 10:56Pablo Torre?

  Well, you gotta, I think, if I can help you sell your own film.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Yes, please.

• 11:00Pablo Torre?

  As if you haven't already sold, and it's already getting rave critical reviews, which it is, it's sort of like the name of an album. Like, you should take it in the sense of, like, there's something here, and it might be meaningful, and it is, there's a lot of concrete talk. But it's actually something that is decorative around, I think, just the idea of, John is doing something new. And so, don't you want to listen to what it is?

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you're, if you're, if you're bought in already, I think you don't really need to think about the title, like, or, you know, that much going into it. Like, you will be handed a lot of trivia about concrete and cement, and stuff like that.

• 11:40Pablo Torre?

  The second most used substance in the world.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, other than water, but it also uses a lot of water, you know, a lot of sand. I don't know, this is how the pitches usually went. I, you know, I'm just listing off raw materials.

• 11:55Pablo Torre?

  I like how there is like, footage of like, Kim Kardashian in this. And, do you know that there's sports in this? Are you aware that there is sports in your film?

• 12:04Speaker 01

  I heard that there were some sports people at the dinner that I was filming. I didn't know who they were.

• 12:10Pablo Torre?

  So dinner is a through line, it turns out, in your, in your life, in your work. This dinner is the GQ Man of the Year party, in what year?

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Oh, that was probably 2023? And, yeah, me, I was one of the Men of the Year, for some reason, along with Tim Robinson, and, and Kim Kardashian was also, like, the most Men of the Year. She was being like, recognized.

• 12:35Pablo Torre?

  She was the year, almost.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  I guess, I don't know, it was a confusing event. I mean, these magazine things, it's nice to dress up sometimes, and, you know, be in these like, environments, but I'm also just like, so confused about what their actual purpose is.

• 12:50Pablo Torre?

  I want to set the scene, which is, you are, and I am so glad that you were, in 2023, a GQ Man of the Year, and also that you, of course, started filming.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:02Pablo Torre?

  Because this is what you do, and the person who is giving a toast is the sports that I'm referring to.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Oh, Dwyane Wade, yes, yes, someone told me about, we actually took the elevator, my girlfriend and I, and he was extremely nice to us.

• 13:18Pablo Torre?

  Oh, he's so nice!

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was super, super nice. But I had no idea who this person was.

• 13:23Pablo Torre?

  So Dwyane Wade, former Miami Heat.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I still don't know.

• 13:26Pablo Torre?

  All-time Hall of Fame basketball player, one of the most athletic guards in the history of the sport. He's wearing like, a sweater vest without a shirt underneath.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah.

• 13:36Pablo Torre?

  And he's, he's raising a toast, and elsewhere in the room, the editor-in-chief at the time of GQ, Will Welch, says.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  Money, like, money's the most boring thing on earth.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Yes, and then Kim is like.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  And I don't know, there, there was a very strange, everyone starts laughing, and no one really knows who side to go on, you know?

• 14:02Pablo Torre?

  There was a sort of like, obviousness to the tone of Kim. She was like, in her view, it was like, it was matter of fact, like, what do you mean?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:13Pablo Torre?

  There was something to you filming what felt like a candid moment at a dinner that you were not supposed to be taping at.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:22Pablo Torre?

  Or, or whatever.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  I mean, I feel like, anyone else probably could have taped it, I don't, just, nobody else did, for some reason. I think I wanted to capture, I think, some of the, the kind of awkwardness and confusion that, like, of, of like, the identity of, of an event like that, you know? And like, what, are we, we're celebrating cap, capitalism? I don't know.

• 14:45Pablo Torre?

  But it, but it brings up this quote that you have later in the film, is in that Guide to Board quote, "The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image."

• 14:56Speaker 01

  It always resonated with me, you know, having read, like, Society of the Spectacle ages ago, and, and it felt most relevant in this situation, because it's like, they're talking about money, and whether money's interesting. And it just felt like all of the wealthiest, kind of, most influential people in a room. And, but what we're seeing is, it feels just like the accumulation of wealth, and like, it will just spit out an image, you know? And that is, an event like this, that is an image from this event. And, you know, I just never had seen an uncut shot of Kim Kardashian before. So I just, not that, not that I was like, pursuing it, per se,

• 15:39Speaker 01

  but I just wanted to capture, it was like a rare environment.

• 15:44Pablo Torre?

  I remember hearing you say something about how one of the original pitches for How To was, it's Planet Earth, but for New York.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, Planet Earth, but for New York.

• 15:54Pablo Torre?

  There is like, a, you're, you're watching, you're watching this rare creature somehow just appear in front of your, like, wildlife cam.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, it feels like, it's like, oh, there's the, you know, the gib, gibbon, or, I don't know, just like some, I don't know how rare a gibbon is.

• 16:11Pablo Torre?

  I, I always just say, snow leopard, and I'm trying to think of another rare. The ibex, I don't know.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  And it's, it's just funny, because like, Will Welch set up this room, and set up the seating arrangement, you know, I was one away from Kris Jenner, and.

• 16:28Pablo Torre?

  Oh, yeah, and Dwyane Wade is right in front of you, like, you're right there.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, directly, and, but I'm just like, you know, I'm holding up my phone, just like, as far away as we are from one another, you know? And, I don't know, it's just, but it's like, is this the shot that Will Welch wanted? Like, he knew that I was probably gonna be inclined to film something. And it's like, I look at the footage, and I'm like, okay, this is what you wanted, I guess. Or, I don't know, maybe he didn't think of it. There were some people from the GQ team filming in the room.

• 16:59Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Like, so, it wasn't like, a fully private event, but like, I don't know where that content goes.

• 17:09Pablo Torre?

  I, I do think it's important to sort of foreground your particular relationship with money.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:16Pablo Torre?

  Which is a through line in, I think, all of your work.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:20Pablo Torre?

  At this point.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  The critique is, is very much, I think everyone's value system is just kind of twisted right now. I think aspirationally, people aren't like, okay with being comfortable anymore, and they want to kind of ascend to this point of ludicrous wealth that ultimately doesn't solve any of your problems, and only makes you feel emptier. I'm nowhere near as wealthy as any of the people in that room, but it's like, I'm comfortable, and I just like, I don't see the point in like, in just like, doing a bunch of stuff that degrades me, just like, for the point of, of accumulating more.

• 18:02Pablo Torre?

  We're a culture of aspirational Scrooge McDucks. We just want pools of coins to jump into, and of course we do.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:09Pablo Torre?

  But what you do care about, and what you say no to.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:12Pablo Torre?

  I, I'm not trying to be like, moralizing, I'm actually trying to point out something that you say in, in the film, in The History of Concrete, which is, and this is a bit of something that we believe here on my show, which is, quote, "It's embarrassing to know so little about something that occupies so much of your visual environment."

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:31Pablo Torre?

  Which is true of concrete, and also true of money!

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:34Pablo Torre?

  Just to, just to get to the finance, I want.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 18:36Pablo Torre?

  To look into your tax returns, for a second.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 18:38Pablo Torre?

  How much did you spend on The History of Concrete?

• 18:41Speaker 01

  I was pitching the movie out, I pitched it like, 10 or 12 times, and we were asking for roughly the equivalent of like, three episodes of the TV show, like, like, around like, a million something, so, and everyone looks at the treatment, and they're like, how is this costing a million dollars? I think people are just kind of like, we're not gonna like, pay for your vacation. Then, about a year in, I just decided, like, I'm just gonna throw my own money into this, and just like, buy, buy a flight to Ohio, you know, and just, so I, I feel like I probably, I don't know, spent between like, 10 and 20 grand of my own money, just to like, get this off the ground.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  But then, other people were just working for points on the back end, pretty much. And then, about two years in, when I had like, a rough cut, that's when like, Josh Safdie and Eli, and Ronnie Bronstein came on. They helped us out, I think it was like.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Maybe a hundred grand or something. So it was pretty cheap.

• 19:51Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna say, so far, that's the cheapest movie a person I know has ever made.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, I mean, yeah, I really, I don't get into like, like, the hard numbers in the film itself. But, you know, I mean, I try to be really frank in the film about what things cost. Like, you know, it's like I talk specifically about what I charge for rent.

• 20:12Pablo Torre?

  And you charge way less than you could.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Yes, you know, one of my favorite Onion headlines is like, uh, it's like landlord raises rent due to thinking of new number, you know? And it's, that's just like, kind of how it feels sometimes, where it's like, I, you could inflate it, you know? But it's like, why? Who do you, who are you trying to keep around in the neighborhood? You know, like, what are you, what kind of city do you want to live in? And, you know, I, that's, this comes back to the whole Kardashian of it all, where, I mean, you have, you have like a figure like Trump even, who is just like, the like, final boss merger of like, this idea of celebrity and real estate, like, in this one vial.

• 20:56Pablo Torre?

  Yes, of capital being image.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, capital being image of, of real estate being like, the apex of what you should be profiting from, you know, and, and, and that's, that's awful. I think we need to uncouple real estate from celebrity. And like, not make it this, this thing where you, uh, I don't know. I mean, I watch HGTV, but you know.

• 21:20Pablo Torre?

  No, also, this show, we, we will, we will do episodes that are invariably about real estate, about, incidentally, another affection I have for this film is that it's also quietly gonna sneak in some talk about, yeah, like affordable housing.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  And I mean, the lesson I had kind of had to teach myself during it is like, why, why should this be expensive? You know, I was, I mean, I wanted to pay people that were helping me, like my sound guy and producers and stuff, like, that, that's like, the most important thing to me is, is just being able to, to do that first and foremost. But like, why does it need money? I talk about AI in the film, but, uh, I don't, I don't get super into it, but it's like, people within entertainment or something are using it to basically, like, oh, I couldn't afford a car crash, you know, so I'm gonna like, put it in, uh, with AI or something. But it's like, your limitations are the parameters that give the thing, make it unique. It's the thing that give it life and make it human.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  And, and you need to embrace your limitations instead of trying to out chase them, like, constantly. Like, so many artists, their best work, like filmmakers, whatever, is in that period when they're struggling and waiting for their ship to come in. And it's like, maybe you don't need to exit that phase, you know? Like, like maybe seeing the seams and seeing all of the stuff that makes a human will become like, is gonna continue to stay valuable as long as like, we still have a, like, a civilization.

• 22:50Pablo Torre?

  Which is up in the air.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Which is up in the air.

• 23:01Pablo Torre?

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• 24:42Pablo Torre?

  Luckily, there is still, for now, the Hallmark Channel.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Yes, there is a Hallmark Channel. Well, that's what's so funny in the-

• 24:49Pablo Torre?

  The only cable television channel that is growing.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Yes, it's growing, yes.

• 24:54Pablo Torre?

  As you point out.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Yes, that was some, that was some trivia that a veteran Hallmark assistant director told us about in the film. Yeah, so I mean, you can't argue with that data at the same time.

• 25:04Pablo Torre?

  Well, this is the thing, right? I want to know what and why they are succeeding? What are they doing? Why are they doing it? And how different it is from even what I might imagine to be a parody of what the Hallmark Channel is doing? Because what they're actually doing in terms of their structure, in terms of their strategy, is deliberate and something that you personally witnessed in the film. Because at some point, why, why were you in these meetings?

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Oh, oh, the class?

• 25:34Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was in, um, yeah, I was part of the Writers Guild. And, uh, there was a free class for Writers Guild members about how to write and sell a Hallmark movie. And that's what I went to go film. But, you know, I mean, one of the first main rules that she laid out was that people don't, don't write a financial struggle into your, into your work. People don't, people hate to see struggling financially. These movies should be a balm. They should be the, the idea of what you could be. And I kind of did the inverse. But then I also, there's a bunch of other rules that I kind of incorporate into the film.

• 26:14Pablo Torre?

  Don't interrupt a kiss.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't interrupt a kiss with a phone call. I did not do that.

• 26:18Pablo Torre?

  You didn't, that was disappointing to me personally.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  I would never, I would never do that. And, you know, she said you cannot mention Jesus in any Christmas Hallmark movie, you know? So that's why I did mostly Buddhism in the concrete movie.

• 26:33Pablo Torre?

  Which you actually do.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, which I do, yeah.

• 26:35Pablo Torre?

  You're the only film that has a sequence that involves, uh, Buddhism and Eric Adams.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:43Pablo Torre?

  Almost cut on top of each other.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Yes, that was the first thing I think I edited for the whole movie, was that like, cross cutting between this like, Tibetan sand mandala like, uh, ceremony and the, this Eric Adams press conference that he was doing for this affordable housing initiative that he had just won the vote on.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and also Michael Imperioli, uh, practicing Buddhist, yeah.

• 27:11Pablo Torre?

  At what point did John get the note, "You need a famous person"?

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Well, that's, yeah, I mean, the, the film is filled with these like, extremely brief celebrity cameos, you know? But that's just from living, like, for me. Like, in, in, in those two years, I was just like, I just happened to see a lot of these people. And so I like playing the game. Like, there, there is something super fun about playing the Hollywood game.

• 27:38Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  And I understand why it's valued, because a lot of times, there's like, really big laughs in those moments. And like, people do like, you know, recognizing personalities and, and stuff like that, you know, myself included. So I feel like I'm, like, the film is a product of, of, of my internal tension with like, wanting to, to, to do something kind of punk and just like, say, "Fuck you", but also like, wanting to embrace Hallmark and like, celebrity cameos and like, this idea of a documentary. I ultimately do what they asked me to do, you know, but in, in, in kind of a, in like a monkey's paw kind of way.

• 28:21Pablo Torre?

  There is an almost joyously spiteful delivery of the assignment. Back to the teacher kind of aspect here.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  The Hallmark writer, she came and did a Q and A with me at the IFC Center for one of the screenings. And it was great. She's like amazing. She was such a good sport and she loved the movie. She like totally got it. She's like, yeah, you know, I understand that's like, the movie's all about like, how to make art in a crumbling empire, you know?

• 28:50Pablo Torre?

  Well, that is a thing I really did appreciate about the Hallmark people, which is that they were not vague about why they do what they do and why it works.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Yes, I know.

• 29:01Pablo Torre?

  And there's clarity that I admire in that, honestly.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Totally. Yeah, it was disarming, like how frank they were about

• 29:12Speaker 01

  their jobs and all of the internal mechanizations of Hallmark. Even like, I was invited to film a Hallmark movie production while I was there, but I couldn't do it because of timing, but they were just so open. I think they were just happy to talk about this stuff because like, they had just been doing the same thing cyclically for like so long, you know? And they were just like happy to have like kind of any break in continuity.

• 29:45Pablo Torre?

  Speaking of just like, how long you've been at something? And how sort of clear it becomes, oh, this is the thing that you do. When you go back and watch your, I mean, your first short film.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Oh, what do you, what do you think that is?

• 30:02Pablo Torre?

  Well, I think it's Lunar.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Yes, that was the first, I think, kind of documentary I made when I was in college. That was about these balloon fetishists that get, are sexually attracted to the inflation and the popping of balloons.

• 30:17Speaker 04

  Some people call themselves Lunar, other people don't like that terminology. They kind of sort of divide into two major categories. You have a group that's non-popping, that don't like to see the balloons popped. And you have a group that does like to see the balloons pop.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  They're very interesting. The poppers, they climax when they like hear and see it happen. But the non-poppers are kind of traumatized by the sound of it from childhood or something and they have to wear, you know, like, you know, like noise cancelling, like earmuffs or something.

• 30:51Pablo Torre?

  Like a baby at a concert.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, like, yeah, exactly.

• 30:54Pablo Torre?

  What I loved about that, by the way, as you're describing the poppers and the non-poppers is that the two sort of avatars for either side, they like politically aren't the same either. There's like one liberal guy, one conservative guy. And like, this is clearly just something that goes across political.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the one guy that I really vibed with, he was, he was more kind of,

• 31:17Speaker 01

  he was like the liberal one, but then, yeah, then there was like the dark Lunar who, he had a company called Goth Balloon. It was, this was 2006 that I was filming it. And he was talking so much about Obama and how he has no, he, how he like, doesn't have a chance in hell at, at becoming president. And I didn't even know who Obama was at that point.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  You know, and I was just like, okay, like, sure. And then, so like watching that movie now, it's just like so funny. Hear from like an anti Obama fetishist like in 2006.

• 31:51Pablo Torre?

  In the context of watching women who in this case are very like matter of factly just naked and participating in balloon inflation and popping.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, that strip club that I filmed it at was destroyed. I tried to go visit it recently. It's a pile of rubble underneath Highway 17 or something in Binghamton.

• 32:16Pablo Torre?

  Man, did you, did you recently visit loony nudes.com to see if it was still up?

• 32:22Speaker 01

  No, what's it look like?

• 32:24Pablo Torre?

  I'm here to tell you that it is a very functioning URL.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Looney Nudes? Okay, yeah.

• 32:29Pablo Torre?

  This is what it looks like? I don't know if that's what you remember it looking like.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. They have great web design.

• 32:35Pablo Torre?

  So could you just, for people who aren't watching, could you describe just sort of the aesthetic of Looney Nudes?

• 32:40Speaker 01

  It's, it's pretty web 1.0. You have a beautiful, a beautiful font, kind of rainbow font with some balloon clip art. And then there's an image of a topless woman with clear balloon that she's blown up. That's about the size of her.

• 32:59Pablo Torre?

  It's enormous.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  These are very harsh flash photos.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, look almost hostage like, but then it says shop now. There's a bunch of buttons that say shop now everywhere. And I don't know what they're.

• 33:12Pablo Torre?

  I'm just gonna see what you can find.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  They make custom balloons with.

• 33:16Pablo Torre?

  Please read, our checkout is currently down and you will get an error if you attempt to complete your order online. To order, please send an email to mike d at melilun.com.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Oh, oh, that's Mike D. That's the guy that I. Oh, that's the guy. Yeah, that's the guy. Yeah, yeah. That's the guy that I covered.

• 33:27Pablo Torre?

  I gotta say, on the scale of perversion, loony nudes.com is so quaint.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  It's fine. I mean, these, I, I like these guys. I don't know. I liked one of them.

• 33:39Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna say.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Not, not the other guy.

• 33:42Pablo Torre?

  I like the one whose political worldview did also not pop in 2008.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, the conservative guy, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there's, there's a political spectrum in every group of fetishists.

• 33:53Pablo Torre?

  This whole thing has, has like a GeoCities web, truly like my childhood, like web 1.0 aspect. You almost imagine like a web counter at the bottom.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  About to drive a lot of traffic, you guys gotta.

• 34:05Pablo Torre?

  I know. The bump, the.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  I'm gonna have to text Mike D and get him to make sure he's got some balloons ready.

• 34:13Pablo Torre?

  Repair, repair the order form on the website.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:16Pablo Torre?

  People are, people are, people are.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  It's a small operation.

• 34:20Pablo Torre?

  I wanted, I wanted to ask you about this story that I read about how Nathan Fielder got involved.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:29Pablo Torre?

  How to, because he becomes familiar with your work, according to one piece of reporting, through a quote legally problematic short of yours that was circulating privately at the time?

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Yes. Have I not sent that to you or told you about it?

• 34:47Pablo Torre?

  The fact that you haven't sent it to me is personally disappointing.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  I'm sorry. It was a movie that I made

• 34:55Speaker 01

  2015 or so. I was working, again, I mean, I was working for some fashion guy as a freelancer. And he disliked the work that I did so much that he refused to pay me a thousand dollars. So instead of just saying goodbye to it, I kind of went scorched earth and tried to get in touch with him and it wasn't working. So I then tried to get him on Court TV. And I submitted an application and everything and they tried to reach out to him.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  And he still didn't answer them. So then I got my friend Clark to pitch the story to a new Court TV show.

• 35:40Pablo Torre?

  You're talking about like, by the way, Court TV meaning like a Judge Judy style?

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, Judge Judy, yeah. So we ended up going on the show called Hot Bench. But we basically took the story, but basically made it seem like Clark was the person that had hired me and refused to pay me. So we, I don't know.

• 35:59Pablo Torre?

  You did a cinematic adaptation of an actual small claims court worthy claim that you have, except your friend Clark was playing the guy you were trying to litigate against.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Yes. So they flew us out to LA and they put us up on this Court TV show. And I wore hidden cameras like during it and I was like filming what happened behind the scenes and like all the money that they give you and the way that they coach you before you go on. Today. Case number 297 on calendar, Wilson versus Filio. Please step forward. Filmmaker John Wilson is suing his former friend, Clark Filio,

• 36:36Pablo Torre?

  for failure to pay for video services and

• 36:42Pablo Torre?

  lost wages.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Oh, God. And I genuinely was trying to get a thousand dollars. And, and we did, because when you're on a Court TV show, if I sue you for a grand and I win, you don't pay that. They pay the grand and also pay you an appearance fee. So that's how they get so many people on because you have like already won, you know?

• 37:09Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Like in there, like that's what the producers tell you.

• 37:13Pablo Torre?

  Which is something that I should have known before you just told me.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  What? About how Court TV works?

• 37:20Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, just how about everybody's actually incentivized just purely financially to show up and.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 37:27Pablo Torre?

  By the way, try your case in front of, and this cannot be stressed enough, in front of a series of hot judges.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Is that the Hot Bench?

• 37:36Pablo Torre?

  I think that's the, I mean, I'm looking at the poster for Hot Bench.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  I don't know if it's around anymore. It might, it might still be. I know it was a Judge Judy production.

• 37:45Pablo Torre?

  How many seasons of Hot Bench?

• 37:48Speaker 01

  How many seasons?

• 37:49Pablo Torre?

  13.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  13, okay.

• 37:51Pablo Torre?

  By the way, season 13 began last month.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 37:55Pablo Torre?

  We're still in.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  Wow, we're still in the Hot Bench era. Territory. Well, yeah, I mean, I had some funny people text me, but not many people caught it. But yeah, so I made a movie about that and then I tried to come out with it, but then

• 38:12Speaker 01

  got a cease and desist, so.

• 38:13Pablo Torre?

  From Hot Bench?

• 38:15Speaker 01

  No, from somebody else. I don't want to say who.

• 38:19Pablo Torre?

  Understandable.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  So, yeah, and then it went underground. A mutual friend sent that to Nathan. And then Clark, who I fake sued, was at a gallery opening in Manhattan one night and Nathan was there. And then he was like, John, you should come out. Nathan's here. And we had never met before. And then I just kind of came out and then I followed them to dinner afterwards. And then, you know, I was obviously a huge fan of Nathan's stuff, but then he's like, what are you working on now? And I was like, I don't know, I was thinking about a TV show. And he's like, okay, let's like talk next week about it. And then we just, then the rest happened.

• 39:06Speaker 01

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• 41:33Pablo Torre?

  When I watch your HBO series, it is very clearly an extension of the work that you have been doing for a very long time. And so the question is, what did Nathan Fielder, beyond his sort of like, you know, blessing in Hollywood or whatever the [bleep] you might call it, it's good to have someone as an EP on a show that is himself like a fantastic artist. But what did you learn from him in terms of how you make the show?

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, so much. I was like, I was scared, I was so scared when we started making the show. Because, you know, I made stuff kind of at a small scale. It was very personal, and I would teach you how to, you know, how to live with bedbugs or something like that. You know, it was satirical, but like, when we came up with the show idea, it was like, we wanted it to feel like there was a straight line going from that work to like the show. But also, I didn't know how to tell a story. And I was just living in this world of like, kind of chaotic footage. And I never really like talked to people on screen like for a long amount of time

• 42:45Speaker 01

  and like had like, like, long interviews with people. And he really just beat it out of me, like any self-consciousness that I had. I don't know, I just, I remember like, like a refrain constantly would just be like, like, John, this is a TV show, you know? It can't just be a bunch of shots of dog [bleep], you know? Like, I think there needs to be like an arc here. And like, even if you're just telling the story, and even if you know what's happening, you like maybe need to say it, you know? It's just like basic kind of stuff.

• 43:20Pablo Torre?

  The thing I think about when I watch Nathan's stuff, which I'm a huge fan of as well, is how much of this is real? And with you--

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Well, what is real?

• 43:30Pablo Torre?

  Well, are we about to do a thing about the nature of truth and storytelling?

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Well, can you continue? What were you gonna say?

• 43:39Pablo Torre?

  Well, look, I come at this not with any sort of like, I'm trying to expose what is and is not real. I come at this from the perspective of somebody who is like a journalist that needs to always have in front of me some very clear language around, I'm not misrepresenting reality. Well, what I really mean is, do you see the work that Nathan does and the work that you do as a filmmaker, as a documentarian, do you see those as part of the same school of reality?

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know. I mean, it's all some crazy, like, fabrication in a way, you know? It's like, when you write about anything, it's all from your perspective. And when you like edit any of this footage together, it's like, the chronology in which things happen is like often like nothing like what you're presenting.

• 44:41Pablo Torre?

  And admittedly, when you put a camera in front of somebody, it's not exactly as if there isn't a camera there.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I mean, that's why I like the style that I've like kind of developed over time where, and I really believe in, because it's like, they, there's, there's less artifice there for me, because it's like--

• 45:00Pablo Torre?

  Well, that's why I ask.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, I am a camera essentially, and you are, you like, you are acknowledging me, you don't have to pretend like I'm not in the room. And I really like that. I think that adds a lot of really cool tension. And to me, that's like, it fully strips any, like, any kind of, as much kind of fictionality away as I can, because like, you're seeing like everything. And I try to stay really wide in every shot, so you see like, there's as much information in the frame as possible. But you know, what Nathan does is like, I think he's like searching for a different

• 45:43Speaker 01

  kind of truth in certain ways, but I think we do inform each other. And I think we're, I don't know, I'm, I was like a real purist at first, and I think he kind of like beat that out of me in a certain way.

• 45:57Pablo Torre?

  What is an example of something that you would never have considered doing as a purist documentarian that now you see the value in artistically?

• 46:07Speaker 01

  I see the value in kind of like, I don't know. I'm trying to think of something specific. How do I put this? Like, in the narration, I will often have like a thought that I may not have had in the moment, but I can kind of reinterpret what happened in the environment by like, coloring it with some bit of voiceover that I may not have like thought as a transitional moment from one idea to another. And, you know, like--

• 46:44Pablo Torre?

  Well, I wanna--

• 46:44Speaker 01

  It's kind of vague still, even.

• 46:46Pablo Torre?

  But I wanna specify what you're describing there for people who don't know your work, because part of the magic trick of your work is that you have all of this, I mean, it reads as found footage, but really it's you collecting footage across New York City and across the world. And part of the magic trick is in your ability to sequence them like a collage, and you are voicing over it in the second person, addressing the audience as you, which is all like very, again, high degree of difficulty. You were pulling off something that is almost impossible for a normal people to even imagine how you do this. And what you're describing, apparently, is that in the act of writing the voiceover,

• 47:28Pablo Torre?

  which is very much in your voice-- and it reminds me, not to be so like, whatever, like under the hood of this, but it reminds me of how I talked to, in your chair many moons ago, Ira Glass of This American Life. And I asked him, like, do you script in stumbles and uhs and mms? And he goes, of course. And so there's a performance of mm. There's a performance of this isn't scripted, but in fact, as you're saying, of course there is writing here. And you're taking the liberty to write to tell a story such that the sequence is on some level justified.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, there's an example in the, in the concrete movie, you know, there's this like part with DMX in it, you know? And the way that it's in the film, you know, it hits you by the end of it in a way that like, I find really, I find like it works really well.

• 48:21Pablo Torre?

  It's so-- Good.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  But like, you know, the inclusion of certain bits of information, you kind of only can put in when you're done shooting and you're just like, you're kind of fitting it into the edit at the very end, you know? So it's kind of like, even though chronologically it may be truthful, like, the way that you are putting it into the story is like, obviously, this crafted thing. And I don't know, I feel like it's all a magic trick.

• 48:55Pablo Torre?

  The magic trick analogy of, does it ruin the trick to know how it's done?

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, everyone wants to know, obviously.

• 49:02Pablo Torre?

  And this is why there is, of course, like, curiosity from me about it. You don't get the raw material.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  No, and you shouldn't. It's like, I think it's bull [BLEEP]. It's just like not, uh, what art is a lot of the time.

• 49:18Pablo Torre?

  And I think it was interesting, as documentary is concerned, as journalism is concerned, and you had like Susan Orlean in the writer's room for one of the seasons of How To. One of the greatest magazine feature writers of all time.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:32Pablo Torre?

  And authors. But the question of like, how does art conflict with what journalism and documentary film might demand? Gets to, again, this gray zone in which, in the end, we can sort of be as granular or as argumentative as you want about it. What ultimately happens is the audience decides, do I trust the person telling me the story?

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and it's very easy to turn people off, you know? And I, I want people to trust me in as far as that, like, I want to be able to trust the image and trust what I'm looking at too. Because I smell bull [BLEEP] constantly and I don't like to produce bull [BLEEP]. And I want it to, like, be as close to what actually happened as possible. And like, that has been a constant throughout everything I do. And it pains me to throw things out of chronology sometimes, you know? But sometimes it does help narratively.

• 50:36Pablo Torre?

  But you don't, you don't, you don't construct sequences. I've heard you say, you don't, you don't stage encounters on the street with someone that you know.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  No, I'm not doing that thing. I'm not doing like, like, oh, hey, how much is your rent? You know, kind of, kind of thing. Like, nothing, nothing like that.

• 50:53Pablo Torre?

  Can I see your apartment?

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. It's, it's, no, it's not like that. That, that would make me sick to watch over and over again, like, in the edit.

• 51:00Pablo Torre?

  Which is reality television, though.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. And again, I, no shade of anything. Like, you do literally whatever you want. I'm just like, this is what I like to do. It's like I meet one of the main characters in the concrete movie at the liquor store, like, a block away from my house. That was the moment we met. I spent a year and a half with him after that, you know? And it's just like, that is the kind of stuff that makes me excited.

• 51:30Pablo Torre?

  With a true meet cute.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, yeah, an actual meet cute.

• 51:34Pablo Torre?

  Like, didn't go on, didn't scout him ahead of time and say, hey, are you gonna be at work on this day?

• 51:38Speaker 01

  No, not at all, no, not at all.

• 51:40Pablo Torre?

  Can I remind you, though, as you talk about smelling bull [BLEEP], of the reason why people are, perhaps, who are very familiar with your work, are wondering, what is, what's going on here? It's the part of your show, How To, in which you do show the audience that you're faking [BLEEP].

• 52:01Speaker 01

  What, the one with the toilet shot? Yeah, I mean, there, this one episode, How to Watch Birds, it's one of my favorites.

• 52:07Pablo Torre?

  It's, it's, I loved it, but this part is worth explaining.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  I mean, I saw a real-life piece of footage of a toilet overflowing explosively, you know, and the entire room was covered in brown water. It was beautiful. But I had to have a staged day to get a tax incentive from the city. So we built a one, you know, a replica of the toilet and had a pyrotechnic person come and make it so it recreated it exactly like I remember from the video. And I think in season two, yeah, I passed it off as real. Or, I mean, I passed it off, it was just part of the collage, you know?

• 52:52Speaker 01

  But, and in season three, I admit that as kind of this, I say that that single shot was kind of like a telltale heart for me, where I was like, it was, it was, it was grating on me that, that I had done, that I had fabricating something.

• 53:12Pablo Torre?

  It was haunting you from underneath the floorboard?

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and that one shot was bothering me. So then I make the entire episode where I meet this guy who is a Titanic conspiracy theorist. He believes that a different ship actually sank.

• 53:29Pablo Torre?

  You mean that literally, like, a conspiracy theorist about the Titanic?

• 53:33Speaker 01

  The theories that another ship called the Olympic was actually sank and that they were swapped. And like, everything that happens to us within the kind of parameters of this fictional thing are all real. And like, was, was some of the most shocking, kind of synchronous, like, thematically stuff I've ever experienced. And it gave me chills. Like, he talks about how he was a, a former police officer and talks about corruption and how like, the only way you can keep a secret is if one of you's dead, you know? And it just delivered so amazingly, like, thematically for what I was going through with the film.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  And that's all just through setting up an environment for stuff to flourish, you know? But I was admitting that we fabricated the toilet shot to become closer with the audience, the way I would with like, you were just like a friend at a bar or something, you know? Just to like, just, because you want to know. And that's, that was me showing my hand. I mean, like, this happened, you know? But it, something weird happened to the audience, where they thought that, that meant that I faked a bunch of other stuff, which is not true at all. And it, I feel like was misinterpreted.

• 54:51Pablo Torre?

  And so what I'm here to say, near the end here, what I found out today is that I can still have total confidence, despite the business issues plaguing the foreskin stretching machine, that that was, in fact, a very real device.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Yes, the foreskin, everything is real. The foreskin restoration device is real. I have one at my house. Everything is, that's the thing, like.

• 55:17Pablo Torre?

  Wait, do you actually have one at your house?

• 55:18Speaker 01

  I do, yeah. It doesn't really, uh, he, he would have had to measure the head of my penis to, to give me one that fit me. So he gave me just one that he had lying around when I was there. So the, the device is either, yeah, too big or too small for me.

• 55:38Pablo Torre?

  It's, but what you're saying is that it is, it is, uh, used?

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Um, it's, it's been there.

• 55:50Pablo Torre?

  John Wilson?

• 55:52Pablo Torre?

  In the, in the style of so many Instagram videos that violate the ethics of what we're trying to do here, I do now officially want to see your apartment.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Well, yeah, just, uh, don't, yeah, if you're gonna do that, then make sure you don't arrange to come up to be on the street to ask.

• 56:20Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.