Three years on from the final episode of US comedian John Wilson’s cult HBO show How To With John Wilson, the filmmaker’s feature documentary The History Of Concrete, made its European premiere at CPH:DOX as a special screening this week.
The film uses the building material as a jumping-off point for a meditation on life and death and conjures thematic connections between Hallmark Christmas movies, affordable housing in New York City, and sidewalk gum removal, while revealing an unusual human love story.
Presented in Wilson’s trademark essay style, The History Of Concrete first screened at Sundance in January. UTA Independent Group is handling international sales.
Wilson talks to Screen about why making the film made him vibrate with anxiety, why he is intimidated by Europe and how a leaking basement provided the impetus for a film about concrete.
What was the film’s journey from your head to the big screen?
This feature started as a way to give myself structure as a filmmaker. I needed to start working on a new project. It started innocently enough when my basement was leaking. The foundation of my house was cracked, and I needed to figure out why that was happening and how to fix it. And like most things I do, I ended up getting very distracted while, in a roundabout way, trying to solve the original problem.
How did you come across the myriad stories and characters that populate the film?
The concrete part was the most directional part of the production. I knew there were certain figures and experts that I wanted to talk to. For the first scenes, I talked to some students at Columbia [University] who were in the school’s concrete lab.
A lot of people I just met randomly. The Liquor Store Promoter guy that I ended up spending a lot of time with works in the liquor store a few blocks away from my house. I was out filming potholes one day, really upset because nothing was happening, and I ended up going to buy a bottle of liquor. I ran into him, and we ended up spending the next year together.
What was the most challenging part of making the film?
Not having any money to make it and [not being able to] pay my friends the same kind of salary that they had on the TV show. That was the most painful part.
Were there many moments of self-doubt?
I almost stopped making this so many times. You have this Don Quixote delusion, this is gonna work out somehow. And you really don’t at all, you don’t know if the world is gonna deliver what you need in order to make something compelling. That’s why I spend so much time vibrating with anxiety. I was working with Cori [Wapnowska], who was my editor. She came on after I had kind of a rough cut of the film, within the 90-minute range.
What were the differences in your approach between making a feature-length documentary and making an episodic HBO show?
When I would make a series, I’d spend time sitting with my co-writers, stress testing a bunch of ideas. I usually start with a title for what would become an episode. With this, I wrote every draft myself.
Who supported your process?
I had my producers, Clark [Filio] and Shirel [Kozak and Allie [Viti]. They were committed to the project, but definitely a little in and out here and there, just because they had to do other work just to survive.
The History Of Concrete is set in the US. Would you make a film in Europe?
I shot a bunch in Europe for this movie, but I cut all of it. I visited a lot of iconic brutalist concrete places throughout Europe [in Copenhagen, Barcelona and London.] We ended up not really using any of it, because I felt that story had been told by other people, and I didn’t really want to celebrate the material in that way.
Europe is a bit intimidating to me in certain ways. I naturally feel like a fish out of water in ways that are both exciting but also intimidating.
Which international filmmakers do you admire?
There are so many. My film education was watching [Abbas] Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi. Seeing Salaam Cinema [directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf] really changed me a lot. Agnes Varda and a whole menu of European cinema essayists I admire.
What do you want international audiences to take away from seeing Concrete?
I’d like audiences to analyse their own cities, interrogate what their cities are being made out of and what their art is being made out of.
But I feel a lot of the European cities that I’ve been to are doing pretty well in terms of preserving what they can.
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