John Wilson ‘History of Concrete’ Interview: Kim Kardashian and More

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains minor spoilers for “The History of Concrete,” now in theaters.

John Wilson’s new documentary “The History of Concrete” is, of course, about the history of concrete. But it’s also about selling a documentary titled “The History of Concrete,” which, it turns out, is almost as hard as concrete.

It sees the filmmaker, best known for his HBO series “How To,” traveling across the world — to concrete conventions in Las Vegas and New Orleans, to ancient buildings in Italy and to graves in undisclosed locations. But he also documents the Zoom meetings in between, where he pitches the idea to Hollywood executives and tells them the film’s title. Underneath their deep sighs, you can almost hear them mutter: Who wants to watch a movie called “The History of Concrete”?

“I genuinely did want to make the definitive movie about concrete,” Wilson says of the doc, now in theaters via Magnolia Pictures. “I ended up incorporating the meta aspects about a year or so into the process, because I felt like that was becoming a more interesting story. And I wanted to make something that another filmmaker could learn something from, about how things are produced, because that was always a mystery to me growing up.”

Of course, it’s not all slabs of rock. Wilson finds humanity in the cracks of “The History of Concrete,” letting his camera guide him toward a professional “gum buster,” a grieving local musician and dozens of other fascinating characters. It is perhaps the filmmaker’s most substantial — and heart-forward — work to date.

In the film, as you’re struggling to sell said film, I kept thinking: It’s John Wilson, obviously he’s not going to make a boring movie about concrete!

It doesn’t matter. In terms of the money, we were asking for what a Netflix documentary would cost. Our budget ask was also scaled to what “How To” would cost, so I didn’t think we were being that outrageous. The struggle is actually a lot more real than what’s on screen in the film. I just didn’t want to weigh it down with more struggle.

People laugh when they hear the title, but you laugh knowing that the movie is done. It’s a lot different when someone is asking you directly for money to make this thing that doesn’t exist yet. Would you give your own money to make “The History of Concrete”? Even if it’s me, I don’t know. It’s a strange proposition.

The documentary space has mutated slightly, and I think people value the wrong things a lot of the time. That’s what I wanted to comment on, in a way.

What are the things people value?

People are focused on retelling stories that have already happened — whether it’s a triple homicide or a musician who has gone through all the motions of their career. Certain people with money have a hard time with imagination and this idea of art-making for the sake of it. You need to go through several layers of approval. I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be.

Structurally, the film is similar to “How To.” Was working in the feature-length format freeing or more challenging?

It was freeing in that I was able to have more durational subjects — like the 3,100-mile race that takes place over the course of a few months. I don’t know if I would have been able to cover that as substantially in an episode of the show. Same with one of the main characters I spent a lot of time with near the end of the film. I spent a year and a half with him, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that without the elasticity of a feature film. But emotionally, it is a little different than the show, and while superficially it shares a lot of the same qualities, I set out to make something that was much broader in scope and almost felt like a prequel to the show, because it’s kind of the foundation on which the rest of the work was built.

The subject of the film is literally our foundation. I found it notable that you chose to explore concrete, a hard topic, in a physical sense, but you can’t help but be led to the softness — the humanity.

Yeah, and Jack, the musician I spent a lot of time with, has the softest heart of all. In the world of hard surfaces, he’s got a really soft interior.

How do you view your responsibility to these subjects, specifically him? Do you approach it as a journalist? Do you have an ongoing relationship with him outside of the film?

I met him at a liquor store right next to my house, so he’s the kind of person I’d see all the time. So in that case, I treated it as if he’s someone I’m going to see frequently. But also, my friend Francis Carr, who was one of my producers, would mostly correspond with Jack whenever he was going to have a show or something like that. There was a bit of distance — it wasn’t just him and me. I think there’s some value to a certain level of journalistic distance when making something like this, just because I’m dealing with so many people at the same time.

Has he seen the film?

I think he saw part of it in the Rockaways. But he was rehearsing, because he was playing the after party next door during the screening, so he couldn’t fully watch it. He’s going to be at one of the premieres at IFC over the weekend.

I expect that one of the most talked-about moments of the film will be the Kim Kardashian scene. You’re at a GQ dinner and filming Dwyane Wade as he gives a toast to Kim, and she’s looking right into your camera. It’s all very unsettling. How uncomfortable was that to film?

The discomfort started when I entered the room, and the filming only eased that discomfort. I had just never seen an uninterrupted shot of Kim Kardashian before, and I knew this was going to be the only chance for me to get it. I wasn’t pursuing it, but I thought it was a very rare environment, and there’s something very awkward and strange about these celebrity events. I wanted to capture that somehow by not including any score and just letting the moment play out, so you have a POV of what it’s like to be sitting across from someone like that at dinner.

Did you have any interaction with her at all?

No.

So how does that work? Were you nervous about putting her in the film? Do you expect to hear from her?

It’s a miracle that this film exists and is being released as is — that’s what I’ll say. It was an event that was being documented by someone else too, an internal magazine film-and-photo team. I have no idea where that kind of stuff ends up, but I know it won’t be treated anywhere near how I would treat it. So I think that’s how the footage is able to be in the movie, because it was an event that was captured by someone else as well. But I don’t know where that material will ever end up.

The shot of Tim Robinson got the biggest laugh of the entire film at the screening I was at. Were you expecting that to be such a punchline?

No. Originally we did not have Tim at the end of that shot, because we just wanted you to sit with the strangeness of that eye-contact moment I was having with Kim. We ended up putting the Tim thing in just because it performed really well when we showed it to people, and I realized comedically you needed something to pop that tension bubble. I love reveals that someone else has been there the whole time. I showed the film internationally in a couple of places, and that shot was crickets. There are some places in the world that don’t know Tim in the same way people do here — same with Hallmark and Chef Boyardee. They don’t know what that stuff is.

Is there one shot in the movie you’re proudest of?

The shot I really liked a lot was when I’m filming the sidewalk and you see my shadow, but then I’m zooming into the sidewalk, and the light changes really dramatically around me, and my shadow just disappears into the sidewalk. It happened randomly, and it felt very poetic in a way that I didn’t really plan. But on top of that, I think my favorite shot is when the tattoo preservation guy asks his dad where Chef Boyardee is buried. The timing of that was just incredible, and how casual he was.

It turned out to be your kicker!

I remember trying to figure out what the last shot of the movie should be when I was talking to [producers] Josh [Safdie] and Ronnie [Bronstein] and Eli [Bush]. I was thinking about going to Chef Boyardee’s grave, but we had to have the movie ready in four days, and I didn’t know how I was going to get it. They said, “You have to get that shot,” so I went and shot it by myself on Christmas Eve, which was the day before we locked the movie. So now I know where Chef Boyardee’s grave is.

Wow, that’s fascinating that the final shot was so last-minute.

It was because we got into Sundance as I was still filming the movie. But it also kind of ties in with the Christmas theme of it all, even though you would never know I filmed that on Christmas Eve.