The History of Concrete, courtesy of Sundance Institute.
The History of Concrete, John Wilson’s first feature-length film, is far stranger and more compelling than the title suggests—and a perfect continuation of his oft-meandering, always philosophical practice. Yes, there are novel factoids about Ancient Rome, the removal of gum from city sidewalks and the oldest concrete road in America, but the plot often shifts and transmogrifies, in true Wilsonian fashion, before circling back to the topic at hand. For some, this constant zooming—out, in, away entirely—can be frustratingly disorienting. For those who enjoy the visual approximation of falling down a (preferably weed-induced) Wikipedia rabbit hole, this is non-fiction at its most exciting.
Oddly enough, bygone ruminations of NYC’s DIY music scene are parlayed into Wilson connecting with a local liquor store employee. The man is himself a gigging rocker, and the kinship he forms with the filmmaker paves a truly breakneck path that explores the creative process, the trial of rapper DMX and pretty much the entire length of Long Island. This is just one of the many tendrils teased out in Concrete; for an artist who has long transmitted his musings in short-form snippets (first on Vimeo, then eventually in 30-minute episodes for HBO’s How To With John Wilson), it’s almost surprising that the plot wasn’t entirely lost during the film’s three-year production. Then again, nothing changes about the essential formula: Wilson’s deadpan voiceover guides us through the topic via apt (and often absurd) shots mined from his vast archive of footage. Chance human interactions, like the one detailed above, are also a consistent hallmark. And then, of course, there’s the filming of conventions entirely dedicated to the very subject being dissected. As the adage goes: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. (Funnily enough, Wilson making shoddy repairs to the sidewalk in front of his apartment building served as the inspiration for Concrete.)
I spoke to Wilson over the phone while he was at Park City’s Redstone Theater for the second screening of The History of Concrete, which premiered to favorable reviews on Thursday. (The film also plays this afternoon, January 30 and February 1.) Topics of conversation include the discovery of a John Wilson weed baggie, a scrapped thread concerning jellyfish overpopulation in New Jersey and the film’s exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of Marty Supreme.
Filmmaker: Congrats on the premiere. The reviews look really good, you must be excited.
Wilson: Thank you very much. Yeah, I had no idea what the dominant conversation would be about this movie after it came out, but it seems like people are getting it in a way that I was really happy about.
Filmmaker: How did Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie get involved as producers?
Wilson: I mean, I’ve known Josh since 2010 or something like that. We’ve always been friends and always talk to each other about what we’re working on and stuff. But when I first started making this movie, I tried to do it the hard way. We did a bunch of pitch meetings that you see in the film and they did not go well. We ended up saying, “Forget that, we’re just gonna make the movie without permission from anybody and see what that gets us.” It was kind of late into the production when I had a really rough cut of the movie and I was like, “We need money.” You know, just for post and some basic stuff. I hit up Josh like, “Do you want to check this movie out? I feel like I need a little help.” I obviously trust those guys creatively in a huge way. Josh set us up with [production company] Bronxburgh and they gave us a little money and Ronnie and Eli [Bush] came on as EPs. I’ve been a huge fan of Ronnie’s stuff since Frownland and I think he’s such a smart guy.
Ever since then, we talked about what was missing in the edit. Josh set up this whole relationship with [composer] Suzanne Ciani. I’ve been a fan of hers forever and she fucking came to the premiere last night! She came to the after party at our house. We were just there singing and doing karaoke. It was all very surreal.
Filmmaker: I love that. And the timing is perfect for the premiere, with Marty Supreme fever, as it were, still fresh. The behind-the-scenes footage you include of that shoot is so brief, but what brought you to set in the first place?
Wilson: I was just filming around the Lower East Side, as I often do when I don’t know what to do. I usually just start at Delancey and walk north until I get bored, then I walk west and walk down. There were two productions happening there—Caught Stealing, the Aronofsky, and Marty Supreme—at the same time. I saw John on set and was just like, “Yo, what’s up.” We caught up for a second and he was like, “Come check out the set.” I went into the shoe store set and I was only really allowed to be at the door. There’s so much sensitivity about the big stars, especially when they’re filming such big scenes…but you’re seeing most of the footage I ended up getting.
Anyway, to answer your question, I put that stuff in the movie before they were on it. It’s kind of a funny thing, because I do comment on what kind of movies are getting funded in that scene and there is a bit of a critique there. But it all comes out of love for that stuff. They’re obviously doing the best version of whatever that is in terms of setting up a fake set on Orchard Street. It’s this constant thing with me—it’s easy to hate from outside of the club, you know?
Filmmaker: Speaking of that, have you been back to Sundance since you made your short Escape From Park City?
Wilson: Oh yeah. I was in Slamdance twice. The last time I was here was when I did Temporary Color, the one about David Byrne. I came here by myself, and I think that was 2017 or something. There was a scheduling mix-up at the hotel I was staying at so I got booted from it early and I had nowhere to sleep. I ended up just hiding my luggage in all of the decorative cabinets around Park City—you know, they have those Chase and Acura lounges or whatever. I was staying out all night until I could stay on somebody’s couch. I don’t know, I’m a sucker for punishment in a certain way. I don’t really plan things very well.
Filmmaker: I also feel like that’s not an uncommon arrangement for being at Sundance, anyway.
Wilson: Yeah, this is the first time I’ve ever had a bed here.
Filmmaker: I was going to say that you’re presumably not sleeping on a couch.
Wilson: Not to knock anyone sleeping on a couch.
Filmmaker: As a journalist, that’s basically how you go [to Sundance]. Last year I shared a bunk bed. It’s demoralizing.
Wilson: I know. That’s kind of the name of the game here in a strange way. Everyone acts like a racoon trying to find the one pocket of warmth.
Filmmaker: I mean, you’ve been openly…let’s say skeptical about how Sundance can benefit filmmakers, particularly when it comes to shorts. What made this the perfect place to premiere Concrete?
Wilson: [deadpan as hell] I think it’s funny. I like to lean into hypocrisy sometimes. It’s the kind of thing where I am criticizing, but I can’t stay away. I was doing that with my luggage because I wanted to be here. I wanted proximity to these people. I’ve met some of my best friends in the world here. I don’t think that I would’ve ended up making the work that I did without meeting a lot of these people.
Filmmaker: Going into the process behind making this, I’m always interested in the threads that you might explore that end up not making their way into the final project. Were there any characters, images or events that you felt were poignant or promising that ended up getting nixed?
Wilson: There were a bunch. This is longer than anything I’ve done and the movie is kind of doing a million things at once. I just needed to shave it down. This is the economical version, if you can believe that.
There was one scene with a jellyfish awareness guy. I met him at a Bonnie Raitt show to try to film some music stuff. They wouldn’t let me film inside, but there was one guy in the lobby that Bonnie Raitt invited to be there that had a table where he was warning people about the overpopulation of jellyfish in Atlantic City. I ended up just hanging out with him the whole time and I went on this whole journey with him. He shows me all these jellyfish and then we talk about why there are so many. It’s because of overdevelopment in the man-made lagoons and basins in Jersey. All these plastic docks that hold jet skis end up being the perfect places for jellyfish to reproduce. It kind of ties into the theme of immediate and long-term effects of development, renewal and cyclical change. In the movie as it is now, the only part of it that exists are the names of funny boats. When I lose a scene for time or narrative efficiency or whatever, I try to just use it for parts with my editor.
Filmmaker: Okay, I heard a story a little while back about how a friend of yours made a John Wilson weed pack as a prank. I was delighted to see that it was actually in the film.
Wilson: Yeah, people ask me if that’s real. I don’t know who made it, though.
Filmmaker: I don’t want to call it fabricated, but how often is footage that seems too good to be true actually just that? You kind of go into this on your show, about how the tenets of documentary were bent to serve the plot at times. Was this also the case for Concrete?
Wilson: I kind of expose a lot in the episode about birds that I did, but that was one shot. People have taken that and they now use it to assume that everything is questionable in this way that kind of upsets me. I kind of brought it upon myself, I guess. Fake stuff makes me feel sick when I see it in other productions. Even stuff that is real in my stuff—which it all is—sometimes feels fake. So I kind of have to do extra work to make sure people really believe it, because everyone’s so trained to question everything. I revealed that stuff in the bird episode because I wanted to become closer with the audience. I don’t want them to feel betrayed and I wanted to talk to them as if I were a friend letting them in on something. Even if I wanted to do fake shit in Concrete, I wouldn’t have had the budget. I met the musician guy after a long day of filming potholes. My camera had broken and it was in pieces and barely working. For some reason I decided to go buy fernet at the liquor store. The guy looked like a musician so I started talking to him, but I was holding my camera in the most insane way, trying to get this interview and hopefully he found it disarming. We ended up spending like a year and a half together. I could do fake stuff, but what was kind of nice about this production was that that wasn’t even in the cards. There are certain narrative flourishes and connective tissue that I kind of impose, but in terms of the people and everything, it’s all real.
Filmmaker: I definitely never thought your subjects or the footage were staged at all.
Wilson: I don’t mean to get defensive. It’s a good question.
Filmmaker: Bringing up the liquor store, as a fellow Ridgewood resident, it’s always fun seeing the neighborhood in your work. You met that guy at Queens Wines and Liquors, which was a treat for me to see. Even in terms of your day to day shooting, is it hard, sometimes, to get out and document the city at large when there’s so much charm and color close to home?
Wilson: We would talk about how I could have shot every pick up shot on my block, where there is every example of concrete imperfections. There’s something kind of nice about that, but I really try not to film ostentatiously in my neighborhood. It’s a bit of a safe space for me. There’s a lot of that in this movie in certain ways, but when you look over the course of the three years that I was making this, it’s literally not that often. I try to leave the neighborhood when I can because when you go into a new environment, it just activates your brain in such a wild way and you begin to notice so much more.
Filmmaker: I think it makes the memoir aspect of your work feel more special when you can sense that you’re letting us into your space or daily experiences.
Wilson: Yeah, but I also never really want to name Ridgewood by name. I guess you see it on a street sign this time around, but I kind of like it being a generic New York neighborhood in a certain way.
Filmmaker: There’s a definite sense of pride among Ridgewood people, but maybe I’m over-generalizing.
Wilson: I mean, there was a funny moment in the liquor store [that I realized after] I showed some friends the movie. There’s that girl who walks in that he offers a shot to. He says that she has the same color hair as her dog, and that’s just serendipitously someone that I’m like one or two degrees away socially. I like that it feels organic when it happens. I never want to feel like I’m making something a caricature.
Filmmaker: Circling back to Bronstein, Ronald recently described you as “Adam Curtis by way of Slacker.” How do you feel about that characterization?
Wilson: I think that’s why Ronnie is like such a great person to have on this, because like he understands the mood of it in a nerdy filmmaker way. I mean, to have those two points of reference as a comparison is extremely flattering and exactly what I’m after. We’re both obsessed with Adam Curtis, but Linklater really scratches that existential itch. I just really love Slacker.
Filmmaker: Is there anything else you’re filming or working on, even if it’s just the kernel of something else you might want to develop?
Wilson: Yeah, I’m kind of editing a pilot right now. I wanted to have it in hand for this situation. The short answer is yes, I’ve got other really interesting, great ideas. It’s not just concrete.
