John Wilson Trades Hollywood How-To Guides for Concrete

John Wilson has made a documentary about concrete. The documentarian, known for his HBO series How To with John Wilson, has released his first feature-length film, The History of Concrete.

The title names its subject plainly. Concrete is, by most measures, a dense topic — literally and figuratively — and Wilson's choice to build his feature debut around it marks a departure from the episodic format that made his name at HBO.

In How To with John Wilson, the filmmaker turned small premises — how to make small talk, how to cover your furniture — into wandering, humane essays on New York City and its residents. The show ran on HBO and built Wilson's reputation as one of contemporary documentary's most distinctive voices.

A feature-length run time gives Wilson more room than a series episode allows. Whether The History of Concrete extends the observational style of his television work into longer form, or breaks from it entirely, will determine how his audience receives the film.

No release details beyond the film's existence were available in the source material, including distributors, festival premieres or streaming dates. What is clear is the subject itself: the film takes as its subject the history of the world's most ubiquitous building material.

Wilson's move from HBO episodic television to feature documentary places him in a small group of TV documentarians who have made the same leap. The subject choice — humble, material, easy to underestimate — is consistent with the sensibility of a filmmaker whose previous work found profundity in the mundane.

For now, the film stands as Wilson's answer to the question of what he would do after How To. Concrete, it turns out, was the answer.

The release sets up the next phase of Wilson's career: whether The History of Concrete secures distribution and reaches the audience his HBO show built will be the story to watch.