The Bizarre Logic of John Wilson’s ‘The History of Concrete’

In the How to With John Wilson episode “How to Put Up Scaffolding,” the off-kilter New York City documentarian goes on a quest to understand a ubiquitous part of the city: the ever-present scaffolding that results from strict regulations about building-facade inspection. It’s a journey that takes him to restaurants who’ve clad their scaffolding in plastic vines, rental apartments whose windows are blocked by scaffolding, a scaffolding conference in New Orleans and even a conversation with someone who recounts a sexual scaffolding adventure. This is all introduced with two fantastically bleak, dryly delivered lines: “Hey. Everyone in New York is going to die.”

Opening this week at the Belcourt, Wilson’s debut feature-length documentary The History of Concrete continues his fascination with the awkward intersections of social and built environments. It also, in typical fashion, expands outward in strange directions: the stifling commercialization of the film and music industries, NIMBYism, environmental degradation. There are trips to Rome, a Buddhist temple, Ohio and another niche construction conference (this one, for concrete). It’s a lot to take on in 100 minutes, and the way the film weaves it all into a hilarious meditation on existence and impermanence — through the lens, no less, of concrete — is a marvel.

Aside from what’s likely an incredible storage solution for the copious amounts of footage he gathers, Wilson’s biggest gift might be his ability to get bizarre people talking on camera. In The History of Concrete, one of the men working at postmortem tattoo embalming company Save My Ink Forever hints to Wilson that they were asked to preserve Charles Manson’s forehead swastika. Another small businessman, the proprietor of the company Gum Busters, leads him in the chant “That gum is busted!” as his power-wash system removes pieces of gum stuck to the sidewalk, one at a time. The business is as poetic as it is futile; Wilson describes the man as “the only guy in the city” who tries to get rid of the gum.

That’s a perfect tie-in to Wilson’s own journey, the metatextual artistic frustration as he tries to secure funding for Concrete over the course of the film. He’s obviously making a point by first trying to shoehorn the documentary into a Hallmark movie formula, and then trying to find a connection to a musician of “elevated visibility, relevance and notoriety” (a contract phrase) after a misunderstood joke about making a “rockumentary.” Wilson’s work usually meanders with a surreal dream logic; it’s rare for his framing to be so prominent.

But in these orchestrations, there’s still room to go to unexpected places — and it’s there that his subjects make things simple. A liquor store employee named Jack Macco, who plays bar gigs in a band called Nebulus, offers Wilson advice that would be cliché if it weren’t so profoundly sincere: “Never forget why you’re doin’ it: Because you love it.” Another interviewee, a teenage skateboarder, tells him, “I don’t really think about the concrete like that.” Fundamentally, this is a movie that asks — and makes the viewer want to ask — a bizarre question back: What if you did?