The secret message of John Wilson’s debut feature documentary, ‘The History of Concrete’

FastCompany: Nobody who’s remotely familiar with John Wilson’s funny, angsty HBO series How To with John Wilson will be surprised to discover that his debut feature documentary, The History of Concrete , is not really about concrete. Wilson introduces us to a guy who removes tattoos from corpses and mounts the dead inked skin as mementos for loved ones. He interviews a New York park official who details how to purge poops from public swimming pools. When the film touches on the subject of concrete, Wilson quickly pivots to another. He’ll do anything not to dwell on his nominal topic.

He never wrestles with concrete’s mass, omnipresence, or effects on the lives of nearly everyone on the planet. The topic is too big for comfort, too demanding of his very modern quick, jump-cutting attention deficits. If the point is that concrete defies sustained attention, it’s a good one. Advertently or not, by the end of the film, Wilson reveals two of the most astonishing facts about the world’s most-used material: Concrete is largely unseen, and its invisibility endangers us all. Not because concrete itself is villainous, but because our lazy, distracted, often nonexistent engagement with it invites disaster.

[Photo: Magnolia Pictures] The everywhere material The world produces 30 billion tons of concrete a year. The same material we rely on to protect us is also a major contributor to the climate crisis. Cement, the chemical binder that is one of concrete’s key ingredients, is tied to 8% of climate-warming carbon emissions, but concrete is essential for seawalls and other structures we will need to forestall damage from climate change. The yearly production of concrete tops all other building materials combined. Most of the world’s new concrete is used outside the U.S. and Europe, in China, India and other countries on the make.

Wilson interviews some subjects who know their concrete facts. Just as they seem about to offer a bit of gobsmacking concrete information, the film cuts to something else, like the painting of a bubble-butted woman’s rear he spies on the back of a truck. Civilization may not hang on that, but it may fall due to our distraction. [Photo: Magnolia Pictures] In reporting on concrete, I repeatedly meet people in the industry who cannot fathom why most people care so little about the material. In the U.S., construction, nearly all of which happens with concrete, is the fourth-largest sector in the economy. So what? It’s still boring, right?

The cool kids don’t hover around concrete guys at parties anxious to hear about advances in concrete that make 167-story buildings possible or how new concrete mixes could absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, not emit it. “Concrete is (almost) everywhere,” writes Julie Soleil Archambault, an anthropologist at Concordia University in Montreal. “It often passes unnoticed—too ubiquitous, too mundane, to warrant much attention.

Sometimes, however, it does quite the opposite, especially when it fails to meet the expectations of durability invested in it, when it cracks and crumbles.” In one segment, Wilson interviews a former New York City traffic commissioner. It’s “Gridlock Sam” Schwartz (uncredited), who coined the term “gridlock.” He paces under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in Brooklyn Heights. Schwartz runs a finger along a “fossil,” an empty groove where some once-formidable rebar rusted out and vanished. Schwartz warns that such conditions cause big structures to collapse.

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The documentary addresses a significant issue in sustainability and material usage, which is highly relevant for brand strategists looking to engage audiences, though the topic of concrete itself is not entirely new.