Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | August 4, 2026
HBO’s How to with John Wilson built its entire premise around taking a nothing subject — how to make small talk, how to cook the perfect risotto, how to put up wallpaper — and letting it spiral somewhere weird and profoundly human. The subject is a misdirect — the “how to” was always a Trojan horse. Scaffolding, for instance, got him to a convention of circumcision activists, and risotto got him to an accused fugitive in a hotel room. So it tracks that his first feature would be about arguably one of the least interesting topics imaginable: Concrete.
Per the official synopsis: Following the finale of his TV series, filmmaker John Wilson looks to the bedrock of his beloved New York City for inspiration and structure. Concrete, the world’s most widely used building material, appears as an ever-present life force, and John sets out to make the definitive documentary on the matter. To tell this seemingly drab story, he decides to use the industry-approved Hallmark formula to increase his movie’s appeal. But his foundation soon begins to crumble—literally and figuratively—as he struggles to balance artistic freedom with the realities of the modern film industry.
Concrete is the most literally hardened, boring material in the world, and Wilson is the one man alive who’ll find the something interesting underneath it, probably in some guy’s basement filled with abandoned rice cookers. The wrinkle is the new twist because it means the movie is partly about the impossibility of making the movie.
The History of Concrete hits theaters on September 18th, 2026. It’s also worth noting that concrete is having a moment for all you afficianados: A24 released a more straightforward documentary on concrete called Architecton in 2024. I am guessing, however, that it doesn’t involve any circumcisions.
