‘The History of Concrete’ Trailer — John Wilson’s Feature Debut

Anyone who has watched HBO’s “How To with John Wilson” — or even just Mayor Mamdani’s recent PSA about new changes to scaffolding rules that he made with John Wilson — already knows just how much fun it is to watch Wilson work. The documentary filmmaker can take the mundane things we tune out from the world around us and, through canny shot selection, editing, and his own deadpan voiceover, make them richly funny and alive and surprising.

Each episode of “How To,” which Wilson refers to as his small movies, may start at the scale of birdwatching or risotto, but by digging into the normal people (and, therefore, the deeply weird people) around his subjects, they spiral into something incredible. Well, now Wilson has gotten to make a big movie, and his feature-length debut “The History of Concrete” is set to release in theaters this fall, after being well-received at its premiere at Sundance earlier this year.

“The History of Concrete,” like all Wilson’s stories, does what it says on the tin and absolutely goes above and beyond it. As IndieWire’s own David Ehrlich writes in his review, “It would be a waste of time to walk you through how Wilson gets from 49-cent royalty checks and rueing his life as a Ridgewood landlord to the oldest buildings in Rome and a brick-laying contest in Las Vegas, but suffice it to say that concrete — everyone’s favorite composite material composed of aggregate bound together with fluid cement — serves as the great connector.”

But as always with Wilson, it’s the way that things become connected — be they sudden and startling or the slow, sly wind-up to a joke we’ve suspected all along, or a meditation on loss that only becomes intelligible when coming at it sideways. That’s where the fun really lies.

There’s a line from “Doctor Who” where Britain’s most ADHD alien (as played by Matt Smith at the time) tells someone who assures him they aren’t important, “Blimey, that’s amazing. I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before.” Wilson and his trusty Sony FS5 have never met anyone, or anything, that isn’t important, either. Even when it’s concrete.

“The History of Concrete” will release in theaters on Friday, September 18. Watch the full trailer below.