John Wilson on the Anxiety of Secretly Shooting the Kardashians in ‘History of Concrete,’ and Getting Recognized After His HBO Show

An annual event like GQ’s Man of the Year dinner is typically cameras-off and closed to media — unless you’re John Wilson, that is.

The creator and behind-the-camera star of HBO’s three-season cult favorite “How to with John Wilson” came to the 2026 Sundance Film Festival with his first-ever feature-length documentary, “The History of Concrete.” What feels like a feature-length version of his TV episodic, which uses an associative editing style to ask big and small questions about New York City life, centers on the filmmaker’s own quest to make a documentary about the cement-and-sad aggregate material.

Part of his journey takes him to Los Angeles, where he secretly filmed the 2023 GQ event, which was hosted by Jacob Elordi and featured talent like Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, and Tom Ford.

“I knew that I was in a rare environment, and whenever I’m in a place like that, I tend to, out of anxiety, start to film sometimes,” Wilson said at IndieWire’s Sundance Studio. “But the GQ event was kind of very surreal, and I dunno why I was seated so close to the Kardashians or anybody else, but the way we could use that in the movie I think was because there were other people filming there, and I had proof that other people were filming at the same event. So I wasn’t the only person capturing it, but I think ultimately I was the only person putting it into a larger documentary.”

The documentary also features secretly recorded Zoom meetings with executives to whom he pitches the doc-within-the-doc, and who grow increasingly disappointed with the results, such as material Wilson filmed throughout Europe on a costly pre-production trip.

As for the finished film, Wilson said, “They saw it at the premiere. I went up to my agent afterwards, and he said he really enjoyed it and that he wished he was able to practice his lines. He didn’t know I was recording. They liked it. I dunno, they were super proud of it and really good sports about what I eventually put in the film. They never told me to stop, and I embellished certain things, but it was a tough pitch. That’s why it excited me so much because it was the most boring possible subject matter I could think of, even though I was fascinated by it.”

While Wilson tends to move fairly stealthily through the world as a filmmaker and artist, he has been getting recognized more in public (and by potential interviewee subjects) because of the “How to” show.

“Being out in public is still fine. If anyone would recognize me or what I’m doing, they’re usually pretty respectful of it and understand it’s not something worth disturbing,” he said. “There’s a lot of people in the movie that know about the show, but it doesn’t change who they are. In the very beginning at Columbia [University], there’s a few students showing me their concrete workshop lab and this strength compression machine, and they knew about the show, and they were fans, but when you’re getting someone to describe the material components of concrete, there’s not much play there. They will just act like themselves.”

Watch the full conversation in the video above.

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