The Crusaders

The result is The Crusaders, a modern love/crime story set in New York’s East Village. Featuring legendary actor Peter Greene — notorious for villainous roles in films like Pulp Fiction and The Mask — alongside Downtown icons like Sophia Lamar and newcomers like actress (and Jack Nicholson’s daughter) Tessa Gourin, the film’s two recent screenings, which felt more like a Hollywood premiere than a Downtown short, quickly sold out. "We've shown it twice, following it up with a party afterwards. It's a good time. There's a good buzz going on right now in the city. People here will have a couple more chances to see it in New York. Bands here play too often sometimes, the same fucking songs, but still it's fun. I'm taking this approach with the film. show a film, bring people together, then let’s party.”

We sat down with the new filmmaker to discuss taking on such a massive venture without any experience, how New York’s underbelly is always just at arm’s length and some of the craziest shit one encounters when running a tattoo shop on St. Marks.

Tell me about yourself. Where are you from?

Growing up, my mom lived in Richmond, Virginia and my dad lived in Brooklyn a block up from Biggie's on St. James. Having both cities provided my sister and I the comfort that a slower city offers, and far thought which New York imparts. We grew up in Jackson Ward: "Harlem of the South," which is rich in southern Black culture. By the time I was old enough to walk around my neighborhood solo, Richmond hit a decade of being the most dangerous city in America. I saw crazy shit.

What've you learned living in New York?

I've been in New York for 16 years. If you're born here — not Jersey or Long Island — you have a whole crackpot of shit you have to live through. If you chose to live here, then you missed the boat and gotta catch up! There's an endless amount of knowledge and experience to gain here. You have to go to work. Then get to work again when you have a moment for yourself. I'm a selfish, impatient person and I live in the right place for that. This is a personality trait, choosing to live here. Choosing to deal with this shit? Well you have your bodega with Tylenol Maximum two blocks away, 24 hours a day, cocaine delivered to your couch if you roll like that, most types of food that the Earth has, and personally, I have a beautiful girlfriend from London. So it's cool. But then you get a sandwich at the deli and the tomatoes are a pale pink, almost clear. It’s wild here. The world gets smaller living in New York City. We're lucky to experience that.

I'm sure you meet all kinds of characters owning Fun City alone. Any good stories?

Couple months ago this young handsome guy walks in. Looked well to do. Wanted to tattoo panda eyes around his eyes. Ran his own business so we did it. A couple weeks ago his wife comes in and wants the same thing: big black panda eyes around her human eyes. She had a cute summer dress on. When she was done they were both super happy. Was some old St Mark's crazy shit. It’s rare these days, but it happens. Fun City is happy to make people happy.

What was the impetus for making this, your first film?

I was at Strand and picked up a book called, "The Big Goodbye." It's about the writing that went into the Chinatown script. Super cool shit. Then covid happens, followed by the world's lockdown. I ordered a bunch of books — not from Amazon, Thriftbooks is it — about writing movies. If you learn a lot about how to do something, and you don't, you're trippin’. I had too much knowledge after all that to just sit on my ass. I had zero experience but my brain was buzzing with info. I had to see what I could do with it. Thank you Robert Towne.

Where’d the story come from?

It was natural for me to tell. It’s a love story, and as the French New Wave guys said, “Throw a gun in when you need a hand from the story's world,” and voila. I love Westerns; I love a good Mexican standoff. Those are hard to write: getting three characters to the same place, same time, all ready to rock. How do I modernize or add something to that ending Western fans are familiar with? Watch the movie and you'll see how I did it. It's good. And then writing a story set in New York is easy. If you need a character, you can find it in someone you know, or someone you have met, heard about, read about, whatever the fuck it is. Imagine writing a story set in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Blackbelt shit making that an interesting story.

How'd you get such incredible talent?

The cast is great; I'm blessed. The first call I made was to my good friend Skamdust DMS. Skam's a wizard on the streets. I'd hung out with him and Peter Greene together a couple times over the years. They have a beautifully intense relationship, a bit cantankerous at times but always with love. If you've seen the movie Mikey and Nicky, it's similar to that. These are wild guys that understand respect. Perfect guys to play two crooked cops. I called Skam, sent him the script and told him I wanted Peter to play his counterpart. After reading the script Peter said this movie would either be complete shit or a hit and he was willing to take a chance on it. He was right. It's a bit of a strange script to read. The story isn't anything new but the way I tried to tell it is a bit different — fierceness followed by levity, again and again, like “Hamburger Hill” into “Step Brothers.” After Peter agreed to take part it all fell into place. It was easy to get other people to hop on to the show. Peter Greene is one of the best actors of our time. He has immense power on screen.

Tell me about working with actors of differing experience.

Making a movie is very difficult. Directing one is the toughest position and I had no experience. Plus a couple of the actors had never been in front of a camera before. I own a tattoo shop. My partner Big Steve and I have been telling tattooers what to do for 10 years. That’s a hard lot to work with; people that wanted to act would be easier is what I told myself in order to find confidence. You're dealing with a lot of personal opinions on the same script. It’s really two magnets of opposing poles the whole time from my position. Me trying to get what I envisioned the story to be, while everyone else is doing the same. These are some of the hard parts. Great parts? Everyone helps each other. Experienced actors helped the less-experienced. No one wants their scene to be fucked up so you're better off helping someone. Regardless, I had a feeling everyone would pull it off and they did. Thanks to them.

The Crusaders focuses on the underbelly of downtown; do you think things are similar today as they're presented in the film?

There's always an underbelly. Forever there will be lots of people that come from less that use crime to forward their life. It's not a matter of morals. Sometimes it's the best option to jump brackets. You gotta have a panoptic view on this. It is what it is. The bigger the city, the bigger the scope. New York is kickin’. You gotta be open-minded to find this shit though. It's here.

Advice for emerging filmmakers?

If you want to make a movie, find a good producer. My producer Brendan Brulon was another first-timer. He's got a good brain for organization and making things happen, and he made this movie happen. Thank you Brendan. You don't need experience to do anything for the first time. "I’ve never done it before," well sure. So what? But yes, find a Brendan. That's the first move and it rolls from there. It's been the hardest thing I’ve ever pulled off and it’s only 25 minutes. But I have more knowledge now. I can’t sit back with this shit buzzing again. The Crusaders is the closest thing to me I've ever made. But besides that, I'm still figuring out what this has all compounded into.

Catch the upcoming screening at Under St. Marks in New York on June 1st, and in Paris on the 19th of July.

Culture

Alain Levitt’s Time Capsule of Early Aughts NYC (2000-2005)

Amanda Lepore, Alain Levitt

Beyond the exhibition, Alain’s book of the same name, available May 1st, acts as a time capsule, a snapshot of what he and his friends were getting into back then — figuring their lives out, meeting people, making memories and now, reminiscing on what was. Today, walking through Dimes Square where his and his wife’s restaurant, Bacaro, has become a premiere meeting hub for the neighborhood's youth, Alain recognizes that while “it’s such a different world,” youth is still the same.

“Young people are young people, man. It’s different being older and not really understanding what’s going on. I don’t fully feel like I’m part of it in the same way… but I love it and it seems the same, but one thing I see is it’s more colorful, it’s animated, and everything seems kind of to an extreme that I really love.”

When Bacaro first opened in 2007, there was no Dimes Square. He likens the emergence of the neighborhood to “the beginning of Williamsburg when that kind of popped off and all of a sudden, if you went down Bedford, it was just young people everywhere and everybody was dressing outrageous.” Back then, congregating in Bedford symbolized a communal rejection of Manhattan. What Levitt witnesses in Dimes, a neighborhood that’s become a bit polarizing amongst New Yorkers, is “more or less the same thing” — though the object of its rejection seems yet to be defined.

Perhaps it’s more of an acceptance — of indulgence, of being part of something, of embracing in the past, bringing into now what people imagine New York City and downtown to be.

left to right - Ryan McGinley, Dan Colen, Kenji Ukigaya, Dash Snow

When Alain moved out here in the ‘90s, his older sister Danielle gave him a camera. At that time, he didn’t consider himself a photographer. He was just a younger brother emulating his older sister, who was shooting street photography and fashion parties for the Post. Alain recalls “showing up to Max Fish and being gently made fun of for his oversized paparazzi rig.” For his second job, Alain was working as a bar-back at The Cock and The Fat Cock (now known as The Hole), giving him “a front row seat to a wild NY that was quickly being choked out by Mayor Giuliani.”

On one of his first nights, he was assigned to the back room at The Cock, where patrons would do whatever drunk people do in the dark. As a kid “brand new to New York” flashing a light on people, he realized that suddenly, his life was completely different. And it was exciting. “I made more money than I could have ever imagined. I was working minimum wage jobs coming from LA, at movie theaters and all this other shit. In NY, I was able to live off two days a week which gave me room to do everything.”

Eventually, Alain started shooting for Nylon, PAPER, V Magazine, and other publications on his days off. Though they didn’t fully feel like a part of that world, he and his friends (skaters, graffiti artists, ravers, the trifecta of '90s subcultures) disrupted the fabric of the fashion scene. Reminiscing on some of those moments, he tells us, “Our group would show up at the fashion parties and make our presence known, even though they probably didn’t think we belonged there, that maybe we hadn’t earned it yet.”

left to right - Ryan McGinley, Chloë Sevigny

Then, Alain found his community on the Lower East Side, “Alife by day, Max Fish at night,” and “after starting a bi-weekly party, with Spencer Sweeny, at The Hole, planted his seed in the downtown scene.” The world that Levitt found himself navigating in his early years in New York City wasn’t new, it was itself a continuation of the pseudo-renaissance that emerged downtown in the ‘60s and again in the '70s and again in the subsequent decades. “It’s almost like a 10-year cycle and one good thing about New York is that it lets you be young a little longer. We were coming out here thinking about the CBGB’s era.”

And when looking through Alain’s photos, while humming with an inherent sense of nostalgia, it feels as if these images could’ve been taken yesterday. Skateboarding, bands playing one-off shows in dingy music venues, gallery openings that pour out onto the block, it’s all still here, just slightly different. While the internet has made us more connected, and distractions more frequent, much of what was, still is. And for Alain, there’s an innate resilience to this culture of “youth”, a culture somehow driven by a shared dysfunction. “Living in New York is so hard, rents are high, the weather is hard. It can be amazing but you have to put up with all this other bullshit to get the best out of it. You have to be willing to suffer. The people that I knew and the people that I connected to and was around — there was always a certain amount of fucked-up-ness we all shared.”

The people that I knew and the people that I connected to and was around — there was always a certain amount of fucked-up-ness we all shared.

left to right, Dash Snow, Kunle Martins (Earsnot)

Whether seeking self-discovery in New York City, escaping a toxic family, or generally curious to explore the city’s burgeoning underbelly, people here find their own, often forming surrogate families along the way. Levitt’s book, and the photographs on display at WHAAM! exemplify that family isn’t always clean-cut and you might bond with a person you’d least expect to: on the train, at a bar, laying on the grass at Seward Park, skating at Tompkins, or having a plate of squid ink pasta at Bacaro before heading to Le Dive for some overpriced house wine.

In the most ordinary moments, the greatest ideas and connections can spring to life and this was true even then. “I imagine creativity drives a lot of this,” Levitt says. “There’s a thread that we saw and maybe even idealized New York City to be.” It’s a thread that this generation hasn’t seemed to let go of: “I feel like my book shows our moment of coming into ourselves and now the kids today are doing it themselves. In 20 years, there’ll be a record of their time that the next group of kids will be looking at. It might not be the same, but the roots are.”

From Tim Barber, a former photo editor at Vice who edited the book, to Jesse Pearson, former EIC at Vice, Su Barber (Tim’s sister), Mike Piscitelli from Fucking Awesome and skateboarder Jason Dill, everyone involved in the book “from the editors down to the publisher was there in our circle, and pretty much all in the book too.” To Alain, everyone in the book was of equal significance, whether celebrity Chloe Sevigny or Marc Razo of Max Fish, who Alain recognizes as “a loving, wonderful person who’s been in the downtown scene forever.”

“Some of those people have definitely become legendary, which is awesome,” says Levitt. “But with them, it’s like me, I felt special to be there. I wanted to be with these people and we all had all of these lofty ideas of ourselves that were shattered over time. I think it’s good to break through those delusions of grandeur and get a real sense of what the world is. But at that moment, it was pure. We all thought we were special.” And maybe we still do.

NYC 2000-2005 is on view April 18 - May 25, 2024 at WHAAM! at 15 Elizabeth St # 113, New York, NY 10013.

Culture

At Planned Parenthood's Annual Gala, Megan Thee Stallion Shines Bright

April 18, 2024

Under one of the first truly warm evenings of New York’s spring season, guests, organizational supporters, and a grab-bag of celebrities (who saw Molly Ringwald?) gathered at Cipriani’s South Street outpost to ring in another year of action and advocacy.

In a regressive landscape that has recently seen the rollback of the right to protest in three states, as well as the upholding of arcane abortion legislation in Arizona, Planned Parenthood’s call to action is eerily more apt than ever.

At an interactive exhibit during the cocktail hour, Judy Chicago’s interactive work, produced in partnership with DMINTI, invited guests to share their voices during an urgent time in the fight for free bodies. Participants in the videos will become a permanent piece of the historic artwork as it travels worldwide on tour.

By Sam Falb
Photography by Nikki Burnett

After guests settled into their seats, the night’s honorees Patricia Arquette and Megan Thee Stallion lauded the organization’s work and the manifold ways it has affected their lives for the better. Overcome with emotion, Megan accepted the Catalyst for Change Award, in recognition of her choice to advocate for bodily freedom and sexual liberation through her platform, and inimitable tracks like Plan B.

“Planned Parenthood has been a leader while abortion rights are under attack. Y’all are the true heroes,” Megan shared in her acceptance speech. “I’ve always known that I have a bigger purpose than just being a musician, and to speak up when people need our help.”

The second of its kind, the gala celebrates the work of the organization while honoring particularly devoted advocates, hosting an auction to raise funds for annual operating costs, and rounding out with an afterparty featuring host Patia of Patia’s Fantasy World, and DJs including Boston Chery and river moon.

“They’ve been there for me and a lot of my friends, especially when I first came to this country and needed healthcare,” Moon said. When the lights went down and guests trickled out onto the street, the event’s urgent appeal was in clear and energizing focus, primed for a productive year ahead.

Culture

“This is the most cracked-out shit I’ve ever been to”: Inside Harmony Korine's EDGLRD Party at Elsewhere

April 17, 2024

When do Travis Scott fanboys hang out with BDSM gear-wearing leather heads? At Harmony Korine’s Tuesday night party at Elsewhere, where EDGLRD, Korine’s multimedia design collective, screened their latest film, AGGRO DR1FT. It’s an acid-bath wet dream of luxury cars, gore, and strippers in chain mail — a Miami take on the classic Korine narrative. The film says it best: “There is magic in this brutality. I am mesmerized by it. Right in front of my eyes, we are turning into animals.” With the film’s minute-long beheading scene and a confused Travis Scott asking, “Julius Caesar wrote the Bible?” we were primed to party with that same “magic brutality.”

Between the bored strippers, fashion fanatics, and the guy in the booth with AraabMuzik conspicuously rubbing his nose, not an ass was left unshaken. Everyone wanted to be “the belle of the EDGLRD ball” — evident through the girls trying to be the next Korine muse, fancying him a sort of new-age Warhol. Amidst airborne dollar bills and monster masks, all were pleasantly surprised when Korine’s DJ set had that same animalistic feel as AGGRO DR1FT. A guest's sprained ankle serves as a testament to the fact that Korine’s DJing goes as hard as his filmmaking.

By Izzy Capulong
Photography by Liv Solomon

We got some input from partygoers — some anonymous, some less so.

Anonymous — The film was like a three-hour-long trailer for GTA 6.

Anonymous 2 — We’ll call tonight, “Harmony Korine’s goon cave.”

Aidan — I came here kind of old-new to New York, and I haven’t lived here in eight years, but I’m here again and this is the most cracked-out shit I’ve ever been to.

office — In a good way or a bad way?

Aidan — Always good.

Claire — It’s a rare evening that you find yourself the perfect amount of drunk to be in the space that you’re in, but I happened to experience that tonight, so for me, it’s pure Nirvana. But they stopped playing All Star mid-song. That was upsetting. But at one point in the evening, a rogue, brave woman got herself on stage and took her titties out.

Girl with her tits out — This is the future of cinema.

Tyler — The last time I partied at Elsewhere was 2018. Harmony Korine brought New York back.