Interview

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Matt Folden and Nick Pinkerton talk us through their plans for Metrograph’s soon-to-be world-renowned Bookstore.

Since Metrograph welcomed audiences back to the cinema in October, our beloved Bookstore has also re-opened doors under new management: specifically, the loving care and curatorship of twin biblio-head aesthetes Matt Folden and Nick Pinkerton. The pair took a moment out from the inaugural Bookstore cocktail hour to chat with Annabel Brady-Brown.

Matt and Nick, perhaps you’d like to introduce yourselves?

NP: “What does it matter what you say about a man?” Seriously.

I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio’s elegant Christ Hospital on the day following the election of Ronald Reagan to the office of the American presidency, and resided in the precincts of that fair city until my 18th year, at which point I decamped to the Greater Dayton Area to attend film school at Wright State University, for whose baseball team Robert Pollard of Guided by Voices pitched a no-hitter in 1978. My film school experience was much like that depicted in the motion picture Urban Legends 2: Final Cut (2000). I unceremoniously left WSU in February of 2003, sans diploma, in order to take a $5.50/hr position as assistant manager of the Avenue A location of Kim’s Video in New York City, which has been my home ever since. Kim’s was my last venture into retail, but I have since retained my inborn passion for placing items on shelves, which made the Metrograph Bookstore gig seem like a natural fit. I come from a long line of Midwestern shopkeepers of modest means-my great-grandfather, Parker Nugent, once sold toilet paper to Al Capone-and it feels good to be back where I belong.

In the intervening two decades following my tenure at Kim’s I authored several million words of film criticism, some of them legible, and otherwise have passed my hours puttering about and trying to make myself Useful to Cinema, with varying results.

MF: I moved to New York in 2002 and started working alongside Fred Bass at the Strand Bookstore. It was the tail end of the old Strand: turnstiles at the entrance, piles of books everywhere, a Polaroid dossier of our favorite regulars and banned pervs. Fred taught me a version of bookselling which has since fallen out of fashion, but his bits of wisdom have stuck with me and I apply them constantly. I suppose this was my college experience. Since then I’ve worked at various bookstores, record stores, and other small businesses in the city.

NP: You had to check your tote bag at that iteration of the Strand. Lord help you if you tried to enter that place with a tote in hand. Some time after the fact Matt and I pieced together that he had worked at the Strand with one of my best friends from high school, a fellow called Justin Stewart, who recently was wed (congratulations Justin and Julia!), Justin told me that Matt and he went to see the band Xiu Xiu together in the mid-aughts, and apparently Matt drunkenly heckled Xiu Xiu frontman Jamie Stewart (no relation). Justin also told me that Bill O’Reilly was a regular in the Strand’s antiquarian room, which naturally intrigued me.

MF: Not proud of that heckle, but thanks for reminding me. Simpler times. O’Reilly definitely dropped some coin. Nice guy, too.

The amount of interesting material and people passing through the doors in those days was nuts. Institutional education wasn’t for me, nor was the internet, so I was always hungry for signposts and guidance. A great and generous photographer, Tom Caravaglia, lived next door to the shop. He invited me to his holiday party my first year in town, where I met Wendy Carlos. I was pretty rocked; the Moog stuff from A Clockwork Orange was primo for me, and her interview in issue #3 of the (still taken for granted) Grand Royal magazine was an early skeleton key to a lot of stuff. Meeting her and quickly, politely, being taken down a notch for my over-enthusiastic approach to someone that I admired was a top-line lesson.

With such pedigree to lean on, can you tell us a little of what you’ve got planned for the store?

NP: Well, the first order of business was restocking the pond- getting things to a point where we both felt that what we had in the shop was up to snuff, which I’m pleased to say is a point that we’ve now arrived at, and celebrated by inviting some homies to come and have a drink and fondle our beautiful books, our Pretty-Pretties. This is the first of many such soirees, soon to be joined by book fairs, book launches, and God knows what else.

One thing that Matt and I decided on quite early was to focus on film books and nothing but, the only “cheat” being that we’ve slipped in a few artist’s books by people best known for their filmmaking activities: for example, we’ve got a couple of copies of Khalik Allah’s photo book, Souls Against the Concrete, which frankly rules. As the bookstore occupies a relatively small space upstairs, there’s no reason in the world that there should be any dross in the mix. Strictly top-shelf shit, zero tolerance policy when it comes to scrubs. A nice combination of domestics and imports, new and antiquarian, and loads of things you’re simply not going to encounter anywhere else. We have a lot of other moves in mind, but I’m not sure it’s wise to talk about them until they’re actually underway. Suffice it to say that, in the words of “Papa” John Schnatter, a day of reckoning is coming.

MF: Our first Bookstore cocktail hour was a lovely time, we’re looking forward to making these a staple. Metrograph has created a beautiful space to dine on the best food (hat tip to chef Dennis Spina), watch the best movies, and we intend to have our little corner be the best film bookstore in NYC. 

NP: Technically it already is, Matthew. Matt loves Dennis because Dennis is another old “noise scene” guy. The 2005 No Fun Fest-to-Metrograph pipeline is real.

Are there any particular bookstores, dead or alive, that you hold deep affection for, and that you’re hoping to somewhat recreate here? 

NP: My favorite bookstore in the world is a place called Nuit de Chine in Brussels that specializes in antiquarian smut. I raided their stock for film books last month, and several chestnuts from that raid reside now in the Metrograph bookstore, though sadly our copy of Borowczyk, cinéaste onirique got snapped up. That and Tyler Perry: Interviews went fast.

As regards film-specific bookstores, I have affection for a lot of institutionally affiliated joints-those at the BFI Southbank, the Cinémathèque Française, and TIFF Bell Lightbox, for example-though they all come up lacking in the antiquarian department, as did the second floor at Mondo Kim’s and the old bookstore at the Museum of the Moving Image in its “American Museum of the Moving Image” days, two places that I have fond memories of. There’s a standalone film bookstore in Paris, the Librairie du Cinéma du Panthéon Cinélittérature, that maintains an admirable balance of new and used stuff, though I fancy that what they have on us in floorspace we’ll make up for in “curatorial intelligence.” Not that it’s a competition.

I should mention another Paris bookstore, Un Regard Moderne on Rue Gît-le-Cœur, that I used to love back when it was run by this deranged misanthropic hoarder freak who kept it like a rat warren-I scooped a beautiful book of Ghanian film posters there, among other tasty morsels. Unfortunately he croaked and the new ownership cleaned the joint up, in the process effacing its considerable charm. I have a huge affection for a good Book Dumpster-type shop-The Paradox Bookstore in Wheeling, West Virginia, is another example-though that’s not precisely the “look” we’re going for at Metrograph. More of a pocket-sized La Hune kinda thing-the O.G. La Hune, that is, not that new school bullshit, which gets no play in my ride. But even the best of film bookstores tend to score low on style points, which is something that Matt and myself, both effete aesthetes of considerable physical beauty, intend to rectify.

Anyhoo, on the topic of bookstores I could prattle on for quite some time. Generally speaking, I find them to be one of the few reliable safe havens from the lapping flames of the excruciating hell that is contemporary existence.

MF: My hometown hero, the Tacoma Book Center. Been around for decades, it’s a three-story operation near the Tacoma Dome, not far from the old smelter, site of some serious early 20th-century labor movements. It’s a digger’s spot, always worth it.

What are you particularly jazzed to have on-shelf right now?

NP: Oh, gee. Stephen Thrower’s Jess Franco tome is an all-timer for me, a towering work of research and a gorgeous chunk of pulp besides. The Wang Bing book we have, The Walking Eye, is awfully special as well. I recently copped some very sick vintage French poster books which are holding down the display case very nicely, and also a lovely volume showcasing the work of Studio Harcourt, a Paris photography studio renowned for their ravishing black-and-white images of the leading lights of French cinema. And I would be remiss not to mention our lone, slightly care-worn copy of Tag Gallagher’s The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini: His Life and Films, the critical biography against which all others must be measured.

MF: Nick’s film book prowess is second to none. I’m more the nuts-and-bolts guy in the duo, so when it comes to hot picks, I lean toward the straightforward. Bresson’s Notes on the Cinematograph was thankfully reprinted a few years back, essential for anybody with a set of eyes and ears. Chantal Akerman’s My Mother Laughs is a knockout, in print from the always incredible publishers The Song Cave. Fireflies Press is doing incredible things right now with their Decadent Editions series, including some guy Nick Pinkerton’s best-selling Goodbye, Dragon Inn. And then Hat & Beard, out of Chicago, just published a wonderful Dennis Hopper monograph Along for the Ride, which ties into the documentary of the same name. It’s beautifully printed and features a landslide of imagery and information.

NP: A propos of Decadent Editions, I’ll add that Erika Balsom’s book on James Bennings’s Ten Skies and Melissa Anderson’s on David Lynch’s Inland Empire both touch the superlative, which you, our interlocutor, Annabel Ivy Brady-Brown, should know, because you edited both of them. Vertical integration! It worked for the Big Five!

But I’ll shoot you straight, Annabel: we’re pretty much chucking down all killer, no filler. Beautiful books, beautifully written, about beautiful films, for beautiful people-“And that,” as Sailor Moon would always say to evildoers, “means you.” Better ingredients, better pizza. No Funkos, no 1,001 Badass Movies Every Dude Should See Before He Dies, no geek trashola. Walk that shit the fuck on back to Austin, ya fershluggin’ breakfast taco. This is New York City, baby. We bench our weight and swim at Brighton Beach here.

MF: …Sailor Moon? 

Final thoughts? Can my publisher friends email you about their forthcoming chic tomes?

MF: We aim to have the Bookstore display the energy and movement that’s found throughout Metrograph. We’re adding new stock weekly, throwing events both small and large. We’re scouting new and vintage material, so if you’re a publisher with something we may not have seen, please reach out; or if you have a collection of film books or related ephemera you’re looking to offload, whether it be a single item or a large collection, hit us up! We can be found at bookstore@metrograph.com.

NP: That email goes to Matt, who, when he modestly says that he’s the “nuts-and-bolts” guy in our duo, is politely saying that he does everything essential to the operation of the shop while I swan about in handsome European bookstores and soak up undeserved accolades for my low-impact participation in this entire endeavor. Matt’s the plugged-in play-by-play guy; I’m color commentary. Like Dennis Miller on Monday Night Football, specifically-just super obnoxious and everyone hates what he’s doing. Okay, Babe?

MF: Well put, Nicky, baby. 

NP: You know it, Chachi.

 

All photos courtesy of Hope Christerson.