On a balmy morning in April, Nick Pinkerton was deep in the vaults of a New York video store, cataloguing alongside filmmakers Sean Price Williams and Alex Ross Perry. It’s not where you might expect to find Pinkerton and Williams soon before the Cannes world premiere of their film, The Sweet East, which Pinkerton wrote and Williams directed. But it was a quiet moment in a happy place for the two former employees of the East Village’s storied Kim’s Video & Music.
The Sweet East is the latest writing endeavor for Pinkerton, 42, who has developed a loyal following through a perhaps unlikely cottage industry: lovingly researched, digressive essays about movies; mordantly funny Twitter takedowns of cultural absurdities; and popular pursuits that include a Roxy Cinema secret screening series (with Williams), editing at Metrograph, and a zine, Bombast. (There’s also a Substack and a book or two.)
