Cool people like cool things, which is why we asked Kate, Creston, Keenan, and Casey of NPCC to share a taste of their taste on Perfectly Imperfect.

Kate, Creston, Keenan, and Casey are the people behind New People’s Cinema Club (aka NPCC), a “community-driven, film-focused, multi-media freak show” non profit dedicated to promoting and developing transgressive art. They throw events that champion independent art such as a screening and Q&A with Vincent Gallo, media showcases for artists like Jon Rafman and Petra Cortright, and interviews with legends like John Waters. In the next few months they’re hosting a screening at Cinema Village, a Tribeca Synagogue event, and a curated meme showcase at a Chinatown gallery. Lucky for us, they’re here to tell us what they’ve been into.

Without further ado

Creston “The Pitbull” Brown (instagram)

🚘 Driving

I love driving. If you’ve sat in my passenger seat you’ll think this answer is bullshit, but it’s true. I drive long distances quite a lot, and I love the meditative aspects of a long trip somewhere. In the summer I drive a 1991 Mercedes 500SL my Dad and I have poured almost double its Kelly Blue Book value into, and I have a nondescript daily driver for the rest of the year. I hope I can buy more cars soon, as I want to burn more and more money on shit I love for the rest of my life. 

👘 Clothes

I implore you to never look over my shoulder when I’m on my phone, but if you do, you’ll likely see me scrolling through jackets, t-shirts, and every novelty piece of fitted fabric I can find. I take great pleasure in going out in the weirdest shot I can find, or the nicest shit you’ve never seen or heard of. Dressing up is a game to me, and I love playing it every day. My favorite thing to wear is my bunker pants. No, my favorite thing to wear is my Avirex, or maybe my boots, or all three I don’t know. I don’t like ubiquity. I love seeing what people unconsciously dress themselves in too. It’s fascinating. 

🎥 Movies with my family

It’s a given, but I like the rest of the team, love movies. The first one I saw was Scooby Doo, according to my parents. I cried when it got loud so they took me out of the theater. I love my parents. Showing movies to them is a deep pleasure of mine. Just like cooking for them, or getting them that thing they wanted for their birthday. People are surprised when I say this, but I show everything I screen to my family beforehand. They’re the Wizard behind the curtain of my programming. I talk with them about what should go first, and discuss the common themes the shorts I pick share. It makes me a better curator and programmer having my mom, dad, and sister in the room for help.

📝 Writing

I write a lot of shit down. I’m an impulsive person, so when I get an idea for something I tend to try to record it before it fades away. It’s how I got into throwing these events actually. The first screening I did in LA came from a note I wrote to myself at my old job on the back of a post-it. It was a few loosely scribbld words, but I remembered how strongly the thought behind it was, and decided to act on it. I’m a big ideas guy, and I try to reel myself in a lot of the time. Writing down the things I want to do helps me greatly. 

👷‍♂️ Work

I need to work. I need to keep my mind busy with goals. Big ones, small ones, ambitions and routines, I need it all. As a kid I was always labeled uh, like smart. Or something like that. Gifted. I was a gifted child hahahahaha. I was praised for my verbose conversations, and knowledge of trivial shit from pop culture and presidential history. I didn’t have a lot of solid friends growing up, and I spent a lot of my time with adults. So, I was always pampered with “You’re gonna be ____ one day!” And that shit. I never built a work ethic. I guess it’s my fault, but I don’t know if it was internal or external. As an adult now, I feel like I have to make up for that lost time. I have to constantly work on my personal affairs, and the events I do. Or else I’ll fall into that childhood-teenage bad habit of not doing anything. 

👯 people

I love people. I love my friends, my foes, the people that ignore me, the people that tolerate me, the people I don’t know, and the people I’ll always know. My family, extended and immediate, and my strangers, around the corner or around the world. People are what I live for, and what I’m sure to die trying to appease, impress, offend, inspire, but above all else entertain and instruct. Shouts out to Taylor Cohan, Roger Hayn, Aaron Light, Isaac Reynaldo, and Rob Scharlach, Negashi Armada, Robbie Barnett, Ivy Wolk, my everydays, my homies. Shouts out to Pedro Bello, Santangelo, Francis, and the whole AdWorld team as well as Dylan and Lena Redford for the inspiration and the fun. Blu Hunt, Sally Sum, Video Expert, Alec Moeller, Ally Davis, Jackie Kramer, Brooks Skerritt, Bianca my Yung_Nihilist. Dasha (the true one), Colter Fellows, Harrison Fishman, Ben Gordon, Oliver Shahery my New York warriors. Grant, Jon, thank you for the best summer job I’ve ever had. Xander for the best spring break job I’ve ever had. Kennedy, Lily, Isabelle, Viviana, Gibson, David. Tommy, Leigh, Andy, Alex: my boys on the hustle, the movement. Thank you to my exes and my future exes for teaching me, for listening to me, for giving and for taking. Thank you to everyone who’s let me screen their film, and everyone that’s told me never to screen a film again. That’s not everyone I forgot a lot of people. Ben Friedlander. One of few I’ve seen as stressed about a film screening as me. Kate, Casey, Keenan, Edward. My film family. This sounds like a suicide note but it’s an expression of a gratitude I feel every day. I love you.

Kate Levitt (instagram)

🦊 My little dog, Banana.

Banana is an orange pomeranian. He’s objectively the cutest dog in the neighborhood, and a local celebrity; people we’ve never met approach us and ask, “is this Banana?” My landlord is also a local celebrity because he owns many of the apartments around us. My dream is to hold a race for Mayor of Windsor Terrace between my landlord and Banana and I’d bet the house (his house) that Banana would win. They’re both friendly and love bird watching and the Grateful Dead, but surely the landlord’s platform would have to do with raising rent while Banana’s would be allowing pets in Greenwood Cemetery. Banana can’t do many tricks like “paw” or “twirl” but he’s awesome at fetch. 

 ☮ Lungfish

Lungfish is the best band Dischord ever released, and one of the best bands in general. Vocalist and musician Daniel Higgs will forever be a legend. Feral Hymns is a perfect album. The songs are hypnotic, sludgy, warm - they seem ceremonial somehow. I first listened to this record at the Outer Banks, so it always reminds me of hazy sun, gin and tonics and sand in my socks - which I don’t actually mind because it feels like I’m constantly walking on the beach.

☾ The Unconscious Mind

It’s just fascinating. For example, recently I died in a dream but only briefly. I had a heart attack then my visual field went static black - like a short circuiting TV set. After someone revived me, an old friend put her fingers on my carotid pulse and said, “your heartbeat’s as erratic as a golden retriever.” I awoke convinced death is like “cutting to black”. Or at least “cutting to”. With distance, it’s bizarre to me that I gave the dream creedence. But I suppose that’s how your unconscious convinces you of things; definitively but not necessarily with empirical evidence.  

🌸 Christoph Robin Cleansing Volumizing Paste With Rose Extracts 

This stuff fixed my hair. I will never not use it. 

☁️ Not Vaping Nicotine Inside

It’s your house - do whatever you want there - but why do you want your life to smell like a malignant Skittle? 

Vaping weed inside? That’s fine.

Casey Allen (instagram)

🎼 Making Playlists

Back in middle school, I would obsessively make mix CDs for myself and my friends. I would meticulously design each one and create slipcovers with the track lists. I still have many of them. These days, that practice has transitioned into making playlists, but instead of being limited to 80 minutes per CD-R, they can now be as long as the vibe requires. Check out an ongoing obsessive-compulsive playlist series I’ve made on Spotify titled CORPSING for a taste.

📚 Kramers Ergot

Sammy Harkham is an incredible cartoonist and he curates the ongoing comic anthology Kramers Ergot. Since I was never into super-hero stories, I didn’t think the comic book medium was for me - until I read “Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron” by Daniel Clowes and was blown away and introduced to the alt-comic genre. Kramers Ergot is a perfect collection of some of the best artists and alt-comics working in the medium today and a great primer if you want to get into that strange world.

✝️ Moral Orel

Dino Stamatopoulos is one of the great comedic geniuses of our time (seriously, look up this guy’s credits) and a great man, at that. Moral Orel is his incredible stop-motion opus and the greatest thing Adult Swim ever aired (though special honorable mentions to Xavier Renegade Angel, Million Dollar Extreme, and Off the Air as followup Adult Swim bangers.) 

👗 LiFER

LiFER is a handmade DIY cut-and-sew clothing company based out of LA, exclusively made from thrifted and recycled clothing, and run by my incredibly talented girlfriend. I enjoy helping out with these garments as much as I’m allowed, and find the fabric cutting process extremely meditative. Traveling and thrifting for these projects with my girlfriend in far-off forgotten corners of the country is one of the great joys of my life. Follow @lifershop on Instagram and support a great artist!

🐎 Houston, Texas

Although I have lived in Los Angeles for the past 11 years, Houston is and always will be my home. From the fat & low hanging clouds, perfectly caramelized sunsets, deep-fried queso-drenched tex-mex, and good ol’ fashioned southern hospitality, it’s quite possibly the best city on Earth. In the wise words of the great Lil’ Keke the Don from the original Screwed Up Click - “Houston, Texas, is the home of the players and pimps.” RIP DJ Screw.

Keenan (instagram)

👃🏻 Snuff

I recently was in Munich where I learned about the magic of snuff, the legal upper that instantly became my favorite thing to do at parties

🐂🐮 Running with the Bulls

As a Taurus and huge hemingway fan, going to Pamplona, Spain was like my pilgrimage to mecca. I ran with the bulls twice and still have never felt anything like it. Between the feeling of death creeping around the corner and the rich sense of culture and tradition this city had a buzz to it that I’ve never experienced anywhere else

🦉 Fireflies - Owl City

Hate all you want but this is the best karaoke song of all time

🥵🥶 Working in extreme conditions

I work best and think the most clearly in extreme hot or cold temperatures. It works for me similarly to how background music helps people focus… I always need to be on the edge of my seat in order to crack into things

🍜💆🏻‍♂️ Hungover Massages in Flushing

The key to beating a killer hangover is taking the secret shuttle to Flushing, stopping off at one of the many amazing hot pot spots, and wrapping up with a hour and a half massage 

🎥 My IMDB watchlist 

IMDB has stood by my side since I first got into film and I just can’t get myself to transition to Letterboxd

🦜 Trader Joe's Jerk-Style Plantain Chips

My relationship with them definitely changed when I found myself eating a full bag in one sitting while my face melted on acid, but its the most slept on snack at Trader Joes

🍕 Celebrities eating pizza

For the past couple of years, I have collected a haul of photos of celebrities eating pizza in pizzarias. I was going to make a zine with all my favs (Kevin Spacey at Joes, The Kardashians at Prince Street, Paul Giamonte at Champion Pizza, etc.), but it has since turned into an obsession of mine. Some people catch Pokemon, I collect photos of your fav stars with my fav pizza guys.

🌪 Storm Chasing

It has always been a dream of mine to go tornado hunting and really stare at mother nature right in the ass

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