Photos: At Home With Filmmaker Alex Ross Perry
Alex Ross Perry lives in a cozy Park Slope apartment that’s littered with film posters, film books, film props…did we mention that Perry was a filmmaker? He just wrapped a web series for HBO and is working on an independent feature due out this fall. As such, his apartment has the bustling, shopworn look of a creative New York workspace. And it is indeed a workspace: the office is basically a partitioned corner in the bedroom.
Perry made the leap from the East Village to Brooklyn in 2007 and hasn’t looked back. He showed us around and told us why.
How long have you lived in Brooklyn?
Since 2007. In this apartment since 2008.
Why’d you first move here?
I went to NYU, and I was living in the East Village when I was in school. I eventually got tired of it and wanted to live somewhere else. I first moved to Prospect Heights and lived alone and I was really happy there. I really like this part of the city. I couldn’t believe I had lived in the city for four years and had never gotten familiar with it. So now I’ve been here for six years.
What’s your favorite thing about this apartment?
I like that there’s a little office area in the bedroom, which is good for working. And I feel like it has a decent-sized kitchen for a Brooklyn apartment. We cook a lot, so it’s very nice. Plenty of counter space and adequate cabinet storage areas. Probably my favorite thing would be the cats [Fluffy and Smoky], who are a permanent fixture of the apartment.
What’s your least favorite thing?
I don’t know. The refrigerator’s really small. It’s fine — I don’t have a lot of issues with it. It’s underneath the LaGuardia flight path but I don’t really notice that anymore.
What are the first three things you would save in a fire?
I don’t know, maybe I would grab this prop from my first movie. I’d probably grab my typewriter, which was my grandfather’s typewriter in law school, which I use to write all my scripts.
What’s your favorite room in the apartment, and your favorite time of day?
Well we’ve only got two and a half rooms. The living room is a very nice room in the afternoon. But generally I’ve just been spending time in the office from 11-6 since I’ve been working on this new project. I’d say my favorite room is the living room, at night, when we’re just sitting here watching stuff.
If you suddenly received a windfall of cash, what changes would you make?
It’d be nice to have a fully-renovated kitchen or bathroom with new appliances. But if I got a windfall of cash I wouldn’t do any of that. I would just buy nicer things, like bigger bookshelves. We would get someone to clean the house. That’d be great.
If you could move the house/block/neighborhood to another city, which one would it be, and why?
Well, I guess we could just move it one block over to a street that doesn’t have buses on it.