A chat with New York Nico, the filmmaker documenting New York’s most charismatic people and places

If you want an honest depiction of New York City – one beyond the expensive, high end and high fashion one that’s so often served to us on TV and in glossy magazines – the New York Nico Instagram page is a good place to start. For over ten years, the filmmaker Nicolas Heller (who also runs his own film company Heller Films) has been interviewing and striking up relationships with some of the city’s most unique characters; the ones the city’s locals will all know by sight, but rarely by name.

Uploaded in short-form videos on Instagram, these interactions sit alongside videos of other happenings and events in the city; such as a church full of animals waiting to be blessed, uncanny identical twin conventions, and makeshift lookalike competitions. What makes the page so engrossing is the way Nicholas manages to uncover the weird and the wonderful pockets of day-to-day life – those that occur under our noses, but often go undetected.

Now, the filmmaker has released his first book: New York Nico’s Guide to New York City. It’s a guidebook, but not in the traditional sense of the word – you’ll find no Michelin star restaurants within its pages. Instead, it’s full of independent businesses, those Nick has come to love during his many years traipsing the city. Rather than focusing solely on business, the book centres more on the people who run the joints, and the colourful stories that accompany them. Read on to find out more about the origins of the New York Nico page, how Nicolas knows when he’s found a star, and the unlikely book that provided the seed of the idea for the guidebook when Nicolas was just a kid.

It’s Nice That (INT): Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself, and when you realised you had a passion for filmmaking?

Nicolas Heller (NH): So my name is Nicolas Heller, better known as New York Nico. I’m born and raised in New York City, around Union Square in Manhattan, to be specific. I went to a pretty progressive arts elementary and middle school called Little Red Schoolhouse, and the high school was called Elisabeth Irwin High School.

It was seventh grade when I became really interested in film, and my earliest memory was this thing in the States called Direct TV – it was the first time that a guide would pop up on your TV that would tell you what was playing on what channel. Prior to that, you’re just going in blind. I would just spend time going through the guide, and when a movie was playing on a specific channel, I would check the information on that movie and try to memorise the director and the cast of this movie. I kind of turned that into a talent, because I didn’t really have a talent. We would have talent shows at school, and I would never be able to participate because I didn’t have anything that I was good at. That led to going into the newspaper where they promoted the movies, and memorising the movies there. I would have kids quiz me on the casts of movies.

I had a pretty imaginative mind and I would create concepts for fake movies in my head, and I would cast them. That segued into writing scenes from these movies which I would share with my teachers, and they were always very supportive. In ninth grade, I took my first film film class, and I just became obsessed, like, I was the top student. It was very obvious that I was the one in the group that really wanted to pursue this as a career. At my school, you could get away with anything in the name of art. I took that as an opportunity to make films with the sole purpose of scaring my teachers, but being able to get away with it. I would make films with very mature subject matters, but also very immature at the same time. That summer, my parents sent me to a film camp, and by the time I graduated high school, I got into film school at Emerson College.

INT: So as a child, you were kind of just like a walking IMDb? You were more interested in what made up the film, rather than the film itself?

NH: Yeah exactly. I became obsessed with collecting DVDs too. I think it was like 2000 or 2001 but I became obsessed – I would buy DVDs that I would never even watch. I just liked the idea of having it on my shelf.

INT: So how did the New York Nico page start? What did its early days look like?

NH: I went to Emerson because I wanted to get out of New York – I was just tired of it. But I wasn’t really participating in extracurricular film work, because I didn’t get along with any of the other film students. Around my sophomore year, I got my hands on a DSLR camera, and I started making stuff on my own, and that turned into making music videos with local artists and artists that were visiting from out of town. By the time I graduated, I moved back to New York, and was living in Brooklyn where I continued making music videos. After about a year, I thought the only way I could advance my career would be if I moved to Los Angeles. So I moved on a whim.

You know, I didn’t have a driver’s licence, I failed my test three times. Still never got it. I wasn’t booking any work, it was miserable – not what I expected it to be. So after six months, I moved back to New York, living with my parents, and one day I just went to Union Square Park to contemplate what I was going to do next, because being a music video director is all I thought I could do, and that just failed.

I was sitting there kind of figuring what I was going to do next, and I noticed this New York character who I had seen all throughout high school, he was this six-foot-seven white dude with dreadlocks who carried around a sign everywhere that said: ‘the six-foot-seven Jew will freestyle rap for you’. Everyone knew this guy, but no one really knew his story – he was just this mysterious guy. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t go out of my way to talk to strangers, but I used this low point as an opportunity to break out of my comfort zone and talk to this guy who I figured wouldn’t give me the time of day. To my surprise, he was very inviting and super nice, and we ended up walking around the city together. After chatting for a bit, I asked if I could make a documentary on him. I’d never made a documentary before, but figured he would be a great first subject. So I made this ‘Day in the Life’ documentary, just five minutes about this New York character that everyone knew.

Then I just kept going. I kept doing these documentaries on these New York characters like Wendell the homeless fashion designer of Union Square, and Larry the Birdman of Washington Square, a bunch of famous performance artists in New York. That turned into 16 short films, and I put them up on YouTube. This was in 2013, when people started doing web series. People enjoyed it, but it wasn’t getting the viewership that I was hoping it would get. So I was trying to think what I could do to expose these amazing individuals to more people, and it was around the time that Instagram had really started pushing their 60-second videos. So I started taking a lot of the characters from these films and just putting them up on my Instagram. It was all shot on my phone, no edits, posted in real time, and people started gravitating towards that. Then it kind of just developed into this page about my point of view of New York City.

INT: Another thing I’d like to know is where you find out about all these crazy events that you end up at. I’m always so surprised there’s so many. Do you have a massive calendar?

NH: I mean, there are events that happen annually, and I just kind of keep track of that. Like, if it’s the beginning of October, I know that the blessing of the animals at St John’s Cathedral will be happening. I’ll just do a quick Google search, see exactly when it is and put it in my calendar, with all the cultural parades and celebrations.

Then there are things that happen, like super last minute that I’ll just catch wind of, or maybe someone will tip me off. Like, the New York Liberty just won their first championship, and I knew that there would be a parade that came with that. Or like, yesterday, I went to this Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest that just went insanely viral.

INT: Yeah, I saw that! Didn’t one of the lookalikes get arrested?

NH: Yeah, haha. I wasn’t there for that. So, you know, stuff pops up and I have people who tip me off. But I’m also constantly online, so I’ll catch wind of it one way or the other.

INT: A lot of the people you meet through New York Nico end up in your films and ads through your company, Heller Films. What’s the process of bringing these individuals who aren’t professional actors, into this more official setting with scripts and lights and so on?

NH: I’m usually drawn to charismatic individuals, so whether they know it or not, they’re good on camera; bringing them into a commercial job or a film job just means them playing an exaggerated version of themselves. I’m very confident in my ability to direct them, and I’ve never had an instance where someone has come to set and just froze.

It’s awesome being able to take these people who never would have dreamed of being in a commercial, or being in a film, and giving them this opportunity, like they love it. As a viewer, I appreciate watching commercials, movies and television shows that feature real people, as opposed to actors who are meant to be playing these ‘types’ of people, it just feels way more organic and natural to me.

INT: So, onto your new book. What sparked the idea for it, and why a guidebook specifically?

NH: When I was like eight or nine years old, I got my hands on Bart Simpson's Guide to Life, which was like my favourite book at the time – I still have the same copy to this day. I haven’t saved anything else, but I still have that copy because it meant so much to me. I think that put something in my head. So whether I knew it or not, I think when I had the opportunity to do this three years ago, that’s probably what sparked my desire for it to be a guidebook.

On top of that, one of the most frequently asked questions I get is like, ‘I’m going to be in New York in a week. Do you have any suggestions for where I can go to get the best pizza or do the best vintage shopping, or a great record store?’ I also get it just as much from locals, but it’s more neighbourhood focused. Like, ‘Where’s the best vintage shop in Greenpoint? Or is there a chess shop in Manhattan?’

Because I get these questions so often, I guess it’s something that people want to know about. I have great relationships with all these businesses, so I decided: why don’t I just put together a book that celebrates these spots and also just puts them on people’s radar? So it’s more than a guidebook in the sense that I really take the storytelling aspect of what I do and give it back to all of these businesses, specifically the owners.

INT: It reminds me of another of my favourite Instagram accounts – who I saw that you actually met when you were in London – Caffs not Cafes. Giving places that people might not notice a chance to shine. Can you tell us a little bit about the format? Is it any different from your typical guidebook?

NH: I mean, I gotta be honest, I didn’t really look at many guidebooks because I wanted it to be super unique. I didn’t really want to pull from anything I’d seen. I really did focus on the story, and from what I’ve gathered, most guidebooks tell you about the business – what you can order, what you can buy. But I focused heavily on the owners, because what I do is so character focused. I feel like small businesses are kind of a breeding ground for talent and interesting characters.

There’s no fine dining – I don’t have any Michelin star restaurants you should try while you’re in New York. For me, it’s mostly like old school, mom and pop shops, businesses that have been around for 20, 30, 40 – even 200 years, in the case of one of the businesses in the book. These are the businesses that, to me, really are the backbone of New York. I also have some newer businesses too, but those newer businesses in my eyes are going to be the next generation of these awesome old school mom and pop shops. Specialty shops like Casey Rubber Stamps – he’s like the only person I know that makes stamps by hand – and that’s his whole store. Then there’s the Chess Forum, which is a chess shop where not only can you buy chess sets ranging from anywhere from like $10 to $1,000 but you could also play chess. There’s one of the only Latin music stores in the Bronx; the owner is in his 90s, and he’s still going to work every day.