Vlady the Script Guy
There seems to be some online confusion about his name. Some call him Joe, but he says his name is Vlady. We will go with Vlady. He has a stand in Soho, most frequently at 102 Prince Street, where he sells movie scripts for about 20 dollars. Yes: movie scripts, as in, the original text that actors and actresses recite in movies. According to the neighbourhood reports from the New York Times, someone who goes by the name Vlady has been doing this at least since 1997.
The first question that came to mind is how he gets them. Unless someone watches the movies and decides to transcribe them line by line (which would result in mismatches with the original text as the actors and directors take creative license) he must procure them from a specialized source.
—”I know people in Hollywood”, he said, not mincing any words. “I worked with very big guys over there.” This answer, while very direct and prosaic, didn’t cross the line into name dropping, which was refreshing. He actually didn’t drop a single name.
I asked him if I could take a picture and he obliged while saying that I have “the right mannerisms”. I didn’t know how to read that at the time, but it somehow gave me the impression that he was genuinely surprised to be interacting with a brown man who speaks decent English. Perhaps it was more the kind of surprise motivated by the interaction with a polite brown man who showed some genuine interest for his occupation and wares. There is very little kindness these days for people who are different, like a man who sells movie scripts printed on colorful paper on a street stand in the middle of Soho.
He drives a military camo van, wears a bandana around his neck and seems to carry an eyepatch for his right eye. We chatted for a little while and I was both flattered and slightly taken aback by his praise: I must look really idiotic today for someone to be so surprised by the fact that I can string a few words together in a polite manner, I remember thinking.
His story is a great vignette of NYC, I think, for only great cities have places for dreamers and crazy folk of this nature. His street stand is pure cinema nostalgia from an analog world that is quickly fading away. A symbol of resistance, perhaps. I regret not buying one of his scripts as a memento of that randomly memorable encounter.
