COMING MARCH 2025
brooklyn motto by
alex r. johnson
Fans of Richard Price, Charlie Huston, and Jonathan Lethem will love this coming-of-age New York-centric detective noir debut from esteemed filmmaker and screenwriter Alex Johnson.
New York City, 1998. New York is changing around Nico Kelly, and he can feel more coming.
A private investigator and self-proclaimed photographer, Nico is stuck in a loop of city contracts and self loathing. What little middle class there was is disappearing—long-standing factories are moving out and taking their reliable neighborhood jobs with them, and Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s police force has the streets in a stranglehold.
Nico spends his days looking for fraudsters while taking photos of municipal employees on disability claims. He spends his nights trying to get rid of the nagging feeling that his day job makes him a professional snitch—traversing dive bars, playing pinball, and fighting through the haze of hungover mornings and blurry evenings.
Pushing thirty years old and feeling split between his American and Latin heritage, between youth and adulthood, Nico finds himself at a precipice—who is he and what should he become?
When Nico witnesses and records a murder during one of his insurance fraud investigations, bodies start to turn up all around him and he’s forced into solving a mystery he didn’t ask to solve. Humorous, gritty, and real, Nico’s search for what it means to be human takes him through the deepest and darkest parts of New York City.
About
alex R. johnson
Johnson’s feature film TWO STEP premiered to critical acclaim at SXSW and went on to become a New York Times Critic’s Pick, as well as remaining 100% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.
His screenplay NORTHEAST KINGDOM was selected for the Black List. It was acquired by Paramount Pictures for Platinum Dunes to produce, with Johnson attached to direct.
His screenplay ANY ROUGH TIMES ARE NOW BEHIND YOU was selected by the Austin Film Society’s Artist Intensive lab. There, he spent three days working one-on-one with late director Jonathan Demme, an experience that was as inspiring as it was creatively life changing.
Most recently, he wrote the screenplay adaptation of Ernest Tidyman’s novel, BIG BUCKS, for Pascal Pictures.
Prior to writing and directing, Johnson was a seasoned NYC based commercial and documentary producer. He started his career at the legendary Maysles Films and then branched off to work with other directors, including producing the feature documentary I AM SECRETLY AN IMPORTANT MAN for filmmaker Pete Sillen.
Johnson's family hails from the Andes of Ecuador. A government brat, he moved frequently but was raised mostly between New York City and the suburbs of DC.
He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY..
