DOC NYC staff leads a Q&A with director Jeremy Workman and artist Jay Zhengebot, after a showing of Secret Mall Apartment at Village East by
Secret Mall Apartment Q&A with Jeremy Workman and Jay Zhengebot
11/14/2025
transcript:
[audience clapping]
HOST: Yeah, so this–
JEREMY WORKMAN: Oh, do we want mics? Do you want a mic?
HOST: Do we need a mic? What do we think?
JEREMY: Alright? Yeah?
HOST: Okay.
JEREMY: Alright, let’s get a mic.
HOST: Do we have ours?
JEREMY: We do. We can just snag this?
HOST: Here.
JEREMY: Yeah, okay. How’s that, better? Oh, yeah. Ohh, yeah.
HOST: Yeah, so Jeremy… Is this on?
JEREMY: I think it was.
HOST: Was it? Hi, is this on? I guess it is, yeah. Congratulations.
JEREMY: Thanks!
HOST: I mean, it’s just amazing. And we have a special guest here, right?
JEREMY: We do. We do. We have one of the mall residents.
[audience clapping and cheering]
JEREMY: This is Jay Zehngebot who you might remember in all the scenes of the 9/11 tribute. You were very involved in that. That was sort of your scene, as well.
HOST: Yeah, well, I mean, I just love this movie, and it’s not just because I’m a Providence gal. [laughs] I really appreciate seeing this aspect of the mall that I had no idea about. But, you know, it’s just not often that you get to see a film that is about– It's got some serious issues. It’s about creativity and gentrification, and white privilege, and yet it’s just so fun.
JEREMY: [laughs] Sure.
HOST: Thank you so much. I mean, my first question is obviously, Jay, you and the rest of your crew were filming all of this material. That was almost two decades ago. Where the hell has it been, and how did you get your hands on it?
JERMEY: Yeah, I mean, I could talk about the footage, and then, Jay, you could talk about, [laughs] like, why the heck you guys were filming so much. But when I first heard about the story, I’m not from Providence, and when I first heard about it, I didn’t know how much footage there was. There was some stuff on, like, YouTube, there was a couple news stories, like, very small, not much was out there at all. And then, when we started to make the movie, Michael, and Colin, and everybody came and gave me 25 hours of footage of them filming in the secret apartment. Which was all with that tiny camera. You know, for the video people in the room, it’s footage that was shot at 320 by 240
[audience laughs]
JEREMY: So the people that are laughing know that that’s way worse than like a VHS quality. It was ten frames a second, and we weren’t sure if it would even be something that we could be put in a movie, but I was just stunned, the technical quality aside, I was just stunned how good it was, and it’s stuff that they captured, and how amazing they were able to film everything. So I just knew that that would really structure the movie, in a way. Do you want to talk a little about why you guys filmed so much?
[audience laughs]
JEREMY: Lotta people ask me that, too.
JAY ZHENGEBOT: We were documenting as a function of the rest of the work all of the time. ‘Document, document, document,’ was the mantra. And so we were just in the practice of filming or taking pictures of everything all of the time. Some people liked to be in the camera, and some people liked to be behind it, but, like, actually, I haven’t had a chance to appreciate… There are a lot of great moments in this film, and I realized after seeing it a few times, like, ‘Oh, I took that picture.’
[audience laughs]
JAY:
And I’m really proud of, like, a handful of the pictures that appear in this film because of [indistinct]. So yeah, just documenting everything all of the time.
HOST: Did you have to convince Michael, Jay, and the rest of them to
give you access to this?
JEREMY: Yeah, I mean, there was, there was a little bit of convincing on this film, and you know, obviously, you knew this, but, like, as a documentary filmmaker it’s kind of, like, almost like an underrated part of it. The process of, like, convincing subjects, you know, to earn their trust, and to make them, you know, ‘cause you’re telling their story, it’s kind of an invasive process trying to convince people to let them into their lives, you know? So that’s something that I take really seriously in all my films. I really worked hard to earn that trust. This one took a while.
[audience laughs]
JEREMY: They didn’t want, initially, to do a film. They had turned down a lot of offers.
HOST: Who had the footage?
JEREMY: I guess all of you guys had footage. But, like, there was a little bit of a reluctance… Jay, I know you were reluctant in a way. Yeah.
JAY: Yeah. Whoa.
JEREMY: Alright, take that.
[audience laughs]
JAY: I was quite reluctant. Immediately after the mall was discovered, Mike kind of gave everybody the option to be associated or not associated with the project. And a handful of us were really focused on teaching and we weren’t totally excited about the idea of, like criminal records or whatever.
[audience laughs]
JAY: And then also, like, some of us were less comfortable being in front of cameras and other people were more comfortable being in front of cameras, so I think, for me, having James and Andrew call me up and say, like, “You should hear this guy out, he gets it.” Also we checked out Jeremy’s prior films,
JEREMY: [laughs]
JAY: And that, like, boosted our confidence in this endeavor quite a bit. And lastly I think the crux for me, and I don’t think I’m alone in this, like, I have a couple small children now. The first one had just been born when Jeremy approached me about the movie, and that was the linchpin for me. Like oh, I want him to see this story.
[audience laughs]
JAY: And believe in it. And the last little bit, and this is maybe relevant because we’re in a cinema, so, like, 15 years on, the sort of focus of the story for me is actually, like, the Batman, Dark Knight narrative of, like,
[audience laughs]
JAY:
When the project broke, I really distanced myself from it. I didn’t like that we were sort of bending or breaking the truth in some places, but now, like, the myth is almost more important than, like, what is factually accurate.
[audience laughs]
JAY: And because this apartment has lodged itself in peoples’ minds as like a place of possibility, and everybody sort of projects their own fantasies of, like, secret spaces onto it, that’s more important than, like, some fibs that were told here and there, or some areas where, like, the documentary and Mike’s telling of the story might not be 100% accurate, but, like, who am I to say…
[audience laughs]
HOST: You wanna say any example of that?
JAY: I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna…
[audience laughs]
JAY: You’ll have to ask Mike.
HOST: I mean, I think that it’s a great combination of the playfulness of the project…
JEREMY: Sure.
HOST: …and the playful approach that you took to telling of them. Talk to me about that.
JEREMY: Yeah, thanks. I mean, that was definitely a real intention, you know, I kept on feeling like, when I was working on the film, that it was such this, like, like the secret apartment was such this sort of shape shifter for me. Like, I was like, ‘Oh, it’s, you know, it was this protest against gentrification.’ And then it was like, ‘Oh, no, no it’s not. It’s–’ Wait, we lost Jay? Oh, yeah, he’s [indistinct]
[audience laughs]
JEREMY: Oh, nice, nice. He’s filming. Better camera now. It was, you know, ‘Oh, it’s this protest.’ ‘No it’s not, it’s this, you know, this work of art.’
HOST: Yeah.
JEREMY: ‘It’s a place where– this headquarters, where they would work on their other art.’ ‘It’s an artwork unto itself.’ You know? Like, it was always, like, shifting, for me. And I always felt that that was really… I wanted the movie to have that, in a way, and I wanted the movie to convey that, and to me it was fun and absurd, in a way. They were living in a mall!
[audience laughs]
JEREMY: I mean, it was, you know, I always wanted to remind myself that, that this, you know, yes it has all this sort of deeper stuff, but at the end of the day, there were these, you know, eight people sneaking into a mall and bringing furniture in there, and it was this horrible space that had no light, and that’s where they were.
HOST: Talk about the decision to, I guess you commissioned…
JEREMY: Yeah.
HOST: …the, the model of the mall, and also to commission the recreation of the mall. Talk about that.
JEREMY: Yeah, I wanted to have the participants involved in the process of the movie. You know, obviously they’re all really unique artists, and they’re very creative and interesting, and do all this very unique stuff. And I also, you know, I think a lot of filmmakers now, documentary filmmakers, are thinking about this, like, how to integrate subjects into the making of the movie, a little bit. I mean, some movies really go far in this direction. This movie didn’t really go that far,
but it was an opportunity to invite, sort of, Colin to build that model, and how that would sort of work within telling the story and then also doing the recreation and then having those participants kind of be involved in it as part of that, as well. And, yeah, I mean, of course there was also a practical reason.
They had stopped filming altogether, so I knew that we had to do a little, kind of, recreation.
And how to do it so that it would be in keeping with the tones and the textures of their project.
HOST: I know that you had a kind of guerrilla approach
JEREMY: Mhm!
HOST: to getting this movie out there. I wonder if you could talk about that? And also, sort of additional, how the movie has been received, especially in Providence? But, both of you…
JEREMY: Yeah, yeah. So we released– we self released this. Which is, you know, it– in other words, we turned down offers from distributors. We did– some distributors just were not, you know, they want whatever it is they want, and they– this didn’t necessarily fit into that, check that box. So we self released it, and we put together our team with my producer, Matthew, who is right there in the fourth row there.
[audience clapping]
JEREMY: And we kind of did this very kind of grass roots, guerilla approach where we said, “Okay, well we could put this movie out ourselves and possibly do better than the distributors that were out there.” And we did that. We released in March, and we were in theaters until two weeks ago? Yeah. We, essentially, we played in 250 cities since late March. It was, you know, for a documentary, and I know we’re at a documentary film festival, but it was an enormous hit for a documentary, especially now. And we were really proud of that decision to do it on our own, and then, yes, there was– Oh, do you want to add something, Matt?
MATT: Also we had a blockbuster opening weekend in the mall that it took place.
[audience laughs]
JEREMY: Yeah, so this is this incredible coda to this.
[audience laughs]
JEREMY: Yeah, where we kind of knew that we wanted to premiere at the mall. And we didn’t know how to do that, and Matt, and I, and our team were kind of putting our heads together. How do we do this? Michael’s banned. Are they gonna put, you know, this was illegal what they were doing. So we were just kind of like didn’t know how we could do this, but we wanted to premiere there. And then, miraculously, they came to us. They said, “Oh, we heard about this documentary. It’s getting a lot of buzz. Why don’t you guys come to the mall and premiere there?”
HOST: Yeah, there’s a theater on the top of the mall. Right? Yeah.
JEREMY: Yes, so there’s a–
HOST: Top floor.
JEREMY: Exactly. Which is the theater that you guys were watching movies in.
[audience laughs]
JEREMY: Which is also incredible because it’s in the documentary. So we premiered there in March. We opened there and it was… I think it was the biggest movie there other than Sinners this year,
[audience laughs]
JEREMY: Is that right? Yeah, I mean, it was just a gigantic hit in Providence. It became, you know, we played there, you know, all the time for weeks. And then they continued to have it where Townsend was doing, you know, Q&As every Tuesday, and they were still drawing crowds as of two or three weeks ago. And then, another irony is that theater now was shut down two weeks ago.
PERSON 1: Oh my god. Oh my gosh.
JEREMY: As you saw, the [indistinct]
JAY: I didn’t know that.
JEREMY: Yeah. The mall’s having all kinds of problems.
MATT: It was taken over. Taken over.
JEREMY: But it was taken over, and now there’s a new theater in there, yes. Yes.
HOST: And what about Michael? Was he allowed to come and see the movie?
[audience laughs]
JEREMY: So they decided that when they invited us in they decided to unban Michael.
[audience laughs]
[audience clapping and cheering]
PERSON 1: Hell yeah.
HOST: Are there any other questions here? Yeah.
PERSON 2: Is it going to be available to stream? I would love my daughter to see this.
JEREMY: So we are available now on, like, Amazon and iTunes where you could rent it. Since the movie had this, you know, great, great audience response there’s also now we’re talking with those paid subscribe– streaming services. Which is interesting because we’ve taken this very, you know, DIY, no we don’t want to be involved. The movie’s, you know, kind of ethos is very much, you know, defined by these artists. That they’re, you know, we’re not just looking to kind of drop it wherever. However, it’s still, it’s tough to be a documentary filmmaker, so we’re exploring those with those paid services. The short answer is: Yes. You can find it on Amazon and iTunes right now.
PERSON 2: Thank you.
HOST: Yeah.
PERSON 3: Have you been to festivals in Europe yet?
JEREMY: We are just starting to play in Europe. We’d love to play more. We played in a couple festivals in the Netherlands last month, and we won a couple awards. So yeah, we’re starting to slowly kind of go, play in Europe now.
PERSON 4: I had a question for Jay about the public art thread of the film. That was really unexpected, and I wonder if you could speak to you and the crew, any involvement with other public art projects since that era of your life.
JAY: Hmm… Okay, so the question is public art, and what’s our affiliation with public art. Public art was sort of how I re-fell into the fold with Mike and Andrew. They were working on public art at RISD at the time I started studying there, so that’s what sort of sucked me in. And that was the main sort of focus while I was working with Mike and the team full time. And it informs a lot of how I, like, approach the world, but I’m not doing, like, full time public art as it stands. What would I say… What about public art? You know, I’m still drawing with tape, kind of everywhere I go. I still focus right now, it’s, like, largely a focus on my son and his school. But, you know, that’s a conversation I'm having right now with his art teacher.
[audience laughs]
JAY: You know, I think that it was just a great chance to sort of get comfortable with practicing art in public and sort of normalizing that. Sort of for myself and hopefully for, like, a broader public as well. I don’t know if that’s a good answer–
JEREMY: Wait, I had heard that there’s now some interest in the 9/11 Hope project and possibly doing it as a [indistinct], yeah.
PERSON 5: Oh that’d be great.
JAY: Yeah, I don’t… The public, the 9/11 project, the interesting thing I would say sort of behind the scenes is when we– When we started that project, 9/11 was fresh. And people took the project for what we intended, which is to say, like, they appreciated that this was an attempt to try to maintain that unity everybody felt, the whole country felt, in the sort of immediate aftermath of 9/11. But by the time that project was wrapping up, it had been so politicized that we would tell people we were working on drawings affiliated with 9/11 or firemen, and they would have, like, really intense reactions, really positive and negative. And it was just really clear to me at that point in time, like, oh, this project has expired and it no longer is doing the work we want it to do in public. That’s just an interesting thing I think about sometimes.
PERSON 6: I’m wondering between when you got found out and the screening there, did you go to the mall and shop? [laughs]
JAY: Between the mall and the project, I mean, I was in Providence for a while. I would’ve shopped at the mall, for sure, but I’ve been in New York for a while now, so like, it’s not a regular everyday–
PERSON 6: Did it feel weird shopping in the mall?
JAY: No, you know, this is a funny one, too, of like, when I moved to Providence, just like everybody else, I was like, ‘Fuck the mall. This place is awful.’
[audience laughs]
JAY: It’s all a casino trappings of, like, you can’t find your way out, it’s labyrinthian. And then by the end of the mall project, we just all loved the mall.
[audience laughing]
JAY: We felt at home. We knew every nook and cranny. We felt so comfortable there. And so, like, that sort of act of personal transformation was actually really important to me in my sort of feelings towards or conception of this project. It’s just, like, take that thing you hate,
[audience laughs]
JAY: Build a home there, and you’ll surprise yourself. Probably.
HOST: I’m a little worried about the mall. Is it, has it gone bankrupt? I mean…
JEREMY: It’s, yeah. It’s, as you know, the mall is, and I’m sure a lot of people in the audience too, that mall is literally like in this epicenter of Providence. So if the mall goes down, it would probably be really–
HOST: Very bad for Providence.
JEREMY: Yeah. So I know, you know, the mall’s struggling, but it’s still hanging in there.
JAY: They should turn it into a dirt bike park
[audience laughs]
JEREMY: That probably won’t happen.
JAY: You could do something really cool with it.
[audience laughs]
JEREMY: But I know they are trying to do, they are trying to, like, really think out of the box and come up with like, you know, all these different things for– Still open! You know, when we were there this summer, they were drawing a lot of crowds, and people still go to the movies there. And yeah, so I think it’s kind of hanging in. But, you know, most people’s conception of malls these days are just like dead malls and how bad they are, so in some ways, this movie also is an opportunity to kind of, you know, kind of remind people that there was, you know, this time in our lives when malls were really central, whether you liked it or not.
MATT: I think it’s for sale, actually.
JEREMY: Oh.
HOST: Oh, really?
JEREMY: Yeah, it’s for sale, if anybody wants to buy it.
[audience laughing]
PERSON 7: It feels like Michael needs to pitch a tape art project for the community.
JEREMY: Funny enough, he was doing– he did tape art when we released in the mall, he– there was tape art all over, and he did a lot of, like, Easter eggs where he would put, Jay, did you see that? Where he would put each of the eight people in various spots of the mall. Yeah, it was pretty cool.
PERSON 8: Yeah, I just wanna say thank you so much. I love the portrait of Michael, and I feel like it’s so inspirational. We really don’t see that, right? A person who’s own draw is to want to do things with other people. Like that and that kind of external art creation. So thank you for doing it, it’s great.I hope that, I don’t know, art schools use it or..
JEREMY: Yeah.
PERSON 8: But also, there are projects, I was gonna say, all across the country about reclaiming dead malls. Some of them about regreening, about knocking them down, some about claiming them for, like, government, local government and civic spaces. So it’s actually, like, a nationwide problem that [indistinct].
JEREMY: Yeah Definitely.
PERSON 9: [indistinct]
JEREMY: Yeah.
PERSON 10: It just seems like, as you just talked about, the mall was like, occurring at a very particular time in American history as a way to kind of like revitalize the urban core or whatever.
And I’m wondering whether you think something like this could happen today in our, like, new politics of urban development.
JEREMY: Oh, I think, you know, could this happen today? Absolutely not. I mean, I think that just, I mean, just from a logistics– I think the security cameras are so much better now. And also, also I think it has a lot to do with almost just like how we see the world differently now. You know, if you saw a bunch of people, like, carrying couches and cinder blocks through a mall in the parking lot, you would instantly like record them on your phone, and you’d be like, ‘Check out these people! Oh my god!’ And post it. So I don’t think at all it could be done whatsoever.
JAY: And I feel like that’s the challenge. Like somebody should do it, right?
[audience laughing]
JAY: I subscribe to that. I hear that. I totally think– And also I think it was actually kind of interesting to see–
PERSON 1: He’s like, ‘I dare you.’
JAY: There was a dynamic in the crew between people who were like young when 9/11 happened, and then Mike basically who was older when 9/11 happened. And from my like security mindset, I was thinking like, “If we haul fuel into the mall, there’s no way this is not being viewed through like a prism of a security threat.” So you know, yeah the atmosphere has changed since then, but then I think like you know the Luddite kids in Brooklyn who have sworn off cellphones like one of those kids is gonna build a secret apartment in a mall someday.
[audience laughs]
JAY: You know like so yeah, conventional wisdom, I think, reason says the time for this has come and gone, but, you know, something else surely will take its place.
JEREMY: Now’s your chance.
[audience laughs]
HOST: Well I want to thank you both, Jeremy for this beautiful film,
[audience clapping]
HOST: Jay for your artistic work. Thank you.
JEREMY: Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks everybody for coming.
…
JEREMY: Yeah, super fun.