In the midst of the thriving theatrical release of Secret Mall Apartment, I spoke with director Jeremy Workman and main instigator Michael Townsend about the famed Fort Thunder, the gentrification of Providence, and the public’s response to guerilla art.

Boston Hassle: I came to the premiere in Providence. It was on my radar for a while and then I saw it was playing at the mall and I was like, okay, so we’re going to do that.

Jeremy Workman: I just got a photo of the Easter Bunny of the mall sitting on the [Secret Mall Apartment] couch.

BH: One of the employees at the theater said ‘so the door right there is in the movie’ and I was like, wow, it’s like seeing a celebrity. It was just so much fun to do that in the actual space.

JW: It was a big plan of ours. We really wanted to premiere at the Providence Place Mall and it held up the process a little bit. It took us a while to figure that out. We premiered a year ago at South by Southwest. The Providence plan took a lot of navigating and figuring out over the course of several months.

BH: Yeah, I can imagine. So, Jeremy, how did you find out about said secret mall apartment?

JW: Yeah, I didn’t know anything about this crazy story. I met Michael randomly. I was filming for another documentary called Lily Topples the World, which is about the world’s greatest domino toppling genius. She’s actually a New England local. I was filming a movie on her, which is on Max now. We were in Athens, Greece, filming a collaboration she was doing with the creator of the Rubik’s Cube, an 80 year old Hungarian guy. And the building that we were in was all glass. It was a cultural center. And I looked around and it was covered in tape art, which, of course, Michael Townsend was the originator, the pioneer of this weird art form. And then we met, he told me about this thing and I sort of didn’t believe him. You know, we were kind of just chit chatting, getting to know each other. And I Googled it and I was like, oh, my God, this really happened.

He wasn’t really interested in doing a documentary. I think he was more intrigued just like, oh, here’s a documentary filmmaker. He had some questions. We were chatting. I eventually realized, oh, wow, this is just incredible. I saw some of their footage. I didn’t know how much footage they were going to have. We could get into that later. I was just kind of blown away and then naively just kind of went after it as a filmmaker, not really knowing that for years they had turned down a number of filmmakers and overtures from production companies. But I guess the time was right or my approach was right or or what have you. Now here we are.

BH: Yeah, that’s something that struck me is how much footage you guys actually had. Michael, you were filming the whole time.

Michael Townsend: A lot of it. It’s a combination of like a lot and not a lot. It’s just that the footage that we have has just enough pivotal moments. Just enough to frame out something that where Jeremy, when given a hard drive, he’s the first person who ever saw the footage that we took. To a degree, we never even saw the footage that we took. And he got 25 hours in total, which sounds like a lot. But a lot of documentary filmmakers deal with hundreds, if not thousands of hours. So beyond the stuff we shot in the mall, we’re documenting all of our other artwork, too. And that’s a pile of documentation is enough to make interesting things for the eyeballs.

JW: Yeah, correct me if I’m wrong, Michael, but it never seemed like they were filming for any purpose, like other than themselves. Like one of the funny things that was so interesting with the footage was, it was just blowing my mind at how remarkable it was, how much they filmed, what they got, the angles, the coverage, the dialogues, the scenes. I mean, it’s just crazy. But they never look into the camera, not once. I got the impression that they didn’t care about the camera. It was just kind of always there.

MT: Yeah, that’s partly practice. We put it in the timeline of what we were doing at the time. We were working on the September 11th project starting the week after the towers fell. So that group of artists had spent two years documenting themselves doing kind of like illegal art and getting really used to having the camera as part of our time together. And so when I start the mall project, we’re deep into the rhythm of it. And as Jeremy said, everyone was very comfortable with sort of the voyeurism, self voyeurism of having this camera rolling all the time. And we weren’t shooting to make it anything. There was no end product. There was no need or urge to share it with anybody. We just wanted to have it as a record for ourselves for later, because that’s what we were doing at the time, just documenting our lives.

BH: That makes sense to me. I’m shocked to hear that was only that much footage because, like you said, it’s usually like hundreds of hours. So much of it feels so crucial. And maybe it’s because you guys weren’t really thinking about it in that way. It’s just like, today we’ve got the cinder blocks and we’re doing that. Like the fact that there is footage of the cinder blocks being moved is really amazing to me.

JW: It’s incredible. I remember going through the footage and being like, oh, my God, they’re having a conversation now about the meaning of gentrification or wow, Michael’s having this incredible personal moment with his ex-wife, Adriana, at the food court, or they’re, going to Salvation Army and picking out which couch they like and doing a thumbs up, thumbs down on each of them. It was just beyond anything that I could have imagined. If it wasn’t true, I would have just assumed it was all fake, because it was so good. It was also remarkable how much they also captured in the audio. These were little tiny cameras that weren’t really meant for video. The audio is incredible. It’s just a reminder that these kind of people were recording and getting incredible footage before it was even popular.

BH: I had known this had happened because I grew up in Boston, so I had heard about it, but I didn’t know to what extent. So the further the movie went, the more I was like, oh my God, you guys are really in there.

JW: A lot of people, especially Gen Z’s and hip millennials are just like, oh, yeah, this is a movie about committing to the bit.

BH: Well, that’s the thing. It was hard for me to picture a bunch of 24 year olds right now doing something this cool and tactile.

MT: Totally. 

BH: But I hope there could be something going on. We don’t know.

MT: I think something that people are making note of is that partly there’s a technological arc here that we fit into very nicely, which is that the project gets shut down, I get arrested a couple of months after the iPhone gets released. It gives you a sense of where we are in the digital recording realm. So I think nowadays when someone is pointing a camera at themselves, we’re well aware that it doesn’t stop here. It just keeps going. And there’s an urge to share. There’s an urge to tag our GPS location. It’s just snitching on us the entire time. And whereas opposed to like what’s happening inside the other camera is just dead ends there. And I think the idea of keeping it private, honoring the pact to each other was much easier because sharing was not an idea.

BH: That’s something I know I try. I struggle with a balance of wanting to put my own stuff out there, but I don’t want to just have to be on social media all the time because I don’t like it. I started a newsletter recently and I’m just like, well, I can send this around. How do I promote it? Because I don’t want to be online. And I was like, I’ll figure it out. It’s slow rolling. And I’m lucky to have Boston Hassle and we can do this sort of thing.

MT: Yeah, you have a platform.

BH: Yeah, exactly. I’m so excited that I’m able to talk to you guys. I feel like my relationship with the Providence Place Mall is more limited because I don’t think I really went in there until the pandemic because they were one of the first places where the movie theater reopened. I was like, I got to go. I just got the itch. So I went and saw Sunset Boulevard by myself in August 2020 wearing a mask. There was like one other person in there on the other side of the room. We were both just sitting there like this, being like, oh thank God we’re at the movies. So that’s what I think of when I’m at the mall.

MT: Oh, man, I lost that as my movie theater for 17 years. Getting banned from the mall, that was one of the big problems. All of my peers are like, what? This sucks. Like we have to keep going like Lincoln and Warwick and Boston to see a movie.

BH: So you’re still in Providence then? 

MT: I’m still in Providence. And if I lean forward just a little bit, I’m looking at the mall. 

BH: Your former nemesis.

JW: Yeah, probably there’s probably time that it blocks the sun from where you are.

BH: So when you got unbanned, you said you had gotten unbanned like that previous Tuesday before the screenings. Did they send you a formal letter or an email or something?

MT: There was some conversation about how that should happen. And it was the full range from like, do we throw a parade? Is there a ribbon cutting? Yeah, all the way down to the final decision. Like, we’ll kind of whisper it to the press crowd. ‘We’re unbanned now.’ We left it at that. So no fanfare at all. They didn’t want the attention to be on that specifically.

JW: It was funny because I remember turning around in the theater, getting things ready for the release. I just turned around and there was Michael. He had been unbanned, but when he goes around the mall all the security guards wave at him.

MT: It’s good. I’ve been showing up every Tuesday night. That’s the chief night of the theater. I’ve been doing a surprise Q&A every Tuesday night. And it’s amazing. We’re a month out and it’s still packed. And I show up 30 seconds after they just read that I’m banned from the mall. So it’s a beautiful surprise.

BH: That’s what it was like in my screening, too. You guys ran in and I was like, oh, wait, he’s here. When I bought the tickets, I saw there were so many screenings and they were all already selling out. I was like, man, people want this, which I was so happy about.

JW: Yeah, I think people in Providence just kind of, you know, what we’re seeing is a reminder of how kind of quirky and idiosyncratic Providence is. I think it taps into that. Even some of the things that the film talks about, whether it’s gentrification or development, are back in the middle of the Providence zeitgeist again. I think it resonates with a lot of the locals.

MT: And I’ve been really impressed by the range of people who love this movie. It is wild to me. Teenagers and kids love it. Then you have like the elder nation is all into it. Hipsters love it. The gangsters love it. It’s just such a diverse crowd. And it seems to do a really good job of giving everybody something that they genuinely love. And, you know, there may be maybe something in the movie they don’t like, but my gosh, everyone has something that they can walk away with being like, that’s my movie.

BH: That’s how it felt being in the crowd. There were so many different kinds of people there. So what is the art scene in Providence like these days? I’m not down there that often but I go to vintage shops like Pop Providence and they put on shows.

MT: The art scene will always be consistent in the sense that it’s always going to be a large tribe of artists hanging out in the city. There is the same cycle that Fort Thunder went through. The tragedy of watching living spaces or just workspaces being threatened by developments. Currently, we have a big building called Atlantic Mills. It has decades of artists, nonprofits, a church, small museums, up and coming small businesses all tucked away in this huge mill building that’s changing ownership. And here we are again. So people in Providence are watching Secret Mall Apartment and seeing the Fort Thunder debacle unfold. They feel it in their bones because they’re like, oh, my gosh, we have to keep doing this. These fights never stop.

And Jeremy, through the film, has gifted people with images of Fort Thunder for the first time. So many people have said to me, oh my gosh, what a treat to finally see anything from Fort Thunder because it’s mythological.

JW: Yeah, there had been nothing previously on it in any medium.

MT: I was talking with someone on Instagram yesterday asking about how much footage there was. And I was like, look, there’s not that much footage. Like the culture inside of Fort Thunder was not oriented towards pointing cameras at ourselves or documenting, which at this point seems kind of like a big loss because they were just building all the time. The output was outrageous. It was industrial. But not documentation.

JW: I’ve probably seen the most documentation of anyone.

BH: Somerville is in a similar place. We have Brickbottom, with artists living there. It’s such an amazing building. I don’t think it’s under attack or anything, but I always think about that when I’m in there, just that these sorts of spaces just seem rarer now.

MT: They are rare. It comes and goes. All of it’s tied together. Like the mill buildings are here because Providence is a poor city and didn’t have enough money to knock them down. They became derelict and slum landlords scoop them up. And they’re like, oh, we don’t want to fix them, but we want to make sure we want to get some money. That’s when you get your artists. Then they become cool enough that developers come in. And they’re like, hey, how about we knock them down and put something better here? You just catch at which part of the cycle you’re on.

BH: Yeah, I’ve lived in Somerville for years now. And every once in a while, I’m just like, oh, where did this new ugly building come from?

MT: Right. So many ugly buildings. My God. Standards, people! It’s the character of your neighborhood for the next 50 to 100 years. But a lot of people, you know, there have been phases in Providence where people look at the mill buildings and call them ugly. 

BH: Michael, my friend wanted me to ask you if you’ve managed to get into the train tunnel under East Providence.

MT: Oh, yeah. So, so many times. I think that that train tunnel was open when I came to Providence in 1989. That tunnel was open on both ends. I haunted that place for all the time I was up at school. And then I was part of – tangentially – the whole fiasco of when it got shut down, the May Day Party in ‘93. I don’t know if you know about that whole mess.

BH: I don’t.

MT: You should ask around. It’s a legend. A lot of pepper spray, a lot of handcuffs, a lot of cops, a lot of stone throwing, a lot of fire. But it led to it just being closed off at both ends. Then we took an arc welder and plasma cutter and cut a hole. Anyway, yes we have.

BH: Great. I’ll let them know. I think that’s about it. I’m glad the movie’s still doing well down in Providence. I’m excited to see where else it goes.

JW: Thank you. We’re pumped about Somerville.

MT: I had a friend who saw it in Somerville last night. Packed theater, raucous. They said everyone was verbally engaged with the movie as it was playing.

BH: That’s the perfect place to play it.

MT: The Somerville crowd has been really, really good to us.

Secret Mall Apartment returns to the Somerville Theatre on Wednesday, April 30th!