A documentary that premiered at the South by Southwest film festival follows the story of eight friends who built an apartment in a Rhode Island shopping mall — that remained unnoticed for several years.
Directed by Jeremy Workman, “Secret Mall Apartment” centers on artist Michael Townsend as the mastermind behind the four-year operation. It also reveals the previously unknown co-conspirators involved with the state’s urban legend, Variety reports.
Why did they construct a mall apartment?
According to The Daily Beast, the massive Providence Place Mall finished construction in August 1999. Some time after, Townsend and several of his artist friends were kicked out of their “poorer” home nearby the mall so that the city could turn the space into a grocery store.
While looking for their next home, the group explored the Providence Place corridors in 2003 and found a hidden empty room — accessible only through small passageways. The idea to live there clicked instantaneously.
“It started the conversation immediately,” said Townsend, in a teaser trailer shared by Variety.
The 4-year escapade
From this discovery, Townsend and his friends began to utilize the empty space as a makeshift apartment.
Per Variety, the space was embellished with a sofa, microwave, TV and a Playstation console, surrounded by a laid-out cinderblock wall. MovieMaker added that furniture such as chairs and a china cabinet were all snuck into the mall apartment.
For years, the space was used as anything and everything — a place to sleep, a hang-out spot, an area to plan out art projects and much more. From beginning to end, the mall apartment was made for the artists as a safe, secretive spot.
“There’s this underlying sense of dread that we’re gonna get caught at any time,” Townsend said in the teaser.
It all comes to an end
In September 2007, according to MovieMaker, mall security finally found the secret 750-square-foot apartment. Townsend was then charged with misdemeanor trespassing, in which he received a punishment of one night in jail, six months of probation and a permanent ban from Providence Place.
The director thought this was interesting, claiming the mall security legally “didn’t know what to do with him” and may have been embarrassed about the four-year case.
“These people had lived in this apartment under their nose and security couldn’t find it,” Workman stated to MovieMaker.
How the documentary came to be
Luckily, Workman received hours of video footage from Townsend and friends showcasing the hideaway apartment. The production even made and used a replica apartment for the documentary, because the apartment was dismantled by mall security, according to Variety.
The story was motivating enough for Jesse Eisenberg to sign on as an executive producer.
“As somebody in the arts, I just kept thinking that what they’re doing is so pure, and so perfect,” he said to Variety.
Although the project has yet to find distribution, it hasn’t stopped Workman from showing what the apartment meant to Townsend and his friends.
“It was like a prank. It was a lark. It was a stand. It was an artwork. It was rebellion. But they thought it had real meaning,” Workman told MovieMaker.