Taglines: Sex Bugs Rock ‘n Roll.
Joe’s Apartment movie storyline. Penniless and straight out of the University of Iowa, Joe (Jerry O’Connell) moves to New York needing an apartment and a job. With the fortuitous death of Mrs. Grotowski, an artist named Walter Shit (Jim Turner) helps Joe to take over the last rent controlled apartment in a building slated for demolition. If Senator Dougherty (Robert Vaughn) can empty the building, he can make way for the prison he intends to build there, and uses thug Alberto Bianco (Don Ho) and his nephews, Vlad (Shiek Mahmud-Bey) and Jesus (Jim Sterling), to intimidate tenants (see landlord harassment).
Joe discovers he has 20 to 30 thousand roommates, all of them talking, singing cockroaches grateful that a slob has moved in. Led by Ralph (Billy West), the sentient, tune-savvy insects scare away the thugs in an act of enlightened self-interest that endears them to their human meal ticket.
Tired of living on handouts from Mom back in Iowa and after a series of dead-end jobs ruined by his well-intentioned six-legged roomies, Joe finds himself the unskilled drummer in Walter Shit’s band. Hanging posters for SHIT, he encounters Senator Dougherty’s daughter Lily (Megan Ward) promoting her own project, a community garden to occupy the vacant site surrounding Joe’s building.
Joe’s Apartment is a 1996 musical-comedy film starring Jerry O’Connell and Megan Ward and the first film produced by MTV Films. It was based on a 1992 short film first made for MTV. The film was directed by John Payson, with computer-animated sequences supervised by Chris Wedge through Blue Sky Studios.
The main focus of the story is the fact that, unbeknownst to many humans, cockroaches can talk, but prefer not to, as humans “smush first and ask questions later”. They also sing (as they do many times in the movie) and even have their own public-access television cable TV channel. Actors providing the roaches’ voices included Billy West, Jim Turner, Rick Aviles (in his final film role before his death) and Dave Chappelle.
Joe’s Apartment (1996)
Directed by: John Payson
Starring: Jerry O’Connell, Megan Ward, Billy West, Reginald Hudlin, Jim Turner, Robert Vaughn, Jim Sterling, Shiek Mahmud-Bey, David Huddleston, Lord Kayson
Screenplay by: John Payson
Production Design by: Carol Spier
Cinematography by: Peter Deming
Film Editing by: Peter Frank
Costume Design by: Stephanie Maslansky
Set Decoration by: Karin Wiesel
Art Direction by: Ed Check
Music by: Carter Burwell
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for crude humor and a brief drug reference.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: July 26, 1996
Hits: 339
