“Red Hook needs a place like Wraptor,” says noted film director

On Feb. 10, Wraptor Restaurant and Bar, located at 358 Columbia Street hosted a movie night. Shown was a movie called Secret Mall Apartment, followed by a Q&A with the film’s director, Jeremy Workman.

The film is about a group of artists who create a secret apartment in the middle of a busy Rhode Island mall in the early 2000s and it has been a massive success since it was released in 2024 and on Netflix a few weeks ago.

Workman lives in the area and discovered Wraptor, and after enjoying the food and the atmosphere, he made a four-minute film about Wraptor, which was shown before Secret Mall Apartment. The film about Wraptor can be watched on Wraptor’s YouTube channel.

It was a small but enthusiastic crowd on a cold night, and we were able to eat while watching the film. I got my personal favorite, pan-seared salmon with mixed veggies and mashed potatoes, which was excellent, as always.

The film included a lot of footage shot by the artists themselves in the mall in the early 2000s and also gave insight into the other projects that the artists worked on over the years, and what made both the artists and those projects so unique.

“I grew up in Los Angeles, and my father was an editor of documentaries, and it was really cool to see that, and I knew that was what I wanted to do,” Workman said. “I make documentaries on subjects that I find really interesting, and I raise the money and make the movies independently, so I have creative control.

“I make movies on unique individuals, mostly artists and obsessive people, who are very passionate about what they do. Many of them are outside of the normal status quo. I don’t usually work on social issues movies, although they are always there bubbling under the surface, and I don’t work on political movies. I like making movies about how incredible people are.”

Some of Workman’s other films include The World Before Your Feet, which is about a man trying to walk every street in New York City, and Lily Topples The World, which is about the world’s greatest domino toppler.

For many years, the artists who made the home in the mall did not want to make a documentary, but by chance, while shooting Lily Topples The World in Athens, Greece, Workman met one of the artists who made the apartment.

“What I didn’t realize was that for 20 years, these artists had always turned down people looking to make a documentary about them,” Workman said. “After 20 years, the timing was right, and they were excited about me doing it, and we finally did it.”

The apartment in the mall was actually a side project for the artists involved, and they often spoke about the other projects they were working on while they were at the apartment. Michael Townsend, who was the main artist involved in the project, had a very interesting story, and Workman was able to capture who he was as a person.

“I was working on the movie, and it was always shapeshifting on me,” Workman said. “It’s this prank, no, it’s this artwork, no, it’s a set and a stage. They were using the apartment as a place to plan other projects.”

A lot of the footage used in the film was shot by Townsend and the other artists involved in the project on their own camera while they were at the apartment or other places in the mall.

“They had 25 hours of footage, and nobody had seen it for 15-16 years, and then they stopped filming about 3/4 of the way into the project,” Workman said. “You just go through it a little at a time, and sometimes there would be kind of boring parts, and then suddenly there’s something amazing and interesting.

“It’s such a crazy story. I’ve done some really cool documentaries where I feel like I was so stoked to do a movie on this subject, but this was even more extreme and exciting. I wanted to make sure I didn’t mess it up and did it in a cool way that pays tribute to what they did.”

Next movie night the 17th
The movie has been a success, as was movie night at Wraptor, and the plan is to have more movie nights at the restaurant. The next movie night will take place on March 17 at 7:30 pm with the screening of Premium Rush.

“It’s such a different vibe here,” Workman said. “I’m not sure if it’s the location or being near the hotel or a combination of things. I always thought it was such a cool, weird, unique place, and the food is great. This place is so different from a lot of the other ones in the area, and Red Hook needs a place like Wraptor.”