Before reality TV hijacked the airwaves, and long before MTV traded its subversive bite for bingeable fluff, there was a moment—a weird, glorious moment—when the network greenlit its very first original movie, and it was nothing like what you’d expect.
Enter: “Joe’s Apartment.”
What began as a short film—broadcast during MTV’s early-‘90s experimental heyday—somehow morphed into a full-blown feature-length film in 1996, marking MTV Films’ first official leap into cinematic territory. And yes, it’s about talking, singing, gross-out cockroaches.
Underground filmmaker Nick Zedd, known for his boundary-shattering works in the Cinema of Transgression movement, was reportedly part of the underground sensibility that shaped the project’s tone (even if he didn’t direct this film himself). His influence, along with others from the East Village DIY scene, lingered like graffiti behind the gloss. There was a definite punk ethos in its DNA: absurd, grotesque, anti-corporate, and gloriously low-budget in spirit—even if the finished film had the polish of a studio-backed project.
What made Joe’s Apartment so bizarre wasn’t just the premise—it was how it tricked the mainstream into backing something that felt like it belonged in a midnight screening, not on a marquee next to big-budget blockbusters. No A-list soundtrack, no surefire stars, no massive merch drop. Just… singing cockroaches and scatological slapstick.
The film itself was divisive. Critics were baffled. Audiences didn’t know whether to laugh or gag. But underground fans saw something different: a studio accidentally making a cult movie. A Trojan horse of weird, tucked inside the machinery of a very mainstream brand.
And for a second, MTV looked like it might actually become a voice for outsider art.
Of course, the film didn’t explode at the box office—and the dream of a subversive MTV Films quietly faded into more commercial projects (Varsity Blues, Napoleon Dynamite, etc.). But Joe’s Apartment remains a beautifully bizarre time capsule, a relic from a brief window when weirdness snuck through the cracks.
So the next time someone tells you MTV never did anything weird, just smile and whisper:
“Remember the cockroach musical?”
🪳 SSM: Stay Strange. Stay Subversive.
Want a deep dive on MTV’s oddball programming era or a look at other network-to-film pipeline flukes? Hit me up.