Joe's Apartment
Encyclopedia
Joe's Apartment is a 1996 musical
Musical film
The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...

-serio-comedy film
Comedy film
Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

 starring Jerry O'Connell
Jerry O'Connell
Jeremiah "Jerry" O'Connell is an American actor, best known for his roles in the TV series Sliders, Andrew Clements in My Secret Identity, Vern Tessio in the film Stand by Me, Charlie Carbone in Kangaroo Jack, and Detective Woody Hoyt on the drama Crossing Jordan...

 and Megan Ward
Megan Ward
Megan Marie Ward is an American actress best known for her numerous credits in science fiction and horror movies and television series...

 and the first film produced by MTV Films
MTV Films
MTV Films is the motion picture production arm of cable channel MTV. Founded in 1996, it has produced films based on MTV programs such as Beavis and Butt-head Do America and Jackass: The Movie, as well as other adaptations and original projects. Its films are released by fellow Viacom division...

. It was based on a 1992 short film first made for MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

 (which was used as filler in between commercial breaks), but was also inspired by both the 1987 Japanese film Gokiburi-tachi No Tasogare
Twilight of the Cockroaches
is a 1987 anime/live-action film written and directed by Hiroaki Yoshida that combines live-action footage with animation. The plot concerns a society of cockroaches who live peacefully in the apartment of a bachelor named Seito until a woman moves in and the humans begin to exterminate the...

(known as Twilight of the Cockroaches in the USA) and the American short film Those Damn Roaches, also made in 1987.

The main focus of the story is the fact that unbeknownst to many humans, roaches can talk but prefer not to since 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
Public-access television
Public-access television is a form of non-commercial mass media where ordinary people can create content television programming which is cablecast through cable TV specialty channels...

 cable TV channel. Actors providing the roaches' voices included Billy West, Jim Turner
Jim Turner (comedian)
Jim Turner is an American actor and comedian, born in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His father, George Turner, was in the Air Force and moved his family around often during Jim's youth to places including Quebec, Arizona, and Iowa. Turner married Lynn Freer in 1992 and they have a son, Otto...

, Rick Aviles and Dave Chappelle
Dave Chappelle
David Khari Webber "Dave" Chappelle is an American comedian, screenwriter, television/film producer, actor, and artist. Chappelle began his film career in the film Robin Hood: Men in Tights in 1993 and continued to star in minor roles in the films The Nutty Professor, Con Air, and Blue Streak. His...

.

Plot

Penniless and straight out of an Iowa college, Joe (Jerry O'Connell
Jerry O'Connell
Jeremiah "Jerry" O'Connell is an American actor, best known for his roles in the TV series Sliders, Andrew Clements in My Secret Identity, Vern Tessio in the film Stand by Me, Charlie Carbone in Kangaroo Jack, and Detective Woody Hoyt on the drama Crossing Jordan...

) moves to New York needing an apartment and a job. With the fortuitous death of Mrs. Grotowski, an artist named Walter Shit (Jim Turner
Jim Turner (comedian)
Jim Turner is an American actor and comedian, born in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His father, George Turner, was in the Air Force and moved his family around often during Jim's youth to places including Quebec, Arizona, and Iowa. Turner married Lynn Freer in 1992 and they have a son, Otto...

) helps Joe to take over the last rent-controlled apartment in a building slated for demolition. If Senator Dougherty (Robert Vaughn
Robert Vaughn
Robert Francis Vaughn, , is an American actor noted for stage, film and television work. His best known roles include the suave spy Napoleon Solo in the 1960s television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., wealthy detective Harry Rule in the 1970s television series The Protectors, Albert Stroller in...

) can empty the building, he can make way for the prison he intends to build there, and uses thug Alberto Bianco (Don Ho
Don Ho
Donald Tai Loy "Don" Ho was a Hawaiian and traditional pop musician, singer and entertainer.-Life and career:Ho, of Chinese, Hawaiian, Portuguese, Dutch, and German descent, was born in the small Honolulu neighborhood of Kakaako, but he grew up in Kāneohe on the windward side of the island of Oahu...

) and his nephews, Vlad (Shiek Mahmud-Bey) and Jesus (Jim Sterling
Jim Sterling
Jim Sterling is a television producer and writer.A native of Boulder, Colorado, Sterling moved to the West Coast in 1988 to attend Pepperdine University. After graduation, he worked at 20th Century Fox as production assistant...

), to intimidate tenants.

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
Megan Ward
Megan Marie Ward is an American actress best known for her numerous credits in science fiction and horror movies and television series...

) promoting her own project, a community garden to occupy the vacant site surrounding Joe’s building.

A gift to Lily while working on her garden is enough to woo her back to Joe's apartment, where the cockroaches break a promise to keep out of his business and a panicked Lily flees, only to discover the garden she’d worked on has been burned to the ground. During a fight with his roommates over his spoiled romantic evening, the building suffers the same fate as the garden. A mutual truce between our hapless and now homeless roommates leads the cockroaches to "call in favors from every roach, rat and pigeon in New York City" to try to make amends to Joe. Overnight, the roaches scour New York to gather materials to convert the entire area into a garden and take care of all the necessary paperwork to ensure harmony reigns over all.

Cast

  • Jerry O'Connell
    Jerry O'Connell
    Jeremiah "Jerry" O'Connell is an American actor, best known for his roles in the TV series Sliders, Andrew Clements in My Secret Identity, Vern Tessio in the film Stand by Me, Charlie Carbone in Kangaroo Jack, and Detective Woody Hoyt on the drama Crossing Jordan...

     as Joe
  • Megan Ward
    Megan Ward
    Megan Marie Ward is an American actress best known for her numerous credits in science fiction and horror movies and television series...

     as Lily Dougherty
  • Jim Turner
    Jim Turner (comedian)
    Jim Turner is an American actor and comedian, born in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His father, George Turner, was in the Air Force and moved his family around often during Jim's youth to places including Quebec, Arizona, and Iowa. Turner married Lynn Freer in 1992 and they have a son, Otto...

     as Walter Shit
  • Sandra Denton
    Sandra Denton
    Sandra Denton, known as Pepa, is a Jamaican American rap/hip hop artist, actress, and a member of the female rap trio Salt-N-Pepa.-Biography:...

     as Blank
  • Robert Vaughn
    Robert Vaughn
    Robert Francis Vaughn, , is an American actor noted for stage, film and television work. His best known roles include the suave spy Napoleon Solo in the 1960s television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., wealthy detective Harry Rule in the 1970s television series The Protectors, Albert Stroller in...

     as Senator Dougherty
  • Don Ho
    Don Ho
    Donald Tai Loy "Don" Ho was a Hawaiian and traditional pop musician, singer and entertainer.-Life and career:Ho, of Chinese, Hawaiian, Portuguese, Dutch, and German descent, was born in the small Honolulu neighborhood of Kakaako, but he grew up in Kāneohe on the windward side of the island of Oahu...

     as Alberto Bianco
  • Jim Sterling
    Jim Sterling
    Jim Sterling is a television producer and writer.A native of Boulder, Colorado, Sterling moved to the West Coast in 1988 to attend Pepperdine University. After graduation, he worked at 20th Century Fox as production assistant...

     as Jesus Bianco
  • Shiek Mahmud-Bey as Vladimir Bianco
  • David Huddleston
    David Huddleston
    David William Huddleston is an American actor, best known for his roles in Blazing Saddles, Santa Claus: The Movie and The Big Lebowski.-Early life:...

     as P.I. Smith
  • Vincent Pastore
    Vincent Pastore
    Vincent Pastore is an Italian-American actor, often cast as a mobster and best known for the role of Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero on The Sopranos.-Early life:...

     as Apartment broker
  • Paul Bartel
    Paul Bartel
    Paul Bartel was an American actor, writer and director. Bartel was perhaps most known for his 1982 hit black comedy Eating Raoul, which he wrote, starred in and directed.-Life and career:...

     as NEA
    National Endowment for the Arts
    The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

     scout
  • Richard "Moby" Hall
    Moby
    Richard Melville Hall , better known by his stage name Moby, is an American musician, DJ, and photographer. He is known mainly for his sample-based electronic music and his outspoken liberal political views, including his support of veganism and animal rights.Moby gained attention in the early...

  • Graham Dewar Pizza delivery guy

Cockroach voices
  • Billy West as Ralph
  • Reginald Hudlin
    Reginald Hudlin
    Reginald Alan Hudlin is an American writer and film director.-Biography:Hudlin is the son of Helen , a teacher, and Warrington W. Hudlin, Sr., an insurance executive and teacher...

     as Rodney
  • Jim Turner
    Jim Turner (comedian)
    Jim Turner is an American actor and comedian, born in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His father, George Turner, was in the Air Force and moved his family around often during Jim's youth to places including Quebec, Arizona, and Iowa. Turner married Lynn Freer in 1992 and they have a son, Otto...

  • Jim Sterling
    Jim Sterling
    Jim Sterling is a television producer and writer.A native of Boulder, Colorado, Sterling moved to the West Coast in 1988 to attend Pepperdine University. After graduation, he worked at 20th Century Fox as production assistant...

  • Dave Chappelle
    Dave Chappelle
    David Khari Webber "Dave" Chappelle is an American comedian, screenwriter, television/film producer, actor, and artist. Chappelle began his film career in the film Robin Hood: Men in Tights in 1993 and continued to star in minor roles in the films The Nutty Professor, Con Air, and Blue Streak. His...

  • Tim Blake Nelson
    Tim Blake Nelson
    Tim Blake Nelson is an American director, writer, singer, and actor.-Early life:Nelson was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of Ruth Kaiser Nelson, who is a noted social activist and philanthropist in Tulsa, and a geologist father...

  • Rick Aviles
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