The Bronx comes to life in “Mad Bills to Pay,” a coming-into-adulthood drama about two teenagers trying to navigate a surprise pregnancy.
A smash hit at festivals, the film comes from the heart of Joel Alfonso Vargas, a Bronx-born screenwriter and director with a clear adoration of his home borough.
“I think it’s clear maybe in the film how much… how much I missed the Bronx,” Vargas said ahead of the premiere. “I think is part of the reason why it is it looks and feels the way it does.”
Vargas, who grew up in the projects, experienced the all-too familiar desire to leave home and explore what the world had to offer.
The largely self-taught filmmaker studied at schools in California and London before returning to New York to make his first feature film, leading a cast of relative newcomers in a shoot that lasted only 16 days.
“The narrative growing up was always, ‘you want to get out of the projects,'” he said.
“It took a while to kind of get me there,” he added. “When I sat down to think about it, the struggle that I guess we grew up around, and in, it was just beautiful and I kind of wanted to show that beauty.”
The film is a standout, not only for its rich storytelling and deployment of improvisation, but its still, fly-on-the-wall style cinematography. Vargas said his background in documentary filmmaking informed his observational choice with the camera.
“Mad Bills to Pay” centers on a Dominican American family: a mom working all hours as a nurse, a younger sister trying to break out, and Rico, a 19-year-old hustler who spends his summer days selling nutcrackers on the beach. The realities of adulthood come knocking when Rico invites his pregnant 16-year-old girlfriend to move in with his family. It’s a recipe for chaos.
Vargas infuses the film with the characters of his adolescence, aided by the breakout performances of Juan Collado (Rico) and Destiny Checho (who plays Destiny).
“One of my brother’s friends was sort of a Rico character, you know, self-sabotage and kind of a tornado guy,” he said.
Vargos knows what it’s like to hustle. The film “was made for peanuts,” and funded through a personal loan aided by the support of a few grants.
His advice for other future first-time filmmakers?
“Don’t wait for a yes would be my my advice,” he said. ‘If you really believe in what you’re doing, in yourself, and you know, the team around you because it is a collaborative artform with people, find a way to do it.”
“Mad Bills to Pay” is now playing at the Regal Concourse in the Bronx and Film Forum in Manhattan.