{"id":205297,"date":"2026-04-21T22:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T22:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/205297\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T22:06:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T22:06:08","slug":"mad-bills-to-pay-captures-fun-hustle-culture-in-the-bronx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/205297\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Mad Bills to Pay\u2019 captures fun, hustle culture in the Bronx"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bronx native Joel Alfonso Vargas captivated audiences last year at the Sundance Film Festival with his film, \u201cMad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo)\u201d, winning the NEXT: Special Jury Award.<\/p>\n<p>The coming-of-age film follows Rico as his carefree summer days of chasing girls and selling homemade cocktails on Orchard Beach in the Bronx abruptly come spiraling down when his pregnant girlfriend moves in with his family. This week, the film is in its second week of theatrical screenings at the Film Forum in Hudson Square and the Regal Concourse in the Bronx.<\/p>\n<p>Vargas joined \u201cThe Rush Hour\u201d on Tuesday to discuss the film.<\/p>\n<p>Tap the video player above to watch the interview.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bronx native Joel Alfonso Vargas captivated audiences last year at the Sundance Film Festival with his film, \u201cMad&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[25,128,9,24,12,2370,63,11102,129,131,130,3111,27,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-205297","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-app-top-stories","9":"tag-bronx","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-ny1-interviews","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-stef-manisero","16":"tag-the-bronx","17":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","18":"tag-the-bronx-news","19":"tag-the-rush-hour","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}