Meet the Bushwick Filmmaker Who Helped Make Mamdani

I always had a double life in politics. I was a political activist for most of my university years. I was at Fordham University leading this anti-Bush, anti-war movement at the time. Then I learned production at Democracy Now, so I started in news and thought I was just going to be a journalist, thought I was just going to do documentary and political work that way. They didn't end up hiring me, and I worked in advertising for a while. When I was in advertising, I used to do a lot of comedy on the side, and eventually that became the thing that opened a lot of doors. But along the way, I still did videos for different political organizations and nonprofits and advocacy groups, but I hadn't done a campaign.

It got attention from Lionsgate and NBC and a bunch of Hollywood people. It got me some meetings. The last one was with FX. So it got me in the world in a legitimate way, but nothing transpired, and I totally broke the bank doing that. But it led to me meeting people. I met Kareem through that, who does Subway Takes now. That was his first acting role. He's also in Love, New York. Some of the actors from Love, New York, I met these people a decade before, doing Bros.

I met Rafael because he saw me producing this, and he said, "I'm going to run for office. I know you do video. I think I need a campaign ad." I said I hadn't done a campaign ad, but let's figure it out. The indie film production team for that project all met with Rafael, and we became his campaign production team. That was the beginning of us doing political ads, which was then the beginning of Melted Solids, which is this political ad project.

We had met prior during Bernie's campaign, two blocks from here in a Bushwick loft in spring 2016. Maybe it was February 2016. It was an event organized by the Bushwick Burners, who were the only ground game for Bernie's 2016 campaign in New York. He had no resources in New York, which was a giant mistake of the campaign. But Rafael at the time was the only pro-Bernie politician in all of New York state versus the entire slate of elected officials that endorsed Hillary. So I met him at that event.

I lived in California 2014 to 2018, and I was involved in Bernie work in L.A., and I was like, "Of course I'll go to the Bernie kickoff in New York." Even when I was at the Bushwick Burner loft, I was living in California. My girlfriend at the time broke up with me because I was late to dinner because I went to the Bernie event and met Rafael. So there was this moment in time where being not the best date had historical consequences. I've learned to be better with communications.

It is something special. Kareem is now adapting it to be the equivalent of a TV show, but it will air on YouTube. That's the current plan for it. I'm not involved in this iteration, but I did do what we were calling Season 2. I was behind the camera co-directing Season 2 with Willem Holzer. That relationship of two cameras making a series is the thing that led to Subway Takes, but also led to a certain shooting style that we continue through this day and we're going to do today. The Claire video in Greenpoint will be shot very similar: two Sony FX3s, minimal crew, running around New York, seeing what you capture.

Kareem had a studio here for his company, Nameless TV, and we used to just hang out in the studio and write. He showed me TikTok for the first time in 2019 when he was fooling around with it and doing karaoke videos. He was like, "Oh, this is a new thing. I'm into TikTok." So he, having been day one on TikTok, started to study it. He had a media company at the time, so he was really studying things that worked in short form and in vertical video, which I, as a cinephile, hated and still wage a holy war against vertical video. That's the first Subway Take, our argument about vertical video.

I can trace this back to the neighborhood, two blocks away. Kareem used to rent a workspace in the basement of McKibbin Lofts, and we wrote a movie in the basement there in 2019.

[DiMieri's phone rings]

Oh, William Banks. Do you know William Banks?

That was one of the most insane things I've ever seen. People really loved his intelligence to hold on the 10-second beat drop.

The thing that continues to work is doing short-form documentary format. Also just not shooting on a gimbal. If you shot on a gimbal now, which I think is how people shot, it was new technology a decade ago, and all these small videographers and music video directors were shooting with this really cool method of stabilization, that stabilization looks out of place in social media. The handheld, lighter lift, DIY style where you can feel the camera, you can move with it, that's how we shot. Really, Keep the Meter Running is how I started to shoot like that frequently.

Keeping it surprising in short form. There was a campaign we did with Zohran in 2022, 2023 called Fix the MTA, which was a reform campaign to freeze the subway fare and make buses free. We started doing the style that became really, that Donald really took to a new level in the campaign, the walk and talk. "Hey, I'm here," scripted, breaking up the script in really fun and clever ways. Now I'm on a bus, now I'm on a train, now I'm here, now I'm there. That's what we did for Fix the MTA.

And then also, separately but in the same campaign, pioneering this very empathetic listening-to-New Yorkers style. Zohran tried to get somebody to sit with him on a bus for, I think he asked 15 people in the Bronx to ride the bus with him, which is crazy to think. It was just us two. Debbie, myself, Zohran.

So Zohran tried to get somebody to ride the bus with him. Eventually one woman said yes.

One person. He just wanted to do one interview with a working-class person who would talk about what it means for the fare to jump from $2.75 to $3. And in early 2023, one woman said yes, and we rode, we took her home. It was a 40-minute ride. Zohran just interviewed her the entire ride. I'm pulling the camera as best I could, trying not to fall over, stabilizing by the pole.

She said this line during that ride, because then it became more about economic hardship and cost of living, the pain of continuing to live in New York even though the cost goes up every year. She said, "I used to love New York, but now it's just where I live." He used that line in his mayoral speech on opening night, at the kickoff of his mayoral launch. He used that line multiple times during the campaign. I think he might have done it when he won.

We've been talking about this as a model for what is working for these populist campaign videos generally. It is a little bit of candidate as investigative journalist or candidate as journalist. The only thing is, it will only work as long as the candidate has real solutions.

Even in the first video, which was also very journalistic, Zohran was talking to Trump voters after the election in Queens and Fordham Road, both sides of Queens. That was a very man-on-the-street, journalistic effort. No one knew who he was. He didn't identify himself until the end of every interview. He was like, "By the way, I think I'm running for mayor." But at least he had a solution, because I could imagine there is a thing that some politicians do where they listen to the woes of society and they're like, "Yes, someone should do something about that." It's like, you are the someone. You have to do something about it.

Well, it's real. I was talking to Olivia Becker about this, and I think it's because his parents loved him. I really think, I'm like, "How does this guy take genuine interest in everyone he meets?" He's not faking. He really will listen to someone new. They'll tell the story and he will listen to them until his team pulls him away.

But I'm saying, three years ago at this time, we were on that bus. There was no team to pull him away. He could have wrapped up the interview at any point. But he's like, "I will continue talking to you for the duration of this bus ride until you have to go." So I think that's just who he is.

The fact that they did the mayor, there's a through line between that and now the mayor is listening. That 12-hour listening shift he did in the museum. It's real. It's not an act. For some reason, some combination of personality traits makes him a very empathetic human and a real listener to people, taking them seriously. I think in good journalism, it's rare. It's very rare in politics.

Imagine trying to go out and interview a bunch of people about their economic woes and be like, "Wow, I have a very moderate solution to this. If I just tinker these, if I can get in there and change..." It's like when Kamala Harris had her policy of, we are going to help small businesses with low interest, whatever it was, in exclusively urban communities with a certain diversity in the zip code, means tested, all these really tinkered policy solutions. There's so much minutia and fear. They're afraid to upset their donors with those policies. But if you can get past the fear and actually give people a lifeline, I think that's what opens the door to winning. And that's a winning message.

That's what just happened in New Jersey. Our first campaign that finished, that completed after Zohran, was this New Jersey special election for Analilia Mejia. We went out on Dec. 30 and shot with her in suburban New Jersey. She is now a progressive populist. Bernie went out to support her. AOC endorsed her. And she won in a relatively wealthy suburban New Jersey.

But her message was, "Both parties have failed." So that's the thing of the right and the moderates. It's a hard message to begin with the truth that both parties have failed you. I think the fact that she was able to own that, to campaign on that, is connected to how she won. Because that's how people feel. But the Democratic Party I think has been afraid to call themselves a failure. "We did nothing wrong. It's always the other side." If you can acknowledge your own failure, maybe then you can tweak something or change something that can make you win later.

Well, if it's one party for the rich against another party for the rich, we're stuck in this mess.

The film is a big ensemble project about dysfunctional dating, dysfunctional couples, in fairly common circumstances. In the end it's about growth because it starts with extremely dysfunctional people and ends with watching people be able to relate to one another. I think the first draft of the script was a lot darker and I was like, it should end on a hopeful note, but the general philosophy was, OK, I know I would need to make. Every year I say I'm going to make a movie. And Kareem and I were almost in a race about this. We had tried to make a movie together in 2019, 2020. We ended up writing something that was too expensive for either of us to make. In 2022, I wrote a fairly simple script that we could have shot, except it took place in Paris and it would have had to happen in a certain time period in June of 2022 in Paris. Then that project fell apart and then he ended up producing a different movie called Or Something. And I ended up going to Paris for three weeks, just sort of lost with purpose. And a friend put me up and I was like, well, here I am. And yet another year, a failure in my creative life because I've said I was going to make a movie and I failed again.

That trip, at the end of that trip, I was at a bar. It's called Chez Jeannet. Very random series of events. I missed my flight. A random person found me in the street that was a Bushwick friend. And she took me with her friends to bar hop and ended up at this bar called Chez Jeannet. And Gaspar Noé and Alejandro Iñárritu walked into the bar. And it was a sign from the universe. And I was like, what the fuck I think this is insane because here I am thinking, I'm feeling like a failure. My film career is going nowhere. I've failed yet another year. I failed.

So I came back home the next day.

I said hello. But as soon as I started speaking, they were actually having an intense argument in Spanish that later my Spanish-speaking friend told me was all about debating the creative process. But as soon as they heard my American accent, they were like, "Hey, nice to see you." I think if I spoke French or Spanish, I had a better shot. But the American accent was a dead giveaway for them to bow out of that conversation.

And so when I came home, I was like, OK, I'm going to watch any of their films just as an exercise. Any of their films I haven't seen, this is a sign from the universe. Let me just make sure I would have the full breadth of conversation if I ever run into them again. So let me watch all their films. And then I watched Vortex. I had a very emotional experience. It's the saddest film I've ever seen.

I cried for like 45 minutes.

Yeah, he's using techniques that are rare and maybe even new. Maybe he's inventing techniques. He did this in camera, sometimes with edits, sometimes with camera movement. But in Vortex specifically, he did this perspective shift. You shift between the husband, the wife, and the son. And you rotate between those three characters where either two cameras are following the one character. Or you're usually only following two at a time at most. Unless I guess you could have two of them in one shot. But anyway, it's a way that the perspective of the film is not set on one character. It's rotating. And that clicked something in my brain.

So then I had basically what were a bunch of scene ideas about romance and love and intimacy and funny bad dates and things like that. And polyamory. All these random ideas that I've collected through almost a decade in Bushwick. But I just had a lot of fun stories. Some were real. Some were inspired by friends. When I was 25, I dated somebody and she was like, "Don't fall in love with me. I have four other boyfriends." And I remember falling in love with her. And there were things like that that were just bizarre stories that are the kernel of an idea.

So then it was like, OK, can I write a scene about what it's like for somebody to fall in love with their polyamorous partner where they're very, "I have these rules. This is how we operate." But you can't control love, right? If you fall in love with somebody, it's involuntary. So that creates a conflict. That's fun. So there's a lot of dark comic premises for different ideas that I was able to string together by doing this perspective shift.

So then I wrote this film quicker than I ever wrote anything in my life. I wrote it in a month or five weeks. I had been in a writing workshop. Got back in a writing workshop beginning of 2022.

Because it was like, yes, I had all these stories, but it was more like, OK, this is my first film. I don't have a budget. What do I have? What are my strengths? And other than the actors, it was these locations. My childhood best friend is the director of operations at Overthrow Hospitality. He also acts in the movies in the first scene playing a waiter and then his wife is in the second scene. They're all non-actors. It's him, his wife, their aunt and uncle play their parents. They speak Vietnamese. It's this whole look into New York restaurant culture because we go back into the kitchen.

And then probably the most stunning location of the film is called the Somerset House, which is my friend Alan Eckstein and his wife, Haley Lowenthal. They have this amazing vintage, rare vintage furniture pieces that they collect and have a showroom for. They furnish houses for people that can afford this stuff. It's really pretty. Like the most gorgeous couch from the 1960s, 1962. Things that they find at estate sales and who knows where they source it from. But Alan built this business first in Williamsburg in the pandemic. They were on North 6th and then they moved to Long Island City. And it's one of the most stunning physical locations you can go to. Alan also has an interior design background.

So there was this and I was like, can I call in the favor of favors and ask Alan to let me film the scene there? And he said yes. He's just like, I don't want a bunch of stands, I don't want to, there were a lot of limitations, five people in the room. The lights had to be outside. So the lights were in the parking lot, shooting through the windows. And then it was like, OK, if I have this location, can I write a scene about a wealthy couple furniture shopping? What that might inspire. So a lot of it was just writing around these very specific opportunities.

And we shot in the Deep End in Bushwick. There's a whole Bushwick segment of the film. We shot Maria Hernandez. There's a scene with a bunch of performance artists that was really wacky and was inspired by an even wackier real-life performance. That probably would have been too much for the film where people were doing mock crucifixions and banging on their heads with pots. I could show you videos. It's the craziest. It's some occasional nightmarish performance art. Crackhead Barney's there screaming at people, that was the real one. And we did some sort of approximation of it.

Well, I would say right now, post-pandemic, I've been calling it a cultural renaissance. I think New York is having a cultural renaissance after the pandemic. Which coincides with the fact that other places are not — Los Angeles does not feel like it's having a cultural renaissance. It kind of did with — there's a few filmmakers that were a part of it, but now they're here. The filmmakers who were part of that are here, which is Bonello Mata and Kayla Dawn Marcus, who did a film called Two. And they were — I think they are some of the most impressive filmmakers right now.

But I'd say also Peter Vack and Betsy Brown have had some amazing films together. Rebecca Sherman Minty has produced a ton of amazing work through Simone Films. There's a film called Messy — that's a film she produced. That's a great New York film by another L.A. to New York person, Alexi Vosser.

Kareem. He made a movie. The Downtown Film Festival has a pretty amazing slate of all these up-and-coming people. Some of them like Santiago Malin is a 26-year-old, I want to say, maybe 27-year-old filmmaker.

Santiago Malin, 26 years old, wrote a play, sold out a few shows, and turned that into a film Homunculus. Shey Sennett, they made a different film called Sly Boots. And these are all films done for $100,000 or less. And the stuff I've done with Bonnie and Kayla, Kayla and I made a film called Romance Never Dies for basically the cost of Ubers and takeout. And I think all of this has happened in the last five years.

Well, I think when people think of Dime Square as a cultural — unless you are going to loop me and Kareem into the Dime Square scene, it depends how big the tent is of Dime Square. Technically, we both have offices in Dime Square. I have a production office on East Broadway. So does Kareem. We're neighbors. He was there first.

Peter's in the film, actually. Peter's in Love, New York. He has a cameo. I have one line in his film. He has one line in my film.

But yeah, I think Peter and Betsy are definitely — they were kind of wrapped up in, I guess, the cultural moment of that. I feel like it was happening — it wasn't necessarily that they were — I think they were just participating in whatever culture was happening at the time, and I think they will continue, because I think they're both some of the best filmmakers and performers and artists right now.

I got involved with some avant-garde theater troupe that came out of Peter's film, that came out of Rachel Ormont, which was very traditional. It would have been energy that felt like Bushwick or downtown New York in the '80s or '90s. But we did a play, if you can call it that — a very deconstructed theater play in, I think it was a warehouse in Gowanus.

And by the end of it, the audience just started walking out and then the theater troupe was barricading the door, trying to keep people in, while maintaining character. Everybody's screaming. And my character was the straight person. So I'm trying to let people out and then fighting the other cast members who are barricading.

I don't think I'm — well, I don't think we need to — I'm a humanist, I guess, is what I am.

There are people that — you could see it in these leaked files where they're like, "OK, well, eventually we'll get to a point where we just need to delete the humans or delete our excess humans or delete old people." These people are psychopaths.

And yeah, I would hope that in being in the — we'll call it what David Lynch calls the art life — by being in that world, you are creating a counterbalance to the ruling anti-humanist, psychopathic personalities.

I was half joking about having the Balzac book in my pocket in Paris, which is a cartoon, but I did — if I trace it, in early COVID, I got really into just giving myself a film education. So I watched a lot of old Italian films, watched a lot of old French films, gravitated to some — Jacques Rivette, some French New Wave guys, Godard, of course. And I realized, they kept referencing Balzac. And I was like, "I love these filmmakers, what is their fascination with Balzac?"

And then I went back and I read his short stories and I was like, "Oh, I get it. This is really good. This is 200 years old now, but this is really good."

And then he has a different book called — have you ever heard of Lost Illusions? Illusions Perdues. But that's a book about Paris in the 1820s. And so it was, yeah, 200 years old, but he does this thing where he's painting a picture of the city — upper class, lower class, mannerisms, how society — this is how it's done in society. Commentaries on what are the ways of acting to be part of the upper class? When do you feel like you've broken from it? What do you dress a certain way so you can't fit in?

And I was realizing, oh, he wrote prolifically. And I was like, oh, he's painting this time capsule of the city at this time. And I think somewhere in the back of my head, it wasn't my first thought, but somewhere in the back of my head that became philosophically — if you're going to do a New York film, how can you be as comprehensive as possible to make it feel like now?

I got really into Weekend — Godard's Weekend is amazing. I'm a Fellini super fan. I got really into Lina Wertmüller — she was his protégé. And her films also were a huge influence on all this stuff because she made a film called Swept Away, Love and Anarchy — Seven Beauties, but there's a few of her great films.

She does this amazing thing that — actually I think there's a limit. She knows the line of how basically terrible a man can be while still being somewhat redeemable or attractive to her. I feel like she knows that line and a man can't know that line.

But if you watch her films, she goes to the line. She pushes all her characters to the line. None of our couple arguments or fights in the film can even reach her scale — we're like a three out of ten on her scale. But when she pushes it, because these characters are at the edge and their energy is completely boiling over, overflowing, but they're still redeemable — I think it's so fascinating because yeah, I don't think any man can know that line. You don't even attempt it. But she knows the line.

But I feel like then Jacques Rivette also — and this is something I'm still inspired by. If I ever get the chance and I really think about this sometimes — if I can put enough ideas together to make sense of it — he made a 13-hour film in 1971. It's called Out 1. And I watched it in the first pandemic Thanksgiving. All 13 hours over Thanksgiving break. And I'm like, this is an energy that we need to tap back into as filmmakers and as society. They're trying to push the limits. They're trying to out-create each other. And it starts to — they're feeding off each other in generating. So at some point he makes a 13-hour film. And I loved that. I thought it was amazing.

Yeah, Special Head who I met — I actually met Special Head at the Deep End. So later it becomes a location for Love, New York. Special Head I saw do a performance where he ripped his guts out. He had entrails and he ripped his guts out and gives birth — it's a very bizarre thing. Also does a different costume where he dresses up as a human-sized poodle and climbs on people on the subway. Just a real creature of the neighborhood.

But he told me he came to the December screening and he was like, "You know, I really appreciate how much you gave a platform to performance artists," which was an idea I had for over a decade. Because performance artists in New York are really creative on a level that I've never seen.

There's this performance artist called Enormous Face, who now tours the world and basically creates nightmares in reality. Builds them through the night. He makes three-dimensional props and really makes these images that are terrifying and creepy and eerie. And used to just do this in subways and parks. And I remember just zoning into — this needs to be captured on film, this is nuts.

Oh God. I've heard stories of people.

No.

I mean, it's — well, artists — this is the cost of living crisis. People — it's hard to live.

I think about 10 years ago, I met my friend at Bushwick Bazaar, probably about eight, ten years ago. And I was late to meet him and I was like, "Hey, I'm so sorry I'm running behind." He goes, "Oh, don't worry. I just saw somebody light his dick on fire on stage." And I'm like, "All right." That's that.

But it is a thing of — because living in New York is so expensive, it's forcing a lot of the culture out. And I think that's — I'm not saying that we need more people lighting their dicks on fire, but — maybe we do need more people lighting their dicks on fire.

We need to be — I think just the general creativity. Even the joke — I was like, sometimes thinking it was a very millennial or even Gen X type joke to say, "What are people doing in Williamsburg?" "Oh, they're working on screenplays," or whatnot.

And I remember coming from the Bushwick Block Party to some random person's after party. And he was an actual — this sounds like a fake character, but a man who was in his underwear typing on a typewriter and he's talking about his screenplay. And that was kind of the caricature of the neighborhood for a long time.

But I haven't even heard somebody make the joke about people being screenwriters. It's really — a failed screenwriter struggling with their screenplay. I wish there were more failed screenwriters struggling with their screenplay. We need that energy back. It's been lost.

Well, even when I did the 12-foot skeleton — I did two short films with the 12-foot skeleton from Home Depot, also sort of a precursor for Love, New York because of trying to fit as much of the city in one short piece.

And for three weeks I had the top half of the 12-foot skeleton at my kitchen table in my apartment. So people walked in, there would just be this giant skeleton there because I had no place to house it. And I remember thinking, "Oh, I'm keeping the Bushwick dream alive in this moment." This is what it's about here.

The next film is a Dario Argento, giallo-type film. And this is what I'm working on and hoping to do this year.

I got really into 1970s giallo films. And I watched three dozen of them at some period. Mostly it was winter 2023. And out of that, I wrote this script that felt very — I didn't have an outline. It's a murder mystery. I didn't know who the killer was. I was just using almost dream logic to write something. But being very influenced by these tropes of these films.

A lot of those films are about an American abroad who's a fish out of water in Italy. And so I'm attempting to invert it so it's an Italian student in New York City who gets wrapped up in a series of murders around a hotel that are connected to a sex club.

Marcus Foster, who did the score for Love, New York, is going to help produce and do the score for this film. I'm currently trying to cast this Italian Netflix actress to be the lead and come to New York and do this. Of course, I need to fundraise for it. I'm willing to break the bank and go into debt again to do it if I need to. But I think it's more about just keeping momentum up.

And it's just a wildly different thing. It's like, OK, we did the ensemble dark comedy about couples and relationships and dating. That's done. I don't need to do Love, New York Part II. What else feels inspiring?

And I think really fully committing to this other forgotten genre of films, which almost never even made it to the States. Lucio Fulci and Mario Bava and Sergio Martino, I think, is one of the other big — but these '70s directors — it's just such a fun and distinct and unique style of filmmaking that are kind of dismissed as cult B-movies or you can find them on Shudder.

You've seen Deep Red?

See, I would argue that Suspiria is not a giallo because it's very specifically about a murder mystery — it's a murder mystery element and a non-supernatural element. And so there's — yeah, see, this is a debate in film — the scholars. But there's the more stylized, erotic murder mystery films, and then at the same time some of the same directors were making supernatural horror, and they get looped together sometimes. But the genre more specifically is about the murder mystery. Some people stretch the definition.

It's more of, there's a leather, black-gloved killer, and you see first person, their hands grab a knife, and there's certain tropes that are there.

Somebody asked me this question during the — the last time we showed Love, New York, they were like, "How do these things connect?" And I was like, well, I wake up and I say, the world is a horrible place and we need to meet this challenge with A, a political solution, and then B, creative and cultural solutions.

So they're not — they're more connected than it might seem, where I look at it as, OK, how can I use powers of filmmaking and skills of filmmaking to advance political solutions? And with the goal — and I think it was very clear, even with Rafael, with Zohran, with these people who we work with — "Oh, yeah, I'm a filmmaker."

Debbie, my partner, I think is a little more all-in on the political side of it. So that helps balance us as a duo that does political ads together — she anchors it in a political life and I am doing all this film and entertainment stuff on the side.

But I think right now we're in a national, global series of emergencies and I can't imagine not participating politically, right? It would feel so disingenuous to bow out and just be like, "Oh, I'm just going to do my cool art project."

And so I'm trying to schedule the year where the next film project will come either after the primary election or after November's election in July, August or November, December — so that this year is still structured of, OK, we're going to advance all these political people and causes as much as we can and hopefully win some more elections, and then I can maintain my long-term —

Because I don't think I'll do — I won't do political media forever. I think right now we're just in a particular emergency that people with creative talents and skills should be more involved in amplifying solutions. But the long-term goal is filmmaking.

It's very optimistic. You think it's going to get worse?

I mean, I'll never fully be on the other side of it, but at least — I think there was a world where — I think when Biden got elected — it depends who's running the show.

If we can realize — if you had a Zohran-style president, if you had a Zohran-style executive branch that actually wanted to use the powers of office for solutions, for helping people, for uplifting people — I'd have a lot less guilt taking a step back and doing a fun art project.

But right now, it has to happen in tandem. And I think they're more connected than — there's a lot of people in the arts that are pretty sympathetic to many political causes, so it doesn't feel —

And if somebody was a creative person and they believed in anti-human — if you were a fascist, I think it would be easy to just not collaborate with that person.