Out on Dvd Now...

[RPR]

Coming Up Rosie
May 30, 2007

By Mark Dundas Wood

The impetus for Rosie Perez's documentary about Puerto Rico, Yo Soy Boricua Pa'que Tu Lo Sepas! (I'm Puerto Rican, Just So You Know), came a few years ago, on the Sunday of New York City's Puerto Rican Day Parade. "An ex-boyfriend of mine calls me every year to make fun," she remembers. "He said, 'Your people are so loud!' I was just not in the mood that morning. And I said, 'Well, it's because we're proud.' And he says, 'What the hell do you got to be proud about?' And [it was] a light-bulb moment."

Perez was fed up. Throughout her youth, the Brooklyn-born actor frequently had to explain to people about her cultural identity. She did not consider herself an angry or militant person. But over the years she grew frustrated with people's ignorance. She was baffled that, even in college, classmates were clueless as to where Puerto Rico was geographically. She wanted to make a film to celebrate with her people and to enlighten others.

She called her agent immediately that Sunday and announced that she wanted to do a documentary about her heritage. She had been planning a different documentary: about the sterilization of Puerto Rican women in the mid-20th century. But that project proved controversial and she had been unable to finance it. This time, her scope would be broader.

In June 2006, after a lengthy incubation, Yo Soy Boricua — which Perez produced and co-directed, along with documentary director-producer Liz Garbus (Juvies, Girlhood) — premiered on the Independent Film Channel. The documentary will be released on DVD June 5.

Fever Pitch




Once Perez committed to the project, getting financing and assembling a crew proved relatively simple. She had worked as a producer before (The 24 Hour Woman, SUBWAYStories: Tales From the Underground), so people were willing to trust her as she moved into the director's chair. But some people she approached for money had their own ideas about how the film should work. One potential source urged her to include other Puerto Rican celebrities, such as her friend John Leguizamo. Perez said no. She wanted the film to feature the voices of ordinary Puerto Ricans — those from the island and those from the U.S. mainland — along with the words of respected historians and social critics.

An agent told Perez that IFC was developing original programming and that the channel had a hands-off policy with regard to creative control. So she set up a meeting with IFC executives, and 15 minutes into her pitch, the project was green-lighted.

There was one problem. During the pitch, Perez mentioned Garbus as her collaborator. The two had once shared a near-death experience in a seaplane returning from the Nantucket Film Festival, and they considered themselves "connected for life." But Perez had not yet mentioned the idea of the film to Garbus. After leaving the IFC offices that day, Perez sped to the offices of Garbus and business partner Rory Kennedy (A Boy's Life, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib), and explained the project to them. Luckily, according to Perez, "They were like, 'We're in. Who should we pitch it to?' I go, 'I've taken care of that already.' "

We Are Familia

Yo Soy Boricua features footage of Perez and two of her family members: sister Carmen Serrano and cousin Sixto Ramos. Their travels and interaction provide a good deal of the film's warmth and humor. But Perez originally planned not to face the camera at all. It was Kennedy, a producer on the film, who finally convinced her she should appear in the film. "I fought her tooth and nail," Perez says. "And she goes, 'Let me just put you on film so we can get the information down.' And she later said it was a trick…. When she played it back to me, [she had] incorporated it into a rough edit. I was like, 'You sneaky little thing!' "

Looking back, Perez is glad she agreed to participate on-camera, though she wound up exposing parts of her life that she usually conceals. "I mean, I talk a lot," she explains. "I love to say funny stories. But I really don't talk about my personal life…. [But] I knew if I'm asking everybody else to be open and honest, I would have to go there as well."

In one segment, the filmmakers travel to the small Puerto Rican town of Aguadilla — the place from which Perez's family hails and where her father, who has since passed away, lived at the time of the shoot. There was some misunderstanding among the laid-back American crew about the structured etiquette of rural Puerto Rican life, and this caused Perez some moments of embarrassment. One crew member noted that the actor-director behaved much differently in Aguadilla than she did in the States. "I said, 'I am my father's child down here. I'm not Rosie Perez. I'm Ismael Serrano's daughter. He's the star down here. Anything I do in the wrong way brings shame on him, so I have to act accordingly.' "

Puerto Rico 101

The inclusion of Perez's family in the film provides a personal dimension to her examination of a society. The history lessons in the film begin with a look at the indigenous, precolonial people of the island, the Taínos — who, it turns out, shared with modern Puerto Ricans a love of impromptu dance events — and continue through a segment on the U.S. military exercises, which ended in 2003 after years of controversy and protest, on the adjoining island of Vieques.

Perez felt she had a good working knowledge of Puerto Rican history and culture, bolstered by her research on the sterilization issue, which is examined briefly in the documentary. But she learned some "mind-blowing" facts while planning the film. She had not known about Puerto Rican workers who were recruited by companies and sent to unknown destinations in windowless cargo planes. Nor had she realized that when the U.S. military was segregated into African-American and white units in the first half of the 20th century, the whim of an inducting officer could arbitrarily place a Puerto Rican soldier in one camp or the other, without regard to skin hue.

Production on the project was spread over two and a half years and would have gone on longer had the budget permitted. During parts of the shoot, Perez was in New York, acting on Broadway. Sometimes, after a performance, she would skip sleep to review footage from the film.

The warm reception the work has received since its debut has been a welcome payoff for Perez. Ratings for the program were high, and IFC added additional airings in the months following its premiere. Strangers who once pegged Perez as "the girl from White Men Can't Jump" now come up to her and talk — sometimes with tears streaming down their faces — about Yo Soy Boricua.

Perez has an idea for another documentary, which she cannot discuss, beyond saying it has nothing to do with politics or social history. Next time out of the gate, she says, she will feel much more prepared. She's not rushing into the project, however. "Like everything in my career, I go very slow," she explains. "People go, 'How come you don't do that many movies?' I go, 'I'm picky. I go slow. The projects come to me at my pace.' "