Terrero Gives 'Fly' A Whole New Meaning

By KAREN MCCARTHY
May 5, 2004

Word Count: 1000

W ith his first film opening Memorial Day weekend, Jessy Terrero, the first Dominican ever to get a Hollywood picture deal, is on the fast track to stardom, and at only 31, he's showing Tinseltown what Urban really means.

Today he got dressed for the gym then rambled off for breakfast. With baggy clothes and a shaved head, the quintessential Latino is as comfortable in this upscale restaurant as he is on his neighborhood's streets in Jamaica, Queens. He's back in New York to shoot a video for long-time friend, Fat Joe "in some nice neighborhood where we're probably not supposed to be." He grins and digs into his bacon and eggs. It seems the toast of Hollywood is the same genuine and mischievous New Yorker he's always been.

"Life is good," he smiles. "The film's funny."

The film is 'Soul Plane,' an urban comedy based on the 80s hit movie 'Airplane' about a humiliated passenger who sues the airline, then creates the airline of his dreams, with sexy flight attendants, funky music and a dance club that gives 'fly a whole new meaning.'

New meanings don't stop there. After 'butting heads' with a Hollywood where Latino means any dark-skinned guy in a salsa shirt, and urban culture is a stereotype of crime or ignorance, Terrero was eventually given free rein to tell his story from the right perspective. "There's nothing I put in Soul Plane that I haven't lived or been around myself," he says, "You might see someone in the back of the plane act a little ghetto but then you also have a positive figure." These are the contrasts he used to convey "the different levels of who we are."

While it might appear that Hollywood just threw open its doors to the Latino kid with a compulsion to help people see themselves in a more positive light, Terrero - born to a Spanish-speaking father, raised in a black neighborhood and educated in a white school - worked behind the scenes for years to learn his skill. Later he blended it with his hilarious sense of humor and flair for the dramatic, to create his own inimitable style.

This promising career started at nine-years-old, when he and his brother set about remaking 80s classics "just for fun" with an old video camera their mother gave them to keep them off the 'hooker and drug infested streets.' Eight years later, he went to a casting call for 'Juice' to meet girls, but once there, he realized that something real could happen, so he waited until everyone left, pretended he forgot his keys, ducked back inside, charmed the casting director - even though he confessed later that he had 'no acting chops' - and ended up playing a Latino gangster with Treach from Naughty By Nature opposite Tupac, neither of whom were stars at the time.

"The urban industry was blowing up, I felt I was at the birth of a whole new generation of Hollywood," he says.

Inspired by the experience he changed his major to film studies, got an internship at Columbia Pictures, set up an extras casting agency with his brother (through which he met Fat Joe and Chris Robinson who later helped kick-start his career), and took any set job he could. "I did everything from picking up peoples laundry to cleaning the set," he says remembering hard work and hunger.

He continued acting, but got tired of stereotypical roles as drug-dealers, crooks and crack-heads. "It was always written from the wrong perspective," he complains. "I wasn't even playing a cool drug dealer."

Realizing that "nobody's going to change it if we don't change it," he became compelled to get behind the camera and do it right. The booming music video industry in the mid-90s became his doorway when he convinced Fat Joe to let him shoot two tiny videos then showed them to Robinson who signed him to his new company.

These were exciting times, and Terrero was riding a wave of eager anticipation.

What followed was seven long discouraging months of no directing jobs, writing 'hot treatments' for other directors, struggling to make money and trying to remain positive. He was living at home, listening to songs, trying to create, afraid the father he respected thought him a 'bum.' He wondered if it was ever going to happen.

Fortunately passion and self-confidence sustained him until he shot highly acclaimed video for Jill Scott. Three years and many videos later, he was invited to join a Fox Searchlight program for up and coming directors, where he made his short film "The Clinic," which screened at the Sundance Film Festival and at the Latino Film Festival where his parents watched from the audience. "That was my proudest moment," he says.

The William Morris Agency soon signed him and sent him the script for 'Soul Plane.' He accepted, had it rewritten from the 'right perspective,' and went to re-enlist Method Man, John Witherspoon and Mo'Nique, all of whom had passed on the original stereotyped draft. "When people started hearing my vision they jumped on board," he says. "Everybody was excited," including Snoop, for whom he rewrote a part.

Now inundated with more movie and TV offers, his producing partner, Jalina Stewart, attributes his success partly to traits like loyalty, intelligence and a dynamic personality that can sway a room, but Terrero says it comes from dedication, learning and education, and a commitment to be himself. "For years people didn't accept me the way I was," he says. "It's big for urban kids to see people who look like them on TV that are successful. That's why I don't change now."

He finishes breakfast and heads uptown to Fat Joe's set. Along the way he sees a Soul Plane billboard and it hits him. "Wow. To some people that's a big deal." He pauses. "It's hard for me to take in, but my mother will come out and see a billboard and then it IS a big deal."