Latin Music Icon Lives In ‘Puerto Rico’ With Bad Bunny

The native son of Puerto Rico, René Pérez Joglar, better known as Resident to his many fans, has dominated the music industry for decades – and now he’s looking to disrupt Hollywood.

Resident, a four-time Grammy winner and 29-time Latin Grammy Award winner, is gearing up to make his directorial debut no. Puerto Ricoa Caribbean Western and historical drama starring Benito “Bad Rabbit” Martínez Ocasio in his first leading man role. Joining the main actors are Viggo Mortensen, Edward Norton and Javier Bardem from Hollywood. The project also marks Resident’s debut as a screenwriter, sharing credit with the Oscar-winning writer and co. BoricuaAlexander Dinelaris (Birdman).

Tackling a project as large as this can make anyone second-guess themselves, but not Resident. He had mentors and friends, young and old, who helped him along the way, such as Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who works as the executive producer of Puerto Rico. It was in Iñárritu that Resident met Dinelaris, and a scriptwriting collaboration began.

“Toward the end of this pandemic, Alex and I got together. I thought he would be writing by himself, but he called me to sit with him while he worked. Maybe it was his way of defending himself and forcing himself to write; or maybe it was that he asked me technical questions, historical details, etc. In the end, I ended up writing the whole film next to him,” recalls Residente.

“I was able to use the same storytelling techniques that I used in my music, but now within the context of cinema – a different medium that requires a different structure. And from there, the screenplay evolved. Alex taught me an enormous amount. He’s a brilliant writer, but also a brilliant mentor – he really knows how to teach a craft. He’s gifted.”

It’s not that I didn’t see Benito as an actor; at first, I just saw him playing a different role. But then I started to see him earning more.

Resident

Earlier in the epidemic, he received a visit from his friend Benito – Bad Bunny to all the rest of the world, and a fellow bugger who recently launched an Internet talk about his Super Bowl performance, a tribute to Puerto Rico. During his stay, his friend became interested in the script Residente was writing. He informed in advance that he would like to participate in this project.

“Benito was a part of it from the moment I started writing the story. He used to visit me at my house during the pandemic – in fact, he stayed several times – and he would see me working on the story. He would see the books I was reading and say, ‘Oh, is that what you’re working on?’ I told him all about it, and he always said to me, ‘Hey, if you’ll let me, I’d like to be in it, even if it’s a small role. It was a fun act, and that’s how it started, with a small supporting role for him. But in the end, it turned out to be something much bigger.”

The reason Resident didn’t have Bad Bunny in mind for the lead role was because he was hoping to find an unknown Puerto Rican actor for the film’s debut, which he would surround with “strong, seasoned actors.” But the more he thought about things the more his thinking “started to change”.

“I said, ‘At some point, your name just popped into my head, and I couldn’t explain it,'” Resident recalled of his conversation with Bad Bunny after a visit to Puerto Rico. “It wasn’t that I didn’t see Benito as an actor, at first I just saw him playing a different role. But then I started to see him getting paid more. I said to him, ‘Brother, my gut is telling me something here. How can I share an opportunity with someone I’ve known for years, someone who represents Puerto Rico? It makes perfect sense for him to be this character. It feels perfect.”

So, Resident reached out to Bad Bunny, and sent him a text in hopes of confirming his gut feeling.

“I wanted to see what kind of energy it would bring to me after reading the script, how it would respond,” Resident recalled.

“And his response was so much better than I thought. He absolutely loved the script. He cried reading it; he felt so deep. So, I said to him, ‘Okay, brother, we’re in. We’re going to jump off this bridge together — we’re making a blood pact. We’re taking on this problem together.’ ” Fortunately, his friend agreed to his terms.

Resident understands that people will be expecting something from this film. And you feel that this is an important project, that you should take risks.

Although the movie will likely be one of the most important projects of the Resident’s career, he is fully aware that this may be a one-time opportunity. So, he takes everything with his eyes open. His goal is to tell a story about his island, which is the only non-negotiable going into the project.

“For me, that was the most important thing, to make a film about Puerto Rico. I knew that it would be very easy to make a movie in English and to direct something that would be easy to sell. But I wanted to face the challenge of making the film that I want to make – which is 85% in Spanish – and still be able to sell it. How can I pull that off? So, I put together a group that will help me to get help. I have no interest in the financial result. I want to make a film, regardless of whether it makes or loses. it’s money.

He adds, “I believe that the film will be relevant to many things that are happening around the world, especially about who we are: that essence of humanity that deeply affects us Latin Americans living abroad.”

The film is a full-circle moment for a younger version of René, who struggled with undiagnosed ADHD growing up. For all his accomplishments, he is no longer defined by his neurodivergence. In fact, today he can look back on his youth – a musician who played drums, alto-sax and guitar skillfully at the age of 7, who dreamed of becoming a baseball player, who watched his mother do her heart out as an actor and singer, who worked with his father and stepfather, and later with his brother and sister, their group Urbano often sees that the life of 13 Calle 3 is a gift.

“ADHD gave me a kind of power, almost like a superpower, that I learned to use,” he recalls. Now, I do many things at once, and people ask me, ‘But how do you manage to do it all?’ You see, since I was young, I had to endure the painful struggle of not being understood; people did not understand what they were facing. Well, little by little they started to get it – my mother, especially – and I started to understand myself.

“That process continued until today,” he adds. “Actually, I feel like I just finished understanding myself.”