I am missing my friend...
...so I thought about what Jerry would do, and that would be to create something. So I looked and saw that JerryCarrillo.com is available and I snatched it up to create this tribute site. That's how I knew Jerry, as this energetic creative force. That's how we became such good friends.
I met Jerry when he called me up one day. He was putting on a comedy show at local coffee shop/hang out Bohemeo's and was looking for an artist to create the poster that would bring his vision to life. We met and hung out, and to my surprise we really hit it off. I understood where he was coming from and my sketching was fast enough to keep up with his barrage of ideas. Soon after, our first poster, Breaking Through, was complete and ready for the big show.
Over the next few years, I found that Jerry's ideas for shows were pretty hilarious, but he also allowed me to exercise my own take on the ideas with parody and satire. We'd take these large, universally human concepts like struggle, failure, temptation, success, and sprinkle them with inner-city imagery and other other references to the barrio and growing up in the hood. Where else are you gonna see an iced out Shakespearean poet, or a parody of 50 Cent's movie poster?
As an art director Jerry was relentless. I'm sure he didn't mean to be, but he had a very clear vision of what he wanted and he couldn't rest until he felt everything was perfect. I'd slave away on the designs and hand them in, only to receive that dreaded call that begins with "Actually, can you change..."
Man, he drove me nuts with all the changes sometimes! After a while I learned to illustrate and construct the posters with it's many elements separate so they can by moved around and adjusted without much work. After a while Jerry himself began to learn Photoshop so he could edit and tweak his own posters as needed, thus eliminating all the calls. And after that he took those Photoshop skills and helped people with their promotional art. He'd always hit me up for Photoshop and other design tips. And then one day he actually apologized for being so meticulous about those early posters. It turned out Jerry's own clients were constantly calling him for changes, so he knew exactly how it felt!
It wasn't long after we started doing the posters that we became collaborators with everything else. Since we were both broke we we're both big champions of DIY (do it yourself) stuff, so we were constantly sharing cost-cutting tips, and other techniques to stretch the dollar. We often bragged about gear we got on discount, and brainstormed how to do anything on the cheap if not downright free. I helped him film a lot of his stuff and even helped with direction. A lot of those opening city shots in Punchline 2 Punchout were my idea. :)
From the day we created the Punchline 2 Punchout theme song
Jerry would call me up and run jokes by me, trying to figure out the best way to word them or punch them up. Sometimes I'd give him ideas for jokes and he'd use them on stage. In his last few years we were brainstorming more sketches and videos to make. He was itching to do a sketch he called Anchor Babies, playing off the immigration term. And since sex robots were becoming a thing we riffed a sketch about a robo-pimp in a late night commercial. And that's how it was with him, we would just be kicking it and soon we'd have ideas for new projects. And knowing Jerry to be the social media wiz that he was it was only a matter of time until he mastered Tik Tok and grew his following. We also shared a love of crafting song parodies. Don't ask me how we flipped the Tears for Fears song "Mad World" into a song about BJs called "Mad Wood".
On top of all that he was such a good friend. We always had a million other things going and perhaps didn't hang out as much as we could have, but whenever he called with the latest design/hangover/woman crisis he'd always take a beat to genuinely ask how I was doing. He would always take time to listen and even figure out ways to help solve your problem, even if he was drowning in his. We all knew him as a God-praising Christian but he never proselytized or judged. In fact, he understood where I stood on religion and let me be, jokingly acknowledging it when he bowed his head and said a prayer. He never let a difference in beliefs come between us. He did him and he let me do me, which to me is a pretty good example of how to be a Christian. I truly wish more Christians could be like that.
I still can't believe he's no longer here. We still had so much more stuff to do; to write, to act, to sing and dance, to shoot, to record. To share in our successes and drink away our failures. To see who could get to the top of the world first, only so we could lend a hand and pull the other right up. And not just the creative stuff either. We still had so many more cookouts, Christmases, and untapped kegs that need to be drained; to see how our families grew to start families of their own. All of that.
There's a big hole where his presence used to be, so I created this website to pay tribute to the man and the body of work he left.
My name is Jarrod Perez, who Jerry enthusiastically referred to as "TOONZi!", and I did all of his art, including caricatures for the family.
I have few more Jerry stories...
