Dear Andy and Larry,

My name is Terry Torres. I am an actor and a director, and I will be graduating from Emerson College in May – a year after Speed Racer’s release. And I want to tell you something.

Joe Pantoliano came to Emerson College about two weeks ago to talk about No Kidding, Me Too! and his experiences working in the entertainment industry as a depressed dyslexic. He got onto the subject of The Matrix – which he paired with Memento as the two movies his took part in that he’ll never fully understand. Then he brought up you guys, how much he admired you. And then he said that you might not continue to direct, because your favorite work – Speed Racer – did not fare very well in the box office.

My ears perked up as soon as I heard him mention Speed Racer. I wanted to hoot and holler and clap my hands, but I was in the middle of a theatre full of stone-faced acting and filmmaking students. I was able to stop myself just short of pumping my fists into the air. I felt a breeze over the plains of my heart, a stirring not unlike the way I felt when I watched Speed fly over the red and white for the first time with my brothers at the AMC in the New York Palisades Center. I was leaning out of my seat.

Kevin Bright, the pseudo-famed producer of Friends who was moderating the discussion, asked, “No one liked it?”

“No one liked it,” Joe responded.

“I fucking liked it!” I shouted like a reflex over eight rows of students and faculty.

Joe, Kevin and the rest of the theater turned to look at me. My heart was in my throat. When Kevin looked up at me, I couldn’t tell if he was confused or upset. I didn’t expect him to ask me, “What was it you liked about it? In a sentence.”

I looked off to the side in search of the words, but there were too many to choose from. It was then that I realized just how much I had been touched by it. The week before I had shown it to my friends, who cursed themselves for not seeing it in theaters. A week before that my brother sent me a text message after President Obama’s inauguration, reading, “It’s a whole new world, baby!” I think I was even wearing the God damn lucky red socks I bought from Foot Locker on Halloween, when I dressed up as anime-era Speed. Maybe I was obsessed, or just completely wrong? All I could do was say what came to me.

“It’s a vibrant… honest story.”

“Huh,” Kevin said. “That sounds more like The Reader to me.”

Joe turned to him: “The Reader was a boring piece of shit.”

The audience responded with scattered laughter and applause.


I want to be brave enough to be myself, to make something and have others look at it and want to make something for themselves. There is a fire in me now. I want to help you ignite that fire in others, at least in my own way, but I still need to work hard enough to sustain that courage. I need to know that there are people out there who love doing what they do as much as you guys.

So, please, don’t stop doing it.

Driven,
Terry Torres