Joey Medina: he's crazy, he's cocky, and he's downright hilarious. Los Angeles' own funnyman Joey Medina has been a police officer, a professional boxer, a stand-up comic, and is now a Latin TV personality. This wild Puerto Rican let Latino Leaders in on his views on show business from the small screen to Hollywood to those more, um, mature films

Latino Leaders: The National Magazine of the Successful American Latino, April-May, 2005 by Kerri Allen

"I'm like my own job fair. I want to do something and I go for it. Being a stand-up comedian is my bread-and-butter, though, it's my therapy. I have always had stage fright. Even as a kid, when I would stand up in class to read a paragraph my mouth would get dry. I feel weird when people are looking at me, but I love challenges.

I admired stand-up comedians for so long ... Paul Rodriguez, Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor. I admire any comic. One day, I decided to try it. I was living in Tucson and I went to Laffs Comedy Club. It became addictive and I never turned back. On occasion, it's still frightening, but with experience you can control it and manipulate it.

In the 2002 movie The Original Latin Kings of Comedy, I worked with Cheech Marin, Paul Rodriguez, George Lopez and Alex Reymundo. Working with those great comics was incredible--they're all so different from each other. Thank God for George Lopez. He's opened a lot of doors for Latino comedians and showed people that we're not just talking about tortillas or stealing hubcaps. Latinos are some of the best comics out there. We're better than mainstream, we have a coolness like Black comics do.

I just performed in Seattle and the only Latin guy was me and the guy in the kitchen. When I was a boxer, I never fought everyone the same way. I see what the audience demographic is and I play to it a little more.

I wrote, produced and directed the 2003 film, El Matador. I even held the boom mike. This cat can make things happen with very little money. I want to produce and direct TV and film, heavy, on the Latin side. The problem is that Hollywood already has Latino money because we see the Black movies, buy the rap albums. We will only get control if we make our own projects. Instead of bitching and complaining, grab a damn camera and make yourself a movie! I will be the Spike Lee, the Quentin Tarantino of the Latin community. I want to put the Latino vibe out there. We need to do it.

I'm the host, a producer and one of the writers for SiTV's new show, Circumsized Cinema. We take low-budget Mexican action movies and edit and club them to a half hour slot. Everyone on the show is Latin, and Moctesuma Esparza, who produced the movie Selena, is the producer. The show is very hip, very crossover.

I'm a lucky, man. I talk for a living. I think I'll be a porn star next. Everything I like to do, I want to do for a living.