From the Early Stars of Reggaeton to Miami Kingpins, Filmmaker Jokes Yanes Spotlights Untold Stories

Before his name was attached to feature films and streaming deals, Jorge "Jokes" Yanes was just another Kendall kid with a camcorder and a wild imagination — no studio, no paid actors, no budget — just a VHS tape and a few friends who were down for the ride.

That’s where it all started: skits and fake commercials. Think Saturday Night Live, except in Miami, in high school, and exclusively shown through a cassette tape passed around like contraband. Yanes, a first-generation Cuban American, grew up in South Miami, where he made music and graffiti art. His moniker, "Jokes," comes from his graffiti tag. Today, it can be seen in credits for projects spotlighting other local boys-made-good (and bad) in Miami.

The former graffiti artist says that when he first picked up a camera, he saw color from a different point of view. "It was almost as if I already knew how to use it," he tells New Times.

Yanes broke into the industry in the early 2000s as the creative director of the Roof, a Latin urbano music program on Telemundo’s MUN2. The show was an early platform for an emerging genre and the now-household names who would go on to dominate it—Daddy Yankee, Ivy Queen, and others. "I’ve always been attracted to stuff that’s groundbreaking," he says. "Nobody was playing reggaeton in the United States."

From there, he went on to direct music videos and tour visuals for musicians, primarily within the hip-hop and urbano spaces. Collaborators included T-Pain, ¡Mayday!, and Plies, who broke through with "Got Em Hatin," the track for which Yanes directed the music video. Still, like many directors who get their foot in the door through short films and music video work, the filmmaker was always drawn to narrative cinema.

"I feel like everything I’ve done in the last few years has been stuff nobody else has really done; telling stories no one’s really told," he says. Earlier this year, his short film, the Cherry Picker, a comedic thriller about a cutthroat Hollywood showrunner navigating a messy divorce and PR nightmare, premiered at the South Beach Film Festival and took home awards for Best Screenplay and Best Actor (James Bishop). It is now a pilot for a comedic series.

Even as that project finds a home, another has already premiered. As a series producer, writer, and editor on Miami Kingpins, Yanes is showing audiences another side of the city. The docuseries, which is streaming on Apple TV and Amazon Prime, tells the stories of three notorious drug lords—no, not Scarface—who ruled Miami’s streets during the '80s and '90s. The episodes trace the rise of Convertible Burt, Bo Dilley, and Big Ike's criminal empires, showing audiences another side of the Cocaine Cowboy era through the eyes of Black Miami.

"These guys are legendary in their own right," Yanes says. "They say with dealers, 'you either end up in jail or dead.' So, they’re finally getting their chance to tell the story, and tell it their way."

Like his early work during the MUN2 days, Miami Kingpins spotlights influential cultural figures whose stories often bubble in the underground.

"There’s been a ton of stuff made in Miami, but I feel like it hasn’t been seen as much as it should be," Yanes says. "This city is constantly changing, so it’s also about capturing things here before they disappear."