For the first Miramax title to hit the film-festival circuit, you\u2019d think Crossover Dreams<\/em> would be a more well-known release in the Miramax canon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This rags-to-riches-to-rags dramedy\/musical stars Rub\u00e9<\/strong>n Blades as Rudy Veloz, a struggling Nuyorican musician who, as the title implies, has aspirations of becoming a mainstream star. After his mentor dies while performing at an East Harlem club, Veloz vows not to go out the same way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He gets a smooth-talking producer (actual producing veteran Joel Diamond, who claims that Harvey Weinstein cast him in the role) to record an English-speaking salsa single he\u2019s been shopping around. Before the tune even drops, Veloz goes into big-headed mode. He breaks up with his loving girlfriend (Elizabeth Pe\u00f1a) after discovering hot-tub threesomes, and even kicks his longtime trumpet-playing partner (Shawn Elliott) to the curb during recording. You can easily guess how mighty Veloz falls when his track fails to find an audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This black-comic cautionary tale was the second film for Cuban-born filmmaker Leon Ichaso, who previously took on Cuban exiles in New York with his 1980 Spanish-language stage adaptation El Super<\/em>. In the early \u201880s, he and his co-writing\/producing partner Manuel Arce were failing to get projects off the ground in Hollywood \u2014 and that includes writing a script for Universal about Miami and Cubans that was rejected in favor of another similar film. You might have heard of it: Scarface<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They went back to their indie roots with Dreams<\/em>, scrounging up $600,000 (Ichaso got most of the dough from directing commercials for Latin food giant Goya Foods) for a film that would take two years to finish. Ichaso had previously worked with Blades (who co-wrote the script with Ichaso and Arce) on Pepe Gonzalez<\/em>, a Saturday Night Live<\/em> short film from 1980 that starred then-cast member Gilbert Gottfried as a bullfighter who battles anything \u2013 cars, subways, people \u2013 that moves. (It\u2019s located at the 26-minute mark of this episode<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ichaso found his ideal lead in Blades, a Panamanian singer\/songwriter who already recorded several albums and collaborated with salsa legends Ray Barretto, Willie Colon, and Hector Lavoe before starring in Dreams<\/em>. (Blades also has several degrees in political science and law.) Blades has said Veloz is a complete 180 from himself, as he didn\u2019t have to sing in English to build a following. “Crossover has never worked because it implies forsaking.” Blades told<\/a> the Boston Globe in 1985. “My own proposition is very different. It’s convergence, a meeting halfway on the bridge. The idea of going places at the expense of your cultural identity cannot work. It’s been proven a thousand times.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amid all the cynical, deadpan satire Dreams<\/em> serves up, Ichaso also stages fantastic musical sequences for Blades, like an early-morning salsa number<\/a> Veloz performs (only using a couple of wooden claves) on his rooftop or a drunken serenade<\/a> a guitar-strumming Veloz gives his girlfriend after a night of partying. The story was supposed to end tragically, as a broke, desperate Veloz heads to Miami to do a drug-smuggling deal and dies in a hail of bullets. Ichaso had a change of heart and gave his self-absorbed protagonist an optimistic second chance in Dreams<\/em>\u2019 final minutes. “We didn’t want it to be another Latin hero dead in the street,” Ichaso said in a 1985 Miami Herald<\/a> interview<\/a>. “There are so few Latin films that we didn’t want to do a stereotype.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dreams<\/em> debuted in March 1985 at the New Directors\/New Films Festival in New York, the same place where Ichaso showed Super<\/em> a few years before. Dreams<\/em> got a glowing review from New York Times<\/em> critic Vincent Canby, who showered the picture with more praise when Miramax gave it a theatrical rollout later that August. Canby wrote<\/a>, \u201c…[Ichaso and Arce] have a singular understanding of an important segment of our society that has, so far, been largely ignored by other film makers.\u201d Canby added that they \u201cprovide a bridge that allows us to cross over to a world that surrounds us every day, though we seldom take the trouble to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the critical love, Ichaso didn\u2019t exactly cross over after Crossover.<\/em> He directed very few subsequent features, like the 1994 Wesley Snipes gangster film Sugar Hill <\/em>and the 2007 biopic El Cantante<\/em>, starring Marc Anthony as Hector Lavoe and then-wife Jennifer Lopez as his loyal spouse. He did direct a lot of episodic television: Miami Vice, The Equalizer, Medium<\/em>, and Criminal Minds<\/em> are just a few of the police-procedural dramas with eps helmed by Ichaso. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Before he passed away in 2023 from a heart attack at age 74, Ichaso worked with the Weinsteins one last time when he wrote and directed Pi\u00f1ero<\/em>,<\/em> the 2001 biopic on Nuyorican poet\/playwright Miguel Pi\u00f1ero (played by Benjamin Bratt). But that experience was nowhere near a dream. In the book Down and Dirty Pictures<\/em>, actor\/producer Fisher Stevens recalled how Ichaso was fed up when Harvey and them mishandled the film: \u201cThey threatened to bury it, and basically they did. As soon as Ben Bratt failed to get a Golden Globe nomination, that was it. They do things behind your back, like saying, ‘We’re thinking of pulling Pi\u00f1ero<\/em> <\/em>from festivals,’ when they’d already pulled it from festivals.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s understandable why Ichaso felt betrayed by Weinstein; Dreams<\/em> was one of several acclaimed, low-budget films Miramax released in the \u201880s, elevating the Weinstein bros from overseas rock-doc distributors to legit, independent-film producers. Sadly, Dreams<\/em> is yet another forgotten, noteworthy Miramax title that\u2019s damn-near-impossible to locate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With Ichaso no longer with us, Arce has taken it upon himself to keep Dreams<\/em>\u2019 memory alive by hosting screenings of his very own 16mm print. (Earlier this year, he did one at Carnegie Hall<\/a>.) I can only assume younger viewers may find the idea of a Spanish-speaking musician angling for popularity by going English to be a bit dated, since we currently live in a time when some of the world\u2019s biggest pop stars \u2013 including Latinx performers Bad Bunny, Rosalia and Karol G \u2013 usually drop music in their native language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While a 2K\/4K digital restoration remains to be seen, at least one of the men behind this movie is making sure audiences know about the time a Latin American filmmaker gave moviegoers Dreams<\/em> \u2013 sweet, savage, salsa-filled and ultimately discarded by those disrespectful-ass Weinsteins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Crossover Dreams<\/em>: isn\u2019t available to rent, buy or stream, but <\/em>a shitty VHS rip<\/em><\/a> Diamond uploaded to his YouTube page is out there. (You\u2019re better off tracking down the DVD New Yorker Video released 20 years ago, which you can also <\/em>purchase on Blades\u2019s website<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/crossover2.png\")
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