Discipline on Set

I'm Michael Baez. I'm a writer, director, producer, and editor, born and raised in New York. I moved to California 23 years ago to get closer to the movie industry, and while I was out here I fell in love with yoga. Now I'm a yoga teacher too.

From 13 to 23, all I did back in New York was martial arts. Karate was my whole life. When I moved to LA I wanted something physical to stay in shape, but I didn't want to start over as a white belt after earning my second-degree black belt and working as an instructor. Yoga filled that gap. I studied it deeply and started teaching at different studios.

Eventually I opened my own yoga school, one of the first in the Bronx, and created the Awakened Warrior Yoga teacher training. I've been running it since 2011, and we've certified close to 400 people. We've had students fly to LA and New York from Australia, Japan, and Hawaii to do the training. It gives me a balance. The calm I get from yoga helps me handle the chaos and egos on a movie set.

Absolutely, 100%. Discipline is the most important thing I took from martial arts. Thank God I never had to use it in the street. It was always competing, training, and teaching. But I use that discipline every day.

Right now I'm writing a new project set in the same world as De La Cruz. This past Saturday I wrote for nine hours straight. I took one break to go for a walk and work out the next scene, but otherwise it was nine hours of writing. That focus comes straight from martial arts and yoga.

In our teacher training we tell students that getting on the mat is the hardest part, the same way people say getting to the gym is the hardest part. That discipline keeps me moving forward.

De La Cruz was almost 30 years in the making. People talk about overnight success, but this was three decades. It started in New York when I first got into the industry. I spent two years writing the first draft, called Butterfly in the Fire, under a great mentor named Eddie Pomerantz. He taught me how to write screenplays and how to build life-or-death stakes for characters.

When the script was done, I didn't have the contacts or money to make it yet. I was fresh out of the New York Film Academy. So I put it aside and got real experience. Commercials, a bunch of short films, and a very low-budget feature called Spanish Harlem. That was my real training. Film school is great, but raising money, running auditions, managing cast and crew, and scouting locations are things you learn by doing.

By 2018 cameras had changed so much you didn't need to shoot on film anymore. I shot a 20-minute test version of the script to see if it was affordable, and it was. A friend suggested Colombia. I flew down, but the script was such a New York story it didn't fit. So I wrote a prequel about the main character, Yoli De La Cruz, called Muertos.

We spent years trying to get that going, and then the pandemic shut everything down. I couldn't teach yoga, and you could barely go outside. A close friend invited me to Puerto Vallarta, and a few days there changed everything. I saw how affordable it was to live and work there and knew it would be much cheaper to make a movie. I connected with the film community in Guadalajara and held auditions. That's where I met our lead, Sofia Diaz. She came in on a cold audition and crushed it. The moment I saw her, I knew she was my Yoli.

I spent three years going back and forth between California and Mexico, scouting Guadalajara, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico City, and Leon in Guanajuato. Finally I told myself I wasn't going in circles for another 20 years. I promised to shoot the film before my 50th year was over, and we did it. Seeing it go to theaters and land on Prime Video, Tubi, Fandango at Home, Plex, and more has been incredible.

The best way to handle change is to change with it. Right now everyone in the industry is talking about vertical series, also called micro-dramas. They're 60 to 90 second episodes people watch on their phones, and they're built to hook you into the next one.

I'm writing one set in the De La Cruz world, and I'm excited about it because there's no time for long setups. We get right into the drama and the action. While I raise money for my next feature, Muertos, I'm making this spinoff with Yoli De La Cruz that fits between the two films.

Being professional is everything to me. As a writer, director, producer, editor, yoga teacher, and teacher trainer, it's my highest standard. Always do your best, like it says in The Four Agreements. I live by that as a business owner, a father, and a boyfriend. I give it everything I have.

I hate to sound like a beauty pageant contestant, but world peace. In yoga, one of the guiding principles from the 8 Limbs of Yoga is Ahimsa. It means compassion for all living things. When you look at all the violence, anger, division, and war out there, we need a change.

The word yoga means union. Unity is the only way. That's why I teach. I want to leave the world better for my son, Iysaac.