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Parade
Magazine
May 4, 2003
In
Step with George Lopez
By James Brady
George
Lopez is quite a story: From being "a Mexican
kid" in the San Fernando Valley to prime-time stardom
with his own show on ABC.
Not
being an enormous fan of television sitcoms, I had until
recently only a vague
idea of just who
George Lopez was.
Consider
me converted. The impressive Mr. Lopez—star
of the Wednesday-night ABC show that bears his name—not
only plays the lead but also is the co-creator, a
writer and producer. The George Lopez show began
slow, with
a mere four episodes in its first season, then earned
a full second
season of 24 episodes. And, according to George, "we'll
be here next September for a third season."
The
broadcast industry and TV critics are all talking
about Lopez as a major Latino star and perhaps
the legitimate
heir to the late comedian Freddie Prinze Sr. of
Chico and the
Man fame. I asked George about that.
"If
you could see my dressing room, it's kind of a shrine to
him," Lopez told me. "But our humor
is different. He was on in the 1970s and was
self-deprecatory toward Chicanos—the
time of 'Archie Bunker' and his attitudes. Now
we can be funny without that. I'm into being
a sympathetic
underdog who works in an airplane factory and
becomes manager.
I actually
did go from the assembly line."
Which
may be the secret of the show's success: that it
derives from real life—George's. How did
a Chicano from the San Fernando Valley who was
doing
stand-up comedy
in clubs
graduate to network TV? And what was actress
Sandra Bullock's role in his discovery?
"Sandra
has her own production company," explained Lopez. "And
it occurred to her, 'Hey, there's no Hispanic
show on TV.' So she sent a scout to check the clubs. She had a writer
with an idea: The Latino Beverly Hillbillies,
which I did not like. Then she said, 'Let's do a show based on your act."'
I
asked George to differentiate between the terms Chicano, Latino and Hispanic. "I'm
Chicano," he said, "which
means I'm an American of Mexican descent.
Hispanic?" he
asked with a laugh. "I say, why be associated
with a word that has 'panic' in it?"
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