During the 80’s and early 90’s, there was an effort by Hollywood to make movies about Latinos but rarely did you see Latinos actually played by Latinos. During my back injury I watched a slew of movies from that era, including Scarface and Carlito’s Way. In Scarface, Al Pacino played a Cuban refugee with F. Murray Abraham as a Cuban as well. In Carlito’s Way, Pacino played a Puerto Rican. In each role Pacino had a terrible accent. I also watched Altered States with Thaao Penghlis, a Greek actor from Australia, playing the role of Prof. Eduardo Eccheverria, a professor from Mexico. In the movie, Thaao doesn’t try to hide his Aussie accent. I guess Hollywood figured his dark skin would suffice. To top it off, I watched Lou Diamond Phillips play Ritchie Valens in La Bamba and Angel Guzman, a former Chicano gang member turned math wiz in Stand And Deliver. Phillips is everything but Chicano. He, according to his bio, is American of Scotch-Irish, Hawaiian, Cherokee, Filipino, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese descent.

During that time period, it seemed like no effort was made to use Latinos in staring roles, even if the movie was about Latinos, unless you were James Edward Olmos. Olmos played most of the big roles during that era. He played Jaime Escalante in Stand And Deliver, Abraham Quintanilla in Selena, police Lieutenant Martin Castillo in the television series Miami Vice and starred and directed the prison gang classic American Me. This led to the classic joke by La Cucaracha’s satirist Lalo Alcaraz,
“He’s in Olmos every movie!”

VidAmerica 948

So I’m back after a small hiatus. First, my back kept me in bed for a week. All I could do was lie on my back and watch endless hours of T.V. After my back got a little better, it was time to hit the studio with my band, Monte Carlo 76. We have been writing our second record for close to three years now and to finally hit to the studio is a welcome relief. During this time it has been painful to sit for long periods of time. Even as I write this I am on my knees with my laptop on my bed rather than sitting at my desk. I still managed to check out a few bands (Calle 13, Ely Guerra and Manejo Beto…more on them later) and I recorded all my keyboard tracks. I just had to do all this while standing up.

If you are under 25 and you are reading this, remember this: Take care of yourself because the older you get it becomes so much harder to recover from injuries, especially if you don’t take care of yourself. I will recover, but like I said, it’s taking a lot longer than it used to.

Before you start second guessing that you clicked on the right blog, I’ll explain myself. While I’m known to ogle a pretty gal now and again, the reason for my purchase is for one woman in particular: Sandra Bernhard.