E-mail a friendGeorge Lopez
airdate August 13, 2008
George Lopez is one of the premier Hispanic comedian-actors in popular culture. Raised by his grandmother, he finds the humor in his experiences as a Mexican American. Outside of stand-up, he's starred in many films and a successful self-titled sitcom, which he also co-created, wrote and produced. Named one of "The Most Influential Hispanics in America" by Time magazine, Lopez has roles in two upcoming features—Henry Poole is Here and Beverly Hills Chihuahua—and is currently touring North America.
Comedian talks about the generational differences between him and his 12-year-old daughter. (1:47)
Full Interview. (11:54)
George Lopez
Tavis: I'm laughing already. George Lopez (laughter) is a popular and successful comedian and actor who starred for six seasons on the ABC series that was conveniently called "George Lopez." In addition to his role in the current film "Swing Vote," you can also catch him this weekend in the new movie, "Henry Poole is Here." The film also stars Luke Wilson. Here now, a scene from "Henry Poole is Here."
[Clip]
Tavis: I knew you were a comedian, and an awfully good comedian. I knew you were an actor when I saw you wearing that collar.
George Lopez: Yeah.
Tavis: (Laughs) I was like, that's about as far from George Lopez as you can get.
Lopez: Sandra Bulloch sent me an email when the show was over - she executive produced the show - and she said, "Now you have to do something that people completely don't expect." That's it.
Tavis: George Lopez is here. (Laughter) How did you end up playing the father in this movie?
Lopez: The script Albert Torres wrote was so compelling. It was really interesting and very well written - all of it, from the beginning to the end. And the characters were real people, and it took place in Downey and it reminded me of where I grew up. And Mark Pellington had started coming back to movies. He had lost his wife, tragically, and when we talked about the movie, I was coming off my kidney transplant.
And it wasn't so much about it being a comedy or about being broad or what people expect a comedian to do. I'm really fortunate to be alive, so in this movie I think that faith and that hope and that belief thing had a lot to do with - well, I wanted to get the part, but it being so important. It's nice to have that.
Tavis: Were you a person of faith prior to your kidney issues, and how did that transform that?
Lopez: (Laughs) Well, Tavis, you think you're going to live forever. People think - they waste days and they waste time and they waste relationships and they waste moments, and they never really look around to see what the beauty is in the simplicity of life. And I was responsible of being a person like that. I thought everything revolved around me, and my wife was behind my stand-up career, and it was all about me and making me happy; make sure the house was quiet.
And when I got sick, I realized that I wasn't going to live forever, and that it was really up to a higher power whether I was going to continue to live. And when I came out healthy, and you have to live a certain life to be healthy, I started to appreciate the things that people take for granted.
Tavis: I was teasing you when you walked on the set that I don't know if it was the kidney thing or something else, but the weight that you took off, you have kept it off.
Lopez: Yeah, thank you. It's really difficult. I don't eat after 11:00. (Laughter) You know when people say they don't eat after 8:00 p.m.? I don't eat after 11:00 a.m. (Laughter) It's funny, because it's not a traditional - like our diets, I think people of color diets are different.
Tavis: Oh, of course, yeah.
Lopez: We don't have food delivered to our house that's prepared by a chef, and then at 11:15 you have three almonds and a plum. We usually eat a big breakfast, and then when I get sleepy at night I take some Tylenol P.M.s and hopefully fall asleep before I eat.
Tavis: (Laughs) Well, you look great, man, you kept it off.
Lopez: Thank you.
Tavis: You mentioned something I wanted to go back and get anyway, because I had forgotten about this. I don't know how I'd forgotten it. But you mentioned Sandra Bulloch, the actress we all know. She exec produced the "George Lopez Show." How did that happen?
Lopez: I was never really fortunate in life. I was always used as a bad example. They would say, "Don't end up like George, you want to be like him, keep doing it." And "Look at him - that's going to be your life." And I was fortunate enough to meet a great woman that married me and kind of started to change my direction, but Sandra was the first one in show business who's ever said, "I'm not going to take no for an answer. I love this guy, I love what he's talking about, I love the content of his material, he's a good guy, and I'm going to make sure that this guy gets a shot."
And the first time we met - and I've said this before, but it's so powerful - I had nothing. And we're walking down these stairs and we get to the door and I said, "Hey, what you're going to try to do has never been done successfully in the history of TV." And she said, "You just worry about being funny, and you let me worry about all that." Changed my life completely, like a fairy godmother.
Tavis: When you look back on it now, what does having a successful show, as an Hispanic, for six seasons on network television, what does that do for you?
Lopez: You know what I think it really does is you see a lot of kids now who see it on "Nick at Nite," and when I was growing up, I didn't have role models that I could watch. All my role models were non-Latino people, and for kids now in this era where there's so many more of us but yet there are so many issues about us being here and what we - the value of us and the depletion of the system and can they live without us, it's nice for a kid who's eight years old to see somebody like me and think "If he can do it, I can do it."
I did the same thing when I saw Freddie Prinze in "Chico and the Man." That really kind of ignited me.
Tavis: "Time Magazine," a few years ago, listed you as, as you know, one of the 25 most influential Hispanics in the country.
Lopez: Yes, thank you.
Tavis: How does that - it's a high honor - how does that shift or change or does it not when you're not on network every night, or does the influence grow, does it wane, does it ebb and flow?
Lopez: Well, what you want to do is you want to continue - first of all, I've always taken parts that I thought were positive portrayals and not just gratuitous or written where you were the joke, and I've turned down a lot of movies because of that. But in directing the focus on producing movies and hiring actors and a production company that you can do things that you're not in and hire other actors? I think that's what you want to use those six years for.
A hundred and twenty episodes of a show that nobody thought was going to go four is brilliant. We all got along really well, it'll last forever, and to use that and move on to other things is the whole idea.
Tavis: To your point now, so you use it as a platform, as a springboard, to other things.
Lopez: Right.
Tavis: But when you had that kind of success - and obviously, you ain't done yet by a long shot, we hope and pray - how do you navigate beyond that? Your career, that is. How do you navigate beyond all that?
Lopez: Well, fortunately - money was always an issue when I was growing up; the fact that we didn't have any.
Tavis: It ain't no more.
Lopez: It's not an issue anymore. (Laughter) And the -
Tavis: Isn't that nice to say? It's not an issue anymore.
Lopez: No, no, it's not an issue. "Forbes Magazine" had me at, like, $27 million last year, and I told them that was only what I declared. That's all that they know about. I have a little drywall business; I get paid under the table.
Tavis: Yeah - don't do the Wesley Snipes thing, though.
Lopez: No, absolutely not, no. Believe me, I pay my taxes. (Laughter) I talk too much about too many people not to be paying taxes. So they come looking for me, they go "Well, we'd like to nail him on tax evasion, but he's all paid up." So I have a daughter that's 12, and you want to be around for her and I don't want to be invisible.
Even though I didn't have a father, if he would have not taken time for me it would have been like he was not there. So she's 12, I like spending time with her, I drive her to school. So I don't know - things have to be good for me to get involved in, and I'd kind of like to stay home a little bit more, even though I still do stand-up.
I think I'm going to do maybe one more HBO special and then kind of start to look at wrapping it all up.
Tavis: I was about to say, either - speaking of HBO - either HBO paid you a whole lot - a whole lot of money, or they really love George Lopez, because they play this thing endlessly on HBO.
Lopez: Yeah, "America's Mexican" was a tribute to Richard Pryor. I watched Richard Pryor live in Long Beach and I kind of patterned my style after him with not any props and really the words, and creating different characters, and talking about the upbringing from way back.
And I connected with people, I think, because it's so real and it's not false. And I don't think that they're really jokes as much as recollections. They're not jokes, per se. I don't think I tell jokes. But if you just connect thoughts, you got - I got a kind of a - I found a really nice place.
Tavis: We re-broadcast on this program last night the last conversation I had months ago with Bernie Mac before he passed, of course. We re-broadcast that conversation last night and Bernie made the same point, that when you're really good at what you do, when you are at the top of your craft, you're not telling jokes with punch lines - you're doing what you guys do in that Pryor tradition.
Lopez: The guys who came up like that, like Bernie Mac - all the kings of comedy came up - it's like gut humor. It's in your gut. There's no way that anybody could teach you, you don't tell anybody what you think about it, you don't expect anybody to really kind of get it, and you just do it because you're doing it for you, and then the audience comes to you and it's just this wonderful thing.
Bernie had that, all those guys had it. Very few people had it. They talk about things that are insignificant or mundane or things that don't apply to the general population. You can talk about being African American and get it in Russia if it's on the right (unintelligible). Or humanity is humanity wherever you go.
So the fact that we lost Bernie was 50 - he was way too young, but he will always be around in all of our hearts and the people that knew him. He didn't leave the room until he made sure everybody was cool, and I loved that about him.
Tavis: How do you know that when you're standing up, though, literally, on the stage, sharing that humanity? I love the way you phrased it - when you're sharing that humanity, how do you know that the telling of that story is going to get the laugh? What makes it funny?
Lopez: It's your belief, and I equate a lot of it to boxing. A boxer knows how much is left in his tank. He knows how many more punches he has and how much pain he can stand and how deep he can dig. So for us, when you're really in there, you're firing things off, they're coming out, you never even thought of things.
I was on stage in Las Vegas and I said - I tried to explain to my daughter, she's 12, when I was 12, I was still drying myself with a wet towel from the person who took the shower three hours earlier. There wasn't a stack of towels like there are now. You'd grab it, it'd still be wet. (Laughter)
And trying to communicate that to somebody who's 12 who's never really struggled, you may as well be talking about the Incas, man, to my daughter. (Laughter) And that's my blood. I was watching "Nacho Libre" with her, and she was like, "What does that mean?" "Nacho Libre." I could see if we're talking about, like, "Apocalypto."
We're talking about "Nacho -" my daughter's like, "What does that mean?" That means "good." Bueno means good. (Laughter) It's crazy to be like the way I am and then go home and have a kid that puts macaroni and cheese in a flour tortilla. (Laughter)
Tavis: Maybe the answer is I should interview your daughter one day, but what's it like having you as a father? Maybe I should ask her this.
Lopez: I'm cool with her. When I need to be tough, I'm tough. I know what it's like to have somebody just in your face the whole time. I love her to death, she's the greatest kid. Unfortunately she has my sense of humor, and she don't know when to stop. It's like when you used to watch "Bewitched," and the mom was cool when people were around, but then the little kid would make things float when people were not in the room. She doesn't know when to turn it off.
Tavis: One last question - why is it that every comedian who I talk to somewhere in the conversation brings up the name Richard Pryor? You did it tonight.
Lopez: It's a seed. It's a seed that - if you had a tree that was just the biggest, strongest tree and it gave seeds, all of those guys are seeds. If you love that tree and you want one of those trees, you become the tree. Like Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy and Cedric and Harvey and (unintelligible), and they all dig - they all dig and get - and part of that.
You want - because that's the high water mark. That's the tent right there, the flagpole is Richard Pryor. And he knew that he had spawned all these people - Damon Wayans and all these guys - and we miss him, but we have him, and we still continue to go out like satellites.
Tavis: The process has already started, but it's going to be fascinating 20 years from now to sit on this program, perhaps, or someplace else and look at all the people that George Lopez has inspired in his community.
Lopez: Thank you.
Tavis: You see these Hispanic comedians everywhere, and they're funny, and so many of them look up to this guy, George Lopez, who is a busy guy. So you can catch him on HBO pretty much any night with this special that he did.
Lopez: And I'll come to your house if it's not -
Tavis: (Laughs) He's in "Swing Vote," movie, and he's in "Henry Poole is Here." He's a busy guy and a funny guy. George, good to see you, as always.
Lopez: Thank you.
Tavis: Thanks for coming by, man.
Lopez: I appreciate that, man, thank you.
Tavis: Take care of yourself.
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