Al Pacino is considered an icon in the Latino community for portraying a Cuban in Scarface and a Puerto Rican in Carlito’s Way. When I was growing up, Scarface posters always hung next to Raiders flags in every garage I stepped into. But truthfully, nobody could get away with that very dated Scarface accent today, not even the great Al Pacino himself. Cubans watch that film today and are like, “What da fuck, mang!” I was rehearsing at UCLA working on my Chicano accent for a play that Jose Luis was directing—trying my best not to sound like Tony Montana—when she walked into our class. A short, brown firecracker of a woman named Lupe Ontiveros. Lupe had starred as the maid in over one hundred TV, film, and theater roles, including the Jack Nicholson–Helen Hunt comedy As Good as It Gets. Lupe was an older Mexican American lady with a big laugh and an even bigger sense of purpose. She was a past social worker who started in theater with Jose Luis, and who would portray strong Latina women on-screen, like Nacha in El Norte, Carmen in Real Women Have Curves, and Juanita in Desperate Housewives. But it was playing Yolanda in the movie Selena that most stuck with me. Lupe was not at all like the treacherous character who shot Jennifer Lopez in the biopic of the Tejana superstar. Lupe walked into our rehearsal room unannounced, greeted Jose Luis, who knew to quickly get out of her way onstage, and she proceeded to talk about LALIFF: the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. She thought that as a bunch of young Latinos aspiring to work in the entertainment industry, we should consider volunteering for the film festival since it was the one place in town where the Hollywood industry and Latino community came together. We were all rehearsing for a Chicano theater festival. LALIFF sounded right up my alley. I decided to do what Lupe said. I mean, the woman did kill Selena!
LALIFF was an initiative launched by the City of Los Angeles when a passionate and highly dedicated woman named Marlene Dermer and the late Cuban film programmer George Hernandez on one end, and Latino Hollywood icon Edward James Olmos and his nonprofit partner Kirk Whisler on the other end, turned in competing bids for creating Los Angeles’ first Latino International Film Festival. The city loved both bids so much that they asked the two factions to join forces, which was how LALIFF came to be. When I joined the Latino film festival as a volunteer, Marlene was basically a one-woman show, given that George Hernandez had sadly passed away, Kirk Whisler had moved on to run other nonprofits, and Edward James Olmos was filming his mega-hit TV series, Battlestar Galactica. Marlene was of Peruvian descent, so you know she and I were destined to go to war with each other over our deeply held beliefs of where ceviche came from. (Answer: Ecuador!) Marlene was a young single mother in life; thus, she was a resilient woman accustomed to working without the help of others. I saw so much of what my mom had to overcome in her early life in Marlene’s story. I was eager to help.
I volunteered at LALIFF as much as I could after classes, but when the summer hit, I went all in. I volunteered to set up folding chairs for the youth program, to make purchase runs for the production department, to pick up lunch for the volunteers, to do anything that needed to be done. I was on the floor fixing the bottom of a desk one evening when he walked in: Emmy and Golden Globe–winning actor and activist Edward James Olmos. Olmos was best known for being the only Mexican American ever to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of East LA public school teacher Jaime Escalante in the film Stand and Deliver. I had hoped to one day meet Olmos, but in a different capacity—perhaps while I was at least standing up (pun intended). Olmos stopped at the table I was fixing, looked down at me, and said: “Thank you for all the work you’re doing.” It was quite ironic that the most successful actor from the Latino community at the time found me—literally—working under the table.
Here is an unsolicited tip to anybody wondering why Edward James Olmos is such a legendary actor, or how they, too, can one day get to his level. Olmos always controlled the characters he portrayed. It’s that simple. In Blade Runner, Ridley Scott did not ask him to invent a new futuristic Los Angeles language; he just did. In the original Miami Vice, he agreed to do Michael Mann’s TV series only if he had complete creative control of Lieutenant Castillo, which meant he never had to do what the stars of the show demanded of him. In the groundbreaking musical Zoot Suit, while everyone was doing teatro, Olmos was performing Kabuki theater as El Pachuco. If you want to be a great artist, then you have to take full control of your art. Olmos did exactly that.
I was in the production office late one night when I found out that the LALIFF Opening Night Gala tickets were open for purchase to the public. Up until that point, I figured the big event was invite-only. I had seen invites go out to the likes of Andy Garcia and Rita Moreno; I never imagined commoners like myself could attend by simply paying. The gala tickets were expensive at almost one hundred dollars each, but I had been working so hard and I barely saw my parents. I thought this was a great way for them and my uncles to see what I had been spending my entire summer doing. I told my supervisor that I wanted to buy six gala tickets. Now that I was a permanent resident in this country, I could have luxury items such as a debit card. I didn’t have much money in the bank. I had exactly six hundred dollars, which I used for the six LALIFF Opening Night Gala tickets for my family.
The big opening night arrived and I was ecstatic. I couldn’t wait to see how an international film festival unfolded. But more important, I couldn’t wait to see my parents and my uncles, who rarely allowed themselves an extravagance such as going to the movies, let alone going to a Hollywood opening night at the historic Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre. Hell, I hadn’t done that either! The giant searchlights on the street alerting the night sky that there was a major event in progress made the entire evening even more magical. I walked to the front entrance, past all the men in suits and women in gowns, and saw one of my colleagues sneak someone into the event. Then I saw another staff member do the same thing. I walked over to the box office and curiously asked if everyone in the team had bought their guests gala tickets. The box office coordinator looked at me with a concerned smile and said: “No. Just you.”
I was shocked to discover that all the staff and volunteers were sneaking their friends and families into the gala. Funny enough, one of those people sneaking in was then-unknown, future megastar Eva Longoria. Today, Eva is a Hollywood iconoclast with open doors everywhere, and I’m still over here paying for my goddamn gala tickets!
I greeted my parents and my uncles and I guided them through the red carpet with our unnecessarily paid gala tickets. My mom and dad could not believe it. They were on an actual red carpet. Dios mío. They loved it, but quickly felt very out of place. They weren’t made for the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. I showed them the historical courtyard, guided them through the renovated lobby, and showed them to their seats. I felt like I was still interpreting everything for my parents. Except this wasn’t English; it was Hollywood. My parents and my aunts and uncles had a blast. How could they not? The evening cost me my life savings!
Post the Opening Night Gala, Marlene asked to speak to me. She said she’d heard I’d bought all six of my gala tickets: “Is that true?” Still bothered, I assured her that it was. Marlene was impressed. “I don’t think anyone on the staff has ever done that before,” Marlene said, now taking me in as much more than a volunteer. From that moment, Marlene never questioned my loyalty to the organization.
I was eating with the volunteers one day when Lupe Ontiveros showed up at the festival. Without any of us knowing, Lupe had personally called all the Mexican restaurants on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue that had donated the food for the LALIFF volunteers. Lupe was so giving of her time that she sat down with us and started cracking jokes. I didn’t know if I would ever have the chance to speak to Lupe again, so I took it upon myself to ask: “Do you hate that you had to play so many maids in your career?” All the other volunteers went silent. While it wasn’t my intention, the question was in poor taste. Lupe’s response still sits with me to this day: “I played those roles so that nobody else would have to.” Wow.
To beat the LA traffic from West Covina, I would arrive early at the festival. That was why the production department put me in charge of working with the people who ran the parking lot. We always needed to rent more parking spots for extra space, and that all had to be negotiated early in the morning. Most of the parking attendants were Latinos and they were always willing to help me out. Only one attendant was not. His name was John. He was a poor-looking parking attendant who was in his late eighties. I have no idea how he was even hired. But John’s saving grace was that he was funny. He loved to crack jokes as he handed out his parking tickets. Every morning I would see John with clothes that didn’t seem to fit him, always wearing a large, weathered straw hat to protect him from the unrelenting Southern California sun, and when the volunteer food would arrive, I would make him a plate. John wasn’t a LALIFF volunteer so he wasn’t entitled to our food, but I saw him every morning by himself handing out tickets in the blistering sun, and I felt bad for the guy. I figured he needed company and some good Mexican food.
A few days later, Marlene came running out of the theater freaking out. Someone had interrupted the screening she was presenting to inform her that we had lost a venue for a big party. Needless to say, somebody was about to lose their job. Trying to be helpful, I suggested the posh nightclub across the street called Les Deux. Marlene said that if I thought I could get the it club in town, then I should. I immediately walked over to speak to the Les Deux manager, who informed me that he was in the middle of a dispute with the owner of the building and doubted either of us could use the space that weekend. “Who is the owner?” I wondered. The manager told me that the owner of the building was the same owner of all the parking structures around town: “He’s a very difficult man to get ahold of. Good luck.”
I walked over to the main parking office. By this point, all the office staff knew me from the festival. I asked to speak to the owner. “Sure thing,” said the Latina receptionist. When she escorted me to the executive office, I was blown away to see John sitting behind a big fancy desk. His old, weathered straw hat was just an arm’s reach away.
“Rafael! What’re you doing here?”
“John… you own the parking lot?”
“Of course.”
“And you own Les Deux?”
John rolled his eyes and said, “Don’t even get me started with that club.”
“Umm… well… we wanted to rent it for the film festival.”
“Anything for you, Rafael. You don’t even gotta ask.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my first experience as a Hollywood producer.
Marlene very kindly told Mr. Olmos that I helped saved the festival that year. All the staff and volunteers wanted to know how I had pulled off getting the hottest club in Hollywood—and practically for free. The answer was easy, and it was also my greatest lesson in production: always be kind to everybody. Who would have known that the old parking attendant, who literally looked like a homeless man, and his family owned most of the real estate in Hollywood since the studios first started doing black-and-white film premieres at the Chinese Theatre. John was retired, reaching the end of his life, and when he wasn’t volunteering with Army veterans, he was at the parking lot behind the Egyptian Theatre personally selling parking tickets to out-of-towners, telling very bad dad jokes. It just so happened that he took a liking to a wide-eyed immigrant kid volunteering for a Latino film festival that took place in the heart of Hollywood.