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Gaytino!
Born Gay, Born-Again Hispanic (page 2)
by Joel Dossi, March 28, 2005
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A
Childhood Friend
Guerrero met Almaraz in the school yard when he was 8 years
old. An instant friendship developed, and they remained best friends
forever.
“Carlos wanted to be an artist for as long as I wanted to be a
performer,” says Guerrero. “We both knew that East LA wasn’t the
place for us.”
Today, people consider flying to New York as just a short jaunt
from LA, says Guerrero. “But this was back in 1962, and it was
a big move. It took 12 hours to fly there on a propeller plane,
with a stop in Chicago. We could have been in Siberia. It was
a big friggin’ deal.”
The two teenagers didn’t know a soul in the Nation’s largest city,
and survived by the wisdom doled out in a book called New
York on Five Bucks a Day.
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Almaraz went
to art school, and Guerrero began looking for classes on acting, singing
and dancing. Almaraz would leave New York after one semester to attend Otis
College of Art and Design in California. He eventually became an internationally
renowned artist, leading the Chicano Arts Movement of the ‘70s.
In 1989, Almaraz died of AIDS. Guerrero would remain in
NYC for the next 20 years.
Gay Times on the
East Coast
Gay life in the 1960’s New York theatre scene wasn’t difficult for
Guerrero. “Oh,
sweetie, please,” he remarks, “With musical comedies, they put out the
red carpet when they found out you were gay, so it was never really a
problem for me.”
But day-to-day
life in pre-Stonewall New York wasn’t gay-friendly, either. “There
were very few places for gays to meet in New York,” remembers Guerrero.
“There were the bars, but they were never my scene, even when I was young.
But all I had to do was stand on corner of 52nd and Park, and I got dates
every night. I
just had to wait for the light to change. Honey, what could I do?” Guerrero
jokes. “I was a boy in need of a meal!”
Guerrero’s
career path soon turned towards management, first as an agent’s assistant,
then to a full-fledged Broadway agent to future stars Sarah Jessica Parker
and Fran Drescher.
“My years as an agent were from A Chorus Line to Cats,” recalls
Guerrero. “My last contract was for “Old Deuteronomy” in Cats.
Guerrero loved
catering to actors. That is until 1982, his last Broadway season, when he
thought he’d kill himself if he had to go through one more stack of 8X10
glossies.
“I love talent. I respect talent, whether you’re a singer,
or a dancer,” says Guerrero, who then pauses a moment. “I love dancers.
Dancers are my favorite creatures on the whole planet. I first fell in love
with dancers seeing the movie Oklahoma! I so respect their discipline
and camaraderie.”
As an agent, Guerrero specialized in handling musical comedy
performers. “It gave me a sense of purpose that I could never get from being
a performer,” he says.
Born Again Hispanic
When Zoot Suit, which featured his father’s music, opened on
Broadway, Guerrero began to realize just how little had changed for Latino
representation in the media. So he returned to California in 1982 to do
something about it.
“I came back with a vengeance,” says Guerrero. He began casting television
shows, trying to open the market up to Hispanic actors.
For the past
15 years, Guerrero has produced Latino-themed programming in English and
Spanish for network and cable television, along with live concerts at venues
ranging from the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC to La cité de la musique
in Paris.
But it hasn’t
always been an easy task. “In 1989, I cast a pilot for a Latino Family
sitcom,” recalls Guerrero. “They were trying to do a Latino show way back
then. But look how long it took before the George Lopez Show went
on the air.”
Where is the “exploding Latino market” we keep hearing about, Guerrero
wonders. He
stops a moment, and then reflects, “I don’t need to see a show with 52
brown faces in it. I just would have liked to have seen one of those faces
on Friends be brown. I just want it to be like in real life.”
With Gaytino!,
Guerrero embraces his performing roots again--and his “real-life” roots
in the Latino and gay communities.
For
more about Dan and Gaytino, visit gaytino.com
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