For George Lopez, a 41-year-old stand-up comic who once thought his role as Eddie in the 1990 movie “Ski Patrol” might end up being his chief contribution to the acting profession, these are good days indeed.
The “George Lopez” show, based more than loosely on his life growing up in the Los Angeles area, returned this month with new episodes after a monthlong holiday hiatus. The show has consistently won its Wednesday night time slot (7:30 p.m.) this season, and Lopez also has a small but key role in the current well-received indie film “Real Women Have Curves.” “After struggling through the ’90s just to feed my family and pay my bills, this is a pretty good time,” he says.
“This show may go one more episode or 100, but it’s not going to fail because I didn’t give enough of myself,” he says. “If you consider being a road comedian a career, good luck.”
Actress Sandra Bullock, who had been interested in putting together a TV project with a Latino story line for some time, was given one of Lopez’s comedy albums to listen to, and she was impressed enough to check out his act. In Lopez’s act, he managed to wring humor from the real-life stories of his father leaving his mother when George was 2 months old, and how they lived with her parents until his mother remarried and moved away, leaving George to be brought up by his grandparents.
Bullock says she and Lopez want to begin blending in some of the darker humor that is so much a part of his nightclub act–and indeed of Lopez himself–into future episodes.
“It’s going to get heavier and more risky,” Bullock says.
