John Leguizamo sticks it to Hollywood in Toronto show
Last Updated: Thursday, July 16, 2009 | 12:11 AM ET
CBC News
John Leguizamo attends the premiere of Righteous Kill in New York in 2008. He's doing his first Toronto show this week. (Jason DeCrow/Associated Press)John Leguizamo, who made his career as a comedian telling scandalous stories about his family, has now turned his manic energy to dissing Hollywood.
The Latino comedian known for his edgy humour is staging his show John Leguizamo Live! at the Just For Laughs festival in Toronto.
The actor, who starred in Ice Age and Nothing Like the Holidays,touches on themes from his 2006 memoir Pimps, Hos, Playa Hatas and All the Rest of My Hollywood Friends: My Life in the show, his first engagement outside the U.S.
He's not afraid to name names and tell stories about A-List celebrities, even when they show them in a bad light.
"I'm not really dissing them; I'm just talking about what happened," he said in an interview with CBC's Q cultural affairs show.
"Behind the scenes in films, there's a lot of fighting and back-stabbing. There's camaraderie and generosity, too, but it's just boring to tell."
Harrison Ford, Sean Penn, Steven Seagal, Patrick Swayze and Colm Feore are mentioned by name.
The show has resulted in cease and desist orders from lawyers and the occasional threat to punch him out, but it has audiences laughing.
Leguizamo tells about fights he had with directors, actors who behaved badly and the times he got kicked off the set.
"A lot of actors really like to say their lines exactly like they're told to. Not me," said Leguizamo, admitting he uses his comedy to explore his own mistakes.
"I'm really dissing myself as well," he said, adding that he has refused to become "a product," that is, the kind of Latino stereotype that Hollywood might be more comfortable working with.
He played a desperate psychopath in Regarding Henry, a sharp-tongued, cross-dressing Latina minx in To Wong Foo, a young gangster in Carlito's Way and artist Toulouse Lautrec in Moulin Rouge.
Leguizamo believes he's hit a "Plexiglas ceiling" in Hollywood. He's looking to make movies himself and turned to touring, which he did to great success with Sexaholic, to convey his brash view of the world.
A Colombian-Puerto Rican guy from New York with roots in Italy and Lebanon, he says he could do comedy without a racial component, but he doesn't want to.
"I could, but race to me is very important," he said. "When I started out, I was the only Latin guy in the Strasberg class, I was the only Latin guy or dude of colour in any of my acting classes, and we were hardly on television."
Latinos are still the scapegoats of American society, he said.
It's the first leg of an international tour for Leguizamo, and Toronto is his first show outside of the U.S.
Earlier shows were tailored for New York, where there is a large Latino population. Leguizamo was agreeably surprised by the warm reaction of a Canadian audience.
"I'm used to a much rowdier, louder crazier audience — I've been doing it in New York," he said.
"I talked more and kept going because it was a quieter crowd, but it made me think about things, and I said things in a different way. In New York, everybody's so loud all the time that I have to be even louder."
His show is at the Berkeley Theatre in Toronto to July 18.
