Casting a Paul

Friday, Nov. 2, 2001 | 5:27 a.m.

The 1984 low-budget hit film "D.C. Cab" featured an ensemble cast of actors that included, among others, Gary Busey, Bill Maher, Mr. T and Max Gail.

Also appearing in the movie, which was directed by Joel Schumacher ("Batman Forever"), was a young Mexican-American who was thinking about becoming an attorney.

Comedian Paul Rodriguez, who appears Friday and Saturday at the Las Vegas Hilton, said he was going to use the money from his first film to help pay his way through law school.

The court system lost a potential four-star counselor when a teacher convinced Rodriguez there were too many lawyers and not enough comedians.

The 44-year-old actor, who starred in the short-lived 1984 sitcom "A.K.A. Pablo" and this year's film "Tortilla Soup," recently spoke to the Sun by telephone. He was in a limousine en route to a screening of his latest movie, "Ali," which is to be released Dec. 25. The screening was for the cast only, which includes Will Smith as Muhammad Ali and features, among others, Rodriguez as Dr. Ferdie Pacheco, an eclectic man known as "The Fight Doctor."

Las Vegas Sun: "D.C. Cab" was a funny little film. What did it mean to your career?

Paul Rodriguez: "D.C. Cab" is the reason why I'm in this business. I was on my way to being an attorney. I needed to taking acting classes, because a good trial lawyer is nothing but a good actor. As a result of the class I got the part in "D.C. Cab." It was the biggest hit of the summer. If it had bombed I wouldn't have been offered "Quicksilver" and (television producer) Norman Lear wouldn't have noticed me."

Sun: What was it like to be cast in "Ali?"

PR: Well over 200 actors auditioned. Do you know what it is to walk into a room and you see Joe Mantegna and Ruben Blades and all these other really gifted, talented actors that you are not worthy of being in the same room with them, much less in the same movie with them, but by the grace of God it's you who gets the part?

Sun: I've never had that experience.

PR: I almost felt like apologizing to them and saying, "Hey, look, I'm sorry, I had a good day." But what's weird is, nobody loves you till somebody loves you. The movie hasn't even come out and I've got script offers up the wazoo for movies I assure you would have never thought about Paul Rodriguez as the police officer or the attorney general or as the cabinet member on "The West Wing." I don't know what it is, I'm not here to question, I'm just here to do the best I can.

Sun: Which do you prefer, films or stand-up comedy?

PR: I don't consider myself an actor of any kind. I do it begrudgingly. I act because it gets your name out. My love is for stand-up. I come from the George Carlin school, someone who I admire. Although George Carlin hasn't really had a hit movie, he's been in a couple of movies but he's not really a movie star, and he's not known for having a hit television series, although he has done some successful HBO specials. George Carlin is primarily a stand-up comic, you know. That's what he does and that's what I'd like to think I am. I'd like people to think of me as a stand-up comic who once in a while, by the seat of his pants, does a good job in a movie or comes out on television. You do this to get name recognition.

In reality, I live and I die for being onstage. When you're onstage you don't get a second chance to tell people, "OK, people, get amnesia. I'm going to walk out and do it again." You've got to be good now, you know. You've got to be there in the moment. When you're doing movies, it's a long, drawn-out, boring process. What I love about stand-up is it's immediate. Right away you know if you're good. You don't have to wait for the polls to come in. You don't have to wait for the reviews to come in. The minute you're onstage and deliver those lines, those ideas you came up with, the audience will tell you in a millisecond whether you're funny or not. They vote with their voices.

Sun: Where does your sense of humor come from?

PR: From my father. He was an absolute ham, like a big kid, very, very funny. He kept us laughing. I remember him hitting me on the head with a pencil one time when I was a kid. I was brooding about something. He says to me, "What's your problem? You have to worry about the rent? Your back hurt? Wait till you get married to be miserable. Your day of misery is going to come, but right now you're a kid and you should be laughing."

He didn't care if you had your elbows on the table, he just wanted to see a smile on his children. He said that childhood is something that nobody should ever rob you of, you know, because it's the last time you are going to be innocently happy. He said after you hit 18 or 19, there's very few real laughs left.

Dad was a philosopher and my best friend. When he passed away, he passed away in the middle of telling a joke to my brother. At my father's funeral my brother is crying and I say, "Why?" and he goes, "Because he didn't give me the punch line."

Sun: You've done a lot for the Latino community with your success.

PR: It's just the opposite. The Latino community has given me this limousine that I'm crawling out of right now. The Latino community has given me infinitely more than I could ever possibly give them, you know. I live so that I won't disappoint them.

But right now, I will tell you the greatest thing that I'm proud of is we aren't Latinos anymore. After Sept. 11, I took my Mexican flag down and put up an American one, and I saw hundreds of my fellow countrymen doing that. We're not blacks after Sept. 11, we're not Mexican-Americans.

It might sound trite and corny but if there is a silver lining to this very dark cloud, it's a genuine patriotism that has come out in all of us. I had this license plate on my car that said "Chicano Forever." I went over there and ripped it off and now I have one with an American flag on it. We discovered in ourselves that we were always Americans, it was we who had segregated ourselves ... I'm proud to be a Hispanic-American, but I'm not a Hispanic-American comedian -- I'm a comedian.

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