John Leguizamo’s one-man show Spic-o-Rama electrified a generation of Latinos in 1992 and brought Hollywood to his door. As the actor-writer-producer returns to his downtown, Off Broadway roots, with Latin History for Morons at the Public Theater, LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA recalls the door that Leguizamo opened for him
I don’t remember which family member taped it off HBO for me: we didn’t have cable at the time. But I remember the scrawl on the side of the VHS tape in my handwriting: Spic-o-Rama. I remember popping in the cassette and seeing John Leguizamo leap across the stage in orange baggy jeans and braces, playing the dorky, nine-year-old Miggy. Then he was Crazy Willie, a Persian Gulf War vet with serious relationship issues. Then Raffi, a flamboyant would-be Elizabethan actor in Jackson Heights. It slowly dawned on me that Leguizamo was playing every member of his hilarious, dysfunctional family, on his own electric terms.
This story is from the Hollywood 2017 edition of Vanity Fair.
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