Leguizamo Live! There’s more to John Leguizamo than a pretty face ... and bod by Blase DiStefano

Smack dab in the middle of rehearsals for Live!, his new one-man show, funny man John Leguizamo calls the OutSmart office from New York ("the city that God created and then forgot," he quips) for what turns out to be a laugh-provoking conversation. His career, on the other hand, is no laughing matter. The 37-year-old straight-but-not-narrow performer has had three prior one-man shows and has appeared on television and in a variety of films playing a variety of roles (including his recent turn as Toulouse-Lautrec in Moulin Rouge). He’s won so many awards, there’s not enough space here to list them. • However, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention his cross-dressing habit: First is his well-known role as Miss Chi Chi Rodriguez in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar; second is his role as a cynical mom in his HBO one-man show Spic-O-Rama; and last but not least, Leguizamo tells about the first time his dad and he played catch: "He ridiculed me. ‘You play like a girl!’ he cursed. I tore off my dress and ran inside the house."

OutSmart: I saw you on TV at the Cannes Film Festival [for Moulin Rouge]. Had you been there before?

John Leguizamo: Not in that capacity. With Summer of Sam, we did the fortnight at Cannes. But this was opening night of the whole Cannes Film Festival. It was huge. The red carpet … never seen a carpet that big–not even at the Waldorf-Astoria.

Every time celebrities are interviewed, they say it’s really unbelievable.

It’s unbelievable because all you see is a sea of people on either side of the ropes. And photographers … they start elbowing each other in the throat, knocking each other’s cameras out of the way–it’s insane.

That must have been surreal.

Very surreal.

Okay, back to reality. You were born in Bogotá, Colombia.

Right, because my mother was there.

Thank God!

It made it a lot easier for both of us.

[Laughs] How long were you there?

Three to four years, something like that. I went back when I was seven to eight and then 14 to 15. So I’ve been back a couple of times.

So you moved from Bogotá to New York?

Yes.

New York has a truly diverse population. Did you grow up around gay people at all?

There’s a lot of gay Latin people. There’s gay people in my family, and they were amazing and hilarious … and musical.

[Laughs] I’m curious because Latino men have a reputation for being kind of macho and …

Right. You have the macho thing going on, but that’s mostly in your teens and you’re forming yourself as a man. You’re afraid of anything different or anything that’s going to make you stand out, so you’re afraid of who people will associate you with. But then you get over that. A lot of my friends who are Latin, they don’t have a problem with people’s sexual preference.

But when you were younger …

Everybody gets weird about it. When you’re a teenager you’re weird about everything. People are afraid of being Latin or whatever or short.

Speaking of short, in Spawn you were short.

Short and fat and ugly–that was my first, middle, and last name.

Totally the opposite of what you are. How in the hell was that done?

They tried a lot of different bizarre systems, like chairs built into my legs so I could sit down on my ankles. Didn’t work. They tried little chairs that I could sit underneath, but I couldn’t move, ’cause I would lose my balance. Eventually the only thing that I could do was squat, so I had buns of titanium.

I’ll bet.

I was crazy, man. By the end of the shoot I could go through a whole roll of film and not pop up. My legs would be quaking and shaking and I would be "Help me, I can’t take it." And I would jump into frame and wreck the scene.

You’re still short in Moulin Rouge as Toulouse-Lautrec …

Right. Now I’m short and French.

How did they accomplish the short part?

A little different, because I had to be 4-foot-11, and Toulouse-Lautrec wasn’t fat. In Spawn, being fat helped me to hide my squatting. In this, I had to kneel into a cast that solidified, and then they put mini-amputee prostheses, like a miniature ankle and a miniature foot, and I had to learn how to balance on that, and they weighed 45 pounds. They just digitally erased the back of my foot and leg. I look like I’m having fun, but that’s why I get paid.

Exactly–you can act.

I can act like I’m having a good time.

Thank God you can act. That reminds me, in To Wong Foo you were absolutely wonderful.

I did steal the show, didn’t I?

[Laughs] Totally. I have read interviews with actors who have done drag in movies, and most of them say how constricting the clothes are. How was it for you?

They didn’t try to put anything constricting on me–the only thing that hurt me was the pumps, the bubble-gum pumps that f--king were destroying my feet. I was afraid I’d become a serial murderer.

Back to Summer of Sam.

Exactly. Good segue. But the gender-benders were tough.

The gender-benders?

Yeah, they have these things that drag queens wear, I guess to hide their appendage.

I just heard that you have to tuck it in.

Right, but they have a whole apparatus that they put on all three of us–small, medium, and large–I won’t tell you who was which. [Both laugh.] But we used those suckers so that we would look more realistic like what they do. We had a lot of consultants.

You had dressed in drag before, in Spic-O-Rama, right?

That was different. I was just putting on some clothes and throwing on a wig, but this was serious work. We worked with drag queens in front of the mirror, and they taught us how to walk and move the hands, how to talk. I stole lines from them that I could use in the movie.

Tell me a little about Live!

Live! is my last one-man show.

Last?

The fourth is the last one that I’m going to do. It’s too … it beats you up, man. It’s like playing football without a helmet.

Then we better see you …

You better see it. I swear this is the last time. In the show I still have some family things–growing up with my brother, stuff with my dad. My dad was really cheap; we were poor but he had to be cheap on top of that. At Christmas he would tell us that Santa Claus was dead.

What?

He would come out as a Christmas clown, so he would do tricks instead of gifts. It would be like, "Dad, you suck." He’d tell us that Santa had cancer–that’s what he would give us for Christmas. So I have a lot of material about that, and then about relationships, dating, breaking up, breakup sex, angry sex, marriage and divorce … so you act out all the relationships, the sickness, the dysfunction, the hating–it’s gonna be fun.

How about we end with what I hope are a couple of fun questions. If you were stranded on a desert island and you could have only one person–you cannot choose a family member, a loved one, a friend …

You’re trying to get people in trouble, basically.

Basically. You can choose a dead person, but obviously he or she would be alive on the island. Who would it be?

I would definitely choose a dead sexy woman; that way I won’t get in trouble at home [Leguizamo is married and has two children]. If I take someone living, my ass will be grass. That way I can still fantasize.

Okay. You’re still stranded on that island and you can have only one movie.

I know I’d like to pick one of my own [both laugh] … to watch myself. I’ll probably pick Summer of Sam. I can see myself being sexy with all these women in case the dead woman stays dead.

See John Leguizamo’s Live! on Saturday, August 11, at Aerial Theater, 520 Texas Ave. Tickets are $36.50—$44 and can be purchased at all Ticketmaster locations, www.ticketmaster.com, or www.celebrityentertainment.net; charge by phone at 713/629-3700. For more information, call 713/230-1600.

If you have the Encore channel, you can see To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar on Thursday, August 16, at 8:05 a.m. and 5 p.m., and on Saturday, August 25, at 6:50 a.m. and 7 p.m.; Summer of Sam can be seen on Starz! at 2 a.m. on Friday, August 10.