Born In East L.A.

By RICHARD CORLISS

Mama sits in her humble Guatemalan home and spins tales of a promised land she has seen only in the pages of Good Housekeeping. In America, she tells her daughter Rosa, you will find money, cars, TV, even indoor plumbing. "You flush it, and everything vanishes!" And so in Gregory Nava's 1983 film El Norte, Rosa and her brother Enrique embark on a perilous pilgrimage toward the golden north. When they eventually reach California, they do find honest work and small incomes -- the money dreams can buy. But it is a rasping irony to possess so little when surrounded by too much. Up close the dream looks fragile and fraudulent. You crush it, and everything vanishes.

El Norte is not just a parable for immigrant visions crushed by reality. It is a caustic metaphor for Hispanic-American filmmakers lusting to conquer Hollywood. Years of slammed doors have tempered hope with skepticism, even when one smash movie has opened doors a crack. La Bamba, a low-budget bio-pic of Chicano Rock 'n' Roller Ritchie Valens, was last summer's surprise hit, earning $55 million at the North American box office. Maybe Hispanic film artists would prefer to believe in La Bamba's rags-to-riches story. But they know how even that film ends: with a fatal plane crash.

There are, to be sure, reasons to dream. One is the burgeoning Hispanic audience: young, urban moviegoers who prefer American action-adventures to the low-budget Mexican films traditionally shown in Latino theaters. Now Hollywood is catering to this bloc by offering Spanish-subtitled prints of Rambo III and ) Red Heat, and the grosses for those theaters have sizzled. "The studios have re-evaluated their outdated perception of the 'ethnic' audience," says Columbia Pictures Executive Katherine Moore. "We now realize that Hispanics aren't a segregated group that attends only films that relate to them. They're a permanent part of the moviegoing population."

And so, maybe, are Hollywood's Hispanic films. "They're made for a little and make a lot," says Cheech Marin, whose Born in East L.A. cost $5.1 million and grossed $17.4 million. "In a business where only three out of ten films show a profit, Hispanic films return more on the dollar than their mainstream counterparts." If Hispanic films produce black ink -- and they have -- studios will take an educated gamble on making more. As La Bamba's director, Luis Valdez, notes, "There are more projects in the works now than in the rest of the '80s combined."

This spring three films with Hispanic themes opened. The Milagro Beanfield War, Robert Redford's $30 million social fable, may never make its money back. But Ramon Menendez's Stand and Deliver, though no blockbuster, is already showing a profit. And Salsa, a cheap blend of West Side Story and Dirty Dancing, made some quick money. Next, Puerto Rican-born Raul Julia, one of the few Hispanics to work regularly and rewardingly on stage and screen, stars with Sonia Braga (Brazil) and Richard Dreyfuss (Brooklyn) in Moon over Parador, a satire about South America. Then Julia will play a Salvadoran archbishop in Romero. And Christmas brings The Old Gringo, from the Carlos Fuentes novel, with Jane Fonda and L.A. Law's Jimmy Smits. Fonda, who calls herself a "premature Latinian," spent eight years preparing the drama, set on "this scar of a border we share."

There are scars to heal and miles to go before Hispanic-Hollywood assimilation is complete. Begin with the wondrous and confounding diversity of Latin cultures. "Cubans," says Julia, "are as different from Mexicans as French are from Italians." Menendez, Cuban-born, catalogs the differences: "First-generation Mexican Americans are still emotionally connected to their homeland. They want movies that remind them of home. But Cubans don't identify with the underclass. Would you, if you owned Miami?"

This tangle among diverse strands of the Latino community is reflected in the tango of Anglo movie moguls and Hispanic moviemakers. The industry sees its Hispanic films as good deeds with limited commercial prospects, and ! Hispanic directors worry about making films that are both exemplary and entertaining. The result is an impasse for which, as Casting Director Dan Guerrero notes, "everyone is blaming everyone else. The agent tells an actor, 'I'd submit you, but no one will see you.' The casting director says, 'I'd bring in Hispanics, but no one's submitting them.' The writer says, 'I don't write Hispanic scripts because there's no market.' And the producer says, 'I'd produce a Hispanic film, but there's no material.' "

In the old days things were almost better. Compared with Hollywood's caricaturing of other minorities, the industry's treatment of Hispanics was benign. In the silent era of the Latin lover, actors named Ricardo Cortez, Antonio Moreno and Ramon Novarro all wooed Garbo on screen. In the '30s and '40s, Hollywood called on Cesar Romero, Gilbert Roland or Ricardo Montalban for Continental elegance and rewarded them with careers as durable as Corinthian leather. Even those two camp goddesses of the '40s, Carmen Miranda and Maria Montez, did not wallow in the spitfire stereotype so much as they exploded it, with wit and pizazz.

The era of good feeling ended in the '50s when, ironically, Hollywood got a liberal conscience and concentrated on making amends to blacks. Hispanic roles became rare, and even those tended toward gang lords and victims. Mexican-born Anthony Quinn went abroad to graduate from Frito Bandito roles to stardom in La Strada and Zorba the Greek. The signal film was West Side Story. It said Latins were no longer domesticated birds of colorful plumage; now they were a social problem, a political cause set to barrio rhythms. What kind of guarantee was that for box-office gold?

So blacks got a brief ride on the B-movie circuit in the '70s (Shaft, Superfly), and Hispanics got short shrift, even as Mexicans were streaming into California to tend moguls' gardens and kitchens. When Latin actors did seize center screen, it was in art-house fodder like Alambrista!, Zoot Suit, El Norte and Crossover Dreams. These films meant well, but they rarely did well. They staggered under the weight of their liberal messages like a postman with the A.C.L.U. on his route. So many good intentions were riding on these films that they became morality plays, long on the uplift, short on subtlety or underdog smarts. They sculpted dramatic archetypes into heroic stereotypes -- folk art for guilty connoisseurs.

The few films that did get made could hardly support the 1,750 Hispanic members of the Screen Actors Guild. "Movie directors tend to cast people as personalities rather than as actors," says Julia. "For them, you're as good as the last role you played. Or, in the case of Hispanics, as good as the last role you didn't play." To a budding star like Andy Garcia, the Cuban-born flamethrower of 8 Million Ways to Die and The Untouchables, that ethnic box is confining: "I didn't take Hispanic Acting 101. I studied Shakespeare."

And if Latino actors have trouble finding jobs, what hope is there for a gifted Latina? "In the '50s," recalls Puerto Rican-born Rita Moreno, 56, who won an Oscar for her work in West Side Story, "I was always the Indian maiden -- 'Ju no love Ula no more?' -- who knew where the gold was hidden and would throw herself off a cliff to show how important it was to have Protestants love me. Then I got to play the Hispanic woman, perpetually pregnant, abused and abandoned by her husband. Now we've moved a step up: we play the wives of leading actors, home taking care of them instead of having babies and banging on the pipes for more steam heat." One small step for Latin women, one giant step to go. "There's 'manly' stuff for Hispanic males to do, but Hispanic actresses find it hard."

It is harder still for Hispanic artisans. Scan the list of technical credits for The Milagro Beanfield War, and, except for that of Co-Producer Moctesuma Esparza, you will find no Latin names among the top 20 craftsmen. And in the conference rooms where movies get the go-ahead, few Hispanics are more than visitors. "The actors, directors and producers are in place," says Menendez. "The real problem is the lack of powerful Hispanic executives. In Hollywood today, the ethnics have won court-jester status, but we're not in control of what films get made."

One industry executive, sympathetic to minority aspirations, warns that "the moment there's a trend, it's stale. Hispanic films are just a fad that will pass, as all fads do. Whatever the ethnic basis of a movie, it demands a commercially appealing story line. That might not be a concern of Hispanic activists, but it is crucial to the studios." Perhaps surprisingly, Director Menendez agrees. "With the exception of La Bamba, most of our films have been a little precious. You have to reach people, and popular art always has more impact on culture than fine art. Who goes to museums these days?"

The challenge for any film artist is to make movies artful enough for a & museum and popular enough for the malls. Unless Hispanic Hollywood can embrace those imposing contradictions, as Jimmy Smits says, "we'll just be Ethnic of the Year." But even the smallest smoke signal can mark the way on the road out of the cinema barrio and toward Mama's dream of el Norte. "Hope is a thing with feathers," notes Rita Moreno. "For years we'd been picking it up with tweezers and putting it in a little paper bag. I know we haven't arrived yet, but I think we can throw away the tweezers."

With reporting by Elaine Dutka/Los Angeles