Check out this week’s ”Stage” story about Fort Worth standup comic Paul Edwards and The Butterfly Connection artistic director Adam Dietrich, who’ve collaborated to create a 22 minute comedy pilot called “Illegal Gringo Crosser.” The show, shot with all local cast and crew, turns on a “what if?” premise: What if some white Americans were so desperately dissatisfied with the U.S. and their personal lives that they wanted to cross the border illegally into Mexico and start anew?
Edwards, who grew up in El Paso, credits his grandfather with instilling a sense of humor in him early. The old man often took him to a downtown E Paso movie palace called La Plaza and introduced him to the comedies of Mario Alfonso Moreno aka Cantinflas, the dancer/actor/producer/labor activist whose good looks and rascal charm made him a superstar to Latin audiences in the 1940s and ‘50s. There’s a wealth of Cantinflas flicks on the web. Here’s ”Soy un Profugo” (“I Am a Fugitive”) from 1946.
