by Marisa Treviño of Latina Lista

Long before George Lopez was an international star, he was performing in Addison and gave me my first celebrity interview.

A no surer sign that Hispanic Heritage Month kicks off this week is tonight's documentary, airing at 7 p.m. on Dallas' public television station KERA, titled Brown is the New Green: George Lopez and the American Dream.

This segment is supposed to be the first of a four-part PBS series called "Latinos: Here and Now." The show has an interesting twist on the whole Latino identity issue. The filmmaker, Phillip Rodriguez, argues that our identity is basically being manufactured into a high-dollar business by media marketers and that what is seen on Spanish-language networks and pushed by Hispanic ad companies are nothing more than "an exoticized image that has no basis in contemporary American reality."

No me digas.

Rodriguez says that George has been able to authenticate or "normalize" the image of Latinos through his show and comic routines while always having to strike that balance between being true to la gente and Hollywood's expectations of Latinos.

But long before George ever had his show, he knew exactly how he wanted to rep us all on the small screen. Back in the early 90s when he was appearing quite frequently at the Comedy Club in Addison, this Latina had decided she was going to be a writer and her first "celebrity" interview was going to be with a rising Latino star.

George graciously agreed to be my first interview. Throughout the hour and a half sitting in the lobby of his hotel that was near the club, and in between the off-the-cuff jokes he was cracking about Addison (it was the 90s), he talked about having his own show. "It's not going to be a show about Latinos; it's going to be a show about an American family who happens to be Latino," I remember him saying a few times.

He was adamant that Hollywood wasn't going to impose their perceptions onto him. "If they do, I'll walk," he declared. Evidently, he learned to play the Hollywood game.

In the process though, according to tonight's documentary, Hispanic marketers riding on the coattails of George's success would rather present Latinos as a separate entity rather than part of the mainstream that he intended his program to show.

Whether we agree, disagree or just don't know what to think, it's assuring to know that for the next month we can count on more programs like this that through their intent to highlight and celebrate the Latino presence, sometimes only achieve to confuse us more.

What do you think?