So they say it’s 33 years ago this week that La Bamba opened.

So they say it’s 33 years ago this week that La Bamba opened. Here’s what I remember.A bunch of us young actors in Dallas had formed a sort of family, mainly centered around a guy named Adam Roarke, but there were other connections. My brother, Bill, was the first to land enough acting work to move to Los Angeles (1982?). With his help, I headed west a couple of years later. Lou was still in Dallas when a national talent search for La Bamba found HIM. As I remember it, he and Esai Morales were set to play the brothers, but it took some time to determine which would be Ritchie. The film wrapped, Lou booked a Miami Vice (Eddie Olmos, impressed, booked him straightaway in Stand and Deliver). Those old enough will remember the power of MTV in the Eighties. Los Lobos played the music in the film, with Lou syncing. Some absolutely excellent videos were assembled, and started playing on MTV ’round the clock. Six-foot cardboard “standees” of Lou/Ritchie appeared in every CD store in America. Mind you, the film hadn’t opened. Lou had already spent his “scale plus ten” salary just living in a little place on Crescent Heights, watching the clock tick. I remember the two of us going bowling about a week before the film opened. Every two minutes, he got interrupted to sign an autograph. We looked at each other, bug-eyed. So this was how it’s going to be. Thirty years on, if I wear my Longmire hat in a grocery store, the checkout girl will tell me she just got Lou’s autograph in the deli aisle yesterday, and how nice he is. You don’t say.