Living with a stand-up comic

Sitting outside our back yard looking out at the horizon, I watch the sun disappear over the canyon. With it another beautiful day in Southern California gone with the events of an active family of seven and I think back to all the days and years I have shared with my husband, Luis Moro and raising our brood. I came into his life with three children, a somewhat budding reality TV show career, and a fierce attitude…well, for an LA girl anyway. “La-LA” girl he calls me, and that is where my character was born on the stage of his stand-up shows.

They say they come tough, and if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere….from the Big Apple that is. Well, he came tough, and he made it there…the question is can he survive here in LA? The funniest part of it is, most people really don’t know what to think of the City of Angeles. Being that I was born in Hollywood, Ca and raised in all parts of LA (north, east, west, south and yes, the valley), of coarse this is all I knew. Then I started to travel around the world, and I discovered there really is no place else like Los Angeles. A place where dreams are made, and broken, and a place that you love to hate. Hate the traffic, but love the weather. Hate the people, but love the outdoors. Hate the apartment, but love the homes. Where fickle fancies live, and immigrants from around the world wouldn’t dream of living anywhere else. More people from New York, than you can shake a stick at, and sexual orientation (yes, gay people) live in open harmony. Sure, there is gangs and violence…but what’s new. This is the Mecca of all things Entertainment, where Hollywood glamour and homeless live side by side. This is the land where it all happens. This is LA-LA land.

What does this have to do with my husband? Plenty. See, here he came 6 years ago, very tough from playing College Football at Rutgers University (Strong Safety) in New Jersey, had escaped from Communist Cuba, had been on his own since Middle School, going to Studio 54 at 13 years old (gasp). He tackled the Real Estate market in Jersey and New York, and put his own TV Show on the air, Real Estate America. He conquered huge events, like putting on the Hispanic World Fair at The Javet’s Center at 22 years old. He married twice, trained and rescued his Rottweiler’s (that weren’t very nice.) He even tackled felon teens at Youth at Risk camps, and became a Seminar Leader in an arduous Seminar leading program for Landmark Education. He made the move to LA, after opening a talent and management agency in New York, and he knew he wanted to play the Hollywood game at a bigger level.

He started acting and did numerous roles and commercials including playing Denzel Washington’s decoy in The Siege, plus a number of other films. He even began making films and started his own film production company in his 30’s, Luis Moro Productions. He was just starting his festival tour from his first big Independent film, Anne B Real, that won him the John Cassaveties Award at the Independent Film Festival, and a couple more nominations. I was celebrating the birthday of a photographer friend at Mel Gorham’s shabby chic Hollywood home one balmy night. I was talking make-up with a make-up artist, and there he was, leaning against the wall. He found out I was single after listening to the guys at the party, he knew I did not come with anyone. As I turned to look at this strapping 6 ft 1 dark skinned, black Latin guy wearing all black…I looked down and he had sandals! Not just any sandals, the Cuban kind. I was very mesmerized. We danced Salsa, he played hard to get, we read our palms, and we talked until 3 am. I never left his side. Five years and two more babies later, Luis and I have an independent film production company with five children.

With four more films back to back we filmed Love & Suicide, directed by Lisa France, shot in Havana, Cuba and made history. The drama film, The Unseen, directed by Lisa France and the comedy yet-to-be-released Venus & Vegas, directed by Damien Lichtenstein. We did not stop there, we turned around two other production-for hire films. All the while, we had babies, and we raised five, active smart kids. But, there was a hidden secret he did not tell me. He was a stand-up comedian. He mentioned that he had stopped going on stage at the time he met me to concentrate on putting these films out there into the world. I had no idea how serious he was until I became his material. The kids became his material, his life became his material. There was nothing sacred, nothing left out. Nothing was off limits. What had I done?

As he contemplates what he has done on stage by marrying me, an ex-cop, great niece of Hedda Hopper, adventurer of life, west coast lover, bad ass, writer, artist, working out, ‘nuevo ghetto’ in-your-face- Latina and Danish, 5 ft 9, tom boy with four daughters and a boy later…I contemplate what have I done marrying this black Cuban with a lightening quick tongue and mind with no boundaries….did I just meet my nemesis or my partner in crime? I opened a blog for “Support for Stand-Up Comic Wives.” There is no topic untouched, and no comment or statement by me not addressed in our day to day life by him. I had to up my game, but he is still on my territory. Wait a minute. My ancestors came across the Oregon Trail after founding Princeton. I came from a long line of patriarchal and judicial kinfolk that settled here in California. Took up residence in Hollywood, and Burbank, was even first women Disney Animators on Bambi for Christ sake. This is my town, and he needs to learn my ways. Beach, yoga, laid back, slightly cocky, with a drrrry sense of humor only Angelino’s get (We have our own language), and plenty of flakiness to go around, with a tad of charitability and a heaping mountain full of creativity. I get my own kind, but he’s the transplant, from clear across the continent no less. So the debate began. Who will conform to whom?

All his tough-guy, East coast antics met his match with me. He gathered many years of material. He was ready to go back on stage after four years. Armed with an arsenal of one-liners, wicked stories and enough sarcasm, Soprano- style (That’s his nick name I call him privately-“Hey Soprano”.) to choke a horse; this Moro self made man was ready for the stage again. So grass roots style, I called everyone we knew and put the word out, and sent out mass emails. The night came, and flashes of him running jokes on me at 7 am, fifty million DVD’s later of other stand-up comics that I sometimes obligingly watched with him all came together. I was relieved to finally be able to see what material he was going to use. Was he going to talk about gays, or racism, politics, or how ‘ghetto’ I am, as he so affectionately calls me. His ‘Ghetto La-La girl’. Nice.

Needless to say, he killed it. Killing it in the comedy world means he ‘nailed it’. He did an easy one hour and 15 minutes and could have kept on going. We were all exhausted from laughing as we poured into the lobby of the Ha-HA Café in NoHo. Jack Assadorian, his old time friend, was pleased and I was relieved I got to finally hear it all. I discovered later, I rested too soon on that notion. Luis told me that he had much more of where that came from, and he did not even use all of the material he had. More on me and the kids, our life, of coarse. Oh God, I felt that sinking feeling in my gut again. Where’s my support blog for Stand-up Comic Wives when I need it, and sighing to myself I thought, Not Another Stand-up Comic!

If curiosity’s got you, and you just got to get your hands on a copy of this special night, this DVD will be available soon. To pre-order, go to www.LouieMoro.com and as soon it is hot off the presses, you’ll get a chance to cry with me. With Luis Moro, he’s not here to make you laugh, he is here to make you cry.