This may be the last interview you see with George Lopez. He’s been talking about retiring, and Beverly Hills Chihuahua may be the last film that comes out with his voice, let alone his whole body. Lopez provides the voice of Papi, a landscaper’s dog in love with a spoiled rich Chihuahua. When she gets lost in Mexico, Papi springs into action to find her.
Crave Online: Do you have Chihuahuas?
George Lopez: I have three of them.
Crave Online: Are they from the pound or rescued?
George Lopez: One was born naturally, from a result of the relationship between the mother and the father, and one was a rescue, and one we bought.
Crave Online: These dogs start the “No Mas” movement. What did you think of that political allegory?
George Lopez: You know, Placido Domingo does the "no mas" speech in the movie, but I did it virally. You know, "enough is enough." All that stuff really helped. I mean, I enjoyed that "no mas/enough is enough" campaign.
Crave Online: Do you think these little dogs have been over-exploited in Hollywood?
George Lopez: [Laughs] Well, I mean, they're accessories. Paris Hilton and different actors and actresses that carry them around. Yes, they're cute dogs. They're small but they think that they can take anyone on. I mean, I've seen my dogs at a dog park where I have to put them in the car because they were going to beat up everyone in the park. You're like, "Come on, what's going on?" You're carrying them under your arm, you're like, "Are you crazy, what's going on?" And it's like, "Let me back out there! Let me back out there!"
Crave Online: Do you relate to Papi's strong romantic streak? Do you have a strong romantic streak?
George Lopez: You know, I don't. It's funny because when I did the voice, Disney people would say, "God, he's so romantic. He's so great." And I'm like, "You know that's me, right?" And even when I saw the movie, I was like, "That is more romance than I thought I put in it." Just the vulnerability. I think all the years of rejection from women, I finally found an outlet to let it go, where it wasn't me personally, but it was a dog. When I recorded the first time, I recorded with Drew, the first hour and a half. I only was supposed to have one recording session, that was it. That was just one hour, or one hour and a half, two hours, and that was it for me. But when her and I got together and I sang to her and she rejected me, and everybody was in there like, "Awww..." they were like, "Hey, we might have something here." So when they started to see that, and then every time they prepared it, everywhere this dog has a camera on him, they tried to get me to put a line in there. A lot of them work. A lot of them work and it created a part where the dog was kind of invisible in the middle of the movie, and now he became the dog that runs through the whole film.
Crave Online: So how much time did you spend recording the part, and how much did it change depending on what the dog did?
George Lopez: You know what was great was in the beginning, I recorded for an hour and a half, and then we got that whole kind of romantic thing where I sang to Drew Barrymore through Plexiglas. That's really the only way I should be close to Drew Barrymore, is through plastic. Then when I started to record and they started to shoot in Mexico and they were bringing back footage and you got a chance to see what was going on, I went and asked them if I could re-record a lot of the stuff from the beginning, because I didn't have a reference point. I said to Raja the director, "Can I re-record this?" And he's like, "It's fine." And I'm like, "To me, it seemed a little flat, so I wanted to re-do it and bump it up a little bit." So it was great to be able to do that. I even saw him yesterday and said, "Can I go in there and re-record stuff?" And he's like, "No, there's 3,000 prints already."
Crave Online: I assume you don't dress up your dogs at all.
George Lopez: I do not but I've had dogs dressed up in my house. Here's the craziest thing. Our friends have a brown chihuahua that was a female, and we have our youngest chihuahua, which is a male. My wife and the other person's owner and the kids decided that it would be great if we had a chihuahua wedding in the backyard. I tried to get out of it, but I came home at the wrong time. They were just starting the wedding. So my smallest dog has a top hat on. They found a top hat. And they found a bowtie and a tuxedo shirt. So there he is, and they're holding them in their hand, and he's like, "What the hell do I have on?" Then the other dog had a wedding dress on, and they were going to marry them. My daughter was doing the services. But in the middle of the wedding, the mother-in-laws fought. The two dogs got in a fight in the backyard, the bride lost her dress in the middle of the ceremony, and the father went missing and nobody could find him. I thought, "I've been to this wedding!"
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