George Lopez

DogFIGHTS and Mexican tough guys worked great together in the hard-boiled drama "Amores Perros" a few years ago. Now Disney is using those elements plus several more family-friendly ones in its new release, "Beverly Hills Chihuahua." Will the combination make viewers sit up and beg for more? Andy Garcia, George Lopez and Eddie "Piolin" Sotelo sat down recently to talk about making the dramatic comedy, which opened Friday.

Cruising down the fairway in an electric cart, George Lopez is behind the wheel fidgeting with not one, not two, but three mobile phones. He grabs a sleek Sliver and punches up his favorite iTunes play list. All of a sudden he's swaying to the Eagles' classic "Hotel California." "Hope you don't mind," Lopez tells me. "This is how I relax." Do I mind?

George Lopez, the first Latino to lead a television series of his own into syndication, isn't laughing. "TV just became really, really white again," he said. ABC has "unceremoniously" canceled his self-titled comedy, which over the years chronicled his personal life from his sad childhood growing up with an abusive grandmother to his alcoholism and kidney transplant.

YES, THE TV PILOT I wrote this year was rejected while a sitcom version of the Geico caveman commercials made the fall schedule. I get how that's embarrassing. And I understand why every sitcom writer I know, entertainment journalist I've read and George Lopez (who said, upon being canceled by ABC, "A Chicano can't be on TV but a caveman can?") has focused so much of their dismay about this week's "upfronts" -- when networks unveil their fall lineups -- on "Cavemen."

When we first started production of "The George Lopez Show" in 2002, my producer Frank Pace told me he had hired a dialogue coach named Marty Nedboy. I didn't think twice about it until Pace added, "Look, you need to trust me on this one. Marty can't be explained. He needs to be experienced." My trust was tested right off when Nedboy walked on the stage. He was already past his 70th birthday and had what he would refer to as a "bum arm," having contracted polio as an infant.

Latinos may comprise 15% of the U.S. population, but white America is still absolutely clueless about them, says Phillip Rodriguez, a senior fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication at USC. "Hispanics are not black or white," says Rodriguez, director of the documentary "Brown Is the New Green: George Lopez and the American Dream," which aired on PBS in September and will be screened this evening at Bovard Auditorium at USC.

The George Lopez comedy train is full speed ahead: His CD "American Mexican" just got a Grammy nod, his six-night Nokia Theatre gig runs through New Year's Eve, he's got four movies coming out next year, and he's hosting the annual Bob Hope Desert Classic in Rancho Mirage next month. Lopez, 46, lives in Toluca Lake with wife, Ann, and daughter, Mayan. LET THERE BE PORK Every Mexican living in L.A. needs a good Mexican restaurant. For me, it's Carrillo's in San Fernando.

WHEN Univision Communications said recently that it was putting itself on the auction block, the announcement was seen as a milestone. With an asking price of $11 billion, a Univision sale would almost certainly rank as the biggest deal in the history of Hispanic media in the U.S. -- a testament, as if one were needed, to the economic clout of the nation's fastest-growing ethnic group.

It got a face lift last year when the Classic Club became the host course, and now the Bob Hope tournament is getting a name change. It will be known as the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic Hosted by George Lopez. The announcement will be made today at Warner Bros. Studios on the set of "George Lopez." Lopez, an actor and comedian, has been a regular in the celebrity field at the Hope and jumped at the chance to lend his name to the tournament that began in 1960 as the Palm Springs Golf Classic.

Comedian George Lopez was announced Wednesday as grand marshal of this year's Hollywood Christmas Parade. The 75th annual parade, which travels a 2.3-mile route along Hollywood Boulevard, Vine Street and Sunset Boulevard, will be broadcast live on KTLA-TV Channel 5 on Nov. 26. And, for the first time, the parade also will have an honorary grand marshal: TV host Regis Philbin, who also is 75.