Progress Overtakes Movie, or Does It?

By Steve Lopez

April 28, 2004 12 AM PT

“On May 14th,” said the billboard above a Sav-on Drugs in Hollywood, “there will be no Mexicans in California.”

It sounded like maybe Pete Wilson was plotting a return to politics. But in fact, the ad was a promo for an upcoming movie that’s pro-immigrant.

As you might have read last week, someone missed the point and lodged a complaint, so the billboard above the Sav-on came down. But since then, more ads are popping up around town, including one in Spanish.

“En Catorce de Mayo, Los Gringos Van a Llorar.”

On May 14, the Gringos Are Going to Cry.

OK, I thought. I’ll bite. And so I called for an advance copy of “A Day Without a Mexican,” a 97-minute film by director/writer Sergio Arau and his wife, actress/writer Yareli Arizmendi. Both were born in Mexico and now live in Hollywood.

The movie opens with a blond woman named Mary Jo Quintana waking up alone in bed and wondering where her husband has disappeared to.

“And then I heard on the news that all the Mexicans were gone,” she says in great distress. “And my husband is a Mexican.”

All across California, everyone of Latino descent is disappearing without a trace in the over-the-top mockumentary. This creates one crisis after another in the home of state Sen. Stephen Abercrombie III, who looks strikingly like former California Gov. Pete Wilson.

Abercrombie was elected to office by whipping up anti-immigrant fervor. Now the senator’s Latina maid doesn’t show up for work, and he is completely unprepared for the tragic consequences.

“There’s no fresh orange juice,” the suffering senator informs his wife.

“There’s no clean clothes,” she whines, practically in tears. “There’s no lunch.”

This is a senator who in one scene scolds his Stepford wife for hiring illegal immigrants for odd jobs.

“If we use regular Mexicans,” his wife snaps, “it’s going to cost a lot more.”

But alas, there are no more Mexicans or Guatemalans or Hondurans available for hire, regular or otherwise. A state of emergency is declared and the U.S. military is called in to figure out how nearly half of California’s residents could suddenly vanish into thin air.

Meanwhile, state commerce grinds to a halt, streets are trash-strewn because there’s no one to sweep them, leaf blowers lie abandoned, fruit goes unpicked, carwash customers riot.

“This is a real disaster,” says a university policy wag named Abdul Hassan. “Forget about parking your cars and valets. Forget about getting a glass of water at restaurants. Forget about restaurants.”

Later, pounding a point that is by then quite obvious, Hassan says:

“I’m really afraid for this state, because the more we start figuring out how dependent we are on Latinos, the more desperate people are going to get.”

OK, I get it.

But wouldn’t the film have been more appropriate in the days of Wilson and Proposition 187? A 187 redux just failed to qualify for the November ballot because backers couldn’t get enough signatures.

Arau and Arizmendi said Prop. 187 was in fact the inspiration for the movie, which appeared several years ago as a short. The infamous proposition, approved by voters and shot down by courts, is history, Arizmendi agreed. But she got nervous when Wilson reappeared as one of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s advisors.

“It’s not a law this film is addressing, it’s an attitude,” she said. “Turn on talk radio and you hear that the problem in the U.S., and California in particular, is these illegal aliens who are coming and taking our jobs.”

Reality, unfortunately, is always more complicated than what you get from talk radio or the movies.

Southern California is fast approaching A Day Without Breathable Air, A Day Without a Swimmable Ocean, and A Day Without a Chance Any New Resident Can Afford a House.

All of those would make good movies, too, and people should be able to talk about those subjects without being called bigots.

But then again, we do have a few bigots on the loose, including those who regularly encourage me to return to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Uruguay, etc. So it’s a kick to see a satire in which the Dodgers have to cancel games because without Latinos they can’t field a team.

Meanwhile, as Border Patrol agents wonder what to do with their days, Sen. Abercrombie makes a quivering appeal to the missing Mexicans.

“More than ever, we need to be the great California familia and bring back our Hispanic brothers and sisters,” he says in a statewide TV address.

Arizmendi, who was in the film “Like Water For Chocolate,” plays the one remaining Mexican in California. She courageously donates her body so scientists can solve the mystery. At the last minute, however, she finds out she’s actually an Armenian who was raised by Mexicans.

Don’t miss the sequel.

A Day Without Armenians.

Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday.