LOS ANGELES — If Hollywood buffs want to jog their memory about the exact proportions of the Mexican water tank where James Cameron shot "Titanic," Luis Reyes has the answer. If a Latina filmmaker seeks to brush up on her cinematic heritage, she can check out Reyes on TV critiquing Dolores del Rio's and J. Lo's most emblematic roles.
And if an #OscarsSoWhite activist demands to know why Charlton Heston — arguably the whitest actor in history — was cast in brownface to play a Mexican narcotics agent in "Touch of Evil," and why there remains a scandalous shortage of Latinos in leading-man roles, Reyes might reply that ... well, it's complicated.
Growing up in New York, the son of a Puerto Rican father and a Dominican mother, Reyes developed a lifelong liaison with darkened spaces. Decades later, he still can recount in granular detail the day that he saw "Planet of the Apes" at the Loews Capital on 52nd Street. He took in "Spartacus" at the DeMille on 7th Avenue at 47th. At his neighborhood theater, the Nemo (Broadway at West 110th Street), he rooted for John Wayne's Captain Jake Cutter in "The Comancheros," and he hooted at Jerry Lewis' Nutty Professor at the Loews Olympia on 107th Street.
