The Prospector (El Paso, Tex.), Vol. 47, No. 40, Ed. 1 Friday, February 20, 1981 Page: 10 of 12
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Page 10 - The Prospector - February 20, 1981
The Prospector
ENTERTAINMENT
ne on
Profile
El Pasoan gets big break in ‘The Border’
Bowie grad seeks acting career
by Allison Ring
Entertainment Editor
As many people know, the motion picture “The
Border” was filmed in and around El Paso, and it
brought a staff of hundreds to town, along with stars
Jack Nicholson, Warren Oates and Valerie Perrine.
The movie, produced under the auspices of
Universal Studios, pumped millions of dollars into El
Paso’s economy. “The Border” will be released this
summer, and the odds are good that it will be
nominated in several categories for film’s highest
honor: the Oscar.
Relatively few people know, however, that there is
a movie personality walking in our midst right here at
UT El Paso. His name is Adalberto Cortez, a Bowie
and El Paso Community College graduate and junior
business management major.
Adalberto got the acting bug in 1972, when he was
chosen to play a small part in the Steve McQueen-Ali
MacGraw hit, “The Getaway.”
He was just a little kid off the streets, but he liked
the famous people and the easy $20 he earned, and he
was on his way to an acting career.
Cortez studied acting at Bowie, where he and three
other students wrote and performed a play. Cortez
was also active in drama at EPCC, and plans to get
involved in future University drama productions.
When Adalberto heard in 1979 that another major
picture was to be made in El Paso, he was first in line
to apply for a part. Unfortunately, he had to wait six
weeks to be interviewed for a part, because the
Screen Actors Guild strike of 1980 delayed the
movie’s production schedule.
Adalberto’s good luck held out, and he landed the
part of a “Coyote,” a drug smuggler who also sneaks
people from Central America into the U.S.
The sequence featuring Cortez lasts about 30
minutes, qualifying him as an important character in
“The Border.”
Adalberto tai . about his role and about the dif-
ficulties he encountered:
“I smuggled people into America from
Guatemala, you know, I take their money and leave
them in the desert. We shot the scene near Cat-
tleman’s restaurant in Fabens.”
“Anyway, we are crossing the border, and I hear
the Border Patrol Jeep coming. I tell everyone to go
hide.”
Adalberto re-created the scene with arm gestures
and facial movement with a sparkle in his eyes as he
related his enviable acting experience.
“Then Harvey Keitel and Jack Nicholson find us
and begin to search everyone, but I run because I
don’t want to be searched. I fall over a rock, and
Nicholson handcuffs me and they slapped me
around,” Cortez continued, “And it really hurt, they
even drew blood out of the sides of my mouth.”
When they searched Adalberto, who is listed in the
movie credits as “The Doper,” they found a pound
of heroin taped to his chest. He was taken to jail,
where he is later murdered by an unknown assailant.
Asked about how that scene was made to look
realistic he said:
“Well, I get my throat cut. They base the make-up
Adalberto Cortez sizes up the people he is smuggling into the country in his role as a “Coyote.”
UT Paso student Adalberto Cortez gets into trou ble as the villain “Coyote” in the Universal
Picture “The Border,"’ which was filmed in El Paso.
on actual homicide photos, and believe me, it’s very
realistic.”
“They taped a strip of leather with raw meat and
other bloody stuff across my neck, then they cover it
with make-up. It took a couple of hours just to get
the cosmetic effect right.”
Even though Adalberto met a nasty death in “The
Border,” his memories of the people he met and
worked with are good. He especially liked getting to
know Jack Nicholson, whom he described as a
“crazy, funny guy,” and Elpedia Carillo, the fiery
Guatemalan actress who Nicholson falls in love with
in the film.
Cortez plans to move to California to pursue his
career in acting if “The Border” is nominated for
Academy Awards, but he is studying business just in
case his dreams don’t come true.
Adalberto, when asked what he bought with the
$3,640 he earned during his two-week film employ-
ment, said:
“I bought some new clothes, a 1976 Toronado,
and I fixed up my Low Rider.”
Asked if he had anything left. He just smiled that
brilliant smile, and we both broke out laughing.
There’s no business like show business.
KTEP commemorates black history month
KTEP-FM, the University of Texas at El Paso
public radio station, is presenting a series of pro-
grams focusing on the local Black community dur-
ing February, Black History Month.
The program of Feb.18 centered on “Black
Education in a Tri-Cultural, Bilingual Society,"
and “The Future of Black-American Studies.”
teacher at Riverside High School, and Marjorie
Lawson, lecturer at UT El Paso.
KTEP will conclude its special Black History
Month programming with a show featuring jazz,
history and poetry.
The series of specials began on Feb.4 with a look
at Black leadership in El Paso, with guest speakers
Rev. Johnnie Washington, Hank Sitgraves, Ray-
mond Cartwright and Iman Otis Kaleem Ali.
KTEP, which now features the only all-night jazz
show in El Paso, is proud to announce “Custom
Jazz,” with the futuristic jazz of Earth, Wind and
Fire, The Crusaders and many other artists. Tune
in to KTEP 88.5 FM from 1 a.m.-6 a.m. to hear
your favorite jazz music.
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University of Texas at El Paso. The Prospector (El Paso, Tex.), Vol. 47, No. 40, Ed. 1 Friday, February 20, 1981, newspaper, February 20, 1981; El Paso, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1625721/m1/10/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting University of Texas at El Paso.