By Brian Argabright
The 830 Times
After months of waiting, Del Rioans will finally get to take center stage on HBO Max.
The episode of the popular “We’re Here” series that was filmed this summer in Del Rio drops Monday, Oct. 25 at 9 p.m., but residents can catch a sneak peek of the episode Saturday when it will be screened at the Dr. Alfredo Guiterrez Amphitheater beginning at 6 p.m. Doors open at 5:30 p.m.
The synopsis for the episode, titled “Del Rio, Texas,” is as follows: “Pride Month proves the perfect opportunity for Bob, Eureka, and Shangela to visit the border town of Del Rio, Texas. There, the queens celebrate gay identifying mayor Bruno Lozano’s positive impact on the community, Joey’s identity quest, and Esael’s coming out journey.”
Director Peter LoGreco, who has been a part of every “We’re Here” episode, explained that the episode itself was shot over the course of eight days, but the outreach team was in town for a couple of days to find the perfect locations to showcase Del Rio.
“We have a team of two or three folks whose job it is to find communities that would be interesting to work in and to find participants in the show. We were really interested in a border town because of the challenges and stories cross cultural communities of a border town present. They really interesting are an interesting slice of America,” LoGreco said. “Of course, Del Rio’s mayor is openly gay, and that came up in the research relatively quickly. But the more we read and the more we learned about this place the more talk grew about Del Rio as a community in general we could feature.”
It was through word of mouth that the participants in the show were discovered, but LoGreco said the final group that took part wasn’t the only group that was being looked at for the show.
“We had a number of participants interested in working with us initially, but they backed out due to a variety of reasons. Things like just the logistics of making it work, family disappointment, coming out publicly … it was just too great a risk for them. Of course we respected that, but at that point we had already committed to Del Rio and had been working on it for quite a while,” LoGreco said.
The show was filmed in June, during one of the hottest times of the year. It’s a point made by the drag queens at the final performance and during their different adventures during the show. The show does paint Del Rio in an overall good light, which was something of a surprise to LoGreco, who had his own thoughts of Del Rio before stepping foot here.
“Some of California’s border towns I’m familiar with, so I had my own impressions coming in. That also comes from those towns’ chaotic energy and that little underbelly of illicit activity. Sort of a you have to watch your back mentality. I went in kind of expecting Del Rio to have a little bit of an edge and I expected to be regarded as an outsider coming into this place. Like I would have no business being there and the people would notice and wonder what you’re doing there.
“When we went and visited in April we found a place that was much more of a sleepy, small town. It was not intimidating at all, but quite the opposite. The people were very nice. It felt a little isolated, kind of quiet, like maybe the city had seen better days. We walked out on Main Street on a weekday afternoon and there was not a lot going on, so we found places where people actually gathered and found a vibrant community with folks trying to interact with us. The people were generally very enthusiastic and engaged. It was a great combination. It was welcoming and still had a very small town vibe. On the night of the show it was tremendously well attended and it was great to see so many people who turned out. I left with a true fondness for the community,” LoGreco said.
That’s not to say there weren’t some people who disagreed with the show or the lifestyles it portrayed. LoGreco said they were made aware of a letter distributed by pastors of 13 local churches that were not in favor the show, citing not just the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that would put the community at risk, but, as was written in the letter, “We feel that our city officials were not elected for the purpose of promoting such events as these that are contrary to what has been established by God.”
At least one local eatery used memes on social media to mock the show, especially Lozano, and when confronted by members of the LGBTQ+ community, responded with another image of a phallic shaped pizza. Those posts have since been removed.
Another controversial aspect of the show that got folks talking was an early photo of the shows drag queens dressed in custom-made football uniforms. While the uniforms were not official Del Rio Rams uniforms the colors and use of a ram logo alluded to the team, which is the Del Rio High School male mascot.
LoGreco said the use of the uniforms was deliberate because Rams football was something many people in town said was a part of Del Rio and connected with the public.
The uniforms appear in the episode’s opening scenes culminating in a humorous moment outside of Walter Levermann Ram Stadium. However, LoGreco said more was actually planned.
“We did plan to do something that was more Del Rio Rams football centric. We were trying to get access to the stadium and field. We had been in contact with the school district and then all of a sudden it went very quiet. We eventually got a one-sentence response that basically said, ‘Your request at this time has been denied.’ I can’t say one way or another if that was an example of pushback or just something more bureaucratic. There are so many issues in border towns that can get into culturally sensitive areas, and we didn’t want to offend anyone,” LoGreco said.
This is the second season for “We’re Here.” After a wildly successful first season, the specter of COVID delayed the start of the second season and created kind of a more subdued atmosphere in the first two episodes. LoGreco said the Del Rio episode was the one that finally felt like things were beginning to turn around energy-wise.
“(Del Rio) was among the most fun and most gratifying of all 14 episodes that we’ve done. I say that for a couple of reasons. We all really did have a great experience with the time that we spent there and because of the show and how fun that show was and how wild and exuberant the audience we had was. It was one of the bigger shows we did this season. Just to be able to be outside and bring together that many people for a show … that was a moment for us. It felt like we got a return to a sense of normalcy for the first time in a long time. This show was a return to that vibe. We had to be careful with some of the first episodes we shot this season, but in Del Rio it felt like the community was really enjoying it and loving it and that was gratifying to us,” LoGreco said.
There was a sort of a reunion show at the end of the first season of “We’re Here,” that updated people as to some of the stories told throughout the season. LoGreco said something similar is planned for season two, but he said he wasn’t ready to reveal anything yet.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to find some way to revisit the stories that we told (in Del Rio) at the end of the season,” LoGreco said.
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Contact the author at drnhsports@gmail.com
