By Wally Macaulay
From 99x Press, 1997
With a name as potentially limiting for an actor as Andy Garcia, it's quite a testament to his abilities that he has managed if not to escape ethnic typecasting altogether, then at least to diversify between characters of Italian descent (The Untouchables, his Oscar-nominated role in The Godfather, Part III) or of Hispanic (Stand and Deliver, A Show of Force), as well as vaguely specified Americans (Hero, When a Man Loves a Woman).
The latest case in point (an interesting one indeed): director Sidney Lumet's "new" drama Night Falls on Manhattan, in which the Cuba-born Garcia plays a guy named Sean Casey, of all things. In fact, the film was originally scheduled for release last fall. (According to the press kit, co-star Ian Holm is "soon to be seen" in Big Night!) Lumet reshot the ending of the movie three times, and for his part, Garcia has finished three other pictures since he made this one. It probably goes without saying that he'll be playing an Italian in Hoodlum (as Lucky Luciano, opposite Laurence Fishburne and Tim Roth), Hispanic in Death in Granada (as slain poet Federico Garcia Lorca), and vaguely specified American in Desperate Measures (with Michael Keaton, for director Barbet Schroeder).
In Night Falls, Sean Casey's an assistant district attorney whose father (Holm) is a city street cop by the good Irish name of Liam. (As if hedging the bet in casting Garcia in the first place, we discover in a gratuitous cemetery scene that Sean's mother's maiden name was Nunez.) The plot finds Casey father and son at the center of a headline-making court case.
Garcia insists it was the character of Sean Casey that attracted him to the project -- that, plus the opportunity to work with the director of such greats as Dog Day Afternoon and Network, and notwithstanding his most recent duds, A Stranger Among Us and Guilty as Sin. "I'm a big fan of Sidney's, and I really admire his body of work," the actor acknowledges during an interview last month in Los Angeles.
"I also admire Sean Casey and what he aspires to, his idealism and how it confronts him in the worst possible way," Garcia continues. "He comes from this place of purity, and he's standing up for something he believes in, even though it turns out that he has to break that ethical high-ground to protect the one person he thought was incorruptible."
That ethical aspect hooked Garcia; the ethnic aspect didn't even occur to him. "I'm certainly not trying to avoid ethnic roles or anything," he notes. "I just really try to avoid bad scripts, that's all. I don't mind the ethnic thing. I do mind mediocre, stereotypical writing. That's what bothers me. I'll play Latino characters for the rest of my life if they're great parts. What's so bad about playing Federico Lorca, you know?"
It's an alternative to the rest of the summer blockbusters, but while Night Falls on Manhattan is no Stranger Among Us, it is somewhat derivative of other Lumet films. His gritty cop drama Prince of the City comes to mind. Lena Olin (as part of the opposing defense team in the trial) might as well be Charlotte Rampling from The Verdict, too, once she develops into Garcia's love interest.
Nevertheless, the actor cites the movie among the most personally satisfying experiences of his career, among such others as Godfather III ("for being chosen to be a part of that legacy"), 8 Million Ways to Die ("for the chance to work with Hal Ashby"), and Steal Big, Steal Little, the box-office flop he also wrote and produced. "It's hard to find the absolute, definitive favorite. They all have a place in my heart, but for different reasons," he says.
One of those reasons isn't necessarily success at the box-office, either. (Anyone remember his last movie, Things to do in Denver When You're Dead?) "At this point in my life, whether or not my pictures make a lot of money doesn't determine whether the experience was meaningful to me personally," admits Garcia, 41.
"In a lot of cases, the fact that I'm in a movie at all is success enough for me," he adds with a chuckle. "I'm blessed that people still want to hire me and pay me really good money to do this. I certainly have no complaints. There are tougher ways to make a living, that's for sure."
What's not sure is Garcia's next project. He may direct a screen version of Cuban author Guillermo Cabrera Infante's The Lost City. An epic about a young Cuban man forced to flee his homeland during the `60s revolution, Garcia describes the story as "cathartic." "It's about healing the wounds of not being able to grow up in the country you were born in." (He was 5 when he and his family left their native Havana when Castro came to power.)
The project would obviously mean a lot to him, and friends like Robert Duvall, Isabella Rossellini, Kevin Spacey and Edward James Olmos have already agreed to appear in it. "I've been busy acting in these other films, and that's kept me from going ahead with it," Garcia explains. "If I'm going to direct it, that's going to take a year or so out of my life.That's not an easy decision to make. I'll need to plan a year around my family."
A Cuban second, an actor third, Garcia says he's first a husband to his wife of 15 years, and a father to three young daughters.