His performance in the Godfather III may have made him as an actor, but it is the Cuban experience that has made him a man.
By Jessica Berens
From GQ-UK, 1996
It is fall. A thick fog seeps down the Strip like dry ice but does not conceal the fact that Los Angeles makes you laugh until you bleed. Joy, Wellness and Abundance are still being promised in La La Land. Those wishing yo give birth to their[ "Individual Universal Human" are using "ray attunement" to clear their karmas and remove their implants. But here in West Hollywood a woman has jumped off the roof of the Bel Age Hotel, and outside a nightclub on Sunset a man has been stabbed by boys with speed habits and "clone" phones.
There is a dangerous psychic syndrome, known as double-bind, where the language communicates love but the behaviour indicates hate; it has been known to initiate schizophrenia in children. The state knows about double-bind, and the citizens sure are schizoid. At this moment in time, Los Angeles' Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights is keeping a record of incidents related to Proposition 187, the initiative that denies undocumented immigrants access to public services. This has resulted in a rash of civil rights violations against legal residents and, in particular, Latinos who have been subject to abuse and assault.
Meanwhile, the LA Times speaks of "the alienation and prejudice that divide American-born Latino kids and their immigrant classmates". Subtle segregation starts in high school where the "parvenus", struggling against a language barrier, are beaten up and ridiculed. Virginia, thirteen, is Mexican but was born in Los Angeles. "We're American," she says, "and they're not." Ernesto, sixteen, has recently arrived from Guatemala. "We come from war-torn countries," he says. "Our families have struggled to come here for a better future and then we still have to struggle with people who are from our own race." The Cuban writer (and exile) Guillermo Cabrera Infante distrusts the term Latin America. "It is curious," he has-written, "that this continent of such different countries carries a name as if it were a single pais. What does Cuba have to do with Mexico?"
Andy Garcia is Cuban, and this is important. His father, Rene, was a lawyer and a prosperous farmer until 1959, when another lawyer entered Havana. Fidel Castro, described by Infante as "a beastly, power-hungry egomaniac who was the bearded white double of Idi Amin", made himself Commander-in-Chief, Secretary General of the Party and President for Life. In 1961, shortly after the American-backed attack on the Bay of Pigs, and shortly before the Cuban missile crisis, the President for Life announced that Cuba was a Marxist-Leninist state and its citizens would relinquish the rights of their children to that state. Rene fled with his wife, Amelie, and three children, of whom Andres Arturo Garcia-Menendez, aged five, was the youngest. They went, like many Cubans, to live in Miami. Garcia's early days in America echo those of Ernesto from Guatemala. "There was an obvious language barrier," he has said. "In school, I was very isolated. I was in another world; it was a bad dream, a nightmare. I was in a fight almost every day. I'd be sitting around and someone would say: 'Do you wanna borrow my crayons?' And I'd beat him up just in case. I was the smallest kid in school and I was a bully."
He studied improvisational theatre under the aegis of Florida International University then went to Hollywood, where he became a waiter. In the eyes of the world he was that musing stereotype - the Spanish waiter. He was a waiter, among many other things, for seven years. Film producers told him to change his name and change his teeth; agents asked him to take off his shirt; and directors wanted him to play sleazy Hispanic coke dealers. His father, who had taken a series of menial jobs to sustain the family's new life and had managed to do so without embitterment, taught his son the importance of persistence. "Never take a step backwards," he said. "Not even to gain momentum."
Now Andy Garcia, 40, is a Movie Star. In 1992, he was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Vincent Mancini in The Godfather III. This year, his name was placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He can do what he likes. Andy Garcia projects a calm carapace, but there is something angry about him. Evidence suggests that when he uses his power, it is connected with the displacement that will never leave him. His motives often hark back to that tropical island, which has, over the last 30 years, emitted over 1 million of its natives - beginning with the poets and professors and ending, in 1980, with the mental patients and ex-convicts who were among the 100,000 people who arrived on Florida beaches in small boats and without papers. At one level, Garcia will choose projects where he knows that the director will allow him the freedom to argue his ground, because that right - the right of basic expression - is the very thing for which his parents sacrificed everything. At another, he will provide practical help to fellow exiles. Four years ago, he searched out a Cuban musician named Cachao, who had received no credit for creating the mambo. Garcia made a documentary about Cachao and the mad polyrhythms which had mesmerised the actor when, as a teenager, he crept through the back door of Miami clubs. He has since produced two Cachao albums, one of which won a Grammy. The 77-year-old maestro has appeared on The David Letterman Show and played Radio City. Cachao, the real Mambo King, has finally received his crown and earned enough money to ease his last years. "It is incredible," Cachao said at the end of one of his concerts, "for such a young man to take so much responsibility for maintaining our roots."
Garcia's connection with his heritage is further revealed in the forthcoming Steal Big/Steal Little, a film directed by Andrew Davis in which Garcia plays twin brothers Ruben and Robbie. The former, as the good papa, oversees a Santa Barbara estate farmed by a crowd of grinning South Americans who divide their time between picking lemons and running away from the immigration authorities. Davis, having directed The Fugitive and Under Siege, has announced that he now wishes to make movies about "positive messages and cultural identities" rather than violence. Initially there were problems raising finance for Steal Big/Steal Little, but these were overcome by Garcia's commitment to the project. The actor was lured by a storyline in which Latin and Hispanic characters received a treatment that avoided stereotype, and the themes of which illuminated his own belief that those who are responsible for closing the doors to immigration are those who should be voted out of office - for most of the voters were once immigrants themselves.
It is no coincidence that Ruben is an avocado farmer, as was Garcia's own father. "I liked what the movie stood for," he says. "Ruben is completely selfless, and has a philosophical way of looking at things. He is very important to me" This year, Garcia steps again into an element of the Hispanic legend when he plays Lorca, the Spanish poet assassinated by fascist goons in 1936. Lorca visited Cuba, thought it was a paradise and influenced its poetry. But, according to Cabrera Infante, Lorca "never knew the obscene night that ended with sleeping beggars and dead rich kids". It is easy to wonder whether Garcia shares this idealised vision of his homeland, that it has become, to use again Infante's words, "a child's choice - as some sort of melancholy rainbow that was splendid but shone beyond the blue horizon".
"I'm realistically in contact with the time that I did spend in Cuba," Garcia says. "I know what that was about. I haven't been there since, but I speak to people about it - I know their struggles. I am very in tune with the Cuban experience. I'd go back there in two seconds, but it is not so easy. First of all, there's no place to live. But if there was a chance to become involved in the reconstruction of Cuba - a country which needs tremendous help then that would be a part of my life, and my family would have to respect that."
Andy Garcia is sitting in a suite at the Universal Hilton. He has brown eyes and is smoking a cigar whose phallic circumference forces his mouth to gulp like a goldfish. Soon after he was born, a cyst. was removed from his shoulder. His mother told him that it had a face and hair and everything. That it was, in fact, an undeveloped twin.
"You seem blessed with mental health," I say.
"Its a front," he smiles.
It is early, but his face has settled, as has his hair. Anyone who has seen his films will know that his hair does not show off; it has never sprung into Ace Ventura chicken wings or coiled into a Sean Penn Seventies'joke. It was calm when a Japanese man ecapitated him in Black Rain, and it suffered no derangement when he was hoiking Dustin Hoffman off a ledge in Accidental Hero. Andy Garcia tends to look like Andy Garcia. He first came to attention in 1985, when he played a Spanish policeman in Phillip Borsos' The Mean Season. This was followed by the part of a coke dealer in Hal Ashby's 8 Million Ways to Die. Since that time, he has played quite a number of policemen (The Untouchables, Internal Affairs, Jennifer 8), one codependent New Man (When a Man Loves a Woman) and one chain-smoking jour nalist (Dead Again).
He is not, as one trade magazine put it, "A-list bankable". But this is tempered by the fact that his interests deviate from the value system that arranges places in the Hollywood hierarchy. He is not impressed by those who arrive with entourages ("they are not usually very good actors"), and he does not really care if he is famous or not ("I don't have any aspiration to be on the cover of a maga zine"). He is fairly bored by a process which requires him to answer the same questions again and again and to have yet another photograph taken when "frankly, I have already had millions of photographs taken of me by very great photographers - why can't they use those?"
Equilibrium is a rather rare commodity in Hollywood, -so rare that those who posscess it can stand out like emotional freaks. Stability has become like a cosmetic disorder: there is much pressure to remove it because it is unfashionable and therefore unsightly. Garcia is aware of the pressure to air angst ("I reveal my most inner self on the screen, how much more public do you want me to be?"), but, in the end, he was a good kid. Never took drugs. Respected his parents. He met his wife Marivi in a bar in Miami and proposed to her the same night. They live in the San Fernando valley, have been happily married for thirteen years, and have three daughters - Dominik, twelve; Daniella, seven; and Alessandra, four. Marivi, who Garcia says is "brutally honest", has given him inner peace while Dominik (who appears in Steal Big/Steal Little), is too bright. "She is busting my chops on a daily basis." He turns down films if they are on location and would take him away from his family for too long. He does the school runs, not because he is asked to, but because: "I know that time is gonna go. Kids, when they look back on their relationship with you, they want to see that you were there. There are gonna be times in a kid's life when you just don't measure up - you're gonna blow up at them, say the wrong thing. But when they look at the arc of that relationship, it's the overall example that's going to win. The only way is by physical presence. Give them a kiss, ask them how they are feeling. Be there."
Hollywood family life has long been described in tearful autobiographies written by emotionally damaged adults who, as children, appeared in endearing publicity photographs with rictus sardonicus, Christmas tree and proud, film-star pop. Hollywood family life has long been the victim of the late-night tap on the trailer door. Garcia looks like an old-fashioned matinee idol, he associates with the most beautiful women in the world, and he does not appear to have been constructed by some kind of special effects department. There is blood. There is a groin. There must have been tempting moments.
Have you ever had to fight anyone off?
"Yeah."
How?
"I say, 'Thank you very much. I'm flattered, but I'm married.'"
As simple as that?
"I have a greater responsibility. My family is more important to me. There is no secret to it; it's just a matter of where your priorities are."
Do you flirt?
"Flirtation is part of human dialogue..."
Nowadays, scripts tend to come to Garcia, and he is "picky". The director is an important part of the equation; he steers away from egomaniacs - and he knows one when he sees one. He looks for "generosity, passion and a willingness to collaborate". He needs to be able to have "creative arguments" with a person who knows how to treat his fellow workers. "If a guy treats a group with respect, the group will follow him because they feel as if they are part of a team." "Andy is like a polygraph," says director Gary Fleder. "If he thinks something is rubblish, he'll say so. He will never do anything just in order to make you feel good. He is just gonna say what he thinks".
Now Garcia may reap cult kudos with Things to do in denver when you are dead. Quentin Tarantino's perverted offspring will doubtles be upon us for the next decase or so; Denver was develope before the release of Pulp Fiction, but has already been seen as the first of a batch of badseed sons. Written by Scott Rosenberg and directed by Gary Fleder, the plot revolves around an ensemble of chemically imbalanced characters who hav learnt no skill in the anger mangement department. Williams is wonderful as a humanised dum-dum bullet; Christopher Lloyd is a man suffering from leprosy; and Garcia himself is Jimmy the Saint, a former gangster forced back into assault and battery by a wheelchair-bound maniac played, as so very often, by Christopher Walken. Low-budget ($8 million), eccentric, black and clever, Denver is held together by Garcia, who weaves among this terrible team with convincing grace. One scene, in which Walken suggests that "The Saint" lies on the ground and sucks his dick, asks for a humiliation that is gruesome to watch and must have been hell to play. "That was a difficult scene even to read," Garcia confesses. "But if you have done the right prep and you are blessed by the acting gods called inspiration, it flows, then it sort of washes over you.
Denver is Gary Fleder's first feature film and, though he was grateful for Garcia's involvement (which helped to attract the rest of the stellar cast), he admits their working relationship was not always harmonious. "Andy and I work from two different points of view," says Fleder. "I like organisation and to work to a carefully designed film. Andy is much looser, he doesn't like being told where to stand. He is passionate, instinctive and impulsive - which is why he is emotionally dangerous on the screen."
There were what Garcia would call creative arguments and others would call rows, and sometimes these would be played out in front of the crew. Fleder felt that this not did not always help the "vibe" on the set, but that in the end this confrontational process gave the film an emotional centre that it may not otherwise have had. "It felt much colder on paper," he says.
Fleder thinks Garcia is a remarkable man, not just for the passion that he invokes, or his obsessive loyalty to other actors, but for the simple success he has wrought in his personal life. "Many Hollywood actors paint this picture of a happy family life and they are full of shit," says Fleder. "But with Andy it is not a facade. He could go to parties - he is Andy Garcia - but he is almost a recluse. The schedule of Denver had to end on a specific date because he had to get the children back to school. He is what he says he is."