From: SHOW, Monday, February 22, 1999

By: BARRY KOLTNOW: The Orange County Register

Director Richard Wenk hid his camera crew on the top of a double-deck bus parked across the street. Andy Garcia was fitted with a hidden microphone and dressed to look the part of a ticket scalper, which he plays in the new film "Just the Ticket," which opens Friday.

Armed with a fistful of real orchestra-seat tickets to the hit Broadway musicals "Cats" and "Chicago," the actor took his position in the middle of Shubert Alley in New York City and began scalping tickets to unsuspecting customers while cameras rolled.

He made a few quick sales. After all, he had the hot ticket in town, and there was no shortage of potential customers. With some, the selling was easy. With others, there was intense, but playful, haggling.

One would think that someone would have noticed that the man they were haggling with was an Oscar-nominated movie star, but New Yorkers don't like to look people in the eye when they're on the street, so Garcia was free to strut his stuff for the movie.

Finally, three young women walked by, glancing casually at the sidewalk negotiations going on in front of the theater. The trio made it a few steps farther before stopping in their tracks and doing a double take.

They walked back to the crowd surrounding the actor and gave Garcia a long, hard look. They shook their heads in unison, as if they had just seen a lost kitten.

"Oh, Andy," one of the women said in a voice aching with pity.

"You're a great actor; you don't need to be doing this." To which a smiling, winking Garcia replied, "You don't know how much I need this." NOT IN IT FOR THE MONEY

Garcia, 42, has just showed the Howie Mandel talk-show audience a side of himself few knew existed. That would be the funny side.

Most people know Garcia only as the intense, dark-eyed actor of "Godfather III," "Internal Affairs" and "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead. " They don't realize that Garcia started in comedy when he first moved to Los Angeles from Miami in search of a show-business career.

The comedy didn't click, of course, but dramatic acting did, and that has kept him busy for the last 15 years.

In his dressing room after the appearance on Mandel's show _ an appearance in which he got more laughs than the host - Garcia sank back in a sofa and reflected on a career that has been rewarding in terms of job satisfaction but hardly one that is clogged with blockbusters.

That few of his films have broken box-office records is of little concern to the actor.

"This tends to be my tragic flaw," he said with a sigh. "I want all my movies to be commercial, but I don't choose movies for that reason. All you have to do is look at the choices I've made to appreciate that.

"But that doesn't mean I have anything against commercial movies. Show me a commercial movie and I'll do it. But it's been my experience that when I do try to do a commercial film, it winds up making less money than the small films I make.

"Listen, my career has been blessed. I have no regrets. I have never done a movie I didn't want to do, nor have I done any movie in which I was unhappy with the outcome. The process is why I do this, not the box-office receipts. Just because a film was the victim of bad marketing or had distribution troubles doesn't mean the process of making it was a bad experience.

"The box office doesn't affect the experience of making the movie. You can't chase those kinds of movies; when you do chase those kinds of movies, you can end up in a lot of terrible films." Garcia seems pretty firm about this subject of box office vs. job satisfaction. The only chink in the armor appears when he starts to discuss "Just the Ticket. " The $7 million film was 20 years in the making, and Garcia, who was involved at least half that time, admits that it would have happened sooner if he had proven to be a bigger box-office star.

"We had to raise the money ourselves on this film, and that probably wouldn't have happened if I had had a few $200 million movies on my resume. I'm sure we would have been financed immediately in that case. So I guess there are some advantages to being that kind of an actor.

"But I'm just not that kind of actor." ANDY GETS REAL IN N.Y.

The Cuban-born Garcia, whose attorney father moved the family to Miami when Andy was 5, discovered acting at Florida International University. While still a student, he gave up his childhood dream of a pro basketball career for a slightly more realistic adult dream of being an actor.

After moving to L.A., he landed small TV roles in shows (look for him in the premiere episode of "Hill Street Blues"), and finally made it to the big screen in 1983 with "Blue Skies Again." Three years later, Hollywood took notice of him in "8 Million Ways to Die. " One year later, he filled the screen in "The Untouchables." The Oscar nomination was for "Godfather III," and the day he was nominated, he was too busy to celebrate. He was already working on "Just the Ticket." Wenk wrote the script for "Just the Ticket," a hard-edge romantic comedy that is based on a real-life ticket scalper Wenk knew in New York City. In Los Angeles, Wenk and Garcia became friends, playing basketball on a neighborhood court but never working together.

"I only knew Andy casually in those days," Wenk said. "He knew about my script, but I never thought of Andy for this character.

Sure, I knew he could play the street hustler part of the character, but I didn't see him as the funny, vulnerable guy that this character is when he's not acting tough. But the more I got to know Andy, the more I saw that other side." Eventually, Garcia joined Wenk's decade-long quest to make a film out of this script, which was turned down flat by at least three studios and as many premium cable channels.

On the day Garcia was nominated, he and Wenk had planned to shoot some test footage outside the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood.

The footage of Garcia scalping tickets to "Les Miz" would be used later as a sales tool to raise money for the film.

"We could only afford the equipment for one day and then, at 10 minutes to 6 in the morning, somebody told me that Andy had just gotten nominated. I couldn't believe it; I was happy for him, but I was crushed for my movie. I figured he would be busy with interviews all day.

"But then, at 6 on the dot, he showed up and stayed for 15 hours. I'll never forget his loyalty." Garcia continued to push for the film, raising money and eventually persuading Andie McDowell to co-star with him.