Andy Garcia
Andy Garcia sets up a shot on The Lost City.

When Andy Garcia was five years old he and his family left their homeland of Cuba during the rise of Fidel Castro’s Marxist regime. Starting a new life in America, like many exiles the Garcia family settled in Miami, where Andy began acting. Though he would go on to become one of the most talented actors of his generation, Garcia has never forgotten where he came from. Rising up the Hollywood totem pole, he crafted a way to generate projects that were close to his heart. He created his own record label, CineSon, producing Grammy-nominated albums from Cuban musician “Cachao” Lopez. But his most personal project was to make a movie that highlights the forgotten culture of a forgotten time in his homeland.

In 1990, Garcia was given the opportunity to make his dream project at Paramount. Enlisting legendary Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante to write the screenplay, the two created an epic story set in 1950s Havana. The Lost City follows three brothers as they take different paths during the revolution to overtake the country’s dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Garcia plays Fico, the oldest brother who turns a blind eye to the changes around him as he runs a successful nightclub. But as the revolution escalates and his two brothers take sides, Fico is forced to get involved as he tries to keep the family together.

Bringing The Lost City to life was a 16-year struggle for Garcia (who along with directing and starring is the producer and did the film’s score). He finally raised $9 million from private investors in 2004—just enough for a 35-day shoot in the Dominican Republic. He also called in favors to friends Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman to star. After showing the film at last year’s Telluride Film Festival, Magnolia Pictures picked up the film for distribution and will release it on April 28 th.

Garcia took time out from working on the film’s soundtrack to speak with MM about bringing his passion project to the screen and directing his first feature.

Jason Guerrasio (MM): You started this process in 1990; tell me how the project formed through the years.

Andy Garcia (AG): The project was developed at Paramount initially when Frank Mancuso, Sr. was the president. They approached me and asked if I wanted to do something and I told them I had this idea for a story about Havana at the turn of the revolution and they said “Great! Find a writer.” I approached Mr. Infante and I was blessed that he had the enthusiasm to write the screenplay. Then Mr. Mancuso left Paramount and, from 1999 to now, I could never really get anyone within the normal avenues of distribution in America to support the project financially. So I just kept struggling to find the money and then finally I had the patronage of Johnny Lopez and Tom Gores, who are two investors who are not in the film business, who believed in the project and believed in what I was trying to do.

MM: Do you feel people’s political views made finding financing more difficult?

AG: You never know what people say behind closed doors. You only get, “No, thank you. This is not for us.” You just don’t know what the situation is. The movie has political content because it was a political time, but the movie is presented in a balanced way. It talks about actual historical things that affected a family. It has a point of view from each side, people who commit themselves to the new ideology and the people who are not prepared to do so and in those two different points of view comes separation. But we have experienced resistance from people who don’t want to see the darker side of the Che Guevara character and things like that, but that’s a historical fact; he was not a saint. If they don’t want to accept that or are naive to that then they need to do a little bit more research.

MM: Did you research that time in Cuba and the political situation?

AG: I’ve been collecting and studying Cuban music since I was a child and the movie was always motivated as an homage to the music of the culture and of that time period. Also, being an exile, I’ve always been very interested and nostalgic about what happened in my country at that time and what propelled my parents to come here to the United States. That’s a subject matter that’s very dear to my heart and very important to me, so I’ve taken it upon myself to research the history of my country and specifically that time period. In the case of this particular family [in the movie], the Fellove family, what’s happening to the them is a microcosm of what’s happening in the country, where families are divided and family members are lost and divided. To me it always came back to be a story which is a state of mind for most exiles around the world—the idea of impossible love. You can love her but you can’t be with her.

MM: Speak a little about your involvement with the music in the film.

AG: Pieces of music would motivate sequences for me—they would motivate scenes for Mr. Infante—and so it was always motivating the movie from the get-go. The movie consists of three elements of music: There are the original “needle drops” as we call them, which are original recordings from the era that you use as part of the soundtrack, then we have songs that I’ve recorded for the music over the last 10 years with myself and a number of songs that I recorded with Cachao. And then the third element is the original score of the film, which I composed.

MM: Were you shooting Ocean’s Twelve at the same time as you were shooting The Lost City?

AG: At the beginning of their schedule I worked for a week and did my scenes. They left for Europe and I left for the Dominican Republic and as they were shooting their movie I was shooting my movie. Then I came back to shoot the last scene of Ocean’s Twelve and then we flew back the last two days on my movie and shot the scenes with myself, Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman.

MM: How did you get them involved?

AG: Well, Bill is a golf partner and we casually spoke about the desire to work with one another and Dustin said, “Okay I’ll do it, but you gotta go to my daughter’s wedding.” So I went to the wedding on Saturday, we flew out on Sunday, we worked on his two scenes on the plane ride over there, we shot Monday and Tuesday and we all went home. So I was blessed by their support. Obviously everybody was working for peanuts and they just really believed in what I was trying to do.

MM: What’s the feedback been like?

AG: It’s been incredible. At Telluride we had to show the movie six times—we were only scheduled to show it twice—and the interesting thing was there were no Hispanics or Cubans there. We also showed it at the Miami Film Festival and obviously there was more of a contingency of Cuban-Americans, so the movie had an additional emotional level.

The movie has proven to me that it plays for everybody. These are universal themes we are talking about. When you have to leave the thing you most cherish in your life, say goodbye to your family and maybe never see them again, these are things that happen to people all over the world. Immigration and exile is a constant situation in all countries—and especially in America. When we were doing the HD transfer of the film the gentleman who was doing the transfer was Greek and when he saw the movie he was sobbing and I said, ‘What happened?’ and he said, “This happened to me and my brother.” So these themes are classic open sores that we carry with us as a society. It also introduces you to a world and a culture that you’ve never been introduced to before.

MM: It’s been a 16-year journey to get to this point. Do you feel relieved? Is there any anxiety for what the future holds for the film?

AG: I don’t have any anxieties at all because the fact that the movie exists is success enough already for me. I know the movie will carve its own journey and it’s more of a curiosity now. To me it’s a movie that’s dedicated to Mr. Infante—who died in 2005—and to a culture that I adore and to a generation of people like my parents who sacrificed themselves to bring their children to a country where they can be free and think for themselves and pursue their dreams

MM: What does the future hold for you as a director?

AG: I’ve been offered movies to direct prior to The Lost City and I’ve been offered some since. But as a director it’s an all-consuming thing, so you have to clean the slate to attack something else. I’m still working on the soundtrack so I’m not through yet. But I have several personal projects that I do want to direct that I’ve been developing over the years and will continue to focus on those.

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