Andy Garcia Serves up Love and Laughs on “City Island”

Built around secrets that family members keep from one another, Raymond de Felitta’s script of “City Island” delivers sweeping emotions and hearty laughs. The film focuses on the Rizzos, a dysfunctional family of four (or perhaps a typical one, depending on your perspective), who shares a home in the former fishing village in the Bronx, NY, known as City Island.

Vince Rizzo, played by Andy Garcia, is a corrections officer who has grandiose dreams of becoming an actor, so he takes some classes at night, masking them as poker games. Naturally his wife Joyce (Julianna Margulies) thinks he’s out cavorting with another woman, while their daughter (Andy’s real-life daughter Dominik Garcia-Lardo) has become a college dropout – and a stripper. Meanwhile their son Vince Jr. (Ezra Miller) obsesses over large women and fantasies of feeding them, while spending every free moment possible surfing the Internet for images of overweight women. While many siblings may not have dropped trou to wrap themselves around a pole or have a thing for large women, it is easy to identify with the family dynamics and importance of dreams we hold dear for many years.

While in Manhattan to promote the film, the handsome Andy Garcia sat down with CelebrityEverything.com to discuss all aspects of the film, his own family dynamics and films to come.

 Q: The food looked great on CITY ISLAND; did you have any favorite restaurants there?

Andy: Yes, we ate at a little at the local seafood restaurants- the Shrimp Box was close to where we were and an Italian place and the City Island Diner with the old-fashioned counters and Lickity Splits, the Harlem Yacht Club and the Lobster House – they’re all very good and get a lot of traffic on the weekends there. Years ago when I was taken there by Tito Puente –where the Shrimp Box is now used to be his restaurant called Tito Puente. I went with him and Johnny Pacheco and we had a little jam session there and we ate at the restaurant. 

Q: How did the locals take to you filming there?

A: Fantastic – they were fantastic. I actually shot all the images at the beginning of the film, pulling people off the streets saying, “Hey do you mind if I shoot this?” By the fourth or fifth setup, I was the pied piper with people following me saying, “Hey can I be in the movie?” (laughs)

Q: I loved how realistic the family was. What did you think when you read the script?

A: Reminded you of home, did it? (laughs) I felt the script was beautifully crafted and it was all there – it was emotional and funny. So I saw the potential for this film and knew it would attract great actors because the writing was so good. The characters were so unique and so quirky.

Q: What they’re going through is bizarre, but the feelings are very relatable.

A: Yes, it’s universal for many themes. For Vince, my character, everybody has a dream. Most people have dreams they don’t want to share because they’re too embarrassed to share them because people will say, “You want to do what?” Most people have that inside of them – those hidden desires, and if you ever pursue them or have the courage to tell someone you want to pursue them and do you make it public – all those things are relatable.

Q: How about that Marlon Brando impression you did?

A: It wasn’t in the original script. It was set up in the script that on the wall in his corrections office he had posters of New York iconic actors and directors and I said to Raymond (De Felitta, the writer/director), ‘I don’t think this guy would share that with his fellow inmates. And I think it’s got to be so painfully private, and it should be focused on one person, Brando. There are a lot of gods, but only one Zeus, you know what I mean? It’s got to be Brando. Then my son can discover Brando tapes and in the audition out of nervousness, he doesn’t even realize he starts breaking into the only thing he considers good acting, which is Marlon Brando. And he said, “I hope it works, but we’ll try it.”

Q: Have you had any memorable auditions in your life you can share?

A: The good ones aren’t funny. But there were some that have been talked about. I went into one and the lady said, “We’re looking for someone very strong for this movie. Would you mind taking your shirt off?” And this was before I even read, so I responded, “You first!” And that audition didn’t go very well. There is a stereotypical cliché that there is an impatience and an insensitivity that all actors suffer through. And there is that classic cliché when you start off, “To be or not to…” and they say, “Thank you!” But it’s just the nature of it.

One other time I was about to start an audition and the phone rang. The woman picked up the phone, looked at me and said, “Go ahead.” She wanted to talk on the phone as I was auditioning. I said, “No, I’ll give you 30 seconds to finish your call and if you’re not done by then I’m gone.” She said, “Can I call you back?” But she didn’t give me a part. It’s a very difficult thing to put yourself through. I admire anyone who even considers doing it.

Q: Like your daughter Dominik. How was it working with her? Was it different?

A: Yes, I admire her very much for putting herself in these situations. I’ve been watching her act since she was five, and we worked together three times before. Of course I’m proud of her for being there, but when we’re there, she’s a fellow actor. She’s doing her thing. We talk about acting, as I would talk about it with any actor, but she has her process, she’s a well-trained actress and knows what she’s doing and we support each other as any actors would support each other.

Q: You produced the movie too – how was that experience?

A: It’s not as romantic as you think. When you sign up on that level, especially when you have a movie that has a good chance of ending up as an independent film, you have to go out there and raise the money any way you can. It’s a commitment. It’s not like when you read a script and say, “I love this part, let me know when you start.” And then you go off and play golf. This is deeper – you’re challenging yourself to raise the money and you don’t want to let yourself down. I’ve done six of these as an independent producer. This one took 2 ½ years – I was the first one to step into it, but I didn’t do it alone. And I had another one, “Lost City” that took me 16 years to get made, so it’s a haunting thing, because once you commit to it, you’re carrying a monkey on your back until you’ve actually achieved it.

Q: Some would you describe your film family as dysfunctional, but do you consider it dysfunctional?

A: Every family is dysfunctional. It’s the very nature of having four or five people in a family – it’s impossible for everybody to be in sync. Even the most proper families – you think, ‘Oh these people are very well behaved,’ and they’re like time bombs waiting to go off. Certain cultures are more boisterous than others, but the dynamic is the same. It may manifest itself differently, but everyone can recognize a similar thing.

Q: Did you have any trepidation telling your parents you wanted to be an actor?

A: Trepidation would be an appropriate word. When I told them I was moving to Los Angeles, my mother was encouraging but my father was very concerned. It’s not like me and Dominik – I know the business and she grew up in it and I know the realities of it. He had no relationship or understanding of the business and they thought only Clark Gable made a living as an actor, so there was no perspective on it. I was going to a city by myself, no one was waiting for me at the airport and no one gave a shit if I was coming or going, but here we are. And my father saw me be successful, which brought him a lot of peace.

Q: Did winning the Audience Award at the Tribeca Film Festival become a turning point for this film?

A: Definitely. For these kinds of movies that are made without distribution, the festivals become a very important launching pad for it. It peaks interest to distributors, but every distributor passed on it except this one, Anchor Bay, and we were lucky. The movie has a real potential for commerce, like “Little Miss Sunshine” and “The Hurt Locker,” which has been around for like four years already, and it just got distribution two years ago. It’s hard because there are very few divisions left in the distribution system that cater to these films – Fox Searchlight does it very well, but the Warner Independents and Miramax are gone. Look at what movies win the Oscars and win all this money, yet studios don’t have a division that knows how to do it. It’s a very difficult time to sell a movie right now.

Q: What inspired you to take on Hemmingway’s story?

A: “Hemmingway and Fuentes” is a picture I wrote about the relationship between Earnest Hemmingway and the captain of his boat, Gregorio Fuentes when he wrote THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA. Sir Anthony Hopkins has attached himself to the project and I’m in it.

I was born in Cuba and I’m also a passionate fisherman and over the years I’ve gotten to know many fisherman and captains and they shared stories of when Hemmingway fished in Cuba with me and I started to imagine what their relationship was like – it was over 20 years, which lasted longer than his marriages and it spawned his greatest literary work. So I wanted to tell the story of the metaphor of a man struggling like Santiago to prove himself one last time and Hemmingway struggling to prove himself again as a writer, because his previous works were critical failures. That’s the essence of the story.

It’s an independent film and has been passed on by distributors. I have a personal conviction about it, and I know the movie will get made. Come hell or high water, and if God gives me health, this movie will get made. It’s a beautiful script and people will want to see that story.