Andy Garcia's passion for music and film is forever rooted in tropical rhythms

Story by Liz Balmaseda

It feels as if we could be anywhere on this stunningly crisp Sunday. Havana, even. The turquoise flats of Biscayne Bay dissolve to a magical blur of latitudes, creating a timeless set design, a perfect place for an Antillean flashback.

Except for the occasional waterbike slicing the waves, there are no jarring markers of this decade. It could be the 1950s all over again.

Here, in this capsule of salt and sea, is the place Andy Garcia loves best.

``You asked me to take you to my favorite place in Miami. Well, it's out there,'' he says, sweeping a hand southward, toward the bay, as he lounges aboard his godfather's boat, a stately 53-foot Hatteras fishing yacht, the Andora.

``When I come to town I hardly ever go out there,'' he says, nodding toward the skyline of the city where he grew up as the quintessential Cuban exile kid of the '60s, where he collected bottles for pennies, swept the floors of his father's warehouse after school, played hoops amid the palms and seagrapes, nabbed mullet with a homemade harpoon, discovered the hypnotic, transformative power of the congas, of the stage, of the sultry-eyed woman who would become his wife.

On another day, we might have gone to the actor's favorite fried shrimp joint, La Camaronera, where you eat standing up, belly to the counter. But it is simply too gorgeous an afternoon to squander on Flagler Street.

Once we have left the mansion-fringed waterway it is easy to see why ``out there'' is the most appropriate backdrop to study the elusive Garcia. This is his habitat, an island adrift between shores.

Somewhere back on the mainland, some Miami-born ``cubanito'' surely is puffing on his first cigar, or swigging a rum-soaked mojito in his grandpa's guayabera shirt, imagining Cuba in sepia shades of black and white. Oh, he can maneuver enough Calle Ocho codewords to pass, but he knows only the veneer of Cuba. Put it this way: Next to Celia Cruz, the ``Azucar!'' queen, such a guy would be Nutrasweet.

But Andy Garcia, the native son, was thoroughly Cuban before Cuban was chic. What separates him from the posers is memory -- he actually remembers Havana. More than that, he has processed the sequences of his complex childhood, the pristine days on his father's avocado farm, the flashbacks of war, his family's stark reversal of fortunes, the poignant beginnings in exile. He is the real deal.

Coming home

As his Hollywood career churns, taking diverse, unscripted turns, the 42-year-old Garcia eases into the summer of his life more secure than ever about who he is. The starkly handsome actor, whose powerfully still presence makes the screen come alive, captured audiences in a wide range of roles: The Godfather III, for which he earned an Academy Award nomination, The Untouchables, Internal Affairs, Black Rain, Hoodlum, Hero, and so on. But contrary to the beliefs of the Hollywood-obsessed, Garcia is so much more than a Godfather-in-waiting. He commands a roots-inspired enterprise that indulges all his whimsies, from acting to filmmaking to songwriting and producing.

On this day, he is wrapping up a weekend trip to Miami to promote his latest film, Just the Ticket, the story of an eccentric, love-struck ticket scalper and his fancy-footed moves to win back his business and his girlfriend (played by Andie MacDowell).

In true Renaissance-man mode, Garcia not only starred in the film, he produced it for $7 million, composed a good deal of the music, played the congas and bongos and sang some of the vocals. For the soundtrack, he also recruited an eclectic posse, including the legendary Cuban bassist Cachao, Miami's favorite roots rocker Nil Lara -- he does a rollicking version of Berry Gordy's Money (That's What I Want) -- and even his middle daughter, the sweet-voiced, 11-year-old Daniella Garcia-Lorido, who sings Amazing Grace a cappella.

But plugging this film, which took eight years to make, is not the only reason Garcia stopped in Miami, where his extended family still lives. He is also building a vacation home, on an island just off Miami. (That's all the ultra-private star will say about the location.) It is an island-style villa with Cuban tile floors, vast terraces and a barrel-tile roof.

Even in its unfinished state, the house reflects Garcia's nostalgia for the homeland he left in 1961, when he was 5 years old. And the trees destined for his garden -- the palms, papayas and avocados -- bear roots that are both tangible and figurative. Take the Russell avocado, for instance. This is the American name for the Garcia No. 1 avocado tree that once thrived on the family farm in Bejucal, near Havana. In their youth, the actor's late father, Rene, and godfather, Andy, would sell the seeds of the distinctive, gourd-shaped fruit to visiting farmers from Homestead.

To Garcia, this is no ordinary avocado tree. It is a symbol of his father's toil, his family's fleeting prosperity. It is a symbol of the farmer he might have been if not for the revolution. It is also an unmistakable fragment of his memories.

``It's interesting, what I remember: My father's boot with red clay caked around its heel. He wore Ropers, low-slung boots with a flat heel. I've always remembered him standing under an avocado tree, wearing those boots. One day not long ago I saw an old picture that confirmed this memory of him, in those boots, under a tree,'' Garcia says in a voice that rises and fades like the bay breezes.

Just then an old DC-3 lumbers overhead on takeoff.

``Mira,'' he says, gazing skyward, ``just like the kind that take off from Havana.''

Ghosts of Havana

Indeed. It's as if the heavens have hung out all the right props for him today. He pauses and returns to his memories.

``I guess this is where all the yearning comes from. I remember playing in the red dirt, racing old go-carts. You know the kind with a lever you had to pump up and down to make you go. I remember poinciana trees.''

He also remembers shivering under a bed as warplanes strafed the capital during the Bay of Pigs invasion. He was barely 5.

The ghosts of old Havana swirl against the fading skyline of Miami. Garcia slips a small, Arturo Fuente cigar from his shirt pocket and contemplates the waters ahead. He is a man of quiet intensity, direct in approach, gentle in language. He is famously allergic to the press, yet he is as disarming as an old friend. He can identify every tiny key in this bay, and all the great spots along the flats to catch tarpon, bonefish, and permit. Far from the film reels of Hollywood, Garcia is quite at home among the fishing reels of South Florida. As proof, there is a picture displayed in the cabin below of the actor standing beside his godfather, a quick-witted, 71-year-old produce businessman also named Andy Garcia, holding a 12-pound bonefish.

``Andy's dad would spend the mornings on the farm and then go work in his law office in his guayabera and his briefcase,'' offers the godfather from the helm. ``We grew up together, as brothers. He was big, jovial man. Everybody called him El Alcalde (the mayor).''

In a near whisper, he adds: ``His father would have been a great actor.''

The younger Garcia beams. His connection to all things Cuban begins and ends with his father. Even in his movies, the actor subtly pays homage to the late patriarch, wearing his old pearl tie pin or his old Lions Club lapel pin from Cuba.

Rene Garcia, who died in 1993, was a charismatic, larger-than-life man who possessed great oratory skills and a deep work ethic. He would make Andy, his youngest child, take the bus after school, from Miami Beach to downtown Miami, to the family-owned warehouse, Rogar Trading. The boy would get there minutes before closing time, as his parents packed up to leave for the day. Still, as the others waited by the car, Andy would sweep the floors. Then he would climb in the car with everyone else and go back home, back to Miami Beach.

That's where the family landed when they arrived from Cuba, in a tiny apartment at 85th Street and Collins Avenue. Garcia's mother, Amelie, remembers the family's first pieces of furniture in exile.

``We got them from the street, and my daughter Tessi painted them,'' she recalls on a later day when we chat in Tessi Garcia's Coral Gables interior-design office.

Tessi, oldest of three and caretaker of brothers Rene and Andy, remembers the tumult of the early days.

``We went from all that -- the land, the animals, the ballet, the club, the ocean, the sports competitions -- to an efficiency on Miami Beach. Overnight,'' she recalls.

On the family's first Christmas in this country, there was no money for presents. But, magically, a family friend came to the rescue on Christmas Eve -- she offered a collie pup from her dog's new litter. Amelie still remembers the ecstatic faces of her children, Tessi, Rene and little Andy, when the puppy, ``King,'' came dashing out from under the bed.

What Andy loved best about his new life was spending Sundays at the neighborhood beach.

``That was exile beach. People were working six days a week, but Sundays everybody would get together, sit on lawn chairs and listen to music. I loved growing up there,'' says Garcia. His memories come in nonsequential fragments.

``They had matinees on Lincoln Road and on 41st Street. We used to go in the summer. I loved all the early Bond flicks,'' he says, turning to his godfather.

``I remember you took me to the opening weekend of Cleopatra.''

Corleone's devotion

The senior Garcia nods: ``That was a big night, going out to the movies.''

Those early days engendered a kind of family bonding that has guided the actor's life, as a son, a brother, a husband and father. Family is sacred, more sacred than art. Garcia has a Corleone's devotion to his clan. When he is not working, he is away from the celeb-lights, safe within his cocoon, blissfully surrounded by all the women of his life: Marivi, his wife of nearly 17 years; their three daughters, Dominik, 15, Daniella, 11, and Alessandra, 7; a red dachshund named Lucy and a black cat, Bianca.

He learned this devotion at the dinner table, listening to his grandfather, Arturo Menendez, recite Cuban sayings, dicharachos, out of Diario Las Americas. Then the family gathered in the living room to watch the novela, Simplemente Maria, and sort out the warehouse merchandise, the membrane-thin, nylon ``11-11'' socks favored by older exiles.

As the business grew, the family moved to larger quarters, from North Beach to Crespi Park to Normandy Isle. Andy attended Biscayne Elementary, then Nautilus Junior High, then Miami Beach High.

In many ways, he was your typical American kid, playing basketball, falling asleep to Motown each night, hanging out at the Royal Castle with the neighborhood boys, getting dragged back home in the late night by his protective older brother, Rene. But something set Andy apart, even from other Cuban-born boys of his generation, those who experienced the usual roots epiphanies in their mid-20s. He was just 11 or 12 when he heard the call of the congas. He would roam the aisles at Do Re Mi Records, flipping through old Cuban LPs. Mongo Santamaria. Benny More. Fajardo.

``Collecting them began as a guessing game,'' he remembers. ``I'd ask the owner, `Is this any good?' And he'd say, `Oh, that's Fajardo. He's the master. 

One particularly eye-catching album would foreshadow one of the most spectacular artistic ventures of his adulthood. It was Descargas en Miniatura, (Miniature Jam Sessions), by the prolific Cuban bassist Israel ``Cachao'' Lopez, one of the original mambo kings. More than 25 years later, Garcia would deliver Cachao from exile obscurity, producing two volumes of all-new master sessions. The first would win a Grammy, three years before Ry Cooder's Buena Vista Social Club swept the acclaim, amid a retro-chic Havana wave.

Garcia's musical passions predate his memories. His mother still imagines him as a spiky-haired rugrat drumming on her coffee table in Havana, singing a popular conga, his tiny voice punctuating the song on the radio, ``La pachanga!''

Later, as a 13-year-old 'hood rat, he witnessed the Cuban jazz performance that sealed his love for the congas. When he heard percussionist Mongo Santamaria was playing at Johnny's, a dark, little neighborhood bar at Collins and 71st Street, he tried to slip in unnoticed.

``The bouncer took one look at us and said, `Get outta here,  recalls Garcia. He and his buddies then tried the back entrance. ``It was closed. But after a few moments, the door magically opened and the bouncer said, `All right, come in.' He led us to a booth, and -- I'll never forget this -- reached up and unscrewed the lightbulb, and said, `What do you boys want to drink?' Big pause. `I mean, Coca-Cola or ginger ale?'

``I'll never forget Mongo was getting ready to do his second set. The first song of that set was Watermelon Man.''

The music fueled an artistic flame that was beginning to intensify. Soon, he was taking part in community plays. It seemed a natural path for the son of the eloquent Rene and Amelie, a former schoolteacher who had dabbled in the theater. She played Pooh-Bah in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado in 1941.

A generation away, Andy would make his acting debut in the rotunda of the North Beach amphitheater. He sang Mr. Bojangles at the 10th Street auditorium on South Beach, and later starred in weekly amateur nights at the Big Five Club in Westchester. Between business classes in college, he would take acting lessons and dutifully research his characters for campus plays at Miami-Dade Community College and Florida International University.

``I had no idea he was seriously studying drama,'' says his mother, who had grown accustomed to the musical strains and conga rolls spilling out of Andy's room.

But at graduation time, all the music stopped.

``And that's that''

``I thought, `Hmmm, something's happened to this canary,  Amelie says. ``He seemed so sad, so sickly. We even had to take him to the doctor.''

Andy describes this as a great turning point of his life.

``I felt as if I had a virus in my stomach. I felt physically ill, as if I had an ulcer. It came from a yearning to be an actor. I knew, deep inside, that the only thing that would heal this malaise was to follow my instincts, to explore this desire. It picked me -- I didn't pick it.''

Amelie: ``One day we were in the car, on the expressway, and I turned to him and said, `Please, son, tell me what is wrong.' I could see tears in his eyes. He was supposed to go into business with his father, but it was so obvious he didn't want a career in business. He turned to me and said, `Mami, I want my real, real, real career. I want to be an actor in Hollywood. And if you believe in me, you'll support me.'

``I looked at my son and said, `Andy, you have earned your wings. Now fly. And if you ever break your wings, my son, come back to the nest. 

Amid the emotion, reality set in. The mother said: ``Now, we have to go tell your father.''

When Rene Garcia saw his wife and son return to the warehouse so quickly, he thought they had been in an accident.

``No, but get ready,'' Amelie cleared her throat. ``Here comes the bomb: Your son, Andy, is going to Hollywood to be an actor. And that's that.''

Within days, Andy had settled into a first-floor, storefront apartment and into the life of a struggling actor. His friend, the Miami-raised actor Steven Bauer, had found easy work in Hollywood and urged him to come join him. But Andy would have no such initial luck. Instead, he worked every kind of odd job while taking acting classes and waiting for his break. In the meantime, he returned to Miami to marry Marivi, the girl he fell in love with at first sight years earlier, at a disco in Coconut Grove.

The break finally came with the role of Lieutenant Ray Martinez in The Mean Season, a film shot in Miami.

``After Mean Season came out, I got a call from a TV network asking if I would be interested in being in a series,'' he says, ``but I didn't want to. I wanted to make films. It was a big career decision at the time.''

Shortly thereafter, he managed a nearly impossible audition for Hal Ashby's 8 Million Ways to Die -- and got the part right away.

``From an industry point of view, that was the one that got me noticed. It got me the attention of Brian de Palma, who was doing The Untouchables.''

And the rest was a Hollywood wave that crested with an Oscar nomination for Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather III. It seemed as if Garcia would soar too high to ever return to the nest.

But something greater than Hollywood tethered his soul. It was evident on the night of the Academy Awards, when the actor's sickly father left his hospital bed and, with paramedics standing nearby, fulfilled his own dream: to accompany Andy to the Oscars.

And throughout the projects that followed, the love for Cuba always seemed to pull the actor back home. He embarked on an ambitious venture with the exiled novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante, a film project titled The Lost City. Now, having completed Just the Ticket and Swing Vote -- a TV drama to be aired within months on ABC, featuring the actor as a Supreme Court justice -- Garcia turns his sights to his dream project.

``It's about the owner of the Tropicana and his unrequited love for the widow of his brother. It is a metaphor for what happens to Havana, and to exile. Havana is a woman you could love, but only from afar,'' says Garcia of Cabrera Infante's screenplay, as the boat heads back to its dock.

Channeling spirits

His flight back home to Los Angeles is departing in a couple of hours. But before he goes, he stops at his godfather's piano. He begins to play a soft, Cuban lament, by Ernesto Lecuona. The piano is the vehicle for Garcia's deepest, unspoken bouts of nostalgia. Without a single lesson, Garcia sat at the keyboards one day seven years ago and taught himself to play, searching unfamiliar octaves for the haunting melodies of his childhood. Then, as if channeling Lecuona himself, he began to compose graceful danzones and, then, sweet mambos.

What Garcia didn't know was that he was simply playing echoes of a blurry period of his childhood, when his maternal grandmother played old Havana classics on the piano in the afternoon. She never played in exile.

``Just recently, my mother said, `You know, your grandmother used to play the piano for you. Didn't you know?  he says softly, holding a languid chord like a cherished memory, until it fades to a silent blue.

Liz Balmaseda is a Miami Herald columnist. You can reach her by e-mail at lbalmaseda@herald.com