The director who changed everything for Andy Garcia: “I see him as the man on the mountain”
One indisputable fact about Taylor Sheridan taking over film and TV with his grizzly modern-day western fare is that he is getting the best out of some actors who many thought had faded away or hadn’t been seen in much for some time, one example being Andy Garcia and his current turn in season two of Landman.
Garcia actually made his debut as cartel boss Galliano at the end of the first season of the Paramount Plus show set in the oilfields of West Texas, and Garcia has spoken about the fact that he feels right at home opposite other former stars of 1990s cinema like Billy Bob Thornton.
And the 69-year-old has also said that he appreciates the fact that Sheridan brought him into the fold by creating the role specifically for him, which came about due to the show’s creator being a fan of an old Garcia movie called 8 Million Ways to Die from 1986, also starring Jeff Bridges.
Garcia, who had his major breakthrough in the classic 1987 mob drama The Untouchables alongside Robert De Niro and Kevin Costner, has worked under some of the very best directors in his time, but one in particular made a mark on him. Francis Ford Coppola was casting for The Godfather: Part III at the end of the ‘80s and included Garcia as Vincent Marcini, the son of Sonny Corleone, in a role that changed everything for the actor.
He said, “Francis inspires you to dream… (he) inspires you to go out and try things. That’s why he inspired a great director in his daughter, Sofia. He has that effect on you. I see [Coppola] as the man on the mountain you go to for advice and knowledge.”
Opinion is very mixed on the third Godfather movie, some think it shouldn’t have been made while others feel it a worthy final part in the trilogy with Garcia’s performance a highlight (although the same can’t be said of Sofia’s). Regardless, Garcia’s opinion of the director couldn’t be more glowing, crediting him with providing the inspiration for becoming a director himself.
He added, “He (Coppola) has done it for me. I’ve shown him movies, and he’s taken time out to sit in a cutting room for 48 hours straight, to talk about it philosophically, and why is that scene there, and why are you going there.” And of The Godfather: Part III, he said, “I went into that movie as an actor, and I came out of it a filmmaker.”
Garcia will be putting those skills to the test soon by directing an upcoming movie called Diamond that stars Brendan Fraser, Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman in a modern noir that tells the tale of a man with exceptional skills for solving crimes with a past that haunts him.
Coppola, meanwhile, now 86, has struggled with movie-making since he sank $120million of his own money into the ill-fated Megalopolis, the sci-fi drama starring Adam Driver that brought in less than $15m at the box office. It was a movie that took him almost 50 years to bring to fruition, with studios unwilling to finance the production on several occasions and the 9/11 attacks on New York causing more than 30 hours of footage to be scrapped.
