Andy Garcia
speaker
217 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Andy Garcia’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
That brings up a real quick thing. I was doing a movie with the Sidney Lumetri director called Night Falls on Manhattan. And Richard Dreyfuss was in the film. We were co-stars in the film. And he came up one day and he said, what is it with you and grandmothers? And I go, what are you talking about? He goes, I mentioned I was doing a movie to my grandmother and she almost fainted.
I'm serious. And I said, wow, my fan base is going to disappear pretty soon.
Well, yeah, people assimilate to the culture. But I must say, I think there is a sense of pride that's passed down through generations because
extraordinary uh journey that our parents went through you know and bringing us you know exile is a very intense thing it's not like immigration by choice is one thing uh exile is you know it is a choice you make but it's fleeing the country that for political reasons you know repression indoctrination
Fear of your own life So it's a the fact that they brought us here It's a testament to their their our greatest generation in terms of us Cubans, you know and they'll always will be and if it wasn't for that journey and that that courage and I wouldn't be talking to you right now.
No, no doubt. But there's an example and a work ethic that they bestowed upon us, you know. Just by observation. It wasn't like, this is what you have to do. Just watch them. Watch them get up and work seven days a week and build a life for your family and slowly progress in what they're doing. A lot of people that came over
they even had to abandon their professions like my father never practiced law again my mother was an english teacher she never taught english again she worked as a secretary and then worked with my father once he started a business but you know he worked like many exiles and young immigrants to the country you start a you know janitorial service that's the first job that's always available doctors lawyers they become plumbers they become they can make a boat out of tires and wood whatever the job what's available tomorrow
And usually you run into someone that you know and say, I'm looking for work, I need work. And they go, well, I got work at the Fountain Blue. Come over and then you're in, you know, mobbing floors or whatever. And then you begin, but at least you pay the rent at 84th and Harding at the motel so you can keep your family under one roof, you know.
Well, we were political exiles. We were fleeing a repressive, you know, dictatorial regime that was taking not only all everything that you've worked for in your life and all your freedoms, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, but also they took possessions of the rights to your children. So, you know, there was no longer public schooling. It was in state indoctrination of your children.
And that's why a lot of people early on said, you know, We're out of here. You're not going to take, you know, the rights to our children because indoctrination was the way, you know, you know, Viva Fidel, Papa Fidel gives you everything. Pray to Fidel. Don't pray to your God. The churches were closed down, you know, like the synagogues were closed down.
So that's when most people, if they could get out at that time, said, you can take our house, you can take our business, you can nationalize everything, you can take our money because you changed the monetary standards, but you're not going to take our children's minds. And that was mostly the early exiles left for that reason.
You know, right. It's so nice that people say, oh, Cuba is a paradise or Cuba. Why is nobody going over that way? You know? Yeah. And, you know, and then that time there was the Pedro Pan Exodus where 14,000 unaccompanied children were sent because the parents, they couldn't get the parents out, but they would forge passports through the archdiocese and Monsignor Walsh and people in Cuba.
And they would send their children maybe never to see them again. That's how desperate they were. You know, it pisses you off still. Oh, yeah. You know, they've stolen the freedom of the Cuban people, you know, for now 64 years. I think it's like 64 years.
My mother and the kids, we came first with my with my father's mother. So with my mother, my brother, my sister and my grandmother on my father's side. My father came about a month and a half later, but we got to the airport and my mother bought a dime to call her brother that was always over here, and my godfather who was also here. He called one or the other.
I think it was their brother who had come a little earlier. And they were living right there in that area, on 84th and Harding, their little apartment. And we got there and went into a little motel, and you pay by the week. Sometimes she was able to scrounge that week's payment. And then my father came, and he was going to go back again trying to...
and do the best he can to get some things out of Cuba. And we got a call from my mother's grandparents, who were not out yet, saying, don't come back. They've come to look for you, you know. So we began. We began. I know his first job, it was at Defount Blue for a while and janitorial. And he just began. We just began to build our life, you know. And we stayed in that area, North Beach.
From there, you know, after a little bit, we gathered a little money. We got into a little bit bigger place. as opposed to just a little motel efficiency. Then we moved to an area called Biscayne, just outside of Biscayne Point, around Crespi Park, Crespi Boulevard. It's a little park. And we started going to school, Biscayne Elementary, then Nautilus Junior High, and then Miami Beach Senior High.
And then by then, I moved to Norman the Isle, And from Normandy Isle, I went to college at Miami Dade South for two years, and then I went to FIU for the final.
In those days, it was a two-year school. And I went into the theater department there, and then from there I came to La La Land.
Well, we lived in, like I said, in 84th and Harding. The motel is still there. It's called the Duchess. It's a little pink, kind of pinkish, little U-shaped. And they have this little efficiency. You walk into a little living room, a little bedroom, and a little, like, what do they call it? What do they call it? A kitchenette kind of thing. A hot plate and whatever it was.
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