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Tavis: I'm delighted to welcome the multi-talented Andy Garcia to this program. The actor-director-producer is also a Grammy nominee--that's right--Grammy nominee for a CD he put out last year featuring Latin artist Cachao. His latest film is 'Modigliani,' which has the honor of being the opening film at the Miami International Film Festival next week. He is both the film's star and executive producer. This guy's busy. Here now a scene from 'Modigliani.'

Amedeo: I carried her back full of love.

Crowd: I carried her back full of love.

Amedeo: But no one to share it with.

Crowd: But no one to share it with.

Amedeo: And then I thought of you.

Crowd: Aww.

Amedeo: All of you.

Crowd: Yeah!

Amedeo: Amore. Amore. Amore. We don't have to look any further. The future of art is in a woman's face.

Crowd: Aww.

Amedeo: Bella. Picasso!

Crowd: Picasso!

Amedeo: Tell me, Pablo, how do you make love to a cube?

All: Pablo! Pablo! Pablo! Pablo! Pablo! Pablo! Pablo!

Tavis: Andy Garcia, an honor to meet you.

Andy Garcia: Thank you, sir.

Tavis: Glad to have you on the program.

Andy: Thanks.

Tavis: I want to get to this music, but I don't want to jump too far and too fast away from that clip. For those who don't know Modigliani, who is he? Tell me the story.

Andy: Amedeo Modigliani was an Italian Jew, painter, a modernist. Died an early age, age of 35 in Paris, tragically. He was--suffered from tuberculosis all his life, uh, but he also abused himself all his life. So he sort of lived fast and died young. And, uh...died fairly an unknown painter, you know, outside of the circles of--of the inner circle of the modernists that were sort of pushing the envelope in Paris in the twenties.

Tavis: Mm-hmm.

Andy: But, uh, subsequent to his death, he obviously became one of the most reproduced and most collected painters in the world.

Tavis: Mm-hmm. One of the things I've always--we just met for the first time--one of the things I've always admired about your work is that you seem intent on stretching yourself, on doing a variety of work, on thinking and acting and creating characters outside of the box. I can't imagine that there were a bunch of people jumping up and down competing with you to play this particular character, never mind how great and brilliant his work has been.

Andy: Well, I don't know. I mean, I think it's a part that a lot of actors would covet, you know? Uh, I was fortunate that the director, Mick Davis, wanted me to do it. So it wasn't like I--he came to see me. Uh, but there weren't a lot of people trying to finance the movie, you know? It's a movie that was done independently for very little money. We shot it in Bucharest, Romania, where--we stretched the money a little bit, and, uh--so it is, uh--it is a very unique project and very beautifully done, but the part is an attractive part for an actor. There's no doubt about it. It's a privilege to play him. I mean...the arc of his life is rather extraordinary.

Tavis: You have your own production company, and everybody, I suspect, goes into establishing their own production company and, in your case, doing indie--independent--films for a variety of reasons. What's Andy Garcia's reason for dealing with what we all know are the challenges and struggles and uphill battles, oftentimes, of doing a small or independent film?

Andy: Well, you know, these are films that come my way or things that I've developed over the years that I'm interested in, you know, and it's really, uh--it's a home for my own personal project or projects that I get associated with. It's not really, uh--it's, uh--it's a hands-on kind of a situation. I mean, the projects that I produce, I'm really in, and I'm there on a daily basis all through the process of post-production and stuff, so it's really a home for my personal interests, you know? That includes music.

Tavis: Is that part of the deal, or you just love being in projects that you produce? When I say part of the deal, I mean that for people to finance it, Andy's got to be in it.

Andy: Well, at times they figure it helps a bit, you know, to get actors that have some sort of recognizability and, you know, marketability in the parts. It always helps the distributor. I mean, it helps you get the movies financed. For the subject matter, sometimes it gets a little testy, and they get worried. I mean, look at the movies that were nominated for Oscars this year. 4 out of the 5 movies are really independent films that all the studios had turned down. But, you know, if you're interested in something, you have to ask yourself what are you prepared to do, you know? And if you got to do it for a price--budgets never concern me. I think you can make a lot of movie for very little money. Most of the money is ill-spent on films anyway, and you can make, with the technology today, you can even make movies on a home DV-cam and cut it on your computer. And then up-convert it to a 35-millimeter print for very little money in the scope of things, you know? So I think the technology's giving the opportunity for people to make more and more films, you know, independently and at very low cost, which is great.

Tavis: What drives Andy Garcia to be more and to do more than just being an actor? I opened our show by saying that you do much more than just act these days.

Andy: Well, you know, it's just I have a creative bug. I'm interested in a lot of things, and I guess it's just my nature or how I was brought up or taught is that you sort of attack the things that you're interested in. And I can't control what people do outside, and whether they think of you for a part or not, but I can control how I spend my time creatively on a daily basis. And so I just get up in the morning and pursue the things that I'm interested in, which obviously includes making films, but also making music.

Tavis: I want to talk about the music in just a second. Let me stay with the film just for one more moment because you're working on a project now that you've been working on literally for, like, 16 years.

Andy: 16 years. Yeah.

Tavis: Tell me about that, and I want to talk about your coming to this country at age 5. Tell me about the film.

Andy: The film is called 'The Lost City,' and it's a movie that I've been wanting to make, I guess, all my life since I left Cuba when I was 5 1/2 years old. But it's been around 16 years since we started seeking money to finance the script, find a writer. And, obviously, in a 16-year period, everybody turns you down 4 or 5 times over. But eventually, you know, with the grace of the movie gods and the help of my agent, we were able to find funding independently outside of the business. And I was very blessed, you know? A gentleman by the name of Tom Gordson and Johnny Lopez stepped in and believed in the project and what I was trying to do. And very much like all these movies that were financed this year, you know, they were financed completely--basically somebody wrote a check. Same with 'Modigliani,' somebody wrote a check, and we went off to do it. And I have the support of great actors. Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman are in the picture with me.

Tavis: That doesn't hurt, does it?

Andy: No. We've got a great cast. Really fantastic. Tomas Milian, Steven Bauer, Ines Sastre. We have, really, a fantastic group of people that have come to bat for the film, and we're very proud of it.

Tavis: You went right past something that I want to go back to, as I intimated a moment ago. You came to this country from Cuba when you were 5 1/2. I guess, just days ago on this program, we had the director, whose name escapes me at the moment, producer of a film that just ran here on PBS about Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution. Talk to me from a very personal point of view if you can about what it means for you as an actor, how your acting, your choices have been influenced by your family, by your circumstances coming here to this country out of Cuba at age 5.

Andy: Well, everything that I do is informed by who I am and what my sensibilities are. Same with you and any human being, so obviously my choices in what I feel about life and my point of view on things is infused with how I was educated and how I was brought up and what I've discovered up until this day, and that's the journey that we're on. So I find my culture is my strength, you know? And I'm lucky that I was able to leave Cuba into a free society where I could pursue my dream, or else I wouldn't be here talking to you. Unfortunately, I had to leave, and my parents gave me the opportunity to come. You know, they wanted me to have those civil liberties that weren't afforded in Cuba and they're still not afforded in Cuba. And so, through their sacrifice, I've had a bi-cultural upbringing. And I'm very much as much a part of the American culture as I am my Cuban culture. I never abandoned Cuba, and I was blessed to grow up in the American society. And I know it as well as any natural-born citizen, and I love it as much as any natural-born citizen or maybe even more so because of what it has afforded me and all Cuban exiles, really.

Tavis: I don't want to get too political here. What's your sense of what's gonna happen in that country in the coming years? Castro's getting older.

Andy: I don't think anything's gonna happen until he's not there. Yeah. I mean, it's a country run by a cult of personality and nothing's gonna happen there until, uh, he's, you know, until he's gone.

Tavis: Cachao. Who knew Andy Garcia loves, and not just loves, but does music? You own this. You're not just producing this? You, like, play a couple of instruments on this thing.

Andy: Yeah.

Tavis: Where'd the love for the music come from?

Andy: Well, you know, it's--since I was a child, I've been fascinated with the music of Cuba, and I studied it.

Tavis: Arturo Sandoval. I just saw that the other night on HBO.

Andy: Yeah. 'For Love or Country.'

Tavis: I loved that movie. Great. I'm sorry.

Andy: That's OK. No. I appreciate it. Uh, so, no, it's just one of those things that I've always been--Cachao was an artist I discovered at a very early age. And for some reason, his music spoke to me as soon as I heard it for the first time. And I used it, uh--his early jam sessions I recall in the early 1950s in Cuba, which revolutionized the Cuban music in a way for the second time 'cause he created the mambo along with his brother in 1938. And it's been sort of a bible for all the percussionists. What I started playing first was percussion, then I also play the piano. But those albums were really like a bible for all people who wanted to study the traditions of Cuban percussion. And then, you know, I started to collect his music, and then I got to know him, and I saw a concert in San Francisco that a friend of mine, Tom Ruddy, invited me to, and I saw him live, and I said, uh, 'This man hasn't recorded an album in 15 years and nobody's paying attention to him.' So I just started getting involved with him. You know, we did a concert in his honor that I filmed. It was a documentary I did of him. We recorded a couple albums. They got nominated. They won Grammys. His life just turned around. And now this is our fourth album together.

Tavis: And now you're a Grammy nominee. Since you're--

Andy: Yeah, well, I produced the other one, so I've been with him through this whole journey. And, uh, you know, now he's in the Smithsonian Institute and--so it's been a--really one of the highlights of my life to be associated with him.

Tavis: I was about to say it must be an awfully good feeling, as I listen to you tell the story, not just to do the movie projects that you want to do--that's got to be good for you, to pick and choose what works for Andy Garcia. But to find a guy whose music you love and to really help this guy experience a renaissance, I can only imagine must be an awfully good feeling.

Andy: Well, I'm honored to be his, uh...

Tavis: His mojo.

Andy: His mojo. Yeah, because he--and everybody needs one. He's a gentleman who's now probably like 86, maybe closer to 90. We don't know when Cachao tells us how old he is. But, uh, he's 12 when he plays the bass, you know. And so you need--everybody needs a patron. And when we make movies, we have patrons that give us an opportunity to make movies. You can't do it alone. And I'm just honored to be of service of him because he's a genius, and I'm just hoping a little bit rubs off, you know.

Tavis: Well, I'm honored to meet you, and you are a genius. The CD is called 'Cachao'--my Spanish--

Andy: 'Ahora Si!' Means 'Now Yes.'

Tavis: 'Ahora Si,' exactly. Cachao's CD. And Andy Garcia's a busy guy. As I said, 'Modigliani,' the film. The other film, 'The Lost City,' working on that. So, uh, nice to see you.

Andy: A pleasure.

Tavis: You're welcome back any time. All my best to you.

Andy: Thank you very much.

Tavis: Up next on this program, director Marc Forster. Stay with us.