AND HOW DE PALMA TOLD HIM TO "FIGURE IT OUT"
A couple of months ago, Aint It Cool's Capone interviewed Andy Garcia and asked him about his experience making Brian De Palma's The Untouchables. Garcia shared some interesting tidbits about his character's introduction within the film...Garcia: Well, I remember my introduction scene in the movie where they come and recruit me was the last scene we shot in the film, if I remember correctly. And we started here like at the end of the summer, so by the time we got to that scene, it was snowing that day in Chicago, so it was like the beginning of Fall with early snow. It was very cold, and I always remember that scene, because it’s a scene, when I was a young man going to the cinema in the '60s I loved the movie THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, and THE UNTOUCHABLES is sort of a take on THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN in a way, which is a take off of THE SEVEN SAMURAI. So structurally, one guy going out to recruit a bunch of people to achieve this objective…I remember seeing THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN and when James Coburn was introduced, who was the knife thrower remember?
Capone: Yeah.
Garcia: I said “Wow, what an entrance in the movie.” I think that’s the movie that made James Coburn and got him known as an actor. I remember as a child being so impressed by that scene and saying “I want to be that guy!” Being lost in that concept that was engrained in my mind, and my scene in THE UNTOUCHABLES is basically the James Coburn scene, there’s a gun and whatever and the sharp shooter instead of a knife, but it’s basically that scene.
IT "HADN'T FOUND ITS WAY INTO THE SCRIPT YET"
Garcia also told Capone about his reaction when he found out he would be riding a horse in the film. It is interesting that De Palma already had storyboards for this sequence prior to it being added to the script...
Capone: The bootlegging sequence right on the Canadian border, right?
Garcia: Right, but when it got to Chicago, Brian [De Palma] took me into a room and had this whole thing storyboarded, but with stick figures. Those were his storyboards, like “Here’s the three shot…” And he says, “Well, I’m going to have you guys on horses,” and in the script there was nothing to do with horses, so I was like “Brian, my character has never been on a horse… This guy’s from the Southside of Chicago…” He looked at me and he said, “No, no, he’s an expert horseman” and I go “How is he an expert horseman?” He goes “Fuckin' figure it out.” I said “Oh, thanks." The guy’s from the Southside of Chicago, now he’s going to be an expert horseman.” [laughs]
It was something that he conceived that he wanted to have us on horses, and it’s something that he adapted in the script, but hadn’t found its way into the script yet, and so me as an actor was like “Oh God… First of all, I’ve got to get on a horse.” So I started taking lessons at this equestrian center here somewhere in town or nearby where it had like a ring, so I got on the horse and I told the costumers “Find me a tie pin or a lapel pin, something that has a horses head just so I can have some sort of connection to…” So I concocted this idea and did some research, there were some stables in a Chicago park here in the inner city that my father or my grandfather as an immigrant, he was like a stable boy and he took care of the stables. When I was a little kid, I would go visit him and I was helping him in the stables, and that's how I knew how to ride. So I had to concoct this whole backstory just to justify “How does this kid from Southside Chicago become an expert horseman?” Then I had two weeks to be an expert horseman.
Capone: There you go.
Garcia: [Laughs] So that’s my UNTOUCHABLES story. Then I just had to concentrate on not falling off when the horses were going 40 miles an hour.
"SUMMER SCENES WE LOVE" AT CINEMATICAL
Meanwhile, earlier today, Scott Weinberg at Cinematical posted a "Summer Scenes We Love" featuring, out of all the great scenes in the film, the opening credits for The Untouchables, which are, of course, simply the best.
Updated: Monday, May 24, 2010 11:02 PM CDT
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