DIAMOND © Jessica Brooks
The Making of Diamond by Andy Garcia
Having starred as Sonny Corleone’s illegitimate son in The Godfather 3 (1990), a vagrant alongside Dustin Hoffman in Hero (1992), and a casino manager in Ocean’s Eleven in 2001, Andy Garcia’s illustrious career is no secret to anyone. But not everyone knows that Andy Garcia is also a director (The Lost City, 2005) and that Diamond, presented Out of Competition, is his second narrative film behind the camera. It took 20 years for his character, Joe Diamond, to see the light of day.
“Dreams are a way of escaping your reality, unless those dreams are your reality,” believes Joe Diamond. This is a character that Andy Garcia has dreamed about for a very long time. Twenty years ago, the actor was helping his daughter Daniella with her English homework. The text in question was The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, and the assignment was to write a noir short story. Garcia improvised a character, noted down scenes, and recorded inner monologues, some of which are in the film. Joe Diamond was born, and from that moment on, he never left him.
Two decades of failed financing attempts later, a 60-page pilot in 2012, and a series of rejections from studios and streaming platforms, and in the end the film went ahead without them, with independent financing. Diamond was shot in 25 days across the city of Los Angeles, a fully-fledged protagonist in this film noir.
The film crew formed a close-knit team around the project: Andy Garcia and his director of photography Tim Suhrstedt (Little Miss Sunshine, 2006) worked in the natural light and drew inspiration from Edward Hopper, with Nighthawks in mind for the shot composition. Joe Diamond has only one suit, designed by Deborah L. Scott who won an Oscar for Titanic: a constraint that actually proved freeing because, in editing, any improvisations could still be used seamlessly. The movie soundtrack combines jazz standards (Miles Davis, Bill Evans, and Duke Ellington) with an original song both written and performed by Andy Garcia, accompanied by the virtuoso Arturo Sandoval on the trumpet. Lastly, rounding off an exceptional cast (Danny Huston, Dustin Hoffman, and Bill Murray), is his daughter Daniella Garcia, who plays Violett, a hotel receptionist — a lovely nod to the film’s origins.
