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August 2000 issue | |
DANCER DOWN UNDER |
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"Watched a friend get married by Elvis," Garcia says of his recent escapades with a twinkle in his eye. "It was hysterical. It was sort of a planned thing, but we all said, 'Let's just go and do it.' And the people at the chapel were really serious about it. I was like, 'You're getting married by Elvis!' "He was really funny, too, the Elvis," he continues. "He was kind of in the bloated stage, the drug-induced stage of Elvis. Every now and again, he'd just stop and then just sneer for a while, overposture and then continue singing." Born in Sydney, Australia, and currently residing in London, Garcia is already rather worldly and can appreciate Vegas' tacky attempts at cosmopolitanism. "This is like Paris -- kiiiind of," he gestures to his surroundings. "Paris without the Paris bit. "And thank goodness [the hotel has a scale model of the Eiffel Tower], 'cause you need those little landmarks just to tell you where you are in Vegas." Perhaps smarting from a lighter load in his billfold, though, he suspects conspiracy on the part of the local casinos. "They oxygenate everything, don't they, to keep you awake," he hypothesizes. "I think they've got every trick in the book to encourage you to give them money." His theories on Vegas exhausted, Garcia humbly glosses over the arc of his acting career to get right down to business: promoting his first starring film vehicle. "I started out as a dancer, and the film that I'm representing here is a tap dancing film called 'Bootmen' -- here comes the plug!" he says. "I've been working with this guy Dein Perry, who choreographed it and directed it, and it's a fictitious story of his life. It's kind of him, but they've bastardized a lot. "So I've been tap dancing and dancing since I was about eight. I just did it for the money, really, and then I got bored of dancing a little bit and thought, 'I'll do the musical thing,' and I did a few plays." What really happened is this: Garcia, with remarkably no sort of egging on from his mum, started taking ballet lessons at the age of eight and turned to tap at 11. After graduating from high school, he attended university, resigned to retiring his tap shoes and majoring in biology. "For some reason, in Newcastle in Australia, there was this tap school [that produced] mainly boys -- really good boy tap dancers," he explains. "And of course, once you hit 15 or 16, you win all the championships or whatever, and you finish school, and you either go and get a normal trade job or that's it. There's no future in tap dance. "[The boys] did dance in terms of going to ballet school or taking violin when you're a kid. And, of course, you think, 'Well, I'm not going to be a violinist. That's unreasonable to think that, so I'll go and do my normal job that everyone else does.' And then Dein basically invited them back and said, 'I've got a tap dancing show. You're going to earn about 20 bucks a week.' Um...oh...all right. And that was the thing. "It was the same when I started university, and Dein went, 'I'm doing this tap dancing musical called 'Hot Shoe Shuffle.' Do you want to come do it?' I'm like, 'Uh...yeah. [I] played too much ball, drank too much beer at university. I'll never pass. All right.' That's how I got essentially started." "Hot Shoe Shuffle" toured Australia in 1993 and opened in the United Kingdom in 1994, where Garcia decided to stay. Over the course of the next couple of years, he appeared in London in "Grease" and "Birdy," where director Arlene Phillips discovered him and cast him in the lead in "Saturday Night Fever." His rave reviews included The Express' comment that he was "out-pelvising Elvis." (Talk about synergy.) Meanwhile, that "guy" Perry with whom Garcia had worked premiered a touring show called Tap Dogs, named after a dance troupe of which Garcia was a founding member, that has now appeared on four continents having made stops in London, New York, Japan, India, Korea, Canada, Italy and New Zealand. His next logical step was to make a film. Bootmen "is about two brothers, Sean (Garcia) and Mitchell (Sam Worthington), who work in Newcastle's BHP Steelworks. Although they've both been tap dancing since they were kids, Mitchell aspires to open his own business, but Sean would like to shape his career around his fleet feet. Also thrown into the mix is a girl they both love, played by fellow Aussie Sophie Lee ("Holy Smoke," "The Castle"). The inspiration for "Bootmen" came from Perry's own life. "He did work in the BHP, and he got sick of that because it's very high-risk," Garcia says. "He worked in turning a 500-ton beam into a bolt or an anchor. "And he just got sick of it and wanted to do something with tap dancing, because he was the national champion, the world champion. And there was nothing -- there was nothing in tap dance to do. Eventually he got Tap Dogs together, and that's how he made his career. "['Bootmen'] sort of follows that line. It's got fiction in it whereby there's a brother in it and there's a girl whom we both fall in love with, so it's dramatized, and there're other people who don't exist in his life that are [in] the film. [Those] very slight substituted things still work for the show." Aware of the film since its inception two or three years before shooting began, the handsome and athletic Garcia was Perry's natural choice to portray himself in the lead role. "He taught me a lot," Garcia says of his mentor. "At some stage in my life, he taught me, and I'd also been working with him in 'Hot Shoe Shuffle' and Tap Dogs, so he knew I could tap dance, which is handy for this sort of a leading role. I think he had a general idea of all the tap dancers that he was going to use. He knew that I had experience in terms of stage plays and musicals and leading musicals -- I did 'Saturday Night Fever' in London and all sorts of stuff -- and so he knew in terms of that maybe my experience might help him in terms of the leading role." |
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Their solid relationship proved valuable on the set. "Dein's fantastic," Garcia says. "He'd never directed, really, anything before. [But] because we're good friends, and we've worked and we've known each other for 10 years, it's one of those things where you can yell at each other or you can have fun and then know when to stop. Building up a relationship wasn't necessary, and we understand how each other works. "But he's the type of guy who just thinks, 'Uh, I wouldn't mind directing something,' and that's it: He can do it. It's really quite sickening, quite horrible." Perry's confidence apparently persuaded Fox Searchlight and the Australian Film Finance Corp. -- co-financiers on the film -- of his ability to pull it off as well. "He sort of developed it, but he was looking for a director," Garcia says. "And then he just went, 'You know what? I'm going to do it because they don't understand tap dancing.' "It sounds kind of silly, but it's just one of those things where you know that he knew what he wanted to get, especially in terms of how the dancing should be shot. He also knew that it was about him in some respects. He knew it was about Newcastle. He knew how he wanted Newcastle to look in people's eyes and sort of the poverty there and unemployment. So in the end I think he just kind of went, 'Well, I know what I want to see in the movie and what I want to make, so why don't I direct it?' So he did." Perry's experience as a choreographer, though, had certain benefits to the production, particularly speed. "He doesn't mess around. He'll just go," Garcia says. "Quality's more of an instinctive thing. He'll say, 'All right. That looks good. That feels good. That goes together.' And I think dancing in general does that as well. You just learn it and go ahead with it. And that's how he directs, going, 'Yeah, yeah. Yep, yep. Take it. We'll do it that way.' "We shot the film in 40 days. We had a couple of pick-up shots -- I think it was 44 days. And that was it. He knew exactly what he wanted to do." Before "Bootmen" bows in the fall, Garcia will also star in "Coyote Ugly," producer Jerry Bruckheimer's virtually all-girl dramedy about a New York City watering hole whose barmaids -- including Piper Perabo, Maria Bello and Tyra Banks -- will do almost anything to get their male patrons to drink more beer. "I fit in nicely," Garcia laughs. "I'm basically one of the only guys in the movie -- fine by me." Bruckheimer conducted a nationwide search to find his leading lady before casting Perabo. Garcia thinks she's definitely worth it. "I think she's magnificent," he gushes. "I don't know, there's just something -- I don't think I've met a person who's got as good of a heart as her, and it's really evident onscreen. When you meet her normally, she's really lovely. She's a genuinely good person, and it comes across that way, and I think that's what they were looking for -- not necessarily innocence, but someone who's naturally good-hearted. There's not a bitter bone in her body. There's not a nasty, ugly bone in her body. I think that's why they went with her, because she's special, and she's also a damn fine actress. And she's pretty. And she's got a good body. And she's got a lot of hair, big eyes. And she sings. She can do everything. So, yeah, I think they made a pretty good choice."
Thanks again to Lori for spotting this article.
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