December 4, 1995
Web posted at: 11:03 p.m. EST
From Correspondent Bill Tush
NEW YORK (CNN) -- In the oddly-titled "Things to do in Denver When You're Dead," Andy Garcia plays Jimmy the Saint, a reformed mobster drawn back into a life in crime. (706K QuickTime movie)
Gabrielle Anwar ("Scent of a Woman") plays Dagney, Jimmy's new girlfriend.
A mob boss known only as The Man with the Plan persuades Jimmy to pull together his old gang for one last job.
So what makes Jimmy a saint?
"Well as young man he was in seminary school and lost a calling, and also because he says 10 'Our Fathers' and 10 'Hail Marys' before he goes to bed at night and he never kisses on his first date," Garcia says. (153K AIFF sound or 153K WAV sound)
"I'm not usually attracted to this kind of screenplay. I usually find them quite nauseating and usually rather sexist." But in this case, "It kept me turning the pages. Usually, by page 10 I'm saying nasty things about the characters."
-- Gabrielle Anwar
Garcia, a veteran of other mob movies ("Godfather III," "The Untouchables") was drawn to his latest role because it was a unique character and an unusual movie. "I think the ideas themselves were fresh to me so it really compelled me and. as you can see, a lot of great actors to participate."
Among them: Christopher Lloyd, Christopher Walken and Treat Williams, who plays a character called Critical Bill.
"This particular character was to say the very least, very extreme," Williams says. "I read this script, my agent said there's this film, it's pretty much cast, but there's this one part that's still open ... and I read it and immediately responded strongly to it."
Critical Bill is a strange one. "One of the ways he maintains his calm during the day is that he works in a funeral parlor. He uses cadavers as heavy bags." As in, punching bags. This guy beats up dead bodies, and in his twisted mind, he's not hurting anybody.
So what brought Anwar to the film? "I'm not usually attracted to this kind of screenplay," she says. "I usually find them quite nauseating and usually rather sexist." But in this case, she says, she was "really intrigued." "It kept me turning the pages. Usually, by page 10 I'm saying nasty things about the characters." (94K AIFF sound or 94K WAV sound)
The makers of "Things to do in Denver" hope to find an audience that will feel the same way.
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