Why was this filmed in Puerto Rico and not Cuba? Why do they have to cast Mexicans and Argentinians instead of Cubans? I know lots of Cubans and these actors do not even sound like Cubans. The accent is all wrong. I loved the music and dance scenes though.
shareThat happens to most movies about Cuba. An example is "Bad Boys II". They also filmed several parts of the Argentine (the Che Guevara Movie with Benicio del Toro) in P.R.
Apart from what the other poster said, it is also very easy to go from the U.S. to PR since we are part of the U.S. and no passports are needed.
But I agree, they should have casted Cubans. If anything, Puerto Ricans since our accents are more similar.
Hey so I’m half Cuban half Puerto Rican and have lived in Puerto Rico my whole life so maybe this might help.
Why did they film in Puerto Rico?
Well first you gotta understand or know that filming in Cuba wasn’t really an option. This is because of political issues and is aside from the different types of government and the conflict they naturally have. It's kind of hard to explain but basically when Fidel came into power the US imposed an economic embargo you could say and that really affected Cuba's economy. So any ally (might not be the right word) or territories or whatever of the US are basically not welcomed in Cuba. That's why foreign countries like Spain for example can actually film in Cuba. Since the project is American they couldn't film there. They chose Puerto Rico because to quote Sarah Green the executive producer "Puerto Rico has a very unique style of architecture which is very similar to that of Havana in 1958". This is referring in most part to Old San Juan, which is very true having lived here all my life and having visited Cuba and seen hundreds of photographs from Cuba around that specific time since my mom was born in 1947. To get an idea of how similar it is I quote René Lavan (Carlos Suarez, Javier's brother) who was born in Cuba, he said in an interview "Puerto Rico, I think this is the closest to being in Cuba for me. Old San Juan reminds me of my childhood in Havana". Our cultures are also very similar. So it really doesn’t have anything to do with not needing passports or anything like that. They just have a lot of similarities and honestly the closest you’ll come to Cuba without actually being there is Old San Juan.
Hope that helped.
"You’ll never take me to hell, Pavayne! Well, that’s just something I say when, uh, it gets dark."
Filming in Cuba wasn't really an option.
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