Havana (film) - Production

Production

• Shooting began on 22 November 1989; completed on 28 April 1990.
• Raúl Juliá chose to remain uncredited because the film's producers would not give him above-the-title credit alongside Robert Redford and Lena Olin.
• Tony Plana and Tomás Milián are Cuban-American actors who lived in Cuba during the 1950s. Milián commented that the film recreated 1958 Havana in great detail during the Batista regime's last days. Many of the extras were exiled Cubans who had moved to the Dominican Republic. According to Sydney Pollock, "The atmosphere became quite emotional... They remembered the old days in Havana. Our set took them back 30 years."
• Sydney Pollack hoped to film in Havana. However, U.S. law would not allow the producers to spend any U.S. dollars in Cuba, U.S. citizens could not legally enter Cuba, and relations between the U.S. and Cuba in 1989 were not conducive to filming an American motion picture in Havana.
• It was decided to make the entire film in the Dominican Republic. The vegetation was the same, and Santo Domingo offered certain architectural similarities, though not a wide boulevard like Havana's famous Prado (Paseo de Marti). The end scene was filmed in Key West, Florida.

• The film's main set, called "The Big Set," was a quarter-mile long street surrounded by facades representing casinos, restaurants and hotels. Interior scenes were shot in replicated casino floors, room suites and cafes. The Prado was replicated by the producers at a former air base in the Dominican Republic. To replicate the Prado, a team of about 300 tradesmen was used over 80 neon signs which needed to be made in the U.S. and shipped to the Dominican Republic. It took 20 weeks to construct "The Big Set".
• Costume designer Bernie Pollock had to outfit 2,000 extras with costumes, and needed 8-10,000 costumes for frequent changes during different scenes of the film. Besides 1950s period clothing, there were large numbers of hats, accessories, jewelry, gloves, along with 1950s Cuban military uniforms. The wardrobe items were brought in from both Los Angeles and England.
• About 100 1950s vintage American automobiles, buses and trucks appear in the film.