SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — Halfway through Godfather II, a tense scene unfolds in which Michael Corleone watches from the back seat of a taxi as a rebel blows himself up on a street in pre-revolutionary Cuba. By the time the scene was shot in the early 70s, Fidel Castro had already taken over the island; filming in Havana was impossible. Standing in for Havana: Santo Domingo. In the more than four decades since, the Dominican Republic has played small parts in U.S. films, serving as the backdrop for scenes in Jurassic Park, The Good Shepherd and Miami Vice. But it never became the destination for filmmaking envisioned by the late Charles Bluhdorn, whose Paramount Studios produced the Godfather series.
