Production Notes:
Track One
Hatching The Plan
Track Two
Recruiting The Team
Track Three
Pulling Off The Heist
Track Four
Rythm and Melody
Life Could Be a Dream
A Brief History of Doo Wop
They used to sing for gold. Now they’re going to steal it.
TRACK ONE: Hatching the plan
"you guys lead a clean life,
why do you want to start playing this game at your age?"
--Tulio
With his directorial debut, THE DUKES, Robert Davi spins a heist comedy that is also a soulful tale about the tenaciousness of everyday American dreamers who refuse to let hard times halt their dreams. The story follows the charismatic but no-longer-in-demand members of a former hit Doo Wop group who turn to a daring act of crime, hoping to make the big score that will fund their comeback. But if most capers are about stealth, cunning and cold calculation, these guys are about to defy every single one of those expectations – pulling off the job, and facing its unintended consequences, with bumbling gusto, dark humor and a genuine camaraderie that drives them through one farcical turn after another just as much as the promise of a fortune in gold.
Sums up Davi: “With THE DUKES, I wanted to tell a story that would appeal to the Everyman – a story filled with music and humor that was raw and honest but also very positive, a story about that American spirit that makes people want to pick themselves back up and get back in the game.”
Fittingly for a film that is about chasing after the American Dream – even when the reality of that dream is changing faster than you can run – THE DUKES began with Davi’s own long-held yearnings. A highly sought-after actor familiar to audiences from his turns as villains and tough guys in such movies as “License to Kill” and “Die Hard,” as well as television’s “The Profiler,” Davi had harbored a desire to write and direct a film since childhood.
Indeed, Davi’s childhood heroes were an unlikely bunch: they were Italian directors like Rosellini, Fellini, Antonioni, Visconti and Scola – and he hoped one day he would be able to pay homage to their unforgettable style of comedy, as rife with intimate humanity as it was with playful humor. “I loved the Italian comedies of that era, the way they were influenced by the Neo-Realists and utilized real human stories and social statements as the roots of their satire,” he says. “They had such a raw beauty about them. As I watched those films, I knew directing was something I wanted to do – and I hope I was able to pay homage to these movies with THE DUKES.”
It would take many decades and plenty of success in front of the camera for Davi to make good on his filmmaking ambitions. Davi actually began writing THE DUKES in the late 1970s, a time not so different from 2008 -- when America was in the middle of a dispiriting recession, a new digital economy was in its volatile early stages and unemployment rates were soaring. As Davi read about life-long steelworkers being laid off, it put him in mind of all the people whose jobs had become quite suddenly obsolete in a transitional economy – men in mid-life with families faced with the bracing challenge of finding a way to re-invent themselves.
“When I started writing THE DUKES, I wanted to give a voice to the struggle of the working man who dreams of a small piece of the better life,” he says. “That theme was very personal for me, because I come from a blue-collar family and one night my Dad came home and told us that he got laid off. For years he had worked for General Bronze and then for Grumman Aircraft, but now, just like that, it was over for him. So that idea of having it all taken away has always in my mind and heart.”
It was also in the 1970s, while working on his first film as an actor, “Contract on Cherry Street” with Frank Sinatra, that Davi had a fateful meeting with Jay Black, who had once been a member of the hugely successful Doo Wop band Jay and the Americans (whose hits included “She Cried” and “Come a Little Bit Closer”) until he, too, had to switch careers when he could no longer make a living with a form of music that was once burning up the charts.
“Meeting Jay brought home that it wasn’t just steelworkers or my father who were being effected by a society changing from an industrial to a technological one – it was also entertainers,” Davi explains. “The country was going through a real metamorphosis that was personal and societal and it came to me that Doo Wop was a way to write about that with a light comic touch.”
Thus was born the idea of The Dukes, a once successful Doo Wop group whose musical hopes have been quashed by the MTV era of rappers, tweeners and instant pop stars – and who are now pushed into an unthinkable criminal plot in their search to find a way to break through a second time. From the beginning, Davi saw the film not just as the story of a caper gone awry, but as a winning comedy with a realistic and thought-provoking edge.
Davi, who was classically trained in opera, began immersing himself in Doo Wop, and soon developed a passion for the unique form of music that emerged from the streets of Northeastern cities in the 1950s and was woven into the pop music revolution of that era. “I like the melodicness of Doo Wop and as an opera singer I appreciate the a cappella nature of it,” says Davi. “It’s a form of music that seems to hearken back to a simpler time of individuals harmonizing together. And it’s also a form of music that came out of the immigrant experience, especially for Italians. Doo Wop became the American equivalent of Neapolitan street songs.”
With all of these inspirations driving him, Davi soon started collaborating on a screenplay with his close friend James Adronica. Together, they focused on forging complex, nuanced relationships between the characters that add vitality and juice to the action of the heist, lending the film an exhilarating depth for a buddy comedy. “The dialogue was honed and sculpted,” says Davi. “I have a very musical ear and there’s a certain rhythmic quality I was always going after, while at the same time wanting a very naturalistic conversational style between the characters.”
“One of the things we really wanted to capture was the reality of men’s friendships,” continues Davi. “In addition to Italian comedies, we were very influenced by John Cassavetes and the kind of bittersweet camaraderie he explored. Many things in the screenplay were also inspired by friends of mine and people I knew – for example, I had a friend who was laid off from his job and had to work at a newsstand, much like Murph in the film.”
When THE DUKES was completed, Davi put it back in his drawer, waiting – not unlike The Dukes – for opportunity to knock. At long last, it all came together. Explains Davi: “A few years ago, I met a gentleman named Frank Visco through my neighbor Larry Logsdon. We became close friends and he wanted to help make my dream of directing a reality. So he put together several of his friends to finance the film. Another close friend of mine, John Paul DeJoria also said he wanted to invest. It was their belief in me, and this project, that has made THE DUKES a reality and I am eternally thankful to all of them.”
Davi’s ultimate gratification came when the film was recently shown to a standing ovation at the Rome Film Festival. “It was really something to hear people say that I had captured the essence of the Commedia al Italiana in a totally American way,” he says. “Here I am this Italian American kid who’s been wanting to make exactly that kind of movie all my life, and I was very pleased that I had accomplished that.”