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Robert Davi Introduces The Dukes
Actor-turned-director Davi addresses America’s economic woes with some overseas inspiration
Robert Davi stars as Danny in The Dukes.
When The Dukes screened at the International Rome Film Festival in October 2007, audiences gave it a standing ovation, critics applauded and the following day it was splashed across all the major newspapers in Italy. “They embraced the picture because they said I was one of the only guys able to make an American commedia all’italiana,” writer-director Robert Davi says proudly.
As a young man growing up in an Italian family in Queens, it was exactly these commedia all’italiana movies that first introduced Davi to the art of moviemaking. From Roberto Rossellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini to Vittorio De Sica and Luchino Visconti, the giants of Italian neorealism served as the moviemaker’s inspiration. “La Terra trema, I Vitelloni, La Strada, The Bicycle Thief were my greatest influences,” explains Davi. “They told stories about human beings and their foibles and in the journey of looking for the truth of the human condition these films had a raw beauty about them. They were not glossy presentations, but unpretentious. Their imperfections were on purpose because life is imperfect and also, of course, because of the economic constraints a post-war Italy imposed on filmmakers.”
To achieve a look similar to the genre masters, Davi and cinematographer Michael Goi shot The Dukes on Super 16. “I didn’t want a shiny, glossy look for these guys. I wanted a rough, raw quality [to add to] the realism of the picture.” Also adding to the realism of the picture was Davi’s personal relationships with his actors, including the late Frank D’Amico and Academy Award nominees Chazz Palminteri and Peter Bogdanovich. Considering the movie is about a group of men who have been together through the highs and lows of life, this was especially important. “Chazz has been a great friend of mine since the mid 1980s,” Davi says. “Peter Bogdanovich I had met with Stella Adler. I met Peter at a screening of Saint Jack years ago—just very briefly—and found a certain kind of… pathos in his face. I thought he’d be perfect for Lou, our manager.”
The Dukes follows the story of Danny DePasquale (Davi) and his cousin George Zucco (Palminteri), two members of the titular doo-wop group that gained fame years earlier, but now find themselves sharing a small apartment and working the kitchen at their aunt’s trattoria. Their aspirations for getting back in the game haven’t waned in the year’s since the group’s demise. Unfortunately for them, their finances have. A happy coincidence leads them to hatch a plan to rob a local dental facility of the gold used for patient procedures. But, as with most things they have tried their hand at, the result is less than what they bargained for.
After successfully running the festival circuit for the past year, Davi’s first movie will hit theaters November 14. Here, he speaks with MM about the project that took him nearly 40 years to release, the state of independent film today and how The Dukes is more timely now than ever.
Mallory Potosky (MM): Distribution on this movie… it’s been a long time coming.
Robert Davi (RD): Yeah.
MM: What would you say to other first-time moviemakers who have gone through this, who are on the festival circuit right now trying to get a distribution deal for their movie? How do you go about it?
RD: I had a whole other game plan originally. First of all, I had a little bit of a strategy in terms of the film, because of the nature of what the film is and what it was. I wanted to do some festivals, one of which was the International Rome Film Festival because the Italian filmmakers that influences me were the neo-realists… There are certain kinds of neo-realists and then the commedia all’italiana, so it was a blend of a couple of styles. They had a rawness to their films to give it a sense of reality. It’s also what Cassavetes did and Elaine May with Mikey and Nicky, Henry Jaglom—those kinds of films.
This film is totally independent and a lot of these films that get releasing, they have a deal with one of the divisions [of a major studio]. To a filmmaker that’s making an independent film, what I’d say is try to get an alliance with the studio even before you start to shoot.
MM: Is that what you were aiming for?
RD: No, no. I wanted to make a totally independent film because I didn’t want any of the constraints. A lot of films today that call themselves independent films that are getting releases really aren’t. They’re part of the umbrella of a smaller division of a major studio. And the budgets aren’t really independent because you have budgets upward of $10 million, and they call themselves independent. That to me isn’t necessarily a truly independent film. If you want to sell your film the festival way, find out if audiences are responding to the picture and if you have a film that you feel could have a shot with an audience, then pursue and don’t let up on that belief until you get your distribution.
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