Deuces Wild producer/writer Paul Kimatian used to work as a still photographer for Martin Scorsese, and when he was on the set he enjoyed telling family stories about growing up in Brooklyn. Scorsese was fascinated by Kimatian’s boyhood tales of a street gang and its members’ loyalty to family, friends, and the neighborhood in which they grew up. The legendary director felt there was a powerful and poignant movie to be found in those stories, and with his encouragement, those stories became the seeds of the script for Deuces Wild.
Kimatian and Christopher Gambale collaborated on the script, and once it was complete it immediately drew attention. Not only did it paint a realistic, never-before-seen portrait of the era. It timelessly captured the frenetic energy, high hopes, and outrageous emotions of youth, the binding ties of family, the lasting bonds of true friendship, and the reckless passion of first love. This intense combination drew the interest of director Scott Kalvert, who previously revealed his affinity for raw stories from New York’s streets with his acclaimed The Basketball Diaries starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
"I’ve always liked gritty street movies," Kalvert admits. "But what really hit me about Deuces Wild was that behind those mean streets of Brooklyn, the gangs were really just made up of dysfunctional kids with intense feelings. The film and its conflicts are driven by emotion, as opposed to just fighting for the sake of fighting."
Kalvert was also intrigued by the notion of taking the rose-colored lenses off prevailing views of life in the ‘50s. "I don’t think anyone has looked at the fifties quite like this," he says, "with a kind of contemporary hyper-realism. We shot the film dark and moody, and made every detail as real to the time as possible. I wanted to give the audience a visceral, authentic feel for what it was like to fight when your life and beliefs were at stake."
"The script had so much texture," adds producer Cerenzie. "For those of us who grew up there, the Brooklyn depicted in the script is the same we have in our hearts and minds and memories. It was a place and time when six city blocks could be your entire world, and getting out of those six blocks could be the biggest challenge of your life. Scott Kalvert was the perfect choice to capture this. He brings a contemporary sexiness to it and a real accessibility.
"I think Deuces Wild is a lot of things," continues Cerenzie. "A story of two brothers, a love story, a family story, but also a story that reveals street life right before drugs and guns really changed the rituals of coming of age. It shows you how things really were, and how things have and haven’t changed for kids today."
As soon as he’d agreed to work on the project, director Kalvert knew that capturing the emotions and energy of a Brooklyn neighborhood’s most volatile youth would require an ensemble of very talented actors. He and the other filmmakers set to work assembling an incredibly fresh, gifted, and promising young cast.
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