Behind the Scenes

The production of Night Dicks: Miami was born out of necessity and isolation. By 2020, Daryl Della was living in Round Rock, Texas, separated from his core cast in the Bay Area and isolated by the global COVID-19 lockdowns. Alone in a new state and needing a creative outlet to keep from going stir-crazy, Daryl turned to the only tool available: the green screen.

The project began with two simple goals: to give Sasha Boggs a substantial role (Dr. Bitch) to foster their growing creative partnership, and to fill the empty hours of lockdown with a massive technical challenge. Because he couldn't shoot on location with friends, Daryl committed to a year-long post-production odyssey, teaching himself advanced VFX, rotoscoping, and animation from his home office.

Free from the constraints of "serious" filmmaking (and the logistical friction of Michael Martin), Daryl treated the project as a technical playground.

Fulfilling a lifelong dream, Daryl animated a sequence in the style of Scooby-Doo. He hand-painted the backgrounds, filling them with Easter eggs from the "Early Years" (like Ninja Killface’s Sais and Lou the Bear). This segment also marked the voiceover debut of the character Tom Arnold (Daryl), signaling a return to the playful, self-referential lore that the "Serious Era" had tried to suppress.

While the green screen work was done in isolation, the "Night Chicks" segment was filmed on location in Daryl’s Texas home, utilizing local talent like Lea'h Sampson. This segment required a producer on the ground—a role Daryl gave to Sasha Boggs, officially cementing her status as his new right hand.

For a sequence where the detectives travel to the Old West, Daryl utilized the public domain film Angel and the Badman (1947). He green-screened the cast into the background of the original footage and painstakingly rotoscoped a saloon fight to occur around them. The result was a seamless interaction between Sasha, Becker, Brandon and John Wayne—a technical feat born of obsessive patience during quarantine.

Historically, Night Dicks: Miami was intended to be a suicide note for the Dollars & Donuts universe. Daryl had planned to stop making "silly" movies entirely to redouble his efforts on a serious script titled What's Next?—a somber drama about a man confronting his father in the afterlife, slated to be produced by Michael Martin.

The ending of Night Dicks: Miami—a total deletion of the universe fading to white—was literal. It was designed to fade up from white directly into the opening scene of What's Next?. The title itself was a meta-signal: "We are done with the Dicks; here is what is next."

However, the universe had other plans. As Michael Martin’s involvement in What's Next? led to predictable delays and development hell, Daryl found himself spending his lockdown editing Miami. He realized that the process of making the "silly" movie—working with Sasha, animating cartoons, putting John Wayne in the background—was the happiest he had been as a filmmaker in years.

In retrospect, Night Dicks: Miami represents the moment the fever broke. Daryl had intended to kill the fun to finally become a "Serious Filmmaker," but found he was having so much fun holding the gun that he decided to keep dancing instead. The final fade-to-white didn't lead to a somber drama; it led to a blank canvas. With the "serious" project stalled, Daryl was forced to embrace the chaos of his own creation. Instead of a funeral for the funny content, Miami became a resurrection. It proved that "Maturity" wasn't about making sad movies; it was about making the movies he actually wanted to make, with the people who were actually there.