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 as Dr. Bitch 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, 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," including Ninja Killface’s sais and Lou the Bear. The sequence also featured Hollywood big shot Tom Arnold, appearing as himself.

Arnold had previously appeared in the Big Wasabi music video, but that project was largely built around him. Night Dicks: Miami was different. This was a full Dollars & Donuts production, and Arnold’s appearance marked the first time a recognizable Hollywood actor stepped directly into one of the company’s larger narrative films. After nearly two decades of making movies in the Bay Area, it somehow took moving to Texas for Hollywood to finally arrive.

While much of the green screen work was created in isolation, the "Night Chicks" segment was filmed on location in Daryl’s Texas home, bringing in local talent including Lea'h Sampson. The sequence required a producer on the ground, a role Daryl gave to Sasha Boggs, marking her first time producing for Dollars & Donuts and a major step forward in their growing creative partnership.

For a sequence in which 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 original footage and painstakingly rotoscoped a saloon fight so that the action could occur around them. The result placed Sasha, Becker, and Brandon directly into a scene with John Wayne, a technical feat born largely from obsessive patience and an unusual amount of time spent alone indoors.

Historically, Night Dicks: Miami was intended to be something close to a suicide note for the sillier side of the Dollars & Donuts universe. Daryl planned to stop making ridiculous genre comedies and redouble his efforts on a more serious script titled What's Next?, a somber drama about a man confronting his father in the afterlife.

The ending of Night Dicks: Miami, in which the entire Dollars & Donuts universe is erased and the screen fades to white, was literal. The plan was for that white frame to fade directly into the opening scene of What's Next?. Even the title was a meta-signal: the Night Dicks were over. This was what came next.

But What's Next? never gained the same momentum. With Michael producing at his usual snail’s pace, the project remained stalled in development while Daryl spent his time actually finishing Miami.

The contrast became difficult to ignore. One project represented the kind of serious filmmaking Daryl thought he was supposed to be pursuing, but it existed mostly as plans, conversations, and delays. The other involved cartoons, green screens, impossible visual effects, old characters, stupid jokes, and putting John Wayne in the background of a Night Dicks movie. More importantly, Daryl realized he was having more fun making it than he had making movies in years.

In retrospect, Night Dicks: Miami represents the moment the fever broke. Daryl had convinced himself that growing as a filmmaker meant leaving the ridiculous material behind and becoming a "Serious Filmmaker." Instead, the experience of making Miami reminded him why he had started doing any of this in the first place.

The final fade to white never led into What's Next? It became a blank canvas instead.

What was supposed to be a funeral for the funny side of Dollars & Donuts became its resurrection. Miami proved that maturity did not mean making sad movies or abandoning the things that once seemed embarrassing. It meant having enough confidence to make the movies he actually wanted to make, with the people who were actually there.