Goonies star confesses he improvised iconic scenes from hit movie

29 December 2023 , 09:30

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Robert Davi starred in iconic film The Goonies (Image: Warner Bros)

The Goonies has become an iconic film following its release in 1985 - and now one of the movie's stars has admitted a huge scene was improvised.

Produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Robert Donner, the film followed a group of kids who face their final days as a group after a development paves over their homes. The youngsters stumbled across a pirate's treasure secrets and quickly gained the attention of a family of criminals called the Fratellis. Among the bad guys was Robert Davi's character Jake.

In a number of scenes, Jake sings Italian opera, including Una furtiva lagrima from L'elisir d'amore when feeding Sloth, and Madame Butterfly when Chunk flags him down on the road. While these moments have gone down as iconic parts of the hugely successful film, they are moments that may never have happened if it wasn't for the actor's improvisation.

READ MORE: The Goonies star Chunk unrecognisable after transformation following Hollywood 'shun'

Robert Davi played the role of singing bad guy Jake in The Goonies

Speaking to the Mirror, Robert - who has also featured in the likes of Die Hard and Licence to Kill - said: "The scene was written where Jake feeds Sloth in the basement by putting the food down and then just moving it away from him as he goes to reach for it, which was very banal, it was nothing. And I thought, well, what if Jake loves to sing, and the only one that can listen to him sing is Sloth because he's chained and in the basement and he has to listen and if he listens good, he gets his food. So it's a double thing.

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"But of course, Sloth didn't listen and that's when I can now show that other side to Jake. You listen to the line, 'You're just like mom and Francis. You never listen'."

He added: "You create a character that you can and people don't know. They see it and they like it and they respond to it in some way. But if they really analyse it, they go, 'Oh God, look at that.'"

Robert Davi explained how he improvised certain scenes (Warner Bros Pictures)

Elsewhere in the movie, he slightly tweaked a line involving counterfeit money. Robert said: "If you look at it, Jake was the one that was creating the counterfeit money. He had a scene that said 'How am I supposed to work with this Smithsonian piece of s***?'

"Instead of saying how can I work, I changed the word work to create. So right off the bat, Jake, wanted to create the best counterfeit bills he could."

The scenes were far from the only time Robert had tweaked his role, either. He also confessed to doing so during his days as a Bond villain too in order to improve the character. Talking about his role as Franz Sanchez in the 1989 release of Licence To Kill, he continued: "In Bond, loyalty is more important than money for Sanchez. It went back to Casino Royale where Ian Fleming says that Bond and the villain are mirror images of each other. So I played Sanchez as if Sanchez was Bond and Timothy played Bond as if he had that edge of Sanchez.

"So it's a continued creative process in terms of trying to make a character believable. Take it off the page, not making a cartoon character."

Robert Davi (left) is starring in Paper Empire with Robert Gillings (centre) and Denise Richards (right) (Paper Empire)

Currently, Robert is working on a number of exciting projects, including the eagerly anticipated Paper Empire, where he takes on the role of Laurence Fintch alongside the likes of Wesley Snipes. With two series already filmed and a third on the way, the action drama is described by IMDB as: "Laurence Fintch wants to be the planet's financial saviour. His digital technology has been unleashed. His attempt to corner the world banks spirals out of control, bringing forth a global Financial Armageddon."

Robert is also keen to continue his music career having previously released an album called Davi Sings Sinatra that reached number six in the Billboard Jazz charts. Speaking of his love for music, the star said: "I always loved the singing. I was always listening to music; opera and Sinatra and you know the rest of it. And classical music. I love music. I love Symphony I love everything. I love it. I was inspired by it, affected by it."

Jamie Roberts