Danny DeVito’s Jersey homecoming
Meet him at the Asbury Park music and film fest.
Danny DeVito remembers being a young “Italian kid” riding his bike down the boardwalk in Asbury Park, N.J. — and now he’s heading back for the Asbury Park Music & Film Festival (April 26 to 29), where he’ll be honored for his contributions to the film world.
The Emmy-winning actor, 73, born and raised in Asbury Park until his late teens, told USA TODAY he’s excited to return.
“This festival and the attention that Asbury gets now makes me feel really good,” he says. “I’m really happy to be part of it, because it’s roots, it’s your hometown.”
The festival, which focuses on the role of music in movies, will screen 29 films in its two days, including If I Leave Here Tomorrow, a documentary about Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Oscar foreign-language film winner A Fantastic Woman, the story of a transgender singer. Musical highlights include Wyclef Jean, Sublime With Rome and Michael Franti.
Proceeds from the actor’s “An Evening With Danny DeVito” event, where DeVito will take questions about his career, will help provide music education to kids in the community, a cause the father of three finds particularly worthwhile.
“I think it’s really, really important for everybody to explore” what they’re interested in, he says. “To give (kids) the signal that’s something you should enjoy and be positive about.”
He noted that local kids have some great people to look up to.
“You know, that guy from Freehold, what’s his name?” he jokes, referencing Bruce Springsteen, one of the largest names to come out of the Jersey town.
DeVito, himself a Jersey success story, has just finished filming Disney’s live-action Dumbo with Tim Burton.
“I played basically the same part in Dumbo that I played in Big Fish: I own a
“This festival and the attention that Asbury gets ... I’m really happy to be part of it, because it’s roots, it’s your hometown.”
Danny DeVito
circus,” he says. “Now if you think back, in ( Batman Returns), the Penguin had a circus troupe. So there’s a theme. This is the completion of our circus trilogy.”
His next project, the live-action/CGI book adaptation The One and Only Ivan, follows a gorilla named Ivan (voiced by Sam Rockwell) who tries to escape from captivity. DeVito plays a dog as part of a star-studded cast that includes Angelina Jolie (as an elephant), Helen Mirren (a poodle) and Bryan Cranston (a circus owner).
Also a self-proclaimed “Jersey boy”: Wyclef Jean, who returns to his former stomping grounds for a performance at The Stone Pony during the festival.
“There’s never a place better than playing at home,” he says.
Performing at the historic music club is a first for Jean, 48, “one of those things on your bucket list.”
He moved from Haiti to the Marlboro projects in Brooklyn when he was a child and later to New Jersey. “Music for me was like survival,” Jean says.
“When my cousins, they’re in the trap doing what they’re doing, or my boys out there playing in the basketball court, I’m like trying to figure out what these guitar chords are, and losing myself inside of music. ... If I didn’t have the music, I could’ve ended up like a lot of my cousins and friends.”
Jean also reflected on immigration in politics of today.
“It can’t anger me at the end of the day. We’ve got to fight towards legislation and policy,” he said. “Me, I’m sensitive to the issue because I could’ve been a DACA baby, right? I feel that the majority of us in America are immigrants, and the idea of using propaganda for division or for politics is something I don’t support.”
As part of the festival, he has been able to give back to kids who also use music as an escape, spending time with kids from the Hip Hop Institute, an after-school music program run by Asbury Park’s Lakehouse Music Academy and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Monmouth County.
“When I see these kids, I see myself,” he says. “It was like exactly what they’re doing is what I was doing at 12, 13. Trying to figure it out.”
One student from the workshop will even perform a remix of Jean’s 2017 track Warrior with him during the festival — and the empowering message of the song was intentional.
“I want kids to feel like they’re cool, like it’s OK to be different,” he says. “The nerds that were considered the nerds are the fly girls of today.”