Robert Davi Quotes

I just sang, recently, for the Prime Minister of Bangladesh - the 34th most powerful woman in the world, according to Forbes Magazine. The United Nations had an event where her son got an award and they put me on this special program on competitiveness and sustainability, and we're talking about doing a world tour of me and the music.

You have your children and it's hard to even hold it in - emotionally.

My parents, the effect that [Frank Sinatra] had on the Italian community, in terms of all our friends at the house were multicultural. We weren't just Italians. My dad's close friend was a black gentleman - this was back in the early 50s when Tony Bennett was reprimanded for having lunch, when he was in the military, with a black man.

I had always been affected by films, as well, of course - and great films.

I met Quincy [Jones], he had heard my album, someone played the album and he flipped over it.

My grandmother told a story that when they used to leave from Southampton to go into the City, because he had apartment buildings in Queens - I was born in Astoria, Queens - they had apartment buildings in Queens and Manhattan, different businesses, and she wanted to pick blueberries on the side of the road and he wouldn't stop, so my grandma used to throw her purse out the window. She never had less than $4,000 cash, back in the 20s, and he would then stop the car and she would pick blueberries. And, he never had a record.

[Frank] Sinatra, to everyone, even Tony Bennett, was such a huge influence because he had mastered not only music, but film and radio.

My daughter [Ariana], she's a sweet, lovely girl, but she doesn't have the drive or the belief in herself. As it says in the film, I get touched up thinking about it, no one can give you a career. You have to have that inner drive. She wants it, but she doesn't know how to go for it, she's too shy. To see her perform and come on stage and feel comfortable, you know, she has talent - that was very touching, very moving, for me. She has a really beautiful sound and voice. She's a young girl still, 26, and innocent. She was kind of sheltered.

Concurrently, while I was in school, while I was winning awards for acting, I was winning awards for singing, in high school. One of the reasons why I decided to continue on with the acting was the opera world is fraught with a very long process, and I did love the acting, as well. The acting took off sooner, and then you get involved with that.

The [Frank] Sinatra interpretation of the music, as opposed to some other music that you were listening to - where you felt like they were singing at you - you felt Sinatra was singing to you. It's a very intimate art form, and that's what I responded to - the intimacy of his performance.

In an Italian household, there were two figures for me growing up - you had the Pope and you had Frank Sinatra, and, of course, Tony Bennett. And not necessarily in that order.

Here I was in Estonia, doing a concert for 5,000 people, and not many people know the song My Way - Gorbachev in the 80s, My Way had just become a famous song, and [Mikhail] Gorbachev in a satirical, kind of cynical manner coined the term the Sinatra Doctrine and My Way was the song because the Baltic states in the Warsaw Pact wanted to go their own way and secede from the Soviet Union, so joking he says," Yeah, we've got the Sinatra Doctrine now."

Hollywood is a very liberal community. There are a lot of guys that are also conservative that are frightened or fearful of being able to come out. And there's also the alternative. I'm one of the few conservatives that are involved with the Creative Coalition. It's trying to propagate the arts in schools and education, and a lot of things I believe in. It's a bipartisan thing, but when there is this strong partisanship... The other thing is, I'm pro-life, that's absolute, but I'm for live and let live. I'm an entertainer, I don't believe in stopping anyone's freedoms of lifestyle.

I trained with a guy named Tito Gobbi, who was the Marlon Brando of the opera world. Tito Gobbi was the greatest singing baritone in the opera world and I studied in Florence, Firenze, with him. That was my first love, as it was Frank Sinatra's, oddly enough.

I had a different upbringing - my dad worked three jobs. You know, it wasn't as easy as they had it.

I've been going around the world; I've been to China, I sang at the General Assembly, the Security Council.

You have to have a certain kind of celebrity to pull something that big together, but I had a whole thing called The Spirit of Man that I wanted to do worldwide concerts in celebration for the spirit of man. So, as I move forward, that would be the kind of thing that I have.

Everyone, young and old, was responding to [Frank] Sinatra. So, the first time that I physically remember, it was as a youth. He always seemed to be there, let me put it that way. I can't remember the exact first time, but I can remember the effect his voice had on me.

I didn't want to become this stiffened - and that was just a personal choice, at that time. And, the idea was also to go to film first, get enough notoriety in film that I could interpret some of the opera stuff the way I would want to interpret it.

I think back, when I saw The Great Gatsby, the film, my grandfather probably helped supply all the alcohol to all these Southampton parties, back then.

I sing My Way, I say this to the whole country, "Well, the President of Estonia sent me a message." He heard about it because of what's happening in Russia right now and the power grab that [Vladimir] Putin has.

Quincy [Jones] is one of the greatest world figures, of all-time. I mean he's up there with Muhammad Ali, as far as I'm concerned. His humanitarian work, his contribution to the world and music - he's really an amazing man. Even political divides don't affect his humanity. So, to me, that was extremely meaningful.

I would want to bring a certain kind of unity and awareness to different things. Even in the 80s, I wanted to do something with Unicef, and I wrote a song for Unicef, but I didn't have any means or the celebrity.

I studied with Stella Adler and I didn't like the representational aspect of most opera singers. Most of the opera singers had not a false, but over theatrical way of presenting.

Oddly enough, my mother was born in Southampton. I have roots in Southampton, Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor. My grandfather, her father, Stefano Rullo, when he came from Naples, he went to Pennsylvania and worked coal mines.

There was something in the bel canto, not just opera, but a certain style of Italian singing that I responded to deeply.

It didn't feel organic and [Tito] Gobbi was one of the artists that was able to, along with Maria Callas, incorporate not just the sound, but the emotion, the technique of the singing.

The music and the message, to me, is something that is imperative and that's what drives me know.

I was born in the 50s, my mom was pregnant in the 50s, [Frank] Sinatra had that big come back around then, From Here to Eternity.

That's what [Frank] Sinatra did. He was the first artist to come out in a major way against anti-Semitism and racial bigotry. And those are huge things back in the 50s and 60s and 70s - and he was doing this in the 40s.

And just everyone in the 40s, you got to realize, for his time period, take Justin Bieber and put it on steroids - there was no one like Frank Sinatra before that. And you didn't have the amount of outlets that you have today and the variety that you have today. So, the Great American Songbook united the nation unlike any other music, because there weren't so many different kinds of communications.

I had a little bit of a vocal strain at a certain period of time that made me lay off the singing, and while I was lying off the singing, I was pursuing the acting.

Phil Ramone and Quincy Jones were very close. Phil Ramone was one of the greatest record producers of all time. I don't know if they talk about him enough in the film, but he produced [Frank] Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, all of Billy Joel, Paul McCartney - Phil Ramone was one of the major record engineers and producers.

His [Frank Sinatra] voice defined not only a certain period of time, but America and what America meant to the world. Sinatra grew up, as my grandparents did, when being Italian was very, very prejudice against, but they didn't let it bring them down or use it as an excuse.