Dollars & Donuts: 20 Years of Filmmaking

Dollars & Donuts Productions released its first film, “Ninja Killface,” while Daryl Della and Ray Revello were juniors in high school. In the 20 years since, the production company has ballooned into a creative power plant. With an extensive filmography, dedicated ensemble, and multimedia approach, Dollars & Donuts embodies longevity. Everything will come full circle as they premiere a revamped version of “Ninja Killface” at the Austin Film Society Cinema on April 11th.

As embarrassing as it is to admit, I thought the Dollars & Donuts Productions logo was a bird.

It’s a Great Dane.

Daryl Della, the heart-and-soul filmmaker of Dollars & Donuts, explains the logo’s genesis.

As a kid in love with comics, his first sketches were modeled after the family dogs, Susie and Addie. When they passed on, Daryl lost inspiration. His father Hank insisted he continue, using their new dog, Walker, as a muse. Hank wrote the initial scripts based on Walker’s real-life antics and Daryl continued drawing. The budding comic company needed a new name, too. Hank pitched “Dollars & Donuts Productions” to his son. It was a perfect fit, a twist on the phrase “dollars to donuts” with nods to Hank’s love for Clint Eastwood’s “Dollar’s Trilogy” and Daryl’s love for The Simpsons. Daryl captured the impact of this name in the introduction of the premiere issue of their comic book, Dollars & Donuts Showcase:

“I didn’t realize at the time how deftly he both symbolized our partnership as father and son with the combination of those words, as well as relinquished control over the company, giving me a sense of ownership by branding it with my initials. It took me years to fully appreciate how brilliant the name was and how it gave me a powerful identity to use in creating stories.”

For 20 years, Dollars & Donuts Productions have been creating stories in a testament to perseverance and longevity through “featurettes” and comics. Its two decade lifespan hinges on the fact that their passions haven’t changed.

“We used to collect comics and stuff even in our early to mid-20s,” Ray Revello said. “But Daryl, you know, 37 years old and he still gets toys for his birthday.”

Ray grew up with Daryl in the suburbs of San Francisco. They bought comics nearly every Wednesday after school and quickly began making movies together with another friend, Nathan Blonkenfeld. The first “Ninja Killface” (2003) is an amalgamation of their interests and talents. Like their taste in media, it’s gritty, dramatic, and violent. It’s also thirteen minutes long and scored with Daryl’s own CDs: Dean Martin for himself and Linkin Park for his friends. Western lovers—like the Della family—will recognize the main theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly during the initial confrontation between Ninja Killface and Mr. Ray Revolver.

For its 20th anniversary, “Ninja Killface” is getting a makeover. Lori Carsillo, who frequently pens original songs for Dollars & Donuts, created jazz Linkin Park covers. The cast mixes new and old faces. Nathan, who plays the titular role in the 2003 version, will make a cameo. This was the first time he and Daryl had seen or talked to each other in eight years. Reaching out to anyone, any time, comes unnervingly easy to Daryl. Charisma—producer Sasha Boggs called it witchcraft—is one of Daryl’s defining characteristics. He could convince anyone to star in their films.

“Our high school librarian, Mr. Cummings, came to my house,” Ray reminisced, “and was sitting in my garage tied up and getting punched. He got him to agree to do that.”

(Bruce Cummings would later officiate Daryl’s wedding, too.)

As a newcomer to the “Ninja Killface” universe, Sasha Boggs loved learning about its inception. Thanks to Daryl’s “collector mindset,” he has tons of archival footage from the original so that Sasha could peek behind the curtain. She should hardly be considered new, however, to Dollars & Donuts. In 2016, Sasha started out as the company’s first “real” actress (read: not a former classmate or coworker). She flew in from Hollywood to work on “No Pill for Regret” (2017). It was intimidating, Daryl admitted, calling in someone without the precedent of shared history. Her arrival opened a new door for expanding the company’s network. They didn’t have to flip through yearbooks anymore.

It was also Sasha’s suggestion to just “film one scene and see how it looks” that snowballed into remaking “Ninja Killface.”

“He’s a shark. If he doesn’t move forward, he dies,” she said.

The day after Dollars & Donuts wrapped “Lemonade” (2023), Daryl mentioned making a tribute for “Ninja Killface.” Sasha knew something was afoot when Daryl called Hollis Edwards, who he’d worked with briefly before, to “film him doing some ninja shit.” Hollis was already specially trained.

“The next thing I know, it’s nine months later and we’re shooting a scene every three months,” Sasha said.

For Ray, slipping back into his old role was like riding a bike. Or maybe upgrading to a motorcycle. Dollars & Donuts has done a lot of growing up in twenty years. In high school, they ran around with Daryl’s camera, shooting what they could and figuring out the rest later. Daryl recalled sitting down and writing a script for the first time in 2009 for “The Corpse That Got Away.” When his father Hank watched the finished product, he caught a loose end, much to Daryl’s annoyance. His pointed criticism, similar to pushing Daryl to continue drawing in his childhood, was pivotal.

“That was when we were like, ‘Well, why don’t you write one dad?’ And then he did. It was like daring each other back and forth, calling each other’s bluffs,” Daryl said.

Hank became the primary screenwriter for Dollars & Donuts for ten years. Daryl considers “The Corpse That Got Away” the project where he became more serious about filmmaking. Coincidentally, it was a remake of a Super 8 film Ray created in college. If the new “Ninja Killface” follows that pattern, Dollars & Donuts should expect to usher in a new era. After twenty years, it’s hardly the first time they’ve endured change. In 2019, Hank Della passed and the following year Daryl moved from California to Texas.

“When I moved I was like, nothing’s gonna change except for our budgets. It’ll just go through the roof with airplane tickets,” Daryl said.

If anything, Dollars & Donuts has flourished because of his transition to Austin’s ultra-collaborative indie scene. The weekend following our interview, Daryl jetted off to Cleveland, Ohio to film with Jake Barcus whom he met at Austin Under the Stars last year.

The release of “Ninja Killface” (2024) will not be complete until it’s physically on Daryl’s shelf. Collecting physical media runs in his family and, in Daryl’s opinion, it feels less permanent when a film solely exists online. Dollars & Donuts makes Blu-ray copies of every film and keeps most characters alive among the pages of Dollars & Donuts Showcase, their own comic book. Wrangling twenty years of Dollars & Donuts lore is nearly impossible, but why should we? The interconnectedness of the stories they create—on the page and with each other—is precisely what powers the company’s longevity.

Becker Von Felsburg, another childhood friend of Daryl’s, summed it up nicely. He gets to make movies with his friends, and who would want to stop doing that? Like most actors and filmmakers, the Dollars & Donuts team hold “regular” jobs for income purposes and derive their real enjoyment from creating together.

“We’re like a BattleBots team, but we make films instead of robots,” he said.

Watching the original, available on the Dollars & Donuts website, is a must in preparation for the April premiere. It has a certain rudimentary charm, from the exploding title card to a BART train sequence set to “Lose Yourself” by Eminem. What I recognized, however, while watching it, was a sense of deliberateness. Ray and Daryl’s love for movies is embedded into structure and cinematography. There are specific scenes—particularly the close up on the bullet casing falling to the ground and Ninja Killface tracking Aries—that highlight this. It’s evident how much their favorite mediums inspired them. It’s impressive too, that juniors in high school accomplished jumping off buildings and minor hand-to-hand combat. Now, Dollars & Donuts can give “Ninja Killface” the sword-slinging, thrill-seeking glory it deserves.