Bronx Gangs Documentary Diary

August 19th, 2006 entry - Konrad Sheehan At Van Courtlandt Park

Big interview day for us here at Lantern-Media. We scored an interview with Mr. Konrad Sheehan. Konrad is an actor/stuntman and done both in MANY popular films. For example, he has appeared in Raging Bull, Fort Apache-The Bronx, Brubaker, Eyes of Laura Mars, Wolfen, My Favorite Year, Secret of my Success, and Ishtar. He has appeared as an actor and/or stuntman in so many films that neither he nor the Internet Movie Database can give an accurate listing.

But the main reason why Konrad is important to our Ducky Boy documentary project is that he has appeared in BOTH of the two movies that will forever be known as the quintessential Bronx gang movies.

And those are The Wanderers and The Warriors:

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Konrad as a Ducky Boy leader in The Wanderers	Konrad as the Punks Gang Leader in The Warriors

While Konrad was great in the Warriors (and the other movies), I will focus more on his role in the Wanderers here for obvious reasons - The Ducky Boys were not officially in the Warriors (altho you could make a point that they were really the Orphans in that movie - but that's an argument for a different day)

In the Wanderers, Konrad portrayed the first Ducky Boy to interact with the Wanderers. When the Wanderers were driving around looking for Karen Allen, they got lost and ended up in the Ducky Boy neighborhood. As they are driving the Ducky's are all over causing the Wanderer car to swerve - Eventually the car had to stop and Konrad walked over to the car, ripped the antenna off, and when Perry (Tony Ganios) got out of the car, started whipping him with the antenna until Perry grabbed him and threw Konrad across the front of the car. Then the fight really began with the Wanderers barely getting out of there alive.

He also was in quite a few other scenes as he was also a stuntman on the film. Oddly enough he did not play a Ducky Boy in the final football fight scene. Due to his skills as a stuntman, ironically he was cast as one of the Wanderer football players who got one of the more dramatic butt-kicking's.

So back to our interview..

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Konrad Sheehan Interview

Konrad flew out from California primarily to do this interview.. Which was EXTREMELY cool of him to do this and a huge honor for me. And to top it off, he was a really nice down-to-earth guy who was passionate about his acting and stuntman days.

After giving him a tour of the actual Ducky turf, we went over to the bleachers over at Van Courtlandt Park for our interview. And for the record, the big football fight scene in the Wanderers was filmed at the football field there at Van Courtlandt Park. Not only was Konrad actually there during filming, but as you will see below in the pictures, it is very much the same as it looked in the movie with the exception of a new track around it.

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Konrad Sheehan and James Hannon in the bleachers at Van Courtlandt Park Football field.	Konrad Sheehan and James Hannon in the bleachers at Van Courtlandt Park Football field.
Every Wanderers fan should recognize this shot - While Konrad wasn't the actual Ducky who did this in the movie, I still had to take this shot	And of course, I had to get in on the act - I mean how many times does this opportunity present itself?

I wont go too into what we spoke about as I don't want to give too much away now. But we spoke about filming the Wanderers, the Warriors (and other films of his), about how the movie Ducky's were quite different than the actual Ducky's (they weren't the zombie-ish creatures portrayed), and how they were the same (what they lacked in size they made up for in sheer numbers). Overall a great interview

After the interview, being that he hasn't been around the area in a while, we drove around the area and showed him the Bronx sites which he seemed to love. Altho looking back now, I cant imagine why he'd be interested in *MY* old apartment building - although it was right across from PS46 and our Lady of Refuge which was "Real" Ducky relevant..

So i would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank Konrad Sheehan for being such a great guy who traveled completely across the country to do this for us, giving us a GREAT and passionate interview, and for being just an all-around good guy! Thank you!