About

Johnny Daukes was born in Camberwell but sadly his parents elected to move to Didcot (change for Oxford). He was educated at a couple of Jesuit comprehensives where he learned that all alliteration is deliberate and that pretty much everything else is a sin. Eschewing a University place reading English, Johnny spent a year as a film and video edit-assistant that quickly resulted in an appointment as editor and spent several years learning about how and why pictures and sound work. By the early 90’s Johnny had become editor of choice for MTV and countless other music-project related clients. Just as the world of directing began to open up, Johnny (who had been writing music since his teens) walked away from TV and walked towards the world of song-writing, forming indie-band Fin, who received much critical adulation, earning Johnny the title ‘the Dennis Potter of Indie Rock’. Throughout this time Johnny was mastering the recording studio and further honing what WORD magazine described as his ‘Orson Welles-style mono-creator attitude’. Around the late 90’s Johnny began writing comedy sketches and the result of winning the BBC’s Greenlight Award was a half-hour on BBC2 for Hello…I’m Jack Berry. This lead to the creation of the cult Radio4 series Radio9 which he wrote and recorded in his own Pro-Tools studio. Described by the Financial Times as ‘weird, wicked and wonderful’ the series was re-commissioned and Johnny went on to develop it into the BBC3TV series theMessage, described in The Times as ‘a huge step forward for BBC3’. Johnny moved on into a new period of fresh productivity, writing an album and feature film script. The album, Promise, was released in early 2008, garnering records of the week from The Sunday Times and Rough Trade, amidst a slew of positive reviews. The film script was Acts of Godfrey, which Johnny attracted independent finance for and which subsequently went into pre-production at the start of 2010. Written by Johnny throughout in rhyming verse, the film recently premiered at London’s Raindance Festival and is released through Guerilla Films on January 27th 2012. During this last two years, the songs that make up his new album, A False Parade have been produced, sharing elements from the self-penned score for Acts of Godfrey. Johnny’s next film Ghost of a Chance is ready to enter pre-production and he is writing another characteristically unique piece of cinema in the shape of the ‘IndieOperetta’ Goodbye Mother.
‘Talk about a Renaissance man. London-born Johnny Daukes, a new name to me, is the writer-director of Acts of Godfrey, a darkly funny film with a notable British cast…but there’s more to him than that. Daukes is also a singer-songwriter, and his impressive second album, A False Parade, is about to be released. It’s faintly reminiscent of Radiohead. Acts of Godfrey features Simon Callow in the title role as a narrator who bends the other characters to his will; Godfrey is just a longer name for “God”. It’s an amusing idea, and the icing on the cake is that Daukes has written all the dialogue in verse. You have to admire this man’s ambition’. DAVID GRITTEN – DAILY TELEGRAPH