Don't Forget Me: A Rock And Roll Story

Don’t Forget Me is told from 2018, looking back on the years 1957-1962 in an almost fairy tale type story set in the Bronx, NY. Based on an existing IP (rights included with the script) along with a musical catalogue and told from the perspective of one of the surviving members of the doo-whop group Scott Stevens & the Cavaliers with a host of celebrity musical cameos. From the moments that two Jewish kids from the Bronx reached out at the local community center to a pair of African American kids to join their singing group until the leader of the group is forced to make a hard choice to disband the group, Don’t Forget Me is a fantastic story about music, life and the many, many “almosts” that happen along the way. Told from the eyes of Steve Glazer, the story takes place in a time when not everyone was inclusive. Along with Steve Wyle, Junie Smith, John Duff and Jackie Morgan, from the stage of the (Ted Mack) Amateur Hour through a #1 regional hit in the Northeast U.S. and a radio tour, with some of music and radios biggest names, we watch five kids get close to stardom and get sucked into the “music money machine” only to be left out at the end.

While told from the perspective of Steve Glaser, the story is really an ensemble piece about the boys and their lives together in the late 50s and how they stood up for each other, or didn’t, when push really came to shove. The conflicts they experienced with derisive people in the neighborhood, the music industry and outside of their own safe spaces and families was palpable.
The major story arc centers around Steve G and Steve W putting together a band called the Satellites and how they become the Cavaliers and make it to a “big show” in Massachusetts where the reception for their interracial musical make-up is less than warm and welcoming. From an appearance winning “The Amateur Hour” to a final show at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, the beats of this story are musical. Steve Wyle leaves the band along the way after arguing with Steve Glaser and the band struggles to capitalize on their own talent after that rift. The other boys have other plans and Glaser realizes too late that Wyle was the glue holding it all together for them.
The minor story arcs circle around John Duff and his welcoming home allowing for the group to have a place to treat as a “tree house” in the Bronx, NY in 1958. Junie Smith and Jackie Morgan provide both comic relief and a stalwart since of brotherhood with their own additions to the story, particularly when Junie Smith steps in to protect Steve Glaser from two local groups of ne’er-do-wells and brokers a deal allowing for Steve to walk safely in the neighborhood.

The biggest conflict comes from record executives themselves calling a meeting with Steve as the group leader and explaining to him that in order to continue in music, he’s got to ditch his brothers-in-music and go a solo career. The results of the solo career never connect the same way and the wrap-up to the story is that the taste of fame the boys got will be their last brush with it at all.
Steve Wyle and Steve Glaser do reconcile, but too late to make the music happen again. Wyle passed away not too long after. All of the other kids are some measure of successful that is completely unrelated to music except for Junie Smith who served as stint in prison and was killed on the streets of their neighborhood shortly after his release. Steve Glaser spent the rest of his life trying to tell this magical story.
The very end of the movie has Steve Glaser, alone in his study, listening to the first thing that he ever recorded with Steve Wyle, a simple song called Don’t Forget Me which so aligns with the course of the story in the movie in that Glaser was trying to keep the world from forgetting not just The Cavaliers but all of the musicians who came and went in this tumultuous time of growth in modern American Pop Music. The movie ends as he toasts each of his comrades with a small “tag line” on top of their old pictures about what happened with the rest of each of their stories.

Comparables = A Bronx Tale, The Sandlot, Stand By Me

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dont-forget-me/id1529386732