This is a transcript of SYS Podcast Episode – 539 From Lawyer To Writer with Vincent Scarsella .
Welcome to episode 539 of the Selling Your Screenplay podcast. I’m actually Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger of SellingYourScreenplay.com. Today I am interviewing writer Vincent Scarcella. I’ve gotten to know Vincent over the last few years as several of his scripts have placed highly in the SYS screenwriting contest. He is a prolific writer in retirement, he’s written novels plays and now screenplays and we talk about all of these various formats, how he’s written in them and then ultimately how he’s been able to have some success in each of these formats. And he now has a feature film, a script that he wrote has now been produced and is about to get distribution. So, we talked through that as well and how all that came about for him. So, stay tuned for that interview.
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So just a quick few words about what I’m working on. My rom-com is in the books. We finished production a couple weeks ago. We had a few hiccups but everything basically went as planned. Now it’s a long slog through post-production but overall it was a great experience. I ended up putting together terrific cast and crew. Everybody was really fantastic and I think no matter how the film ultimately turns out, I think it was a great experience for everyone involved, at least I hope so. Any project like this involves a lot of people who are pitching in their time and effort and in some cases money. So, I really do appreciate everyone who worked on this film with me. We had a bunch of extras that came out really and doing extra work is not a lot of glory. A lot of people came out just to be supportive of indie film. Obviously, the actors, I cast most of them through the breakdown service here in LA. All was terrific. I just, there was nobody that I was sorry I had cast. Everybody just really showed up and gave it their all. And from a producer and a directing standpoint, that’s really all you can ask. Obviously, there’s limitations with the budget and stuff. But as I said, it was a great experience and I hope everybody involved really did get something out of it. In fact, a lot of the people involved in this film are actually people I met through this podcast. So, thank you to everyone who worked on this film and also listens to this podcast. I really, really do appreciate it.
So, I will have some updates as the film progresses through post-production. The first step, Bernie, who was my cinematographer and actually someone I met through this podcast, he shot the pinch and came back and he shot this one as well. He is also going to edit it. So, he’s now basically putting together what’s called an assembly cut. So it’s just going to be sort of a loose approximation. He’s just going to quickly put the movie together and then we can kind of sort of just feel like what do we have here? And we can start to shape it and sort of figure out what is that next step. So hopefully we’ll have that in a month or two and then we can start going from there. As I said, I’m going to do, I’ll do some updates as things go along. I’m going to do a Kickstarter, try to raise some money for post-production and marketing for the film. So, stay tuned for those details. So now let’s get into the main segment. Today I’m interviewing writer Vincent Scarcella. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome Vincent to the Selling You Screenplay podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Vincent Scarsella
Thanks for having me to give me this opportunity. Thanks a lot.
Ashley
Hey, thank you. So maybe to start out, you can just tell us a little bit about your background. It sounds like you were a lawyer for many years. You then started to write novels and plays and film scripts about this career as a lawyer. But maybe you can just start there. What was your initial career? How long did you practice law? And then how did that transition into writing?
Vincent Scarsella
All right. Well, I started practicing back in 1980. It’s been a while. I ended up in the Navy JAG Corps, the Judge Advocate General Corps for about four and a half years, became a prosecutor for about five years with the Airy County District Attorney’s Office, and then got a job kind of a unique kind of job prosecuting bad lawyers for the something called the Attorney Grievens Committee in up in Buffalo, New York. And I ended up being the Deputy Chief Counsel up there from 1989 to 2008. And in those 18 years, probably saw and reviewed about 15,000 complaints against lawyers practicing in Western New York, which encompasses Niagara Falls, Buffalo, and the Southern Tier, and handled some notorious cases. And, and while I was, after the after my time at the Grievens Committee was up, I practiced for about two and a half years as a lawyer, we’re heading a criminal tax fraud unit for the New York State Tax Department. So I’ve always been sort of in government practice. And I retired in 2010, and moved down to Florida from Buffalo. Although we go back, the last couple years, we go back up to Buffalo, we have three children and nine grandchildren and one on the way. And so, I always thought when I was doing the grievance work, the disciplinary work, that it would make a great TV series, because it’s kind of different. It’s internal affairs for lawyers. And, you know, the lawyer shows do great on TV. And although I dread watching them, because the law is always so wrong. And, you know, so I wrote a treat TV treatment. I did a screenplay, a pilot script, and thought, you know, try to pitch it, you know, of course, I’m a nobody, so didn’t go very far. And I ended up shelving it. And after I retired, I’ve always been writing since I was a kid, a teenager, and wrote a lot of short stories, some of them got published, you know, in magazines and whatnot. Not famous magazines, but you know, anthologies and things like that. And finally, after I retired, I said, well, it’s time to start writing novels. And I really put my time to it, you know, every day Saturday when you’re retired. And so I had a lot more time on my hands and, and put it to good use, I think.
And since 2013, and I published 12 novels, and four of which are based upon or embellished from my experiences as a grievance lawyer up in Buffalo, and they’re called the lawyers gone bad series. And that, and I and after a while, and I also wrote some other standalone things I write, I like to write, I like to read and write crime fiction, legal thrillers, which the lawyers gone bad series are another series called the anonymous man, I love Elmore Leonard, and this his style of writing, and some other guys like that in the crime area, mystery area. But I also loved when I was a teenager in the 60s, I had a love for science fiction. And the science fiction in the 60s went through a dramatic change where it became speculative fiction, where character and social issues became more of the genre, dominated the genre guys like Harlan Ellison, theater sturgeon, writers like that came about and I love that. And I wrote so I have a mixture of great crime fiction and speculative fiction, basically and published novels along those lines.
Ashley
So, let’s just break that down. I know I’ve got a lot of people that listen to this that are also trying to write novels or turn their screenplays in novels. Maybe you can just talk a little bit about that. Just what is your process for writing a novel? It sounds like it’s been 12-13 years. So, you’re averaging about one novel a year. Like what does that break down? Is that like three hours a day, five days a week for six months and then you churn out a novel, but just break down that actual writing process a little bit.
Vincent Scarsella
It’s changed, obviously, back when I first started writing, you know, I had like every young writer bouts of writer’s block. And then I read a guy by the name of Steven Pressfield who wrote something called the War of Art. It’s a kind of a, you know, the Art of War in the Sun Zoo. And his thing was, just do it, just write. If it’s not working, just keep doing it because the real writing process is in revision. And that became sort of my mantra and something to live by.
So, after that, after I read him, I was probably in the 80s sometime, I just write, I just, you know, at one time I was just writing in journals. And now it’s like I do it on a computer. And so, the process evolved is what I’m saying. And right now it’s, I get up early, I get up sometimes in the middle of the night at two in the morning and I write for a couple hours and go back to bed. A lot of times I’m up by six and I’m trying to get three to four hours of writing a day in at various points in the day. Of course, I’m fortunate that I’m retired. And my only job is to write at this point and to listen to my wife, which tells me to do things. So that’s my process now. I demand out of myself that I write for three to four hours. And whether it’s good or bad, and a lot of times it’s bad, but then you go back and revise it. And I have two things that I try to do. I always want to have a really good beginning. And I always before I start a project or work on a project, I want to know where it’s going to end. Now it doesn’t always end up that way, but it gives you sort of a map that you can follow from the beginning to end and everything else that fills in between to get from point A to point Z. And that’s my process basically.
Ashley
And so what do you do to market these books? How do you get them published? How do you get them out there? You send me your Amazon link. You’ve got all these books on Amazon. How do you go about that process?
Vincent Scarsella
Well, a few years ago, and it was after the first novel, it’s probably about 2015. I was working through royalty publishers. I mean, you know, I send stuff out to publishers and you have to have an agent. Well, I don’t have an agent. And then I tried to get it. I’m still trying to get an agent now that the agent’s out there. I’m looking for I’m looking for help. But so I found a thing I found through Amazon, something called Kindle Direct Publishing. And it’s a great tool to help indie publisher, indie novelists like me, get their word out and things for sale. And it’s an easy system to use. You go to Amazon, you join it. And I’m not a spokesman for Amazon. I have some problems with the way they they’re profit taking and some of my stuff. But and lately, I use to get the manuscripts formatted correctly. And to do the covers correctly. I use Fiverr.com. And I have a provider there of a gentleman from India, who is very inexpensive to do a manuscript and a cover. And he does it correct. So that Amazon’s tricky in their formatting sometimes. And I get that on there without with ease, actually, it costs anywhere from $100 $150 to get this guy to do a 350-page novel. And it’s great. And I use it. I’m in fact, he’s doing something for me now because I’m redoing the lawyers gone bad novels. And I have another novel that’s in the pipeline that I have to get to them. But we have a good relationship. I built a report with him, I send people to him. And it’s a great process. So, Kindle direct publishing KDP, you go to Amazon self-publishing, I think so that you could put on Google to get to them. And you can, you can upload, you can upload nonfiction, whatever you want, you can do to them a single story, you could do through them. And they have guidelines for pricing and everything. And it’s simple. So, for an indie guy like me, who doesn’t have an agent who I don’t even try anymore with publishing houses. It’s been great. And then the marketing end of it’s a lot of it’s a lot of sweat equity. You are going on social media, bothering your friends and family, and developing an email list that you can use and send out your latest information, and so forth. So that’s the process. It’s time consuming. Fortunately, again, I have a lot of time, yeah, to do that. And it’s fun for me. It’s actually fun. I mean, I’m retired. And I, you know, I’m not going to sit around the house. I’m not I’m not a pickle ball player. I, I like to golf, but I hate to golf. So it’s like, what am I going to do? And I love writing. And I love the process of trying. I love writing. I love entertaining. And they’re wanting to think they go together. I want people to read my stuff. And like I like, for example, I got an email today from somebody who wanted to get this second or the second book in the lawyers gone bad series called personal injuries. And they couldn’t find it. And they somehow contacted me. And I sent them the book and she wrote back and says, it’s a wonderful book. And, you know, and it’s gratifying. Yeah, you’re reading public, you will, limited reading public.
Ashley
So at what point in this process is you start to think about turning some of this into plays or writing plays and turning some of this into screenplays?
Vincent Scarsella
Okay, back in 2010, I was living up in Buffalo. Back then I had not retired yet and I joined a playwriting, not contest, but it was a group. And I was called out of something called the Rowless Travel Theater. Buffalo has a great community theater and theater background. They just have a lot of good little theaters going. And so, I joined this group in the theater district in downtown Buffalo and there was like 10 of us. And I just tried to write a play and it was horrible. It was bad. And it didn’t get rave reviews from the group, but I’m the type of guy that I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the process and the idea of not only having somebody read your short story or novel, but act it and see it on a stage just thrilled me. And so I started reading a place and got the idea of how to do it and read a couple of how-to books, although I’m not a big fan about how-to, about how-to books, how to write books. I think you have to read the plays to get better at it. And I rewrote the play I submitted and that play ended up five years later becoming performed, or many years later, in fact, nine years later, being performed at a theater in Lakeland, Florida, and then performed at the event center where I used to live down in Florida, a community I lived at called Island Block, and 200 people were there and it was performed. So it was-
Ashley
How do you get in contact with those theaters? Do they have like an open submission and you submit your play, you call them, you email them?
Vincent Scarsella
It’s called networking. I mean, I got together with a theater guy named John Fedpew from Lakeland, Florida. There was an article in the Lakeland Ledger newspaper and I tracked him down, sent him an email and he was running sort of a writer’s group weekly and you could submit plays to his group and they would critique them and get back to you. And eventually after COVID became a Zoom thing and I started attending that and I submitted, the play was called Practical Time Travel and the group liked it and we massaged it a little bit. They made some good suggestions and I changed it and then he took it on.
He knew kind of a troop of actors in the Lakeland, Florida area who performed it. And I was writing for Black Box Theater. Black Box Theater is a small little theater. It’s on Broadway, the sets are minimal and you have to keep the number of characters down as well and because the stages are small and so forth. So, it was performed in January of 2019 in Lakeland, a little theater called the Stage Room and then we took it to my community. They have a big event center with a nice stage and so forth and I pitched it to the activities coordinator and they usually have comedians and bands and this was something different that they were looking for, some theater and so we were able to perform it there. But prior to that I had written a play called Hate Crime about a young rising black lawyer representing a white supremacist in a murder case and there was a director in Buffalo by the name of Phil Davis Senior who I just sent it to with Facebook friends and just, hey, you want to look at this play? Sure, send it to me and usually you don’t hear back but he liked it and so he was actually, that was my first play performed in stage with about 200 people in a community theater up in Buffalo in 2015 and that play has since gone on to be performed in colleges, a couple of colleges and also it was an, it was a finalist in the Tampa Bay Theater Festival in 2024 but it was just a stage reading at that level. So, I mean, I’ve got several others, I do these kind of jukebox musicals from time to time that I whisper, I violate copyright law. Because I’m not making a lot of money doing it.
Ashley
So, then what is the next transition? So then how did you move into screenplays? You had these novels, you just thought they would make great screenplays. Maybe you can talk about that a little bit.
Vincent Scarsella
Well, what happened was, as I said, when I was working at the grievance committee, I thought it would make good TV and wrote the treatment. And then I went on and wrote a TV pilot based upon the first book. Nothing happened, so I shelved it. But then as like about 20, early 2020, 2021, the idea popped on my head again. I think I was watching Law and Order episode or something. I’m rolling my eyes. And I decided to dust it off and see where it can go. And I did, and it wasn’t great. This was in November of 2022. And I was on Facebook, and I happened to be Facebook friends with a New York City actor by the name of Tom Polino. And he posted that he was going to be on an episode of FBI. And I watched the episode and he had sort of a minimal role, but he’s a very good actor. And so, I contacted him on Facebook on my birthday, November 10 of 2022, and said, hey, I got this idea for a TV series. I went to look at the script, and I’ve been doing that. And I’m not shy about doing that. And usually, they don’t respond. I’m going to say- no, I’m not interested. But he actually said, Yeah, send me the script. And so I sent it to him and we developed a relationship. He liked it. He liked the idea, the concept. And it took two and a half years, but that TV series ended up becoming a feature film.
We decided the TV series after many jumps and starts, or starts and stops, wasn’t really working. And TV, I don’t know if you have this experience, but TV episodic is tough to write. I mean, especially taking a novel and making it into a full season six-to-eight-episode hour long series is difficult. And it was easy for me to take the novel and adapt it to a 90-minute screenplay, which is what I did in February of 2024. After we’ve got you know, now we’re into two and a half years. And Tom liked it. And then he ended up hiring another screenwriter to kind of put a little more comedy in it. And it became what’s now a feature film called one of the good ones that is, you know, gone through post production. And it’s on the festival circuit. And he just signed a he’s going to sign a distribution contract with indie rights. And we’re going to see it distributed and offered on various, you know, streaming sites and for rent and so forth. So yeah, that’s the process.
Ashley
And I hope people are sort of reading between the lines, just exactly what you said. You’re not shy about reaching out to people. Could you give us just some basic idea of the scope because I just, I get emails from people and, and they’ll say stuff like, Oh, I sent my script out to 10 people and no one responded. I don’t know what to do. And I just, it always just feels like a quantity issue. Like when you’ve sent your script out to a thousand people or 10,000 people, then you can start to say, maybe something’s not working, but maybe you can just give us a sense of the scope. Like how many emails did you send before you get a response, a positive response?
Vincent Scarsella
Well, with Tom, I was pretty lucky. I mean, that was just, you know, I just, you know, I don’t know, I don’t count. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I try to keep track of like, you know, I send eight, I haven’t been sending a lot lately to agents, and you try to keep a little chart that you can record when you sent it, did they respond? Yes response. But for that type of email, probably 5060. I mean, you’re, you’re constantly doing it. I put aside at least an hour a day for things like that. And, you know, my problem is I’m involved in not only the writing, a prose of novels and short stories and things. But I’m working on another film that I’m producing now called Local Talent. That’s a Buffalo centric movie. It’s set in Buffalo. I have some support from some local luminaries up there, restaurant owner by the name of Dennis de Paulo and a heavy weight boxing contender by the name of baby Joe Messi. And so, we’re trying to get that developed. We’ve, you know, we have a it’s an indie film with a micro budget of $75,000. I’ve partnered with some young Buffalo filmmakers who are very eager and very knowledgeable, very good, who are waiting to be discovered. They’re like the local talent up there. And so we’re, you know, that involves a lot of work contacting people and the financing end of it, as you probably know, is one of the hardest things to conquer when you’re trying to get a screenplay filmed. And so I’m in the middle of that. And I’m so I’m doing that I’m trying to also market my other writing and write some more screenplays.
Ashley
Let’s talk about your writing process a little bit. What does this look like for you as a writer? You said you try and get three or four hours a day. Do you go to a coffee shop? You have your, you think your, your home office. Do you do it in the morning? You do it at night. Maybe you can just talk through that process and then outlining the script. How long do you spend outlining the script? If you’re going from a novel, you already have sort of a story there. Just how does that go? You take it and then put it in outline, then turn into screenplay, but maybe you can just sort of describe sort of your writing process.
Vincent Scarsella
And again that process has evolved over time. I write where I’m sitting now, and we have a typical Florida house, a couple bedrooms, a den, you know, gathering room and so forth. And so I’m here. I spent most of my day here. I think my wife’s happy about that. But yeah, so I spend, like I said, I get up, you know, sometimes in the middle of the night, an idea hits me. And, you know, I take my phone and I’ll go to notes and jot it down. And then sometimes no, you got to get up and go write it down, go get it going. And usually it’s when I already have a story going or a novel going, that it’s I need to add this element to it, or this character needs to change or whatever. And I’ll get up at two in the morning and sit at the computer for a couple hours. And so that’s how it works for me.
And then, you know, then I wake up and I continue on with the novel. Right now, I’m going through a process where I’m revising all the Lawyer’s Gone Bad books. I published four from 2015 to 2020. But because I think I thought my script made the first book better, the plot was better, the characters got more deeper, then I went back and redid it and rewrote it. And then I look back and I said, oh, some of this stuff is horrible. I wrote that. I’m ashamed, you know, but so I’ve gotten a little better, because, you know, it’s just the practice makes perfect. As you’re writing, you’re getting better, the more you’re right. So, I mean, that’s, that’s the process I lately in the last year and a half, I have gotten to use and, you know, people are going to throw tomatoes at me or something, but on ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence, which has made me much more productive, because it’s great research, you know, half of writing is research. And because in research, well, a lot of times, generate characters that you didn’t anticipate, generate plot lines that you didn’t really think when you first got the concept going. And it does help in a lot of ways. So, I do utilize it. It helps with making covers. It can do so many things. And so I’ve now evolved into, into incorporating ChatGPT, not that I let it write my stuff. I tried a couple times where I let it, and it gave me garbage. And it wasn’t, you know, it is not, not to my liking at all. So, I don’t think it helps in that end. But so I don’t know if I’m answering your question, because it’s an evolutionary process, where I’ve changed the way I do things for the last, you know, 40, 50 years I’ve been writing.
Ashley
What are some tips you can give us the differences between writing novels and writing screenplays and then turning those novels into screenplays, pairing stuff down. Maybe just talk about that process a little bit. How do you go about that? Do you create an outline when you have a novel, do you create an outline, then turn into a screenplay, you just start writing the screenplay. Just how does that go for you?
Vincent Scarsella
Well, as I said, I have to have a beginning and you end to write something that people are going to want to read, you better have a good beginning, something that’s going to pull them in immediately. And I need to have an ending. And I’ll outline roughly outline from beginning to end. Now the outline never ends up being what the final product looks like. But it’s a good guide and it gets you into the process of writing, and then it changes things come pop into your head that you didn’t anticipate. So that’s my essential process. I have to have a beginning and I have to have an end. That works for me or else I can’t do it. I can’t get into it. And in terms of the different formats, novel writing, prose writing, play writing, and screenplay writing are three very different formats. They’re very different things to write, I found. Because you know, prose, you’re being more descriptive. You have to be to build a world from your world building, whether it’s lawyers gone bad, the world of being a disciplinary counsel, play writing, you’re writing for an audience looking at actors perform on a stage, and film, you’re you have to be much more cinematic and briefer in writing your screenplay description. So you know, I’ve read various things about, you know, the page should be almost all white. When you write a screenplay, I don’t know if that’s, you know, something that you’ve also but so yeah, so and I, you know, to be a good writer, you’ve got to read a lot. And when I got into screenplay writing, especially back in 2022, before I met Tom, and we went on with the lawyers gone bad project. I was it was awful the things I was putting out, you know, but and then I started reading some screenplays, I went back and read The Godfather. There’s a great book, The Annotated Godfather, which gives you the screenplay plus stories underlying the screenplay, which is a great little tool. And I also read some other screenplays that, you know, that were out there by people who are great screen writers. And, and I sort of filtered in, you know, that good writing, you know, tends to filter in. And I’ve gotten better at it, not that it’s not that great, but I mean, I’ve gotten better at it. And some of my, you know, I entered a bunch of contests along the way and to get some feedback. And it’s been, frankly, I’ve gotten some positive, very positive feedback.
Ashley
Yeah exactly. You know, you’ve done well in our contest and that’s always an interesting thing. When some of the same people, their scripts always make it pretty far in the contest. That’s a good sign. You’re on the right track. What is your rewriting process like? You mentioned you don’t have an agent, but do you have a group of writers that you send your stuff to? You get notes from them. Just what is that rewriting and that note taking process like for you?
Vincent Scarsella
Well, one of my errors, I guess you can say, is when I’m done writing, and I won’t talk about screenplays, but when I’m done writing a screenplay, I’ll have my wife, my poor wife, Roseanne, she played multiple roles in the screenplay. And because I have to hear it, you know, you have to hear dialogue, and you have to just, you know, go through it. And she’s very helpful, and she enjoys it. And she’s a good critic, too. She’ll tell me that’s not and she’ll make suggestions. Sometimes I say, well, I’m going to have to give you a byline. And she’ll also tell me that she didn’t, that she really likes it. And so I tell her to be critical. I don’t want you just to pat me on the back. That’s not going to help me. So and so I do that. I mean, I used to belong to this just rate Lakeland group and submit things to them. Unfortunately, john Fed cue is running a business now. And he’s got four children and he’s busy. And so he doesn’t do it anymore. So I really don’t have that opportunity. And so I kind of go it alone and hope that I’m doing it right. And the only way I can find out whether I am or not is through the contest that you sponsor and others obviously out there. I’m thrown away. Yeah, yeah, remember and all that. So, I enter a contest you may
Ashley
I mentioned, you’re not crazy about how to write books, save the cat, sit, field, screenplay. And those are the books, at least for me, that really laid out sort of the screenplay structure, you know, how to just, just how to sort of build a screenplay. So maybe you can tell us what your approach is. What is your approach to screenplay structure? You know, the, the inciting incident, the act breaks, the midpoint, all of that stuff. Um, just how do you, how do you decipher that and figure that out with your scripts? Fine.
Vincent Scarsella
I just try to tell a story. I mean, I just don’t get into the arc and it bogs me down when I start thinking about that. So, I’m trying to build a world that the viewer or reader can get into and believe it really exists and then have a good plot. And again, I think it comes from reading science fiction and crime where plot was so important, but yet the good writers, the really good writers knew how to create characters to be in those plots. And that’s what I try to do. I try to tell a good story. And whether you’re writing a brief, a legal brief or a court, which I used to do in one point in my life, you’re there to tell a story or when you’re doing a trial. And I was a trial lawyer, you have a jury, that’s your readers, that’s your people. You have to build a story to them so they can understand. And so that’s my approach. And so, there’s a certain style that you have to use when you format a play or screenplay. And I wasn’t very good at that. And in fact, some of your assessment people had mentioned that, too flowery in my scene descriptions and so forth. So, I’ve cut that down and learned from that and from reading other scripts as well. And so the how-to books, yes, some of them, I was reading a lot of them early on in my writing career, if you want to call it that. But lately I haven’t. I just don’t, I write, I’d rather spend that time writing. And maybe as you get older, you’re seeing a limited timeframe ahead of you. So, you better get to work.
Ashley
Yeah. So, you mentioned earlier in the interview, when you watch something like law and order, it bothers you because the law is so wrong. But let me just give you an example. As a programmer, someone who’s done a lot of web development, I remember this moment in the social network where they try and just get past like, oh, he wrote this in PHP and this. And it was clear as someone who’s run a web server that the guy who wrote this didn’t understand how to write a web server, but it worked in the screenplay. Most people don’t have that knowledge. So, it wasn’t really that big of a deal for the score. Yeah. Programmers are like, this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but that’s a very small select number of people in the audience. How do you approach these legal things? Sometimes just for brevity, sometimes just for dramatic purposes. The law is not as is Matt, you know, if the law is the law in real life, but in a story, sometimes you do need to make some changes just to get the story moving and stuff. How do you approach that stuff as a lawyer, that stuff probably bothers you, but how do you go about…
Vincent Scarsella
But I don’t want it to be legal. It’s not a legal textbook you’re writing. You’re writing a job. You’re writing drama, but you can still, the law is very interesting and it is cinematic. I mean, for example, in one of the good ones, because it’s a lawyer, illegal thriller with some comedic element to it, we wanted to have a courtroom scene and it really didn’t go through with the plot, but yet we wanted to show the main character Dean Alyssi, played by Tom, as a courtroom lawyer, because it develops his character. It makes him more heroic. And so, we put a courtroom scene in there and it was done very well and true to life with direct testimony, the way you ask questions, the proper way and cross-examination. And that’s the thing that bothers me when I watch a courtroom scene, I go, they would never get away with that question or the judge sustained or sustains. And so I go, why? So that’s what I try to build in authenticity, but yet preserving the drama and especially the crime books. And like, for example, even my play Hate Crime, it’s about a lawyer representing a white supremacist. I still had the law correct and the law made it more interesting actually. And so, you have to do that. I understand what you’re saying about the technical things. I’m not going to get bogged down in giving them textbook jargon and all that kind of stuff that I would read in law school, because that really, you don’t lose the reader in about two seconds, but you can still make it part of the story, move the story along and make it interesting. And that’s sometimes difficult, but I’ve found it quite easy to do and kind of fun.
Ashley
Yeah. So, what’s next for you? What are you working? It sounds like you have a novel, you’re working on these rewrites of the lawyer’s gun bag series, but what’s next for you in terms of screenplays and movies?
Vincent Scarsella
Well, we have local talent, which is…
Ashley
Your financing and getting the financing together on that.
Vincent Scarsella
I’m getting financing but the local talent itself is a comedy it’s in a I compare it to like Edwood or waiting for Guffman a bunch of dream local dreamers from buffalo actors a screenwriter who writes this goofy tv remake of Baywatch on the shores of Lake Erie using plus size lifeguards because his girlfriend is little plus size but she’s lost weight she’s working on it. And so it’s got the comedic element a con man comes sweeps in, takes advantage of them, gets their money to do a demo reel and it costs like hardly anything to do this demo reel and then he runs off with the rest of the money. So, that’s the whole essence of the plot. so it’s got some crime element to it. It’s about the main character is a dreamer in his late 30s actor who hasn’t made it you know maybe he should have gone in New York city or Atlanta or Hollywood and tried but he stayed in buffalo. And so it’s a film about almost making it and so we’ve gotten some good support. I think that the script is pretty decent it did well at your contest. Back in 2023 it was a whole little bit different story back then but so I revised it a little bit to fit it for Buffalo. So, that’s what we’re working on, we have a complete script. I mean you’re always revising a script and I’m sure it’ll change as we get closer to filming um but so we’ve got that we’ve raised 25 or 22,500 so far out of a 75,000 budget with some other commitments out there and developing the financing. I have support of some local people up in buffalo that are well known and all we’ve got all locations, and other amenities that are going to be that won’t cost us anything. So, it’s got a lot of positives going for it and it’s just getting the local people behind it and with their with their pocketbooks as you know that’s one of the hardest things to do and you know so now I’m watching a lot of YouTube videos on how to develop financing and so forth that are out there and those are the types of books I’ll read now.
Ashley
Gotcha. So, is there anything you can recommend to our mostly screenwriting audience that you’ve been watching – HBO, Netflix, anything out there that you thought was interesting?
Vincent Scarsella
We, last night, I told you before we went on, we were, I was flipping through and Rocky was on, and of course, like, we had to watch it.
Ashley
It’s an amazing script, man. People go back. Some of those movies like that, that are really iconic. You rewatch them and they still work after all those years.
Vincent Scarsella
That was one of the scripts that I read. I read about Sylvester Stallone writing that script and actually got the script and looked at it and how, you know, there were some differences in the script that he wrote it in a notebook. I mean, it was like amazing. This guy is so persistent and look where it got him. And so he’s an inspiration, I think, to any screenwriter out there, dreamer, to really continue at it because he’s been very successful. And so they have one, I mean, The Godfather is another one that we, you know, anytime it’s on, you can’t, you can’t switch the channel. I’m that type of guy. Things like Sopranos, Breaking Bad, you know, all the good stuff out there. Now we’re into Stranger Things. Although I think that, you know, it’s taken how many years for him to come back when it’s coming back Thanksgiving.
Ashley
Do you know what the release schedule is going to be like for one of the good ones? It sounds like you guys are getting hooked up with indie rights. When will that be settled? And when would they start pushing it out?
Vincent Scarsella
Yeah, it’ll be in January, date to be determined, it’ll be released for rent and to purchase. And then and it’s in a Canns film festival in May. Okay. And he’s, it’s going to be, there’s a couple film festivals, one in Dunedin, Florida, it’s already entered and been accepted. Perfect. And some other ones he entered in, Tom is the executive producer of Tom Paulino, and he entered into a variety of contests, film festivals, I should say.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. And what’s the best way for people to keep up with what you’re doing? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, anything you’re comfortable sharing, I will round up and put in the show notes so people can click over.
Vincent Scarsella
Yeah, you can go to Amazon and just search my last name, Scarcella, and you’ll find all my many books. In terms of, I don’t know if you, I don’t have a problem giving my email address. People can contact me as VLScarcella@gmail.com to contact me anytime and I’ll talk writing with you. I love talking about writing, I do teach it from time to time when asked. So those are the major things on Facebook, just search my name, Instagram, same way. I’m on Twitter, but I avoid Twitter because it’s so toxic. And those are the two major ones that I use, Instagram and Facebook, to try to sell books.
Ashley
Perfect, perfect. Well, Vincent, I really appreciate you coming on the show with me and talking about all your writing projects. It’s very inspirational. I hope people really listened to this. And it’s just the key is getting out there and doing it, man, just writing and writing and writing. And that sounds like that’s what you’re doing.
Vincent Scarsella
I appreciate the opportunity once again for having me and buying my book.
Ashley
Yep. It sounds good. And yeah, maybe we can just do a pitch for that. Where are your books available? Mostly on Amazon. That’s where you sell.
Vincent Scarsella
That’s one of the drawbacks of the KDP program. If you use KDP, you’re stuck with Amazon. And Amazon does take a big chunk of profit. But it’s so easy for me to do it and I’m loathe to try to go with it. So yeah, just go to Amazon, search me, you know, through the little window there and my books will come up and hopefully you’ll take a look at them and be interested in buying them. And I’ve gotten some reviews from newspapers and things like that, they’re positive, so.
Ashley
Perfect. Again, Vincent, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you very much. We’ll be in touch. All right. Take it easy.
Vincent Scarsella
Thank you. Bye.
Ashley
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