Anthony Valerio's Screenplays

HOT CONEY ISLAND!

AHEAD OF YOUR TIME! THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS SOMETIMES.

NOW THAT THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE HAS DONE ITS SPREAD ON CONEY ISLAND MY PHOTO SHOOT OF THE FAMOUS LANDMARK NEAR TO WHERE I WAS BORN AND RAISED IS ALL THE RAGE. CANNOT PRINT THE ORIGINAL SIGNED EDITIONS OF 50 FAST ENOUGH. CATCH THEM ON MY SITES AT FACEBOOK AND MYSPACE.

THANKS,

ANTHONY

Feb 8, 2008 4:04 PM | Link | Comments (0) | Add Comment | Report Content

The Bensonhurst Pigeon original screenplay by Anthony Valerio

Am I kidding myself? How can I love a project of mine so much? The ageing process? I think what I like about my completed screenplay The Bensonhurst Pigeon is precisely that it's a creative leap from the book which I wrote to the screenplay, a film. Usually, its: oh the film can't possibly...what the book does. In this case, it was the other way: Additions to the screenplay enriched the book, at least in my mind.

For example: The comical detective Sam Spade--yes, that Sam Spade!-- gets more involved in a Missing Persons Case in the film than in the book, and, in the process, the book's sexual potential, he comes alive in different ways in the screenplay, and interacts more closely with both the book's and screenplay's protagonist, 10-year-old Antonio. The book's Antonio and it's murders and disappearances are somewhat ambiguous, the crimes not really solved, while the screenplay delves deeper into the project's netherworld, thereby into Antonio.

The Bensonhurst Pigeon is adapted from Disc 2 of my audiobook titled The Little Sailor. I'm not one for derivative but to bring back the characters of the noir classic The Maltese Falcon--book & film--arose not from their fascination directly but from the Little Sailor himself, imagining him much later on, and I saw him transformed into Kasper Gutman, the legendary criminal called The Fat Man, and envisioned the great Sidney Greenstreet. The "heart" necessary for me to write it derived from the Little Sailor's best girlfriend, Frances, the grocer's daughter, a hunchback with a huge mound on her back. Guess where the true Maltese Falcon is hidden?

"The Little Sailor is a literary gem from one of our foremost writers. Anthony Valerio’s evocative prose woos the characters onto the page and into the hearts of its readers. His charming, eccentric, deeply moving women emerge from a world of distant memories with extraordinary force and passion--sensual, enticing, unforgettable--and the reader is mesmerized."
Edvige Giunta, author of Writing with an Accent: Contemporary Italian American Women Authors

Feb 2, 2008 10:51 AM | Link | Comments (0) | Add Comment | Report Content

Anthony Valerio's Screenplays

Lefty & the Button Men a completed screenplay adapted from my book of that title this past summer I wrote for my daughter, a producer, who misplaced the first copy and has been reading the second since July. "I like it!" In the adaption Lefty became a musical, with a gay don added, with whom I felt sympathy. This could be because I had lived with the original, the book--promotion, readings, and I'm glad and proud to say it's taught in colleges--that I desired more from it, and the screenplay is the result.

Briefly,
of the book:

The incomparable Lefty--a redheaded, left-handed, cross-eyed, married and very sexy woman--reduces her Italian-American lover, Nicholas, to that of a sex slave, her own private Button Man--propelling him back to the neighborhood don, Johnny, for counsel and wisdom. Lefty is also their muse and their salvation, humanizing both the Italian poet and the Italian gangster, and even transforms them to the godfather of the future, the unforgettable Don Pippo--reformed, wise, gentle.

of the screenplay:
Lefty catalyzes even more, a territorial war between the comical ineffective, dangerous Brooklyn Don and Lefty's gay husband, Manhattan don, over the spread of Gay Establishements from Brooklyn to Staten Island, Queens and beyond. The musical, firt rate gay impersonations, may have derived from experience living in Greenwich Village during the 1970s, how the gay community, including neighbors and friends, was decimated.

"He's just crazy enough. He knows his people. He knows his craft. He gets in, tells his story and gets out. It's what good writing should be."
--Shel Silverstein

Feb 1, 2008 7:36 AM | Link | Comments (0) | Add Comment | Report Content