The Bensonhurst Pigeon original screenplay by Anthony Valerio

My screenplay is adapted from Part II of a book of mine titled THE LITTLE SAILOR which has just been released in paperback. Picks up on the noir classic The Maltese Falcon.

THE LITTLE SAILOR
by Anthony Valerio

· Paperback: 81 pages
· Publisher: Bordighera Press (May 5, 2008)
· ISBN-10: 1884419941
· $9
· amazon.com

“The Little Sailor is a literary gem from one of our foremost writers. Anthony Valerio’s evocative prose woos the characters across 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

About The Little Sailor, Anthony Valerio writes:

“I enjoyed writing The Little Sailor more than any of my other books. I had never recalled so early, with such pleasure. These are the beautiful women who raised me. Who taught me. Happy women and sad. Sainted women and scorned. Lovers appearing in the guise of goddess and sibyl. It’s a sensual, picaresque odyssey in which Antonio known as The Little Sailor seeks to hold onto his openness, his innocence, and thereby his ladies and their beauty.
I have never loved anyone as much as the grocer’s daughter, Frances Palermo. To revisit and sustain this pure love, I believe I had to morph into the reformed arch criminal Kasper Gutman, known in elite crime circles as the Fat Man, and resume the hunt for the notorious statuette of a bird filled from beak to claw with fantastic riches—the Maltese Falcon.”

Anthony Valerio is the author of five books, including Lefty and the Button Men, Valentino and the Great Italians, and The Mediterranean Runs Through Brooklyn.
He resides in Connecticut and Rome.

“He’s just crazy enough. He knows characters. He gets in, tells his story and gets out. It’s what good writing should be.”
--Shel Silverstein