Profile (Final Draft)

By Jaime Zahl

Scarlet-infused light bulbs illuminated the depths of the West Village’s Le Poisson Rouge

lounge as an intimate audience awaited the arrival of veteran writer Richard Vetere.

A glowing Peter Carlaftes, co-director of Three Rooms Press, proudly announced

his friend and client.

“The Italians are coming,” he warned with a smile as a Godfather-esque melody

rang through the room.

Flashes of camera phones erupted as Vetere walked on stage, accompanied in

style by five beautiful women, among them, Boardwalk Empire actress Christiane Sidel

and Italian singer Giada Valenti.

Vetere is not shy on stage. His experience as a character actor showed as he took

to the mic and read from his new novel, The Writer’s Afterlife.

The novel tells the story Tom Chillo, a semi-successful writer who dies of a

stroke and is transported to “The Writer’s Afterlife”, where all writers go when they die.

There he mingles with those known as “The Eternals”, famed writers such as

Shakespeare, Wilde, Keats, and The Bronte Sisters, just to name a few. Although he can

interact with the greats he is condemned to dwell in a place known as The Valley of

Those on the Verge, a destination for the almost famous. However, he is permitted to

return to earth for one week to make himself famous and join the Eternals.

The idea for the novel came to Vetere while reading an Art Daily article on

Vincent Van Gogh.

 “I was thinking about the idea of fame in Western civilization,” Vetere said.

“How did Van Gogh become famous?”

After Van Gogh died his brother took his paintings and stored them in the

basement, said Vetere.

“When his niece got back from Amsterdam some time after his death she

remembered seeing a painting by her uncle. Then they sold them for a lot of money really

fast,” Vetere said.

The same posthumous story of fame applies to the Bard himself, William

Shakespeare. When Shakespeare died people continued to perform his plays but they

began to change, Vetere said. In some productions Romeo and Juliet lived rather than

meeting a tragic end. Many of the original works lost their former strength. Fifty years

later a man named Samuel Johnson published a literary criticism commenting on

Shakespeare’s plays. That was when Shakespeare really became famous.

“I was interested in why this happened,” Vetere said. “These are the things you

don’t learn in school.”

Vetere has had his own experience with fame over the length of his career. He

broke into Hollywood writing the 1983 cult film Vigilante. He also found success in the

publication of his novel The Third Miracle in 1998, later adapted into a film produced by

Francis Ford Coppola and starring Ed Harris.

What began with a master’s degree in poetry led to a life of work in

screenwriting, playwriting and prose. Those who have worked with him agree that there

is something special about his work.

 “He takes these ideas and makes them into something fabulous,” friend and

Queens native Sherry Cleator said after attending the reading. “His use of language

makes everything beautiful. It’s all artistic, from the heart.”

This sort of passion is what Three Rooms Press looks for in their authors, said co-

director Kat Georges.

“We met Richard at a Charles Bukowski event at the Cordelia Street Café,”

Georges said. “He pitched it [The Writer’s Afterlife] to us and we fell in love with it.”

Vetere associates most instances of literary fame with specific qualifications.

“I think writers are born,” Vetere said. “But it’s a 3-pronged battle. One, you have

to build your talent. Two, you have to survive. And three, you have to have discipline.

Then you have to have determination and just get lucky.”

Some do get lucky. Many writers achieve fame when they aren’t really talented,

he said. It is because critics love them and they are able to capture the imagination of the

people.

While you cannot teach someone how to become famous, you can teach someone

how to capture imagination, and well. Every Wednesday night Vetere shares his

knowledge of his craft with Queens College students in an undergraduate screenwriting

course.

Eager media studies majors are able to workshop their own screenplays with

Vetere and classmates. Vetere not only teaches his students how to write a screenplay,

but teaches them what makes something good.

“Anyone see any good movies?” he asks before each class.

 This opens up the floor for students to discuss films or television shows they may

have seen in the last week. Often times Vetere brings in his own personal anecdotes,

displaying his skills as a master storyteller.

“I was Robert Redford and Paul Newman’s bodyguard,” he said to the class,

piquing their curiosity.

“When I was a writer I decided the best thing I could do was to get a job I really

hated”, Vetere said. He ended up becoming the supervisor of 20 security guards in a mall

and was selected to work a movie premiere.

“In all my years, Redford was the coolest guy I ever met. Jeans, leather jacket,

perfect hair. He told me, ‘I hate this stuff. I don’t want to do this’,” Vetere said.

When it comes to workshopping, students cast their script and it is read aloud,

giving the script the life to enable visualization of a film. Vetere provide constructive

criticism, and his students say they appreciate his feedback.

“He truly wants us to improve our writing and be able to compose realistic,

quality screenplays,” said screenwriting student Rena Levin. “His years of experience in

the field make his advice and critiques invaluable. He's also enthusiastic about his own

and his students' work and always makes sure to spend sufficient amount of time on each

person's work to properly guide them.”

The Writer’s Afterlife is receiving many positive reviews particularly noting

Vetere’s skill. “Vetere demonstrates the ability to mix the poetic with the colloquial,”

said Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times. With this success Vetere may be

returning to his desk to start a new screenplay.

 “I would love to do it as a film,” Vetere said. “I think it would need a director

who could visualize it.”

For now he will enjoy the ride of promoting his novel and possibly achieving

fame himself. However he hopes people will find its deeper meaning.

“I want people to think about the meaning of life, the meaning of fame, the

meaning of art.”