From Courtroom Battles to Captivating Stories: Vincent Scarsella’s Unexpected Journey Revealed
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.
