David Prete author of Say it to my Face
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

First and foremost David Prete is a storyteller. Whether he does that by acting, playwriting or fiction he is very good at what he does. His first collection of short stories has just been published by W.W. Norton & Company and its called Say That To My Face. If it sounds a little like what a tough guy would say it’s because Prete grew up around tough guys in Yonkers. Say That to My Face introduces us to Joey Frascone and his family and friends in the tense, violent, racially divided Yonkers of the Seventies and Eighties. All the short stories are connected because they are about the myriad people that Prete and therefore the character of Frascone encounters. Every year many Italian Americans get upset about their portrayal in the media, well do they ever reward artists who do honest portrayals of working class Italians? If they ever do then Prete should be first in line for a medal because what he brings to the table is more than just red sauce.

Check out the website for Say That To My Face.

Daniel Robert Epstein: How autobiographical is your book Say That To My Face?

David Prete: No doubt that I come from that place and time. All the people I created in the book are composites of people I’ve met or people I’ve seen. But as far as autobiographical, I can’t really say that to be honest.

DRE: So the stories are set in a realm you know?

DP: For the most part. People want to know how much of it is true or not, they want to meet these people. I say that you can’t because it’s a composite of maybe 18 different people I’ve met in my life. I’d say that’s pretty much true across the board.

DRE: Where did the idea come from then?

DP: I’m actually new to short story writing. I wrote for the stage for many years and never thought to write fiction. When I did, I first wrote a short story and was able to find an agent. When the agent sat me down and said, I think you have a collection of short stories in you that planted the idea in my head that I could write about a certain place and time while having all the stories be connected without having to write a novel.

DRE: Does that mean you wrote all these stories at once?

DP: Pretty much. I wrote the whole book within six months.

DRE: What’s that like?

DP: When I tell other writers that I wrote the stories in six months, they go whoa and get a little pissed off especially since I’m new to it. What I didn’t have to deal with doing this book is the research. Some writers do years of research before they start at their computer. This came mostly from memory, as I said people I’ve known or things I’ve heard. Whatever the source may be I wasn’t spending hours in the library trying to figure out another culture I didn’t know. That’s why I was able to do it in such a short amount of time.

DRE: Were you daunted by the idea of doing a novel?

DP: Yeah I was but I’m writing a novel now and I’m still daunted by it only because I’ve never done it before. It may turn out to be a beautiful thing in the end I hope. What I always had was a knack for storytelling. I had been an actor for 12 years. I studied acting that whole time. The school of thought I came from was that acting was storytelling. You were working on a scene and what happens in a scene is most important then what happens after that and so on. If you can somehow as an actor create all those events then we’re telling a story. That’s where my mind goes when I act. Because I spent so many years thinking that way and analyzing scripts to find the events and major story points, I imbibed all that. When I was writing the short stories I felt like that was what I was doing. It was just an extension of storytelling. It wasn’t all that much different from what I had been doing with acting.

DRE: I’ve actually seen one of your movies, Four Letter Words.

DP: Oh yeah! Sean Baker’s movie. I shot that so long ago.

DRE: I talk to a lot of actors and when you mention the idea of them writing many get this look of fear in their eyes. Have you always been writing?

DP: Yeah I have. I always wrote for the stage. I think that’s why you see that look of fear in some actors because playwriting and screenwriting is scary. When I think of what playwrights do I’m fascinated that they have this whole narrative structure by only using dialogue. It’s just a fascinating thing to me and I don’t quite get it. My stuff for the stage was mostly monologues. When I think about playwriting it’s a whole other medium I don’t think I have it in me at this point. I understand that look of fear. It’s a whole other art form.

DRE: I had no idea that Yonkers was so bad at that point. What was it like really?

DP: To some extent it’s a lot like it is in the stories. I’m sure that some people that grew up in this same place and time that read this book will say that it wasn’t their experience. I’m sure I’ll get some of that somewhere. Although I’ve gotten the opposite from people I know. They say it takes them back to that time. The climate of the place as far as racism and economic struggle was very real. There were just some political things that happened at the time like the NAACP coming in and suing the Yonkers Board of Education really affected everyone’s mindset. This was going on when I was 15 years old, so my political mind hadn’t developed yet its the last thing you’re thinking about when you’re that age. But we felt it as kids, we felt the tension and we didn’t know what to do with it. Because there was this integration being done it may have felt like we were to blame for something. Either you were an oppressor or you were the oppressed and neither one of those things was a winner. It wasn’t a comfortable place to be.

DRE: Here’s a silly question. I can’t tell from your last name but are you Italian?

DP: I am. The name is not a very common last name so I get people asking me if it had been shortened which is the case with a lot of Italian-Americans. It hasn’t but it’s just an uncommon Italian name. All of my relatives trace back to Italy.

DRE: Was it nice to write stories that weren’t about the mob?

DP: Yeah it is. That’s a world I really don’t know too much about. I think my education about the mob comes from the same source as many Americans, the movies and television. I didn’t know too much about it and I didn’t have the desire to sink into it, although you could feel that presence in Yonkers. What I was really happy to write about was the violence at the time. There is physical violence in the book but also emotional violence as well which is a little trickier. I think there is some kind of similarity between the mobsters we know and the regular working class guys in that they have this propensity towards violence. Sometimes when that’s depicted it’s done without showing the consequences. If it is depicted without consequence then you’re into this realm of gratuitous violence. If you actually see the consequences of all kinds of violence then I think you are really dealing with the value of human life and frailties. That’s one of the things that’s missing in the mobster genre. I hope I presented it in the right way.

DRE: What’s really good in the book is the details, that’s something actors are really into as well. Did that attention to detail come from your acting?

DP: I’m sure it came from both acting and writing. When I was studying acting I was lucky to find some of the greatest acting teachers of our time at this point. They were very much about detail insofar as character and storytelling goes. As I was writing this there was a part of me that made speak the characters words out loud and that led me to other details about them. To not just put them on the computer screen but to put them in my body, this led me to discover more about them. Also I wrote this with a film director’s eye. I pretty much grew up on watching film. So a part of me was using the narrative as a camera and saying to the audience, let me put this in the frame so you can look at it like this. I think that I was in a way to direct the scenes with a movie director’s eye.

DRE: Was this all real language?

DP: Yeah I heard all that. It was the colloquial speech I grew up with. I don’t think I bent it all that much. You’ve heard the expression “It’s too good to be real.” Some things I used, nobody would ever believe that someone would talk like that so I actually had to tone it down a bit to give it a more realistic feel because some of it is so absurd. It’s like all the four letter words. People would ask me if people curse that much when they talk, well they do. As a dramatist you have to find a balance between the reality of a character and reality of the way the character speaks. But you don’t want to use the language too much because the audience will become anesthetized to it. The characters themselves don’t even realize they are saying it. You want the reality to come through but you also want it to be poignant so you have to tone it down.

DRE: What’s it like to be compared to Raymond Carver and one critic called you the Bronx Chekhov?

DP: If anyone is going to compare me to Anton Chekhov how could I not like that. He’s one of the greatest writers of all time. It feels great to have people compliment. There are two things I want from the work. I want it to be received, to be popular, people to buy and like. Then I want it to really resonate with them for them to get it on other levels. I want it to inspire.

DRE: Were your parents divorced?

DP: Yes they were. It’s definitely a huge theme in the book. The loss and the confusion. Hopefully someone else who comes from a situation like that will be able to relate to this book and hopefully get more understanding about the difficulty of coming from divorced parents. Not just that but how the parents themselves get confused about it. Feelings of failure, regret and how difficult it is to work through those things. It takes a really long time.

DRE: Did you see both your parents?

DP: Yes they were both present in my life.

DRE: Where did you go to school?

DP: After high school I went to an acting conservatory in New York City and spent two years there. I knew I wanted to act and to spend time in classes at college didn’t appeal to me.

DRE: What drew you to acting?

DP: I loved movies so much and actors so much then after high school I just had to go to acting class. After that first class I said this is it, this is what I’m doing. We did theatre in bars while bands were playing in Yonkers that were considered radical back then. The people I were working with but no one really knew the craft so I searched for my teachers.

DRE: Which teachers?

DP: I studied at the New Actors Workshop with George Morrison and Mike Nichols. Those guys are phenomenal. George Morrison is 70 and has been teaching for over 40 years. He still comes into the classroom with new stuff. He was so inspirational because he would stand in front of us and try new things with the students helping. It was so exciting to see a guy who had been teaching for so long bring in something that he wasn’t even sure was going to work.

DRE: Were you a troublemaker when you were younger?

DP: [laughs] That word was definitely attached me. I was reckless like so many people. I was just testing the boundaries trying to find myself. I bounced around between different friends and was a bit rebellious. I grew my hair really long, at the time no one was doing it and had my ears pierced. Now that’s all completely accepted.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

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