Is There Life After My Cousin Vinny?
by Guest Contributor Lawrence Kelter
Oh, God I certainly hope so because the joy of novelizing My Cousin Vinny and writing Back To Brooklyn, the sequel, as well as Wing and A Prayer, the final segment in the legal comedy trilogy was the most fun I ever had sitting behind a computer keyboard.
Now, you might ask, “How did all this fun stuff come to pass?” Well, I’ll tell you as concisely as I can. I’d seen the film in whole or in part many, many times. On one rainy afternoon, the TV was on and I had my laptop on my…well, you know where it was. I picked up the remote and My Cousin Vinny was on the tube just at the scene where Lisa’s biological clock is ticking. You may have surmised that it’s one of the most rewatched movies of all time. Work be damned, I shut the computer and watched the balance of the movie.
When it was over I thought it would be a nice idea to contact Dale Launer, the screenwriter and congratulate him on his timeless work. It’s often said that no good deed goes unpunished but this is one case to the contrary. I dashed off an email, never expecting to hear back. I was wrong. Dale responded with a lengthy email. I wrote back. He wrote back. One thing led to another. Before long we were on the phone together. He explained that he always wanted Vinny and Lisa to have additional adventures along the lines of Dashiell Hammett’s Nick and Nora Charles with Lisa investigating and Vinny litigating. Unfortunately, attempts at a My Cousin Vinny film sequel and network TV show never worked out.
He called one day and told me he’d read one of my books, BABY GIRL DOE, one of the books in my Stephanie Chalice series. His next comment was, “You’re pretty funny. Do you want to write a sequel in book form?” I said yes, then hung up and called my attorney. He called his attorney. Twentieth Century Fox called their attorneys. Five attorneys later, we had an agreement. Nothing to it.
The novelization was fun to write but hey, a lot of the work had been done for me. After all, I had Dale’s original screenplay to guide me. Sure, I peppered the book with additional scenes and provided insights film viewers weren’t privy to but when you start with literary treasure how far astray can you go?
The greatest compliment I received from fans and reviewers was that they were able to visualize Vinny Gambini and Mona Lisa Vito while they read the stories. They said that they could picture the couple exchanging funny barbs and playing their romantic game of cat and mouse. They also felt that the transition between the film and the sequel was seamless and that the characterizations were one-hundred percent spot on, just as they imagined them to be.
Now, writing the sequel, that was two tons of fun but it’s also where things got interesting because I had to develop a story that rivaled the original classic. As they sort of say, “You can take the boy out of Brooklyn but you can’t take Brooklyn out of the boy.” By the way, I’m originally from Brooklyn and had met guys like Vinny and gals like Lisa. Perhaps that was why the film resonated with me so strongly. In the sequel, Vinny was no longer a fish out of water, a rough around the edges New Yorker trying a murder case in rural Alabama. He was back on his home turf but still had to be inappropriate, constantly trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole. That, my friends, was a huge challenge.
I was given creative reign to develop the plot. I thought, What’s next for Vinny and Lisa? What’s the next logical step? It was a given that Vinny didn’t stand a chance of pursuing his legal career in the state of Alabama. It was time to see how our inappropriate legal genius would fare in the Big Apple. The film ended with our heroes in Vinny’s red Cadillac convertible with the top down and the wind blowing through their hair as they raced home from Alabama. It seemed the perfect starting point for the sequel.
Well then, three laugh-out-loud legal thrillers written and done. And now what?
The fun I had writing about Vinny and Lisa proved addicting and so I thought, Lets have some more fun. To that end I developed PI Gina Marie Cototi. Gina Marie Cototi is a feisty Sicilian spark plug, a Brooklyn-based PI with a fondness for family, friends, and one roguishly handsome Casanova named Rocco Benelli. Hey, nobody's perfect.
You might think of Man-Killer as Stephanie Plum meets Moonstruck. I hope you’ll take a peek. New York Times bestselling author Gemma Halliday read an advance review copy and said, “A sassy PI and sizzling romance—what’s not to love?”
Lawrence Kelter hails from New York but now calls North Carolina his home. He is the bestselling author of more than twenty-five mystery and thriller novels including the Stephanie Chalice Mystery Series that has topped bestseller lists in the US, UK, and Australia. In 2017 he penned BACK TO BROOKLYN, the studio-authorized sequel to the cult comedy classic “My Cousin Vinny.”
Early in his writing career, he received direction from literary icon, Nelson DeMille, who edited portions of his early work. Well before he said, "Lawrence Kelter is an exciting new novelist, who reminds me of an early Robert Ludlum," he said, "Kid, your work needs editing, but that's a hell of a lot better than not having talent. Keep it up!"