MARC ACITO
How I Paid For College is a clever novel about a
character named Edward Zanni and how he schemes
to pay for his education at Julliard. Like many budding
artists, Zanni is exacerbated at trying to make his
father, Al, understand the importance of his wanting to
become an actor. Helping Zanni to achieve his dream
is a motley crew of his closest theater friends, and a
football jock on whom he has a crush. First time
novelist Marc Acito creates a wildly devious world for
his characters, in which they develop and find their
path--a truly entertaining story of love, sex, and every
sort of illegal activity.
The author’s own story also reads like a great piece of
fiction, starting with his stint as an opera singer and
tracing onward to October 2003, when he finished
writing How I Paid For College. By Nov. 1, he had two
book deals and had optioned the movie rights to
Columbia Pictures. Two days later the manuscript was
sent to an editor at Broadway Books, who picked up
the novel and began preparing it for release. The
movie rights were sold in a pre-emptive bid by Laura
Ziskin, best known as the producer of the Spider-Man
movies, and also edgier films like Fight Club and To
Die For--an amazing feat for a first-time author.
“I first started writing back in college. I had been
kicked out of acting school for artistic differences,"
remembers Acito. "I thought I could act and they didn't,
so I turned to writing. The first thing I wrote was a play
about being an usher on Broadway. It was a story
about a little usherette who wanted to be an opera
singer, but didn’t have the courage to do it. After I
finished the play I looked at it and decided to take my
own advice. I was a music theater guy with a very old-
fashioned sounding voice, so it was a natural leap to
become an opera singer.”
Acito said that after seeing the play onstage, he knew
that his life would be changed. He stopped writing and
started focusing on his desire to become an opera
singer. The challenge, however, was that he didn’t
know much about opera. “I scratched my way to the
middle. I was making a career portraying comic roles
in opera. That would mean that I would play mad
scientists, dwarves, hunchbacks, and somebody’s
drunken best friend. It was fun, but artistically very
frustrating.”
As a result, Acito turned back to writing by age thirty.
“It was like my biological clock went off and I felt the
urge to create the art myself, so in my spare time I
started writing.”
He worked as a freelance journalist for a local
publication and was given the assignment to interview
an opera singer who turned out to be an old friend. He
decided to “make up” some quotes to make the story
more interesting and funny. It didn’t take long before
his story assignments were turned into a weekly
column, becoming a fast hit. Still, Acito wasn’t sure he
wanted to be a full-time writer, so he started his own
sign and graphics business to spur his creative muse.
“I was reading the paper one morning over breakfast
and I had an epiphany. I was reading this article on
the rising cost of college and I thought ‘man, to pay for
college nowadays you would have to turn to a life of
crime.’ I just could not shake the idea and it kept
creeping into my conscious and banging at the door of
my subconscious at night saying, ‘this is a story you
want to tell.’”
Acito said he felt it was important to write a
lighthearted comedy because he couldn’t understand
why people would want their entertainment to be
depressing. “I don’t need fiction to tell me life is hard, I
already know life is hard: I still have to fly coach! So I
knew that in addition to the story being lighthearted, I
also wanted to make it a coming of age story. Once
this idea took hold, I couldn’t let it go.”
Acito wrote over nine versions of the manuscript. “I
finished the first draft of this book at stop lights and
sales calls. I wrote it in five-minute increments and was
completely sleep deprived for about a year. Because I
am not a morning person, I would work way into the
night.”
His efforts pay off through the uncanny way he shapes
the lives of his characters, best witnessed in the
development of Zanni, who emerges from his
circumstance to embrace not only the challenges life
throws at him, but also his own sexuality.
For more information about Marc Acito and his book
How I Paid For College, you may visit his website at
marcacito.com. P&A
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