Wilfred La Salle put in 18 years with the City of New York, first as an NYPD school safety agent and then as a correction officer. He was getting close to a pension when he walked away to make movies, with no crew, no investors and no idea how to use the camera he had just bought. Seven years and seven feature films later, his newest, The Veteran, debuted on FOX Soul this Memorial Day, with its war scenes shot on the old military grounds at Floyd Bennett Field, Fort Tilden and Fort Totten and a real Army veteran playing the lead.
The Veteran follows Jose Torres, a U.S. Marine played by Yanko Valentin-Perez, who comes home from deployment to his wife and young son and loses both in a car accident weeks later. He turns to opioids, is administratively separated from service when the military finds out, and ends up homeless on the streets of New York, until he crosses paths with Maxwell Cade, a CEO played by Lancelot E. Theobald Jr. who sees past the wreckage and believes in him. La Salle’s press release lists earlier releases across Amazon Prime, Tubi, Apple TV and Roku, and on Wednesday he told Bushwick Daily the network deal is real and doubled: “The Veteran and The Security Guard are the films that are on FOX Soul, and we signed two deals with them.” The trailer is on YouTube, and the film has drawn reviews from Film Threat and The Movie Buff.
He was born and raised in the Bronx, and he does not dress up where he came from. “I was 18 years in with the City of New York,” he wrote to Bushwick Daily on Wednesday. “I worked as an NYPD School Safety Agent and as a New York City Correctional Officer before leaving to pursue filmmaking. I was getting close to retirement, but I made the decision to walk away because I knew I had a bigger mission. My wife was a little against it at first, but she understood that my mission was bigger.”
The start was not glamorous. “My wife will kill me if she knows how much money I’ve spent on my movies, but when I first started in 2019, I spent about $10,000 on camera equipment,” he wrote. “I didn’t know how to use any of it. I just knew I had a vision and wanted to start creating films. I taught myself how to edit by watching YouTube videos and figuring it out as I went.”
Then he made a film a year, every one paid for out of his own pocket. “The Veteran is my seventh feature film in seven years, all of which have been completely self-funded on a zero-dollar budget through my production company, La Salle Productions,” he wrote in July. Asked on Wednesday what zero-dollar means day to day, he did not hedge. “It means I have no sponsors and no investors,” he wrote. “There is no outside funding. I am the budget.” The films found an audience anyway. “While working entirely outside the traditional studio system, my films have earned national recognition through appearances and coverage across FOX, NBC, ABC, and other major media outlets,” he wrote, and this summer that meant a press trip to Chicago and a sit-down on FOX 32.
Brooklyn is the set. “Brooklyn played a major role in bringing this story to life,” La Salle wrote. “We filmed the military sequences at Floyd Bennett Field, Fort Totten, and Fort Tilden, while many of Jose Torres’ home and neighborhood scenes were shot throughout Crown Heights and Bushwick. Showcasing Brooklyn authentically was incredibly important to me, and I wanted audiences to see the borough through a cinematic lens while telling a powerful human story.” The interiors went up on Pacific Street in Crown Heights. Asked whether the war scenes on federal parkland drew any attention, he answered with his working philosophy. “I always live by the phrase, ‘Always ask for forgiveness, not permission.'” And then: “If the police did come, they were very polite. We explained exactly what we were doing, and actually, one of the officers was a veteran and a Marine himself. He was intrigued by what we were doing and understood the vision behind the scenes.”
The street scenes were harder on everyone. “People were outraged,” La Salle wrote. “They genuinely thought what we were filming was real and that the actor playing Jose Torres was actually homeless.” He did not mind. “That reaction was actually what we wanted. We wanted society to react in a way that demonstrated how invisible Jose Torres was to the world.”
The casting is the part he comes back to most. “Yanko Valentin-Perez is an actual U.S. Army veteran, and he brought a level of authenticity to the role that you can’t simply teach,” he wrote. “He understood the mission of the film, understood how to carry himself as a veteran, and even trained us on certain military movements and procedures for the war scenes.” In July he put it more simply: Valentin-Perez “served a tour in Iraq,” and “his military experience brought an authenticity to the role that simply can’t be replicated, making Jose’s journey through grief, addiction, homelessness, and redemption even more impactful.”
He is direct about why he made this one. “The film focuses on veteran homelessness, PTSD, mental health, addiction, and the challenges many veterans face when returning to civilian life,” he wrote in May. His press release frames it as the continuation of a mission “to spotlight underrepresented stories, addressing themes of grief, addiction, homelessness, and veteran reintegration through a raw and deeply human lens.”
He has not slowed down. While The Veteran was making its rounds on television, La Salle was already shooting his eighth film, Lucy. “Lucy is a powerful story centered around autism awareness and follows a family navigating the challenges, triumphs, and realities of raising a nonverbal autistic child,” he wrote in June, sending set photos from a Sunday shoot in a bar on Palmetto Street in Bushwick. By late July he was filming “every weekend” and “almost at the finish line.” This one is not headed to FOX Soul. “Lucy is going to be distributed across streaming platforms, and we’re hoping to land a major deal with Hulu or Lifetime,” he wrote.
There is one more true thing worth saying. La Salle told this paper in April that he had been trying to get Bushwick Daily’s attention since his last film, about three years earlier, and that it had been “an uphill battle.” He kept writing anyway. On September 1 he wrote that he was “looking forward to finally seeing the article on The Veteran in the Bushwick Daily.” This is that article.
Asked what he wants a reader in Brooklyn to do with it, he did not point at himself. “Everyone thinks Manhattan is the heart of New York City, but I believe Brooklyn is where it’s really at,” he wrote. “I want people to support independent filmmakers, support Brooklyn, and understand that you can create something powerful right here in your own community.” The trailer is on YouTube and the film is streaming now. If the story hits closer to home, the Veterans Crisis Line is open 24 hours a day: dial 988 and press 1, or text 838255. And the NYC Department of Veterans’ Services handles the exact problems the film is about, from housing and VA claims to discharge upgrades, at no cost.
Featured image: Courtesy Wilfred La Salle / La Salle Productions; composite by Bushwick Daily
