Michael Wolfe's Indie Film Set in Southampton

Michael Wolfe, director, writer, star, and co-producer of “Maybe Tomorrow,” an independent dramatic film that has just been released on DVD, began his film career with humble ambitions. As teenagers growing up on Long Island in the early 1990s, he and his friends made skits using his father’s video camera and showed them at parties.

“A number of years later, when ‘Jackass’ came out, everybody said, ‘Oh my God, that’s what you were doing.’ ” For those unfamiliar with the MTV series, “Jackass” featured young men performing dangerous, crude, and self-injuring stunts and pranks. The series eventually spawned eight films.

“I was a juvenile delinquent, heading the wrong way when I was younger,” Mr. Wolfe said. “We learned from those films that you can have fun without doing drugs or getting arrested.” Born and raised in Patchogue, after “bouncing around several private schools” he graduated from Patchogue-Medford High School.

From there he went to Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where he studied television and film production and was a member of the sketch comedy troupe, a weekly columnist for the newspaper, a writer and actor for the college TV station, and the host of a weekly radio show.

Since graduating, he has written seven screenplays, three teleplays, a novel, a memoir, and two novellas, but “Maybe Tomorrow” provided the opportunity to put all his skills together. The film is the story of three men who in one long night at a beach house on Meadow Lane in Southampton confront their present circumstances and revisit their shared past, which included an act of violence that has continued to have repercussions for all of them.

Completed in 2012, the film has been screened at more than a dozen film festivals and won prizes at six, including three best-picture awards. In addition to the beach house, scenes were shot at Seafield Treatment Center in Westhampton Beach and at the Omni in Southampton, among other East End locations. The filmmakers received a post-production grant from the Suffolk County Film Commission that enabled them to complete the project.

Mr. Wolfe is familiar with the East End. “I got kicked out of a Catholic school in Riverhead,” he said, “and my summer job when I was in college was servicing swimming pools out in the Hamptons.” He cast the film from his Rolodex, auditioning only three roles; the rest of the actors he knew and had worked with.

“I like having my fingers in every single step of the filmmaking process,” he said. “As a director, that obviously gives you the most involvement. As a producer, which I don’t particularly enjoy, there are a lot of decisions made that I want to be a part of. And I like writing good roles for myself. If you surround yourself with enough people, making a film is not as overwhelming a task as it seems.”

Mr. Wolfe acknowledged that getting theatrical distribution for an independent film can be difficult. “It’s very hard to get, without name actors.” His next project, a road-trip drama titled “I Love You I’ll Miss You Goodbye,” is in pre-production. He feels it will lend itself well to an art-house audience, and he hopes to engage some high-profile actors.

In “Maybe Tomorrow,” Mr. Wolfe elicits strong performances from his cast, but his own turn as Russ Mahler, a career criminal with a history of drug problems, is as nuanced as it is powerful. “People always assume Russ is the most autobiographical character, but there’s a part of me in all the characters.”

Mr. Wolfe lives in Queens. While he visits Los Angeles if there is work there, the casting director and producing partner of his current project are both based in New York. “I like L.A.,” he said, “but I’m a New York guy. I need the energy of New York.”