Michayla Scully with her father, Michael Scully
It was Michayla Scully, fifteen, who proposed to her father, Michael, in 2019, to follow his dreams and create a feature film. Thanks to her bold suggestion, the Levittown father and daughter duo launched their first feature film together in 2021, titled “Montauk77.”
“The genesis of the film was her idea, and she co-wrote much of the script,” said Scully, a longtime Levittown resident. “She was really amazing throughout the process, helping me come up with an idea for the film and also playing the lead character in the film.”
Scully said he played an Uber driver in the film and his daughter played a passenger who recruited him to help with a bank robbery.
“I play this Uber driver, who picks up this young girl from Wantagh station, because she wants to go to Montauk to scatter her dead mother’s ashes,” Scully said. “There’s a lot more to it, but it’s obvious, because this girl, who’s name is Liz, has ulterior motives in her mind.”
He said the ambiguity lies in the fact that the girl believes the driver, whose name is Harry, is her biological father, who left her mother when she was very young.
“There’s a certain anger on her part and she also knows that Harry used to be a petty thief. She deliberately targets him so he can help her steal $50,000, so she can move to California and start a new life.
He said that the real authentic moments of the film are the bonds that are formed between the two characters throughout the car ride and in other places.
Scully said the village of Montauk is not the main setting, and the film was shot in 23 different locations across Long Island over a fourteen-day period.
“It’s obviously not a big budget movie and it was shot cheaply, but there are many landmarks across Long Island that are shown throughout the movie that people will recognize.”
Some of the notable sites include Adventureland in Farmingdale, the Lighthouse Diner and Mulcahy’s Bar in Wantagh and the Amphitheater at Jones Beach.
He said finding a bank willing to lend their location as the setting for a bank robbery was an ordeal in itself.
“We contacted probably eighty to a hundred banks on Long Island and even in New Jersey, to let us shoot the bank robbery scene,” Scully said. “They all rejected the idea until we found a small bank in Seaford that allowed us to use their location on Good Friday last year.”
Scully said that prior to the feature’s launch, he had spent the past eighteen years putting together short clips for various functions, including Bar Mitzvahs, weddings and Sweet Sixteen parties. He owns Island Long Productions
He worked alongside cinematographer Ethan Kornfeld, who helped shoot the car ride scenes and background scenes throughout the film.
Montauk77 was recently entered into the 25th Annual Long Island International Film Expo at Bellmore last week. The feature won first place in the “Best Feature Film” category, beating over a hundred other films.
The film will also premiere at the Long Beach International Film Festival, which runs July 27-30.
Scully said he recently signed a deal with Gravitas Ventures, an international film distributor, to help market the film on Amazon Prime and iTunes channels.
For more on Levittown’s father and daughter’s debut film, you can visit the website,
Montauk77film.com.
