He later attended and graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts[1] where his writing mentors were Waldo Salt, Ring Lardner, Jr., and Lorenzo Semple.
[2] He won back-to-back honors in national screenwriting competitions his junior and senior year, twice winning the top prize of a Nissan Sentra and a contract with the William Morris Agency.
[12] After traveling in the southeast United States in search of obscure blues artists in the late 1970s, Fusco returned home to New England to co-found the Travis McComb Band, a southern rock ensemble that was popular in the New Haven, Connecticut music scene.
For a short time in 1979, he joined and toured with the Dixie Road Ducks from Northern Virginia, but soon left both bands to return to school and his pursuit of a screenwriting career.
Blues Rock Review has called the collection of original songs "an incredibly impressive and fun debut," while other music critics have praised Fusco's "smoky, soulful voice" and Hammond B3 organ skills.
While known for Western and Native American themed films, Fusco drew on his lifelong background in martial arts to write The Forbidden Kingdom, starring Jet Li and Jackie Chan.
He is also a practitioner of Wing Chun, Jeet Kune Do, and has received an honorary black belt from the World Tang Soo Do Association for his work in promoting traditional martial arts values in film, television, and literature.