He entered the graduate film school and studied directing under Martin Scorsese and Brian DePalma.
were featured in movie journalist Billy Frolick's book called What I Really Want to Do Is Direct: Seven Film School Graduates Go to Hollywood.
Entertainment Weekly called it "The best Western on any size screen since Unforgiven", and Tom Shales of The Washington Post described it as "a new high point in the cable movie".
He is the recipient of Grey Advertising's Student Filmmaker Award and a Presidential Fellowship from Columbia's School of the Arts.
Pesce often collaborates with fellow screenwriter Tom Abrams; they wrote Lost Boys: The Tribe (for which Pesce was also the director), a 2008 sequel to the 1987 film The Lost Boys, as well as the 2010 film Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball.