![]() But he denies to the cops that he witnessed Sonny pulling the trigger. Calogero sees a violent fight over a parking spot lead to Sonny shooting and killing a man. He is drawn to the wiseguys who hang out in his neighborhood, particularly the charismatic Sonny. "A Bronx Tale" follows an Italian-American boy named Calogero (Palminteri's real first name) growing up in the Bronx in the late 1950s and '60s. I started in theater, and I love theater." I mean, I was doing movies and TV shows, but I always enjoy a live audience. It was like 18 months, whatever, 19 months I couldn't perform. Palminteri, 69, says being back onstage after the pandemic "is great. He figures this will be his 904th performance of the piece onstage. Now, he's revisiting the one-man version of "A Bronx Tale" and is performing it at theaters around the country, including Friday at the Garde Arts Center. He went on to star in "The Usual Suspects" and give an Oscar-nominated turn in "Bullets Over Broadway." The 1993 feature film was a hit, and it opened doors for Palminteri. In addition to directing, De Niro would also take the smaller role of the salt-of-the-earth character based on Palminteri's father. "He said, 'That's the greatest one-man show I ever saw.' He goes, 'I never seen anything like that - that's a movie you do onstage by yourself.' "ĭe Niro said he wanted to direct the film version - with Palminteri playing Sonny and handling the screenplay. "So I walk into the dressing room, and there's Bob siting there," Palminteri recalls in a Wednesday phone interview with The Day. He saw Palminteri do "A Bronx Tale" in the theater and stopped backstage to see him afterward. Palminteri - despite having only $200 in his bank account, living in a small apartment in North Hollywood and driving a rundown car - stood firm. They wanted to throw money at Palminteri to change his mind, with offers of $250,000 ratcheting up to $500,000, and eventually reaching $1 million. ![]() Palminteri wanted to make a movie of "A Bronx Tale," but he had conditions: he had to play the role of gangster Sonny and he had to be the lead writer of the screenplay "because it's my life," he recalls now. Crowds flocked to see it, including stars Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino and Burt Reynolds. "A Bronx Tale" proved to be a huge success. Taking his fate into his own hands, he penned a one-man play inspired by his childhood and the Bronx neighborhood where he grew up. In the mid-1980s, Palminteri was acting but not getting the kind of roles he wanted. 7-If it weren't true, the story of how actor Chazz Palminteri got the show he wrote, "A Bronx Tale," made as a film would seem like a Hollywood fable. ![]()
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