Palmintieri did the “book,” and the dueling directors are familiar with the turf: De Niro and Zaks. It’s The NeverEnding Bronx Tale, and it’s not stopped.Ĭurrently, on West 48 th Street, across from the Walter Kerr Theater where A Bronx Tale played nine years ago, the Longacre Theatre has A Bronx Tale: The Musical, which is “This Is Your Life, Chazz Palmintieri”-with a doo-wop flip from Little Shop of Horrors composer Alan Menken and his lyricist, Glenn Slater. Fourteen years after the film’s release, Palmintieri did A Bronx Tale on Broadway in a revival directed by Jerry Zaks. This was the first of two films that De Niro felt strongly enough about to take on the direction himself. And if you shake my hand, that’s the way it will be.’ I shook his hand, and that’s the way it was.”ĭe Niro, who had done his share of gangster roles by this point, saw in the story a father-Sonny conflict-a moral wrestle for the boy’s soul-and wanted to even the scale by playing the upright, blue-collar bus-driver dad, fearful of Sonny’s influence. I want to direct it and play your father. One night a month later, Palminteri found Robert De Niro waiting for him in his dressing room with an offer he couldn’t refuse: “’You should play Sonny–you’ll be great as Sonny–and you should write the screenplay because it’s about your life and you’ll be honest. At the time, I had $200 bucks in the bank, my hand to God, and I still walked out.” “First they offered me $250,000 to walk away, then $500,000, and finally $1 million. “They say that happens once every 15 or 20 years-Stallone, me, then My Big Fat Greek Wedding -where they wanted it so bad that they let you do it. What to do? He “pulled a Stallone” and refused to sell the script unless he starred in the movie version. The problem was they wanted to put a star in the role of Sonny.” “Every writer, producer, director, studio head was interested in it. “My career just exploded with that play,” Palminteri remembers. Reaction was equally hot on the East Coast when it had a sold-out run at New York’s Playhouse 91. The mobster, Sonny, recognized the criminal potential in the kid but paternalistically tried to keep him at arm’s length from a career in crime.įilm producer Peter Guber called the play “the greatest audition and the greatest pitch for a movie” he’d ever seen. What bonded them together was simple: the boy saw the capo zap a guy and didn’t rat on him. in 1988, playing all 18 characters himself (among them, himself and his hitman-father figure). A Bronx Tale he called his autobiographical one-man show when he premiered it in L.A.
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