Arts & Entertainment

Art Will Imitate Life When Chazz Palminteri Brings His Heralded One-Man Show To Music Hall

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Photo credit: Chazz Palminteri; Neighborhood Films

February 14, 2025

By W.B. King —

Leaders of the free world, titans of industry and notorious gangsters often share a common interest—subscribing to the philosophies of Italian renaissance provocateur Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli.

“Not many people know that wise guys, especially bosses, would read Machiavelli in jail. Machiavelli was the first political scientist. He invented it,” celebrated actor, writer and producer Chazz Palminteri told The Hudson Independent.

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“It is a book of how a king, president or ruler should be, and all rulers read it. From the beginning of time, all presidents read Machiavelli—Bill Clinton was big on Machiavelli,” he added of the 16th century diplomat, historian and political theorist, perhaps best known for penning The Prince (1532). “I found a way to incorporate that into A Bronx Tale, but I wouldn’t do the actual vernacular that Machiavelli did. I changed it to street language.”

‘You Got to Show Up’

A proud Sicilian with strong roots to the old country, Calogero Lorenzo “Chazz” Palminteri was born in the Bronx in 1952. The son of a bus driver and homemaker, his neighborhood was rough and tumble. While he learned choice words and slang on the street, his father instilled in him a maxim that guides him to this day: “The saddest thing in life is wasted talent.”

As a young boy sitting on the stoop of his apartment building, Palminteri witnessed a murder over a parking spot on Belmont Avenue. He locked eyes with the trigger man and mob boss—a test of loyalty that would become the crux of the film, A Bronx Tale (1993). As with many childhood memories, however, Palminteri didn’t place unnecessary significance on the incident. “It has never haunted me,” he said of the event, which occurred in “slow motion,” though it would bubble up from his subconscious every so often.

After graduating from Theodore Roosevelt High School in the late 1960s, Palminteri’s interests veered toward music—singing in bands that mostly favored Motown and rock and roll cover songs, with a few original tunes thrown in for good measure. Over the course of the next 10 years, he would also study at the Actor’s Studio—alumni include Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Anne Bancroft and Ellen Barkin. By the early 1980s, his troubadour days were in the rearview mirror. When not taking on odd jobs, studying or writing, he was performing in off-Broadway dramas and comedies.

After years of not finding progressive opportunities in New York, Palminteri headed west—la-la land. In 1986, North Hollywood became his new neighborhood. Looking back, he told The Hudson Independent it was a character-defining time. And while the industry has changed both for “the good and the bad,” he said that a talent’s bedfellows remain perseverance and chutzpah. When asked what advice he would give a young actor, he replied:

“If he doesn’t love it and really want to do this, and he has the passion to do this, and he’s interested in nothing else but this, then I say, go for it. But if he just wants to do it to be famous or whatever…I don’t know, because it’s so hard,” he said.

“If he’s an actor, then act as much as you can. Go to school, go to acting class, meet other actors, meet writers, meet directors…get involved in the community of actors, writers and directors,” he continued. “Directors and writers always need actors to read new scripts. That’s how it happens. The more people that see you, the better it is. You got to show up, man. Let people see you—that’s the key.”

Divine Intervention

Soon he booked guest spots on television shows such as Wiseguy and Matlock, but again he wasn’t landing the type of leading man roles he felt equal to, if only given the chance. One night after getting canned from a moonlighting gig as a doorman, he decided that if the role he sought wasn’t finding him, he would create it—he believed in his talent and wasn’t going to waste it. So, in 1987, he again reflected on the murder he witnessed as a kid and began writing a monologue about the old neighborhood and its cast of characters like Jimmy Whispers, Tony Toupee and Eddie Mush. During his weekly acting class, he workshopped the concept.

“In the beginning it wasn’t easy, but as they say: ‘practice, practice, practice’—10,000 hours—and after a while, I got it,” he said of the creative pursuit that eventually became a one-man stage play, “A Bronx Tale,” where he portrayed 18 characters. “It took about a year to rehearse it and write it. Then at the end, I had it,” he shared, noting that while the play is based on real-life events, for theatrical impact, it is fictionalized in certain parts (without sacrificing messaging).

As Palminteri’s character “Colegio” says at one point, “I was getting two educations: one from the street and one from school. That way, I’d be twice as smart as everybody.”

The Los Angeles stage production was a resounding success, attracting interest from top tier agents and producers. Now in his mid-30s, he was an “overnight” success. “I had $200 in the bank at the time when they offered over a million dollars [to buy it],” he said of the bids that began in the low six figures. But all deals had a catch, they didn’t guarantee the leading role of Santino “Sonny” LoSpecchio for Palminteri or that he would write the screenplay. While he understood the studios’ desire to land a box office star for the lead and to hire a proven writer, he still said no. Friends and colleagues thought he was crazy.

“I just believed in myself, and I believed that Jesus Christ, Lord God Almighty, would help me. He has always been on my shoulder,” he told The Hudson Independent. “I could have been dead three or four times, and he’s just always saved me for something, and I think he saved me for that.”

Intervention also came in the form of Actor Studio alumni Robert DeNiro, known for such iconic films as The Godfather Part II (1974), Raging Bull (1980) and Goodfellas (1990). When the Awakenings actor caught the play for a second time after it opened to rave reviews in New York, he made Palminteri an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“I was very fortunate to find the right person to come and see it, Robert DeNiro, and he gave me his word that I would play Sonny, and I would write the screenplay, and that he wanted to direct it and play the father,” he recalled, noting that they remain close friends to this day. “And it was great. It was the perfect meeting of two people.” With the deal inked for A Bronx Tale, Palminteri secured his first leading role and screenplay writing credit in a motion picture. DeNiro, too, had a first: his directorial debut.

While the men shared Italian ancestry and similar experiences growing up in New York City, DeNiro didn’t want to sacrifice any elements of the winning stage play—taking his role as both the father and the director seriously. “He wanted to hang out with my father for a month before we filmed. He absorbed everything—how he spoke,” he said, noting that his father, Lorenzo, taught DeNiro how to drive the bus and other relatable tasks, like giving riders change. “Bob just immersed himself in my father.”

DeNiro was also keen on portraying the critical dichotomy between the patriarchal roles Sonny and his father represented to Colegio, which was dutifully depicted in the writing.

“You have to realize that Sonny and the father are telling the boy exactly the same thing. This is gray and gray, not black and white. As great as Sonny is to the boy, Sonny was a bad guy. He condoned that kind of violence for other people, but he loved this kid,” he explained. “The father, as much as he loves his children and family more than anything, when it came to race and his son dating a black girl, he wasn’t happy with that. So, the boy takes the best of the father and the best of the gangster, and he becomes a man.”

As Colegio notes in the movie, “Sonny and my father always said that when I get older, I would understand. Well, I finally did. I learned something from these two men. I learned to give love and get love unconditionally.”

Redemption

Prior to DeNiro coming onboard, among reasons Palminteri didn’t want to sell the rights was because interested parties didn’t want to include the “race” element in the motion picture. “They thought it slowed the movie down—you know, that’s how suits are. He’s learning about life and learning about love. I was dating a black girl in 68’. You have to realize, Robert Kennedy had been assassinated, Martin Luther King had been assassinated—the riots. Of all the times to date a black girl in an Italian neighborhood—that was not the time, but I was attracted to her, and she was attracted to me. We didn’t care. That’s why it was important to have that in the movie, to talk about racism and how it really was back then.”

Studio executives also didn’t want [spoiler alert] Sonny to die because they thought the audience would view him as a “beloved” character. “Sonny has to die for the catharsis of the boy. He sees that Sonny is dead, and he realizes that his father was right all along—that I would be influenced by him just being there. It didn’t matter if he told me to do the right thing, I would be influenced. So, it’s not a sad ending, it’s a happy ending. It’s redemption.” He continued. “So, thank God I had Robert DeNiro who just ignored them [studio executives]. We had a very strong director. We made the movie the way we wanted to make it.”

Building on the success of A Bronx Tale, the following year Palminteri landed a significant role in Bullets Over Broadway (1994) for which he was nominated for an academy award. The film, directed by Woody Allen, was yet another learning lesson. “All I did was absorb. I would try to talk to him about film, but he doesn’t talk too much, so it’s not as easy with him as it was with DeNiro. I would study him and watch him,” he noted. “He’s a very smart man and knows comedy very well. He would say to the actors, ‘pause here’ or ‘step on each other there,’ and he was basically always right.”

The Usual Suspects (1995) represented a film hat trick of sorts for Palminteri who played Agent Dave Kujan in the heralded crime thriller that also featured actors Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Baldwin Keving Pollock and Benicio del Toro. “It was just so different and unique. We all liked the script, but it was confusing: What’s a lie, what’s real, but we all went for it. It was a great script, great cast, and a really great director [Bryan Singer] who really knew what the hell he was doing, and he just made it so passionate and wonderful.”

Over the forthcoming years, he would appear in countless movies, including Analyze This, Stuart Little, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints and television shows such as Godfather of Harlem and Modern Family.

“I enjoy doing comedy. I enjoy doing drama. I liked being on Modern Family that was always just great,” he said of his character Vincent, a.k.a. Shorty, Jay Pritchett’s best friend played by Ed O’Neil. “I liked the idea that you don’t know if I’m gay or not. You never really know and I think that’s what’s so funny about it. The audience is in on the joke. That was really the genius of the creators of the show—just a funny bit.”

Lightning in a Bottle

When Palminteri brings A Bronx Tale to the Tarrytown Music Hall on February 21, he will have performed the honored play more than 1,000 times. “When you see the one man show, it’s exactly the movie, exactly—dialog, everything,” he said, noting that shapeshifting into 18 characters often leaves him in an ethereal state after the show. “A lot of people have seen the movie first, and they go, ‘Well, how can one person do the movie?’ I can’t explain it, I just say, ‘Come and see it.’”

For fans unable to attend the show in person, they are in luck. In January 2025, for the first time, his one-man show, professionally shot with five cameras, was released for download on streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime and Apple TV. Career updates like these can also be gleaned by tuning into his podcast, the Chazz Palminteri Show. Past guests have included Billy Joel, comedian Bill Burr and Kathrine Narducci, who played his mother, Rosina, in A Bronx Tale. While topics range from his Italian eateries, including one that bears his name in White Plains, to episodes like “How to Conquer Anxiety,” conversations usually revert to the constructs, ethos and archetypes that inspired A Bronx Tale.

“Alfred Hitchcock used to say there’s only three things you can do to an audience. And he said, if you do two out of three, you got a hit. You can make them laugh, you can make them cry, or you could scare them. That’s it. And in A Bronx Tale, I do all three,” he said. “I’m grateful that God has given me the talent to do this. I wrote this thing from my heart. Sometimes you just catch lightning in a bottle.”

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