Chazz Palminteri’s remembers a crew member coming up to him after a performance of his one-man show A Bronx Tale in the late 80s and telling him that Robert De Niro was waiting for him in his dressing room.
De Niro was there to tell Palminteri that he wanted to make a movie out of the show, which had been based on Palminteri’s childhood.
There, in that dressing room, the two hashed out the details: De Niro would direct and play Palminteri’s dad while Palminteri would play the mobster, Sonny.
The movie received rave reviews.
Two years ago Palminteri and others turned the story into a musical and, once again, it killed.
That musical is now starting a national tour with its first stop in Rochester.
It will run at the Auditorium Theatre through the Rochester Broadway Theatre League from Oct. 14 to Oct. 21 (You can purchase tickets here).
Palminteri sat down with Adam Chodak to talk about the musical and his career:
Adam: Prior to you putting A Bronx Tale up on stage in California in the 80s, what had your career been like?
Chazz: I was doing theater, mostly theater. I started doing some guest star roles on shows like Hill Street Blues, if you remember that show. Matlock, Dallas some mini-series, mostly TV.
Adam: You knew the story was good, you obviously had confidence in your performance in it. Did you have any idea that it would become this centerpiece of your career?
Chazz: No, not at all. I knew it was great, I knew that it just had a great story, people saw it, they laughed, they cried, the story just resonates. Look, it’s been 30 years, Adam, 30 years and it’s a huge hit all over the world, not just, the Bronx, in Japan, it’s a huge hit. Figure that out, I don’t know.
I said I’m going to do something really great and people could see my range and what I could really do so I wrote this show about this killing that I saw and I played all 18 characters and that’s the thing that catapulted me.
I said I’m going to do something really great and people could see my range and what I could really do so I wrote this show about this killing that I saw and I played all 18 characters and that’s the thing that catapulted me.
Adam: What about the story do you think lends itself to a musical version?
Chazz: The themes are there. Cautionary tale, is it better to be loved or feared, racism, it has all the elements for it to be almost operatic.
Adam: This is off Broadway now, it’s touring. What can people expect? Will there be much of a difference than if they saw it in New York City?
Chazz: You’re going to see the Broadway show. I mean 11 people from the cast are in the show here.
Adam: Any plans to slow down?
Chazz: I’m an actor and a director and a writer so there’s always something I want to do.
Adam: You got this break in ’88, you were in your mid-30s. It’s encouraging to people who have been trying something for 10 or 15 years.
Chazz: It’s like my dad says, “The saddest thing in life is wasted talent.” He wrote that on a card for me and put that in my room when I was a little boy and I would stare at it all the time, and he said, “Promise me you’ll never waste your life,” and I said, “Of course, dad, I’m not going to waste my life,” and it’s my mantra and I carry around a card with me that says the saddest thing in life is wasted talent. When I meet a young actor and they talk to me I take out the card and I sign it and I give it to them.
