A Bronx Tale (play)
A Bronx Tale is an autobiographical one-man show written and performed by Chazz Palminteri.
A Bronx Tale tells the story of Calogero Anello, a young boy from a working class family who gets involved in the world of organized crime. Calogero's father is a bus driver who tries to instill working-class family values in his son. As Calogero gets older, the aura and mystique of the Mafia, and the charms of Sonny, the local mob boss who befriends Calogero (and ends up becoming a father figure to him), become difficult to resist. As Calogero comes of age, he must struggle with the choice of following his beloved father's values or submitting to the temptations of the life of organized crime.
Palminteri states that he began writing the play after being fired from a club when as a bouncer he refused entry to super agent Swifty Lazar.
A Bronx Tale premiered in Los Angeles in 1990, achieving great critical success. Palminteri then moved the show to New York City, where it had a critically and commercially successful, four off-Broadway run.
Academy Award winning actor Robert De Niro attended a performance of A Bronx Tale in New York City and offered to buy the film rights to the show. Palminteri agreed to sell the film rights on the conditions that he would be able to write the screenplay and that he be cast as the role of Sonny. The film version of A Bronx Tale premiered in 1993. The film version marked the directorial debut of De Niro and helped catapult Palminteri's film acting career.
Read more about A Bronx Tale (play): 2007 Broadway Revival, Sources
Famous quotes containing the words bronx and/or tale:
“who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery
to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children
brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain and drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)
“I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.”
—A.E. (Alfred Edward)