Las Vegas Weekly

October 1, 2009 · 11:08 AM

Chazz Palminteri plays 18 roles in his Bronx Tale at The Venetian

By Robin Leach

Chazz Palminteri in A Bronx Tale.

Photo: Joan Marcus

Ever since he began acting, Chazz Palminteri dreamed of playing Broadway and performing in Las Vegas. Now the 58-year-old is about to make his debut on the Strip. He kicks off an 11-day run of A Bronx Tale at The Venetian next Wednesday, and tickets are now on sale.

Not wanting to make it an easy Vegas gig, Chazz will play all 18 characters in the 85-minute one-man show! The appearance here brings to a wrap a two-year national tour after its five-month run on the Big Apple’s Great White Way.

In our interview, Chazz admitted that he wrote the play almost 20 years ago as a way to stave off starvation and land a role because he wasn’t getting good parts offered to him.

He was down to his last few dollars but still turned down offers of as much as $1 million for the script because he wanted to act in the movie version. Eventually, Robert De Niro made the right deal, enabling Chazz to write the film version and star as a mobster with Robert as the main character.

I had the opportunity to chat at length with the actor who was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Bullets Over Broadway, one of more than 50 movies and TV dramas he’s made since becoming an actor 25 years ago.

Robin Leach: You play 18 characters, so do you have 18 brains? And if character No. 8 forgets his lines, does character No. 9 substitute immediately?

Photo: Erik Kabik/Retna/www.erikkabikphoto.com

Chazz Palminteri arrives at the 14th annual Andre Agassi Foundation for Education's Grand Slam for Children benefit at Wynn Las Vegas.

Chazz Palminteri: I have been working on this for so long, it actually took a year to perfect it. I can do it pretty much getting out of bed.

RL: You go back a long time with this play, back to 1989, if my memory is correct.

CP: You are correct! I did it the first time back then, and I wanted to write something that would catapult my career. I wrote this one-man show, and all of a sudden, it was an incredible thing that happened. Every director, producer wanted to do it … every actor … everybody wanted to play Sonny. I didn’t want to guarantee anybody a role, because I wanted to play Sonny. It became the hottest property in California and New York since Rocky, and finally it was up to $1 million and I still turned it down. Robert De Niro saw the show, came backstage and said, “Look, I tell you what I’m going to do. If you want to play Sonny, that’s fine. I’ll play Lorenzo, I’ll direct it, and let’s make a movie together.” So that’s how it happened.

RL: You’ve never played Vegas before?

CP: Right. This is my debut. I’ve never played Las Vegas. I have been on Broadway. I always said there were two things I wanted to do -- one was New York and the other was Las Vegas. When I brought the show back, it was such a huge hit on Broadway again, and I said now’s the time to do it in Vegas. I’ll be at The Venetian. I am so excited to do a show like this in Vegas because it is different than anything the town has ever seen.

Photo: Joan Marcus

Chazz Palminteri in A Bronx Tale.

RL: Broadway shows have had a bit of a hiccup run here in Vegas. Do you think your play has enough to overcome those problems?

CP: I really do. I absolutely believe that. Jersey Boys is a big hit here and in New York. I will follow the same pattern.

RL: When we think of gentlemen with Italian last names ending in vowels coming from the Bronx and Brooklyn, we tend to lump them together with the people who started Las Vegas. So I am going to ask, do you think there’s a little of the Bronx Tale that eventually became Las Vegas? Same cast and characters?

CP: Oh, yes, without a doubt, especially with what takes place in the ’60s when Vegas was starting to boom, late ’50’s early ’60s, so yes. These characters are wonderful, very unique individuals, and that is why I think we are fascinated with them.

RL: What was it like in the Bronx in the ’60s? I mean good fellows, mob bosses, hustlers … were they in both Vegas and the Bronx?

CP: Absolutely. There were those guys in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens and in Vegas. Those are the New York guys that came out to Vegas.

Photo: imagesofvegas.com/IS Photo

Chazz Palminteri.

RL: So Vegas was built on knowledge gained on how the Big Apple operated in those circles?

CP: I think it had a lot to do with it. All those New York guys went out to Vegas and thought it would be a great stomping ground … on the way to California, in the middle of the desert. There is no other place like this in the world. It is 24 hours a day. I’ve only been here before twice, so I’m getting suggestions for Italian restaurants from everybody: Rao’s at Caesars, Piero’s by the convention center, Lavo at the Palazzo. I love to go to restaurants. I have never played here, and I don’t gamble, I don’t drink. I write, I direct, I do my work.

RL: Tell me how grueling it is to play 18 people for 85 minutes.

CP: It is grueling! That is why I work out six days a week. I don’t stay up late. I train like I am going to run a marathon. When you see it, you will see what I mean. It is not just a person standing there talking. It is one person doing 18 characters. I do the whole movie onstage by myself. Straight through without stopping. It is a very unique thing. If I don’t eat a lot, I will lose weight from it. If I miss a few meals, I lose weight immediately. We have been on the road for two years between Broadway and the national tour -- 18 cities, 33 weeks.

I’ve taken breaks in between. I always give myself some breaks, but I will be happy when I get home to New York and put my feet up for a while. I’m really looking forward to the Vegas run. I haven’t been this excited since I went on to Broadway. Broadway always gets me excited. I am just as excited as the first time I went to Broadway.

Photo: TVT

Robert De Niro and chef Nobu Matsuhisa.

Chazz told me that he was inspired to write his unique play from an ugly incident he watched when he was just 9 years old. He says he watched from just a few feet away as two men in the Bronx fought over a parking space. One man used a baseball bat, and the other used a gun.

Chazz’s father, who was a bus driver, tried to stop him hanging out with the wise guys because so many people in the neighborhood died from guns, violence and narcotics. From those incidents came the one-man play, which debuts at The Venetian next Wednesday and runs through Oct. 18 daily at 8 p.m.

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

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