20 Questions: Chazz Palminteri

Forty-three-year-old Chazz Palminteri witnessed a murder when he was nine, has known more than a few wiseguys and has been in his share of fights. But he knew that Broadway literally leads from his native Bronx into Manhattan.

"I would go down to the city to take acting classes," says the onetime singer who played gigs at resorts in the Catskills, sang with a jazz band, fronted his own group--Razzamachazz--and even played a few weddings. After collecting credits in off-Broadway plays, he headed to the West Coast. But gangster and cop roles didn't satisfy the ambitious actor. He decided the route to success ran through his old neighborhood.

The 18 speaking roles in his one-man play "A Bronx Tale" guaranteed that critics would notice him--if they showed up. Fortunately, Robert De Niro noticed, and he filmed "A Bronx Tale" for his directing debut. The resulting critical acclaim landed Palminteri a part in Woody Allen's "Bullets Over Broadway" (for which he received an Academy Award nomination). Then he appeared as the cop obsessed with cracking Kevin Spacey in last year's "The Usual Suspects." The tall, dark Palminteri has had onscreen affairs with Linda Fiorentino (in "Jade")and Sharon Stone (in "Diabolique"). A second Palminteri play, "Faithful," made it to the screen this spring. He's currently working on another film based on a script he wrote about a hit man and a debutante.

Subway map in hand, Contributing Editor Warren Kalbacker hit Palminteri's Bronx trail. Says Kalbacker, "He is extremely genial, as only a New Yorker can be. When I asked for a menu recommendation at our first lunch meeting, he told me, 'Order anything. I've never had a bad meal here.' Sure enough, the pasta was al dente."

1.

[Q] Playboy: You made a name for yourself with your one-man play, A Bronx Tale. Your determination not to sell the script and to star in the film version is the stuff of legend. How did you manage to hold off Hollywood producers who were trying to make you an offer you couldn't refuse?

[A] Palminteri: I had nothing, so I had nothing to lose. I did refuse, and I kept refusing. I felt that this was my shot. The first offer to buy the script--$250,000--was the hardest to turn down. Five months later it went to $750,000, and I still said no. After I made up my mind that I wasn't going to give in, it became just numbers. I knew that if I let the Hollywood folks take it away from me, they'd write their own script and put another guy in the role. I turned down a million dollars when I had no money. My agent, other agents and producers told me, "You're going to blow it, kid. You're crazy." Bob De Niro had seen the play a couple of times in New York and said, "You can do this. I'll direct it."

2.

[Q] Playboy: So Chazz Palminteri and Robert De Niro are paisan?

[A] Palminteri: We come from the street. He's from Mulberry Street, Little Italy. I'm from 187th and Balbo in the Bronx. I go on my instincts. When Bob looked at me and said, "I'll protect you, you have my word," I looked in his eyes and believed him. You can have the best contract in the world, but if the guy is a scumbag, you're going to get fucked. You can have the worst contract in the world, but if the guy is a mensch, he'll take care of you in ways that aren't in the contract. I'm blessed to have made a good movie. He's a brilliant director. He's a great restaurateur, too.

3.

[Q] Playboy: Do you get back to the old neighborhood now and then?

[A] Palminteri: I've been meeting with my friends at Gino's Café for the past ten years. Twenty-five guys, a lot of them from school, some who just grew up in the neighborhood. I started it. I wanted to have dinner with all the guys to say goodbye before I left for California to pursue my career. Once there, I was lonely, so I said, "I want to come back. I miss you guys." And we've been doing it ever since. Domenico Broccoli owns Gino's Café. Broccoli, as in the vegetable. He has dishes that refer to all my movies. He has Bronx Tail, which is a lobster tail stuffed with crabmeat. He also has Chicken Palminteri--a chicken dish with asparagus and shrimp. It's delicious.

4.

[Q] Playboy: We can understand why he named a dish after you. But how did a Ryan O'Neal entree make it onto the menu?

[A] Palminteri: Veal O'Neal. Ryan and I went there and had a great time. People don't realize Ryan O'Neal was at one time the biggest box-office guy in America, with Barry Lyndon and What's Up, Doc? He was like Cary Grant, this man. So I was happy to work with him. He is terrific in Faithful. And I wanted to show him some places in the Bronx.

5.

[Q] Playboy: In Faithful you deal with a subject that's on a lot of men's minds. Do you have any advice for the married guy who may be tempted to stray?

[A] Palminteri: Remember that girlfriends become wives sooner or later. You think you could be married and have a girlfriend on the side, but sooner or later the girlfriend will become your wife. After the success of A Bronx Tale, I started to look at my life differently. I wanted a family, and the thought of having one woman the rest of my life intrigued me. I went out with a lot of women in my time. I'm not going to hide that. At one point in the story a guy asks, "What's really cheating?" Some men think blow jobs don't count. But they do. No action in your life is innocuous. Even though nobody caught you, even though nobody saw you, you know. And that chips away at your soul. You'll be less tolerant of your children and your wife. You'll hate yourself a little more. You have to work at a good marriage. There are moments when you may not feel attracted to each other. But you have to stick it out. When the time came to do the right thing, I did the right thing.

6.

[Q] Playboy: We understand you met your wife in church. Do you recommend religious services as a venue for connecting with the opposite sex?

[A] Palminteri: To be exact, I met her coming out of church. In Los Angeles. St. Charles, right off Lancasham in the Valley. Mass was over. She was coming out. Our eyes met. I wanted to say something to her, but the priest was there. What (continued on page 132)Chazz Palminteri(continued from page 107) was I going to say, "Father, can I borrow a pen? I want to get this girl's number"? I didn't say anything and she kept walking. The next Friday, I went to a nightclub and she was there with her friends. I looked at her and she looked at me. We didn't go to church together right away, but we got close. And we've been together ever since. Five years.

7.

[Q] Playboy: One man we know searched upstate New York for the bar where Linda Fiorentino picked up her "designated fuck" in The Last Seduction. You had sex scenes with her in Jade. Tell us what every guy wants to know about Linda Fiorentino.

[A] Palminteri: A lot of guys look for the bar and look for the fence. [Laughs] Forget the bar. They're looking for the fence. Linda is totally fearless. If she thinks somebody is an asshole, she'll say it, even if that person can help her career. Some people would take that as being wild, but she's one of the smartest women I've ever met. She knows men extremely well. We had great chemistry. She's Italian, I'm Italian. She has a background similar to mine. We laughed about the girls and the guys in the neighborhood. Linda would sit and rap with me and I felt like I was talking with a guy. Not dirty stuff. But as tough as she is and as blunt as she is, she's a little girl inside who's sweet and wonderful and who would make a great wife. I feel sorry for the man who tries to calm her.

8.

[Q] Playboy: You starred with Sharon Stone in Diabolique. Care to share any secrets about her?

[A] Palminteri: Sharon is tough. But she wants to get married and have kids and a picket fence and a big sheepdog and a station wagon. I'm serious. That's where she'd be most happy.

9.

[Q] Playboy: You were christened Collogio and later dubbed Chazz. Will your son acquire a nickname when he gets older?

[A] Palminteri: He won't. His name is Dante. Dante Lorenzo. That's it. Dante is unique, so it would be hard to give him a nickname. I wanted my son to have a strong name, an artistic name. Dante is from Dante Alighieri, one of the great writers and poets, and Lorenzo is after my dad, who's one of the great men. I didn't want to name my son after me. It's an Italian tradition, but it's wrong to do that because a junior always gets mixed up with his father, especially when his father is famous. Frank Sinatra Jr.--talk about a curse.

10.

[Q] Playboy: Hanging out is a tradition among city kids. Are you going to take a tough line with your son when he and his friends start spending time on the street corner?

[A] Palminteri: Yeah. I will be bringing up a child in the city, but there will be no going to the corner. Children should not hang out. I used to hang out on the street corner, and there are only two things you can do hanging out: have laughs or get in trouble because you're bored. I was once shot at during a gang feud. We saw the uncle of a rival gang guy, and as we were walking toward him, we knew something was wrong because he wasn't running away. He's by himself and there are eight of us? This is not adding up. Then he whipped out a gun and started blasting. We ran. We found out later it was a starter pistol, but I'll never forget the fear at that moment. After each gunshot I cringed, waiting for the bullet to hit me.

11.

[Q] Playboy: Explain the attraction of wiseguys.

[A] Palminteri: They bring out the worst in people. When I was nine years old, I would look at the wiseguys: They had beautiful, shiny cars. They had money. They had women. They had respect. So you thought that's what you wanted. But as you get older, you realize it's the workingman who has the better life. It's the workingman who is the tough guy. If you think you're tough, go out and work every day at a job you don't really like but do anyway for your family. That's hard.

12.

[Q] Playboy: How do you befriend a wiseguy?

[A] Palminteri: You don't. He befriends you. It takes a long time for a real wiseguy to trust anybody. The real wiseguy is a made guy. The real bosses don't overdo it. Now, there are fake wiseguys, half wiseguys and disappointed wiseguys who want to be wiseguys. They're not in the inner circle, but they claim to be and walk around like they are. Those are usually the worst ones. They have to overcompensate. But you have to deal with them. Stay away from them, that's what I did. Of course, we're talking a long, long time ago. Better clarify that.

13.

[Q] Playboy: Sonny, your wiseguy character in A Bronx Tale, stressed availability as a key to his success. Give us the Bronx definition of availability.

[A] Palminteri: To be in people's eyes. People see the strength you have just by looking at you. You don't have to do anything. They know. And they remember. That's very Machiavellian. Sonny was a student of Machiavelli. So was Nixon. Many leaders are. Machiavelli was a Taurus, by the way, and so am I. Some of his teachings were good for Sonny, that type of man in that type of work. For a man who is more like Mother Teresa, no. But for someone like Sonny, it's better to be feared than loved. Fear lasts longer. When a really tough, hotheaded guy walks into a room, the tempo of the place changes. That's why Sonny says, "The more people see me, the more they are reminded not to fuck with me." I don't condone that, but I certainly understand it.

14.

[Q] Playboy: Define street smarts.

[A] Palminteri: It's intuitive. It comes when you're young and you have to survive on the street. You grow up in a shady atmosphere. People lie, steal and rob, and they don't need to be safe. If you meet enough of those people, you learn their habits, pick up mannerisms and idiosyncrasies. If some of the street guys I knew would have taken that stuff and put it into nine-to-five work, they could have been president. You can find someone who is extremely street-smart but who is a total moron when it comes to common sense or marriage or life. They used to say the lowest thing you could be is a rat. But people do rat now. That has changed.

15.

[Q] Playboy: Woody Allen cast you as a gangster with a talent for drama in Bullets Over Broadway. He's famous for his remark that 80 percent of life is just showing up. Can we assume his attitude toward filmmaking requires a bit more engagement?

[A] Palminteri: You hate saying the word, but whatever a genius is, Woody is the closest thing to it. Most filmmakers shoot a master shot of a scene, then one actor's close-up, then another's, then a two-shot with an angle. So if something isn't working right, you can cut it, maybe end the conversation earlier or make the argument shorter. It gives you options. Woody just shoots a master. He doesn't shoot any coverage. I mean, talk about seeing the movie in his head! If the master doesn't work, it's over. That's nuts. That's such a risk. Even Hitchcock shot coverage. I said, "Woody, how come you don't shoot any coverage?" I had to ask him. And he said, "It's the story, Chazz. It's the story that matters. They'll follow the story."

16.

[Q] Playboy: Woody Allen makes Manhattan look beautiful. Is the Bronx ripe for similar treatment?

[A] Palminteri: It's a beautiful place. Movies like Fort Apache made people think the Bronx is one big ghetto. There's the Bronx Zoo, one of the best zoos in the world--not in the country, in the world, thank you. The Botanical Gardens, with the big hothouse, the wonderful flowers and the museum. See Yankee Stadium, watch the Yankees play. Split Rock is a wonderful golf course. I've played there a few times. I can go on and on.

17.

[Q] Playboy: You're a native New Yorker. Please critique actors who attempt a New York accent. Can they successfully master the dese, dems and doses?

[A] Palminteri: It's one of the hardest accents to do because it's an accent with a mannerism, with an attitude, with inflections. It's a tough attitude. New Yorkers can be rude, but it's more impatience. I was walking down the street recently and a guy came over to me and said, "What time is it?" He saw me looking at my watch and he just shot right out, "What time is it?" Boom. He didn't say, "Excuse me. Can I have the time?" But being a New Yorker, I understood. I just looked at him and said, "Ten after twelve." That's a New York thing. I admire people who can do the accent. Gary Oldman is one of the few who can. Tracey Ullman can definitely do it.

18.

[Q] Playboy: During the Seventies, you were a keeper of the velvet rope at nightspots in New York and Los Angeles. What did it take to get past Chazz Palminteri, disco doorman?

[A] Palminteri: Twenty dollars. I used to say, "The only presidents I know are Jackson and above." You always let the pretty girls in, the models. Automatic. But even if the boss told me to keep somebody out, if the person was really a great guy, I would tell him to dress up a little bit and come back. You didn't want a club where it was all guys with pink hair or all Wall Street types. I'm glad I'm not doing it today. End up dead. I had knives pulled on me, a gun pulled on me.

19.

[Q] Playboy: You fronted a band for several years. Account for the illustrious tradition of Italian male vocalists.

[A] Palminteri: Singing is a very romantic thing. Italians are very romantic. You think of Frank Sinatra. The thrill of my life was meeting him. I've had dinner with him and other people three or four times. I was at his house, and suddenly everybody else walked inside to get something to eat, and I was alone with Frank, looking out at the water. I couldn't get words out of my mouth. I said to myself, "You better just talk to him, Chazz, because you're going to look stupid." So I told him how much I loved his music and how much my parents loved his music. He told me he liked A Bronx Tale a great deal, and I was very flattered. He asked me to get him a martini, and then he asked me to share his olive. I didn't know what he meant. He said, "Come on, Chazz, share my olive," and he held up the martini. He took out the toothpick with two olives on it, and he gave it to me. So I took one of the olives and we both threw them in our mouths, and he tapped me on the back and said, "Let's go inside." I found out later that that's a sign of friendship. I will never forget taking an olive from Frank Sinatra. He's the greatest thing that has ever lived.

20.

[Q] Playboy: Italians have taught us to dine instead of merely eat. Describe the importance of Sunday dinner in the Palminteri household.

[A] Palminteri: We have family dinners on Sunday whether it's with my parents or just us. We all sit down, say grace and eat and talk. No television. Television and VCRs and all that other shit are taking away the family. Dinner is a time when you can tune into your family and find out what the hell is going on. But if you don't have pasta on Sunday, something's wrong. Angel hair--capellini--is my favorite. I also like those traditional ones, spaghetti and linguine. With red sauce. Nothing too fancy, just really good sauce. The old-timers call it gravy. Maybe twice a year, my mother would not make pasta on a Sunday. She would say, "I made a ham, because we always have pasta." We'd study the ham, maybe eat a little of it, and say, "Ma." And she would boil water and make pasta.

hollywood's favorite italian on sex with linda fiorentino, the truth about wise-guys and what it's like to "share the olive" with frank sinatra

He's by himself and there are eight of us. Then he whipped out a gun and started blasting.