‘A Bronx Tale’ Features 1 Extremely Unrealistic Scene, According to Ex-Mob Boss

In 1993 A Bronx Tale brought audiences a story about fathers, sons, and whether it’s better to be loved or feared. The movie depicts the life of Calogero, an Italian American boy growing up in a tough Bronx neighborhood where violence and mafia activity are daily affairs.

Francis Capra gives an endearing performance as nine-year-old Calogero, while Lillo Brancato supplies the character with teenage angst as a 17-year-old. Robert De Niro plays Calogero’s devoted father, Lorenzo, a hardworking bus driver who soon finds himself at odds with the mobster his son is growing to idolize.

Though the film focuses more on personal relationships than organized crime, it features plenty of stereotypical mob activity, including a murder that becomes pivotal for the main character and his family.

So just how accurate is the film’s portrayal of the Cosa Nostra in New York during the 1960s? A former member of the Colombo crime family, Michael Franzese, weighed in on a particular scene he says didn’t make the cut.

Actor Chazz Palminteri wrote ‘A Bronx Tale’ based on his childhood

According to IMDb, Calogero Lorenzo Palminteri, also known as Chazz, really was the son of a bus driver named Lorenzo. Born in 1952 into a tough Bronx neighborhood, he grew up surrounded by the colorful mobsters that populate A Bronx Tale. Though the movie portrays him as a nine-year-old, Palminteri was actually 10 when he witnessed the gangland killing that would determine the course of his acting career.

By 1988, Palminteri was a down-on-his-luck actor who had lost his job as a bouncer at a Beverly Hills nightclub. “I go back to my broke down apartment in North Hollywood … and I see this card on my refrigerator,” Palminteri recalled in an interview with Franzese. “It says, ‘The saddest thing in life is wasted talent.’ That’s my father’s line.”

That line, which appears in the movie, inspired Palminteri to stay.

“… I said, ‘If they won’t give me a part, I’ll write one myself.’ And I sat down and I started writing about this killing that I saw … and I performed it on Monday for my theater workshop and they were, like, blown away, and I was like, ‘all right. This could be something here.'” 

Palminteri expanded that scene into a one-man show that garnered him several offers for the movie rights. He insisted on writing the screenplay and playing Sonny, so he refused them all until Robert De Niro approached him and agreed to his terms. Palminteri still performs his original A Bronx Tale stage show and has appeared in the Broadway musical version too.

Ironically, Brancato grew up to experience the hard truth behind Palminteri’s inspirational line. In 2005, his acting career was derailed when he participated in an attempted burglary that resulted in the shooting death of an off-duty police officer.

Brancato, who was also shot during the altercation, was found not guilty of murder but received a ten-year prison sentence for his part in the crime, according to The New York Times. He was paroled in 2013.

Ex-mob boss Michael Franzese says this scene from ‘A Bronx Tale’ is unrealistic

On Insider’s YouTube channel, the former mobster turned motivational speaker reviewed scenes from a number of mob movies, including A Bronx Tale. Franzese criticized the scene that brought Sonny and Calogero together. 

After the boy sees Sonny shoot a man who has attacked one of their own with a baseball bat, his father drags him upstairs, and the local police arrive. Lorenzo then accompanies his son out onto the street, where the police have arranged a lineup of suspects, including Sonny and his crew. Not wanting to rat out his hero, Calogero claims that none of them is the shooter.

Franzese found the scene to be unrealistic for two reasons. “You know, most of the local police, they didn’t bother us,” Franzese remarked. “You know, it was really the FBI and, you know, investigative agencies like that, especially the feds.”

Franzese also took exception to the actions of Calogero’s father in that scene.

“I doubt if anybody, even if he was protecting his son, would ever come right out front like that and uh, and look to put people on front street so to speak. Front street, in other words, you’re telling the police that, you know, one of these guys might be guilty of doing something. So you’re actually, you know, in mob terms, you’re becoming a rat or a snitch, and you know, you pay a price for that.”

Chazz Palminteri included the disputed scene in ‘A Bronx Tale’ for a reason

In a sit-down with Franzese, Palminteri admitted that the lineup on the street was an embellishment.

“What happened was, when I was on the corner, and this guy whacked this guy right in front of me. …I saw it. My father dragged me upstairs exactly, I mean the killing was exactly the way you saw it in the movie. And when he dragged me upstairs, the cops came up. I never went down and saw a lineup. There was never a lineup. I put that in as a writer to really cement me and Sonny.”

He also agreed that the local police, even though they showed up, weren’t likely to get involved with an investigation. “What happened was, the cops came up, and they said, ‘Who. Did you see it?’ and I said, ‘I didn’t see nothing.’  And my father kept saying, ‘You’re not taking him down there. He’s not going down there.’ …And the cop, they were tight cops, and he said, ‘alright,’ you know. They didn’t give a s—, you know, like they were going to follow up on the investi…,” Palminteri trailed off.

“They knew it was a hit, whatever, and it was.”