If it weren’t true, the story of how actor Chazz Palminteri got the show he wrote, “A Bronx Tale,” made as a film would seem like a Hollywood fable. In the mid-1980s, Palminteri was acting but not getting the kind of roles he wanted. Taking his fate into his own hands, he penned a one-man play inspired by his childhood and the Bronx neighborhood where he grew up.

“A Bronx Tale” proved to be a huge success. Crowds flocked to see it, including stars Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino and Burt Reynolds. Palminteri wanted to make a movie of “A Bronx Tale,” but he had conditions: he had to play the role of gangster Sonny and he had to be the lead writer of the screenplay “because it’s my life,” he recalls now.