Guest Author

Although my wife is not technically writing this next part, I am transcribing a speech that she gave me pretty much verbatim. I found it so hilarious I had her tell it to me a few times, so I could memorize it.

“Being married to you is a weird experience. I came home last night hoping we could spend some time together, because we’d had so many guests in town and you’d been so busy with school, but when I got in the door I knew that was not going to happen.”

But why, I queried, not really remembering anything specific about this day?

“Because when I walked in, you were sitting at the computer, listening to 15th century Gregorian Chants. You had ‘Paradise Lost’ open on your left, The Bible on your right, Dante’s ‘Inferno’ was on the floor, and you were staring at a picture of Bob Dylan.”

Why didn’t you say hello?

“I did.”

Didn’t I respond?

“No. You turned around in your chair, said ‘I’m onto something,’ then spun back around.”

She would later tell me, as she has many times, that my lifelong avoidance of substance abuse only makes this kind of behavior even harder to explain. I sympathize with her, I really do, but I have no idea what to tell her. She put on that ring, she agreed to come through the looking glass, so she’d best prepare herself for Wonderland.

So! I finally acquired a DVD of one of my favorite movies, “A Bronx Tale.” It is an utter travesty that this thing is so hard to find. For those of you who don’t know, this masterpiece is the directorial debut of Robert De Niro, starring Bob himself and Chazz Palminteri. A gripping coming-of-age story, “A Bronx Tale” centers on Calogero Anello, a young Italian-American growing up in the heart of New York City. Calogero’s father, played by De Niro, is a hard-working bus driver, devout Catholic, and committed family man; he knows his neighborhood is crawling with mafia, but his strong sense of right and wrong keeps their influence out of his home. Young Calogero, on the other hand, is romanced by the respect and power these mobsters command, especially the local boss, Sonny (played by Palminteri). After a chance encounter, Sonny befriends the boy (much to his father’s dismay), and so begins the story of two competing father figures, and the choices that decide what kind of man a child will become.

The magic of this movie is in the three-dimensional characters. Sonny is not a cold-blooded killer, he’s a Machiavellian survivor, and he loves young Calogero like a son. The debate is never whether Cee (his nickname) will become a gangster himself, because Sonny expressly forbids this: “This is my life. It’s not for you.” Nor is Lorenzo (the father) an unblemished saint: he can barely put food on the table for his family, and while his religious views make him accepting, he still wrestles with prejudice in a way that Sonny does not, especially against the black community. These two men are not vague metaphors, they are real people from whom real life lessons must be learned. And when they come to blows with one another, fighting for the soul of this young man they both care about, it’s like watching titans facing off.

Here is a film about the importance of family values, doing the right thing, living a clean life so you can look at yourself in the mirror at night. Here is a film about the kind of wisdom that only life imparts, about the difference between a kid and a man, and why you must never forget that you have a choice. A lesser film would cast mobsters as mindless thugs, but “A Bronx Tale” shows us that even criminals have hearts. It lets us see the compassion and wisdom of Sonny, not because that makes his path the right one, but because it’s the truth. If anything, “A Bronx Tale” makes itself an even more ardent defense of clean living by demonstrating how good people can be destroyed by the little compromises they negotiate with their values.

You probably won’t be terribly shocked to discover that “A Bronx Tale” is a true story, and that the man who really lived it is none other than Chazz Palminteri himself. Chazz originally debuted the story of his childhood as a play, which was met with huge success, but he wouldn’t agree to a movie deal until someone promised him he could portray Sonny. Watching the finished film, I can’t imagine anyone else doing it justice; Palminteri is graceful and menacing, tough as a coffin nail and sharp as a tack. What an experience it must have been for him to step into the shoes of a man who shaped his life when he was young. There are some early scenes in the film where young Calogero does his best to imitate Sonny’s every movie; I wonder if Chazz ever smiled to himself on set, and realized he was still doing the same thing.