A Bronx Fairy Tale Comes True : Movies: Chazz Palminteri worked for years to make it in Hollywood. Now he’s earning raves for his writing and acting in ‘A Bronx Tale.’

Lunch with Chazz Palminteri is a bit like a motivational go-get-’em baseball practice. Between bites of a chicken sandwich at the Bel Air Hotel, the writer and actor peppers his conversation with heartfelt testimony to the powers of self-discipline and the wonders of teamwork.

He speaks from experience: The former nightclub doorman spent 10 years beefing up for the big game, in this case his breakthrough performance in “A Bronx Tale,” a movie he also wrote. With players like Robert De Niro, Woody Allen and Danny DeVito on his side these days, Palminteri’s work ethic seems to be paying off.

“There are three people I’ve always wanted to work with: Bob De Niro, Woody Allen and Marty Scorsese,” he says. “And here it is, bing bing , back to back, Allen and De Niro. And maybe one day I’ll work with Marty.”

Palminteri, 41, is earning raves for his portrayal of Sonny, a Machiavellian neighborhood mob boss in “A Bronx Tale.” He’s also been lauded for his ambitious instincts to mix screenwriting and acting.

In “A Bronx Tale,” Palminteri closes the book on a childhood incident in which he witnessed a Mafia-related murder--a memory he first channeled into a five-minute monologue, then an acclaimed one-man play. So moving was Palminteri’s drama about a boy torn between conflicting relationships with his father and the neighborhood wiseguy that De Niro handpicked it for his directorial debut.

“We fell in love with the play and Chazz’s remarkable ability to play 20-plus characters onstage and bring them all to life,” De Niro’s Tribeca partner Jane Rosenthal recalled.

Palminteri is now back in New York, where he’s filming Allen’s latest movie. He will play an Italian-American in New York in the 1920s in the as-yet unnamed film, which also stars Carl and Rob Reiner, John Cusack, Alan Arkin, Diane Weist, Tracey Ullman and Mary Louise Parker.

As harried as his schedule has become, Palminteri is not complaining. He is, after all, in a unique position as both a writer and actor. He just put the finishing touches on a deal with Tribeca and Savoy Pictures to produce “Faithful,” a comedy-thriller he wrote and will star in. He also has a deal with TriStar to write a movie for himself and DeVito.

Palminteri’s recent string of successes can in some ways be credited to his resilience and self-confidence. This is a virtual unknown who stonewalled Universal Pictures like a seasoned veteran during negotiations for “A Bronx Tale.” They wanted to pay the newcomer $250,000 for the play and cast a name actor as Sonny. Palminteri thought otherwise, holding out for seven figures on the condition that he would choose the producer (friend and nightclub owner Peter Gatien) and star in the role himself. Universal agreed to the conditions, only to later abandon the project fearing escalating costs.

Palminteri maintains that his ultimate $1.5-million deal with Tribeca and Savoy for “A Bronx Tale” was the only one his conscience would have allowed.

“Everybody thought I was crazy,” he recalled. “They said to me, ‘You’re out of your mind, you’re going to blow it.’ I said, ‘No way. I’m playing this part or I go down with the ship.’ ”

To a certain extent, “A Bronx Tale” symbolizes Palminteri’s victory over frustrations about his fledgling career. He recalled when it all came to a boil in 1988.

“I was living in a dump in North Hollywood. Here I was 36, 37 years old. I said, ‘All right, you’ve got to do something .’ I got in my car and drove to Laurel Canyon and Ventura Boulevard--there’s a Thrifty Drugstore there. I grabbed five pads of yellow legal paper and I started to write.”