O'REILLY When you look back at what you've accomplished, was there anything that you did in your career that you would not do again?
PALMINTERI I gotta tell you, Bill, you ask great questions.
O'REILLY Thank you.
PALMINTERI You do. And I've been interviewed thousands of times. Is there anything that I did that I would not do again? I remember when I, it was a stupid thing. When I wrote Bronx Tale in the very beginning, the first time I wrote it, and I started doing it, I used everybody's real name that was real. And then I got a phone call, I remember, that they heard that I was using these names. It's not a big thing, but they were like pretty upset by it. And they said, you have to change the names.
O'REILLY And you did?
PALMINTERI Immediately.
O'REILLY You did?
PALMINTERI I did. No, immediately.
O'REILLY Oh, okay.
PALMINTERI I changed him immediately. Immediately. And then they said, cool.
O'REILLY See, my view of you, and I don't know you that well, but we've been at Yankee games together and I couldn't have gotten closer to the stage for A Bronx Tale if I tried. I was just right there, because I wanted to see how Palminteri carried this one man show off. Because one man show...
PALMINTERI Toughest thing in the world.
O'REILLY Oh!
PALMINTERI Toughest.
O'REILLY Because you have to overlook every distraction, any cell phone that rings or anything.
PALMINTERI There's no there's no break you have to...if you're...
O'REILLY Locked in.
PALMINTERI You have to be locked in. If you're off for 10 seconds, the audience goes off.
O'REILLY And so I'm watching every everything, and that's what I always do for people who are successful. I know that you're a fair man, that your whole philosophy is based on fairness. You don't have any malice. You don't have that reputation in business. I wanted to get guys to say bad things about you. Shirripa almost punched me. He wouldn't say anything bad about you, nobody says anything bad about you because you're fair.
PALMINTERI I'm fair.
O'REILLY And that came from your parents and the neighborhood. I mean, that's what the code was. We get back, we started the interview with the code. The code was, you don't kick a guy literally when he's down.
PALMINTERI No.
O'REILLY You don't keep somebody in the head when somebody's laying on the ground.
PALMINTERI Right.
O'REILLY That code is gone now.
PALMINTERI Fairness means a lot to me. Be fair. You know, I don't want things for free because I'm a celebrity. Just be fair. Just don't rip me off. That's all I'm asking.
O'REILLY Or anybody else.
PALMINTERI Or anybody else. I don't like that. Somebody who lies and cheats. And again, I had a guy that worked for me for years once and I treated him great. I treated fantastic. His family, I bought his family things. I could bend over backwards, my wife and I. And then I found out he forged a check of mine. And I was like, well, why would you do that?
O'REILLY Did you ask him?
PALMINTERI Yeah.
O'REILLY What did he say?
PALMINTERI He said he didn't do it, but I know he did.
O'REILLY So to the end, he...
PALMINTERI He just wouldn't cop to it. He wouldn't cop to it and I fired him.
O'REILLY Okay.
PALMINTERI But I couldn't understand why someone would do that, you know?
O'REILLY Right.
PALMINTERI It kind of hurt me. It took me like a little bit to get over that.
O'REILLY You never get over it, really.
PALMINTERI No, because it made me...
O'REILLY It's a matter of trust. It violated your trust.
PALMINTERI Violated my trust. All he had to do was ask me for the money.
O'REILLY Yeah, you would have given it to him.
PALMINTERI I would have give it to them. That's what I didn't understand. I still don't. I think about it and I go, why would he risk that, knowing how good I was to the family? I don't get it.
O'REILLY You know, the New York scene, you still live here a lot of it. I don't, I don't see you in Hollywood. No, do you ever live out there?
PALMINTERI Yeah, I did live in Hollywood. I did lived there from '86 to '91, maybe five years.
O'REILLY Yeah.
PALMINTERI I liked it.
O'REILLY Yeah. Out there in your black shirt on the Santa Monica Pier?
PALMINTERI Yeah. Well, you know what, I have to tell you, Bill, back then it was a lot nicer than it is now. It's 30 years ago, it was great, the weather was great. I came back because we were going to have children and my wife wanted to be close to her mother and I was coming back to do Bronx Tale with Robert De Niro and I said, okay, it's a good time to go back. That's why we went back.
O'REILLY But you are ingrained New Yorker, right?
PALMINTERI Yeah, I'm in New Yorker, yeah.
O'REILLY Because there's a fleet of guys around New York, Buscemi, you mentioned.
PALMINTERI Yeah.
O'REILLY Okay. Shirripa.
PALMINTERI Shirripa.
O'REILLY These are guys that there's old school guys.
PALMINTERI Oh yeah, those are the guys, you know, there's Bob De Niro, there's Joe Pesci, there is Chris Walken, Harvey Keitel, all of us, we're New Yorkers, yes.
O'REILLY But you're all crazy. Do you ever think about that? You're all insane.
PALMINTERI Yes. I think you have to be a little off to do that. I mean, nobody wants to pay $400 or $500 a ticket to see a normal person on Broadway. They want to see somebody who's different.
O'REILLY Volatile. You could do anything at any time.
PALMINTERI Anything. That's what it makes a great actor.
O'REILLY And that's would that when I had dinner with Pacino, that's when you got off him.
PALMINTERI Yeah.
O'REILLY I didn't know whether I was gonna get Attica and on a table, or he was gonna do this and I had done it with Warren Beatty now I'm dropping names all over the place.
PALMINTERI That's all right.
O'REILLY But it was opposite It was opposite. Yeah. It was Opposite and you could see it. Okay So he got, you know, one icon, Pacino, who, no idea, and believe me, I grilled him about the Godfather. And then I talked politics with Beatty, a very left-wing guy. But I knew Beatty was under control, that he wasn't going to mess up a salad no matter what. With Pacino I might have got the salad on me. And that's the difference between New York which is all emotion, and LA, which is all calculation.
PALMINTERI Boy, do I got a story to tell you about that, but I won't say it on the...
O'REILLY Oh, come on.
PALMINTERI Nah, nah.
O'REILLY You don't even have to use the right name. I'll know it.
PALMINTERI Ah, no, yeah, well, he passed away. I did a movie where I wrote, and I hired a director myself, but I hired him with Bob, and we did the movie. And we had a tough time, very tough time with the director. And he just was so headstrong. He wouldn't listen, he wouldn't take my advice, he wouldn't take De Niro's advice. A great director. I mean, great director. Academy Award-winning director.
O'REILLY This isn't a Bronx Tale, is it?
PALMINTERI Oh, no, no.
O'REILLY It's another movie.
PALMINTERI This is another movie I wrote. And in the end, the movie came out, and it did okay. It's doing well now. Now people really like it. But at the time, it didn't do that well.
O'REILLY Come on, tell me the name of the movie, you can do that.
PALMINTERI Well, the move was Faithful.
O'REILLY Faithful?
PALMINTERI Faithful, F-A-I-T-H-F-U-L, Faithful.
O'REILLY Okay, and the guy's dead now?
PALMINTERI The director, yes. And a great director, let me say that for the record, a great director. And I was at a party, and I don't know if this is bad, but I know when you told me the story, I went, damn Bill, you're so on the money. And Warren Beatty came over to me, because Warren was a very good friend of his. And he said, hey, hey Chazz, how you doing? I said, Hey Warren, how are you doing, we start talking. And he says, what ever happened with your movie? How did that all happen? Because he knew there was trouble on the set. So I told him, and he looked at me and he went, thanks.
O'REILLY That was it.
PALMINTERI That was it.
O'REILLY Right.
PALMINTERI And I was just like, damn. That was calculated. And I don't know Warren, I hear he's a great guy. But the man just looked at me, got the info and went...
O'REILLY That's it.
PALMINTERI Thanks.
O'REILLY Right.
PALMINTERI All right. I have my answer, boom. But I was like...
O'REILLY They're compartmentalized out there and I'm generalizing now.
PALMINTERI And I was, like, gee, Warren.
O'REILLY So there is a huge difference. It's like the L.A. Dodgers and the Yankees.
PALMINTERI Yeah.
O'REILLY Okay, so Dodgers are mercenaries, they're out there. They come to the games.
PALMINTERI Yeah.
O'REILLY They so what they do. The Yankees have got a... They're looking back at Mickey Manil. They're looking back at Joe DiMaggio. Dodgers ain't lookin' at anybody but the nice-lookin' woman in the third row, okay? It's a big, big gulf that people don't understand.
PALMINTERI People yeah, I'll never forget that it was like... And I wanted to talk to you about Korea. I couldn't wait to talk you about life, about...
O'REILLY But he's gone.
PALMINTERI He was gone and I was so disappointed because I wanted her to speak to him about shampoo. He's made some of the great movies.
O'REILLY Bonnie and Clyde.
PALMINTERI Bonnie and Clyde, Splendor in the Grass.
O'REILLY Yeah.
PALMINTERI I couldn't wait to talked him and he just kind of just said, okay. Thanks. And I was like, wow.
O'REILLY I'll try to set that up.
PALMINTERI I would love to talk to him about that.
O'REILLY Yeah, he doesn't want anything to do with me, but if I say, Hey, Warren, I'm coming over unless you talk to Chazz.
PALMINTERI I was such a fan of his, you know, I really was.
O'REILLY Don't take it personally.
PALMINTERI I got hurt. Like I went, damn.
O'REILLY No, no, no. No, Warren's never going to be from the neighborhood.
PALMINTERI Yeah, I guess so.
O'REILLY Never. Warren lives in his own neighborhood and there's only one person in it. Warren.
PALMINTERI Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. I'd like to ask you a question, but maybe we'll do it off the air.
O'REILLY No, you can do it if you want.
PALMINTERI I this this is a question and maybe you could just tell me, Bill. Why is it... Why is it that the left, especially the academia, hates the right, capitalism, the billionaires, so much? And I say to myself, okay, because I try to read and learn about it. And I go, well, capitalism, because I love to learn, I want to learn. And it's like, if you look at Dale Carnegie, Rockefeller, I mean, they did some horrible things, but capitalism builds things. The railroads, they build things. Without that rockets, who knows? Academia doesn't build anything. They have ideas. And in their ideas, it's almost like they're jealous of people who build things. Why is it that it's always capitalism against academia? I never get academia who's a capitalist.
O'REILLY Well, number one, you're a beneficiary of capitalism.
PALMINTERI Yes.
O'REILLY Because you created something that people want to see. And they have rewarded you financially.
PALMINTERI Right.
O'REILLY Very simple. Number two, for some convoluted reason, many academics, and I attended Harvard, as you may know, okay. Believe that you couldn't have done what you did. In fact, Obama said this to me, without the government. Are you blanking kidding me?
PALMINTERI But that's not true.
O'REILLY Of course not, but he believes it and so do his acolytes in The academic circles many many many of them, that... Okay, slaves and Native Americans with the land and everybody who got hosed in our country...
PALMINTERI Right.
O'REILLY Contributed to Palminteri and O'Reilly living large. And they don't like it. That's the answer to your question.
PALMINTERI You know, and I voted for Obama, and he did, look, he did some things, he started at least caring about the Obamacare, worrying about other people, and I respect that. He did start that.
O'REILLY He wasn't a bad president.
PALMINTERI No, and, I respect that, but I, no, I'm sorry, the government didn't make me do anything.
O'REILLY No.
PALMINTERI No, I'm sorry.
O'REILLY Right, and the same thing.
PALMINTERI No.
O'REILLY Just get out of our way.
PALMINTERI Just get out of the way and leave me alone.
O'REILLY Right.
PALMINTERI No, no.
O'REILLY Chazz Palminteri. Thank you very much for taking the time.
PALMINTERI Thank you.
O'REILLY It was a great discussion and we really appreciate it.
PALMINTERI Thanks a lot. |
