Casino Movie Facts
Casino is a 1995 American epic crime film directed by Martin Scorsese, produced by Barbara De Fina and distributed by Universal Pictures. The film is based on the nonfiction book Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas by Nicholas Pileggi, who also co-wrote the screenplay for the film with Scorsese. IT ONLY EXISTS BECAUSE THE REAL GUY IT'S BASED ON WAS A BIG DE NIRO FAN.
The Casino is one of the greatest movies about Las Vegas directed by Martin Scorsese. This iconic movie, released in 1995, tells the story of two mobsters who are the best friends and who try to create their own casino empire. The most exciting thing is that the plot is based on a true story ofFrank “Lefty” Rosenthal (played by Robert De Niro) and his real-life gangster friend Tony Spilotro (played by Joe Pesci). But there isn’t the only interesting fact about the movie Casino. Here are 10 little-known and peculiar facts about the Casino.
- Before filming the Casino, Robert De Niro met the man on whom his character – Sam Rothstein – is based. He met with Frank Rosenthal in person.
- Not many people know that the Tangiers casino didn’t really exist. Unlike such real casinos as the Venetian Macao in China, Yebo Casino for South Africa or Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, the Tangiers casino was just a fiction. But the film was shot in a real, operating casino called the Riviera.
- Frank Rosenthal ran the Stardust and was a former executive at that casino. This fact was well documented in Vegas history books. So, Martin Scorsese decided to highlight this fact via the soundtrack. The track “Stardust” is heard three times throughout the film.
- Due to the fact that Robert De Niro’s character was a chain smoker, he constantly had to hold the cigarettes the same distance from the lit end in order to avoid the continuity issues. So, Sam Rothstein’s cigarettes lengths never appear to change throughout the movie.
- According to Frank Rosenthal, the worst scene of the Casino was when Sam was juggling. He really hated it because he claimed that on the Frank Rosenthal TV Show he never juggled and thought this scene made him look foolish.
- The actress Claudia Haro, who played Trudy, the co-host/bandleader “Ace’s High”, was Joe Pesci’s wife in real life.
- The most eye-catching gold and white beaded gown in which Sharon Stone appears during the casino scene weighted 45 pounds.
- There were 7,000 extras in the Casino movie. 120 of these extras had speaking parts.
- Sam Rothstein’s attorney, Oscar Goodman, is a lawyer in real life and he actually defended several mobsters from Las Vegas. Besides, in 1999, he became Mayor of Las Vegas.
- The costume budget of the Casino was about $1 million. Robert De Niro changed 70 various costumes throughout the film, Sharon Stone changed 40 outfits. After the shoot, they both were allowed to keep their costumes.
5 Casino Fun Facts
- Most dialogues between Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci were absolutely improvised. The director just told them where to start and where to end.
- Joe Pesci re-broke the same rib during the filming of the Casino that had been broken 15 years earlier during the filming of the Raging Bull.
- James Woods so wanted to be in the movie directed by Martin Scorsese, so when he heard that the famous director was interested in working with him, he called the Scorsese’s office immediately and said that he was ready to start “any time, any place, any part, any fee”.
- Sharon Stone could meet Martin Scorsese only on the third occasion. Her first two auditions were canceled by the director for different mundane reasons. She decided not to try a third time and go out with her friend instead. But the director of the Casino found Sheron at the restaurant where she was dining with her friend and made her a personal appeal.
- According to the producers of the Casino, the most difficult thing about filming this masterpiece was finding those people who could tell them how to cheat in the casino.
3 Interesting Facts about Casino Movies
The Casino certainly is the most memorable casino-themed movie, but not the only one. For the fans of themovies about gambling and casinos, here are the top 3 casino films in addition to the Casino and most interesting facts about them.
- The Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas directed by Terry William has become a cult classic movie. Despite the fact that this movie describes the casino life of Las Vegas, very little of the movie was really shot in Las Vegas.
- Being one of the most popular casino films ever made, the Ocean’s Eleven was produced on a budget of $80 million and was the fifth highest grossing film the year of its release, raked in $450.7 million in the box office.
- The Casino Royale (2006) is an updated casino movie which describes some new ways of gambling with the help of Mobile Casinos. Amazingly, but it took almost six weeks to film the Parkour chase at the beginning of the movie and Daniel Craig lost two of his front teeth when filming a fight scene in Prague.
Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro) is surrounded by the press at a Nevada Gaming Commission meeting portrayed in Casino. Rothstein’s lawyer, Oscar Goodman (played by Goodman himself), stands by his side. Photo courtesy of Oscar Goodman.
Though the movie Casino was released more than 22 years ago, it still serves as a reference point for those hoping to understand what real Las Vegas mobsters were like when they were a sinister fixture in the news.
But most movies based on true stories, including Casino, twist the facts for dramatic effect and to compress long histories into a watchable timeframe.
What you see in Casino isn’t exactly the way things were. Case in point: the death of the Spilotro brothers, two mobsters originally from Chicago.
The way the movie portrays it, the brothers — or at least the fictional characters representing Anthony and Michael Spilotro — are beaten with baseball bats in a cornfield and shoved into a shallow grave while still alive.
Casino Movie Fun Facts
Not true.
In his 2009 book Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob, journalist Jeff Coen details what really happened. Coen covered the Family Secrets trial for the Chicago Tribune. That 2007 trial resulted in convictions and revealed details that weren’t publicly known when the movie came out more than a decade earlier.
In the 1995 movie, it was baseball bats in a cornfield. But according to trial testimony, the Spilotros were lured to a residence near O’Hare International Airport in Bensenville, a subdivision of “modest homes,” and were beaten to death in the basement. (At the trial, one of the killers, Mob turncoat Nick Calabrese, said he could not recall which house it was.)
Anthony and his brother, Michael, a part-time actor and owner of the Chicago restaurant and Mob hangout Hoagie’s, went to the home in June 1986 believing they were to be promoted within the Outfit.
Although the brothers were suspicious, refusing to go was unthinkable.
When the Spilotros got to the basement, about 15 mobsters pounced on them. Michael had brought a pocket-sized .22-caliber handgun but could not get to it. Anthony was heard asking if he could say a prayer but was swarmed.
In addition to breaking Michael’s nose, the attackers inflicted blunt force injuries over his entire body. They severely bruised Anthony’s face, left temple and chest.
Anthony, 48, had blood in his trachea, lungs and nasal passages and hemorrhaging in the muscles of the larynx. The 41-year-old Michael had a fractured Adam’s apple.
Neither man’s skin was broken, indicating the killers did not use a heavy object such as a baseball bat. The brothers were beaten with fists, knees and feet, according to a pathologist at the trial.
The Spilotros were dead when buried in an Enos, Indiana, cornfield about 100 miles south of the murder house. The brothers were placed in a five-foot grave in only their underwear, one on top of the other.
The cornfield is near land that Outfit boss Joseph “Joey Doves” Aiuppa used for hunting, according to Coen. A farmer discovered the grave, thinking someone had buried a deer. The Spilotros were identified by dental X-rays provided by a third bother, Patrick Spilotro, a dentist.
Why did this happen to Anthony and Michael Spilotro? Mob higher-ups felt the two had to be silenced.
Since the early 1970s, Anthony Spilotro had overseen street rackets in Las Vegas for the Chicago Outfit. He also was keeping an eye on Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, a Chicago bookie handling the skim in Las Vegas for Midwestern Mob bosses.
Ultimately, though, news stories about Spilotro’s violent criminal activities, and his affair with Rosenthal’s wife, a former showgirl at the Tropicana hotel-casino, led to the gruesome outcome in that Bensenville basement.
Anthony Spilotro’s high-profile legal problems were jeopardizing the Outfit’s Las Vegas cash cow, prompting Aiuppa to order him “knocked down.” Michael Spilotro, facing a trial on extortion charges, had to go, too.
That terrifying outcome is not the only place where Casino misses the mark factually. In another example among many from the film, an animated Kansas City mobster pops off in an Italian grocery about the Las Vegas skim while federal authorities listen to his profanity-laced rant through a bug planted in a vent.
In reality, law enforcement authorities learned about the Las Vegas skim while eavesdropping on a conversation between members of the Civella crime family at a bugged back table in Kansas City’s Villa Capri pizzeria. Unlike the movie, there was no humorous scolding mom at the now-demolished Villa Capri nagging her mobster son about his vulgar language.
The only ones at the table were sinister Mob figures, behaving like real-life conspiratorial gangsters, not colorful movie characters.
Larry Henry is a veteran print and broadcast journalist. He served as press secretary for Nevada Governor Bob Miller, and was political editor at the Las Vegas Sun and managing editor at KFSM-TV, the CBS affiliate in Northwest Arkansas. Henry taught journalism at Haas Hall Academy in Bentonville, Arkansas, and now is the headmaster at the school’s campus in Rogers, Arkansas. The Mob in Pop Culture blog appears monthly.
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