{"id":406421,"date":"2025-11-26T17:06:32","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T17:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/406421\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T17:06:32","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T17:06:32","slug":"casino-1995-belongs-in-the-chicago-film-canon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/406421\/","title":{"rendered":"Casino (1995) belongs in the Chicago film canon"},"content":{"rendered":"

At 422 \u201cfucks\u201d given, Casino premiered as the most profane movie ever in 1995. But Martin Scorsese\u2019s Las Vegas mob epic drew the line at the C-word. That\u2019s right: \u201cChicago.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story was adapted by Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi from the latter\u2019s nonfiction book of the same name. (Pileggi also wrote Wiseguy in 1986 and helped adapt it into 1990\u2019s Goodfellas.) The book tells how the midwest mafia, led by the Chicago Outfit, gripped Vegas in the 70s and early 80s. Working with the Teamsters labor union to grant loans to casino investors, the mob controlled the gambling palaces and siphoned millions in profit. Scorsese\u2019s film adaptation was to follow the Chicagoans who went to Vegas to oversee the operation known as \u201cthe skim\u201d: Frank \u201cLefty\u201d Rosenthal, a fastidious, renowned gambler turned casino boss, and Anthony \u201cTony\u201d Spilotro, a vicious but brilliant gangster who served as the muscle.<\/p>\n

Weeks before shooting began, however, studio lawyers began quibbling with the script. The reasons remain murky, but they likely involve the Chicago Department of Law, which was more protective of the city\u2019s media image at the time. Outfit boss Joseph \u201cJoey the Clown\u201d Lombardo was also still active. For fear of a lawsuit, the legal team forced Pileggi and Scorsese to omit the names of the real-life players and their hometown. Always searching for truth in his material, Scorsese resisted before finally relenting.<\/p>\n

\"\"Frank \u201cLefty\u201d Rosenthal
Credit: courtesy Special Collections and Archives, University of Nevada, Las Vegas<\/p>\n

\"\"Robert De Niro as Sam \u201cAce\u201d Rothstein, an adapted version of Rosenthal
Credit: courtesy Universal Pictures<\/p>\n

The story remained essentially the same, but Rosenthal became Sam \u201cAce\u201d Rothstein (Robert De Niro), and Spilotro became Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci). None of the movie was shot in Chicago, and several Windy City\u2013set scenes were transplanted to the desert. The title card at the start of the film changed from \u201cBased on a true story\u201d to \u201cAdapted from a true story.\u201d Mentions of Detroit, Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Cleveland remained in the film, but Chicago was replaced with \u201cback home.\u201d<\/p>\n

These redactions obscured what should have been a classic Chicago film about an essential part of the city\u2019s history. Chicago\u2019s past is intertwined with organized crime, but movies almost always focus on the first half of the 20th century: Scarface (1932), The Untouchables (1987), Public Enemies (2009), among others. Unfortunately, the Chicago mob did not end with John Dillinger and Al Capone, and the later stories deserve to be told. \u201cThe skim\u201d was one of the most monumental crimes ever perpetrated in the U.S., with the City of Broad Shoulders extending its reach all the way to the Mojave. Chicago deserves to own this history and its portrayal in pop culture.<\/p>\n

Pileggi\u2019s book reveals just how much flavor got left on the page.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Anthony \u201cTony\u201d Spilotro (R) with attorney Oscar Goodman
Credit: courtesy Special Collections and Archives, University of Nevada, Las Vegas<\/p>\n

\"\"Joe Pesci as Nicky Santoro, an adapted version of Spilotro
Credit: courtesy Universal Pictures<\/p>\n

The real Rosenthal was a spindly, ice-eyed blond from the west side. He worked as a clerk and bookie for Chicago gamblers before he could vote and played the odds in the bleachers of Wrigley and Comiskey. After developing a nationwide network of tipsters and a reputation to match, he escaped to Miami and then Vegas. He ran four casinos for the Outfit by the mid-70s. Although De Niro looks nothing like Rosenthal, his commitment to playing the part convinced Rosenthal to contribute to the book and movie.<\/p>\n

Spilotro was a fellow west sider. If Pesci was born to play a role, it was this burly, five-foot-five enforcer. The two bore such a resemblance that some casino personnel who had known Spilotro \u201cnearly fainted\u201d in Pesci\u2019s presence, said Pileggi<\/a>. Groomed for the Outfit at his father\u2019s mob hangout, Patsy\u2019s Restaurant, on the corner of Grand and Ogden, Spilotro slung his weight around town like a bowling ball. The Chicago Sun-Times and Tribune dubbed him \u201cthe Ant\u201d sometime after he made his bones carrying out the so-called M&M Murders in 1962, the basis for Casino\u2019s vice torture scene. It happened in Elmwood Park, though, not Vegas.<\/p>\n

After joining Rosenthal in Sin City, Spilotro enlisted Chicago pal Frank Cullotta as his street lieutenant. Leading the \u201cHole in the Wall Gang\u201d burglary crew, Cullotta found it easier to rob homes in Vegas than in Chicago due to the high property walls and lack of neighborliness in the desert town. Frustrated and paranoid over the attention he drew from the Vegas police and media, Spilotro intimated to Cullotta a plan to take over the entire midwest mafia, to become \u201cthe pope of the mob,\u201d as Cullotta said in the book. The film only hints at this ill-fated scheme.<\/p>\n

Years later, the FBI played Cullotta a tape of Spilotro asking permission to eliminate him. Cullotta turned informant and became an indispensable resource not only for the Bureau but for Pileggi and Scorsese.<\/p>\n

On his YouTube channel Mob Vlog<\/a>, Cullotta remembers Pesci calling him a rat on set. \u201c\u2018If you ever call me a name like that again, in plain, I will rip one of your eyeballs out of your head,\u2019\u201d Cullotta recalls telling him. \u201cWe turned out to be friends.\u201d The former wiseguy also laments the casting, saying, \u201cThey don\u2019t pick anybody but from New York, even though this is a Chicago movie.\u201d Cullotta had so many pointers for the actors that he was eventually cast as the main hitman at the end of the film.<\/p>\n

\"\"From L: Martin Scorsese, Joe Pesci, and Robert De Niro while filming Casino
Credit: courtesy Universal Pictures<\/p>\n

As is the case with so many Chicagoans, Spilotro and Rosenthal\u2019s lives were dictated\u2014and undone\u2014by food. Spilotro\u2019s weakness was Cullotta\u2019s pizzeria, Upper Crust, where Cullotta claimed<\/a> to have pioneered the stuffed pie style in Vegas. \u201cAs soon as I opened up that fucking pizza joint,\u201d Cullotta recalls in Pileggi\u2019s book, \u201cTony started coming around too much.\u201d Spilotro was so smitten with the Chicago Italian fare, including beef sandwiches, that he blew his crew\u2019s low profile and jump-started its downfall. Cops started posting up down the street.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Rosenthal was a ribs guy, and he required them on a strict schedule. As the book recounts, he ordered takeout from the same Vegas restaurant every week at the same time. On October 4, 1982, Rosenthal did just that, then his car blew up. His bomber, still unidentified, knew exactly when and where to carry out the hit attempt. As explained in the movie, the extra metal plate beneath the 1981 Cadillac Eldorado saved Rosenthal\u2019s life, but he fled Vegas months later.<\/p>\n

Casino (1995)
<\/strong>R, 178 min. Hulu, Disney+, free on Tubi, wide release on VOD<\/p>\n

Thankfully, Casino manages to smuggle in a few references to the Windy City. The Outfit gets a mention. Pesci asks De Niro for the betting line on the \u201cBears\u2019 game.\u201d But the most precious artifact, the only element of the film that totally escaped the black markers and red pens of Universal\u2019s lawyers, is Pesci\u2019s Chicago accent. We should cherish it.<\/p>\n

Perhaps to distinguish the character from his Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas, the actor uses his voice to tell us what \u201cback home\u201d really means. I couldn\u2019t find any information on Pesci\u2019s approach, so I consulted local musician, content creator, and Chicago accent connoisseur Al Scorch<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPesci did a pretty good job,\u201d says Scorch. \u201cHe strings the words together right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scorch points to the opening voiceover: \u201cHe says, \u2018I mean he had me, his best friend, lookin\u2019 out for him.\u2019 \u2018I-mean-he-had-me\u2019 just becomes one word. All the H\u2019s drop out. The rhythm and cadence are good.\u201d He even begins a sentence with, \u2018As a matter of fact.\u2019 I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s common grammar, but it\u2019s really common in Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scorch explains, \u201cThe blue-collar Chicago dialect has got a lot of ethnic influence. . . . Irish, Polish, and some Italians drop the same letters. \u2018Think\u2019 becomes \u2018tink.\u2019\u201d Pesci demonstrates this with phrases like, \u201cHe was wit [with] me\u201d and \u201cTrow [throw] her out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Scorch also notes the popping sounds on Pesci\u2019s P\u2019s and B\u2019s, called plosives. \u201cIn the Chicago accent,\u201d he says, \u201cthere will be a lag in the plosive, where you hold the air in your mouth ever so slightly more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pesci hammers the R in \u201cmore\u201d and \u201chere\u201d and the nasally A in \u201cpal,\u201d \u201ccash,\u201d and \u201cback home.\u201d He also exchanges TH for D, as in \u201cbrudder\u201d (\u201cbrother\u201d) and \u201cmudderfucker\u201d (\u201cmotherfucker\u201d). And he spits out the classic Great Lakes insult \u201cjagoff\u201d on multiple occasions (not \u201cjerkoff,\u201d as Cullotta made sure).<\/p>\n

Pesci\u2019s voice work slips sometimes, particularly during outbursts. Scorch understands: \u201cYou kind of go back to the mother tongue when you\u2019re distressed, angered, frustrated.\u201d Pesci also swears much more than the real guy did, according to Cullotta.<\/p>\n

If Pesci wanted to maximize the Chicagoness of his performance, he could have
adopted the mustache Spilotro sprouted in his later years. The appearance of a lip caterpillar in the third act of a three-hour movie might have been distracting, but this is nonetheless another act of censorship on the town once named \u201cAmerica\u2019s Most Mustache-Friendly City\u201d<\/a> by the American Mustache Institute.<\/p>\n

Despite the alterations made to the movie, the truth behind Casino still lives within some Chicagoans. Frank Vincent, who plays the fictionalized version of Cullotta, said in 2011<\/a>, \u201cWhen I was in Chicago . . . I went into a little restaurant that this little old lady owned, and she said to me, \u2018How could you do that to those people? How could you put them in a hole and bury them alive? I knew their wives; they were wonderful people!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"YouTube<\/p>\n

Those people were Spilotro and his brother Michael, though they were really killed in a Bensenville basement before being deposited in an Indiana cornfield in 1986. They now rest in the Spilotro family plot at Hillside, Illinois\u2019s Queen of Heaven Cemetery. Rosenthal died of an apparent heart attack in Miami in 2008.<\/p>\n

The final moments of Casino lament what Vegas has become\u2014corporations took over, squeezing out the personality that made the town special. Scorsese said he viewed this as an allegory for Hollywood, of loss of artistic control and lifeless megaproductions. In stripping Casino of its Chicago roots, he himself was forced to compromise his vision of this film, robbing a classic from a great city\u2019s filmography. But this is a Chicago movie, whether the characters say it or not. Three decades after release, it\u2019s time we took Casino back.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\tOctober 30, 2025November 5, 2025\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At 422 \u201cfucks\u201d given, Casino premiered as the most profane movie ever in 1995. But Martin Scorsese\u2019s Las…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":406422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5386,1818,191663],"class_list":{"0":"post-406421","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-illinois","11":"tag-vol-55-no-9"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115617098035974623","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}