Casino
Short description
Casino is a crime drama set in Las Vegas, where Sam "Ace" Rothstein runs a major hotel and casino on behalf of organised crime figures who depend on the steady flow of money it produces. His childhood friend Nicky Santoro arrives in the city, ostensibly to look after Sam, but Nicky's violent methods and independent ambitions soon put the two men on a collision course. Sam's marriage to Ginger McKenna, a woman drawn to wealth and excitement, adds further strain to a position he can only hold by keeping everyone satisfied.
Martin Scorsese directed and co-wrote the film with Nicholas Pileggi, and Barbara De Fina produced it. It is the nineteenth of the thirty-eight features Scorsese has directed, following The Age of Innocence and preceding Kundun. Robert De Niro plays Sam, with Sharon Stone as Ginger, Joe Pesci as Nicky, and supporting turns from James Woods, Don Rickles and Alan King. The production, made in the United States and France, cost about 50 million dollars and took roughly 116 million dollars worldwide, a solid return on a long, adult-oriented drama.
On IMDb and TMDB, audience ratings sit close to 8 out of 10 across thousands of votes, while a film critics' rating of 7.5 out of 10 from seventy-seven reviews indicates strong but slightly more measured approval. The film runs just under three hours.
What's left behind the scenes
- The prototype for Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) was Anthony “Tony Ant” Spilotro, an enforcer for the Chicago Outfit, who was murdered on the orders of his bosses in 1986.
- The word “fuck” and its derivatives are used 422 times in the film – an average of approximately 2.4 times per minute.
- Filming took place in one of the oldest operating hotel-casinos in Las Vegas, the Riviera, which was chosen due to the establishment’s neutral thematic atmosphere.
- A significant portion of the conversations between Robert De Niro and Sharon Stone were improvisations. Director Martin Scorsese simply told them where to start and how to finish, leaving everything else to the actors' discretion.
- The costumes in the film cost $1 million. Robert De Niro appeared in 70 different costumes, and Sharon Stone in 40. All the costumes went to the actors after filming.
- According to the producers, one of the most difficult aspects of working on the film was finding people who would agree to talk about the methods of cheating casinos.
- According to Sharon Stone, the first two times she was called for an audition with Martin Scorsese ended in nothing for various minor reasons (the auditions didn't even take place because, for example, Scorsese was in a business meeting). The actress became overly nervous and impulsively decided that the director was rejecting her. When she was contacted about a third audition, Stone refused and went to a restaurant with a friend. Scorsese tracked her down directly at the restaurant to clear up the misunderstanding and personally asked her to come to the audition.
- According to Martin Scorsese, he specifically included one particularly brutal scene (featuring a head in a vice) in the film, anticipating that the American Film Association (the organization that assigns film ratings) would insist on its removal, and might overlook other scenes of violence. When representatives of the American Film Association didn't comment on the scene during the screening, Scorsese slightly edited it and left it in the film.
- The relevant scenes were filmed on the premises of the Riviera casino between 1:00 AM and 4:00 AM to avoid disturbing the players. The casino management didn't want the filming to interfere with the gambling business, but in turn used the fact of the filming to attract new visitors, displaying, for example, a huge banner on the building's facade that read, "Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, and Joe Pesci – filming of the new movie 'Casino' is underway!"
- Sharon Stone was filming in this movie while still recovering from an old injury sustained on set and suffering from back pain, and one of the dresses her character had to wear weighed 20 kg.
- The scenes in which an emissary from the bosses enters a private room to count money and takes cash "for the bosses" were not filmed in the corresponding room at the Riviera casino. The film crew was simply not allowed access, and these episodes had to be filmed on specially constructed sets.
- At the 133rd minute of the film, Sam asks his wife where she was, and she replies that she was at the Riviera (the same casino where the film was shot).
- When the character played by Joe Pesci was thrown into a pit dug in the ground, the actor broke the same rib he had broken while filming the drama "Raging Bull" (Martin Scorsese, 1980).
- The scene with the “head in a vise” was taken from the book “Casino,” which had nothing to do with the film. The plot revolves around hitman Tony Spilotro interrogating street gangster Billy McCarthy, who killed the Scalvo brothers without the permission of leadership – two high-ranking mafia members from the organization to which Spilotro himself belonged. While trying to extract the name of an accomplice from McCarthy, Spilotro first beat the gangster, then struck him in the genital area with an ice pick, after which he clamped his head in a vise and squeezed it to 12 cm. McCarthy continued to remain silent, not revealing his associate Jimmy Miraglia, and Spilotro increased the pressure to the point where McCarthy’s eyes literally bulged from his head. Surprisingly, he was still alive, and Spilotro killed him by pouring lighter fluid on him and holding an open flame to it. Later, Spilotro paid tribute to McCarthy, saying he was the toughest guy he, Spilotro, had ever met. (And Miraglia was eventually killed as well, and his corpse was stuffed into the trunk of a car next to McCarthy's.)
- The character of Robert De Niro was based on the real-life figure of Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, who managed the "Stardust," "Fremont," and "Hacienda" casinos from the 1970s to the early 1980s.
- When James Woods learned that Martin Scorsese wanted to work with him, he immediately called Scorsese's office and left a message: "Anytime, anywhere, any role, and for any money."
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
