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While the film bears ostensible similarities to Mean Streets, Raging Bull and
GoodFellas, Casino is "not really a mob film," explained Scorsese. "It's about people in
Vegas at the end of its heyday," when organized crime was losing its stronghold on the
city. "It was almost like the end of the Wild West, the end of frontier towns of the
1880s," he added. The filmmaker has always been fascinated by Westerns (Taxi Driver
was, in many ways, inspired by John Ford's The Searchers) and Casino can be seen as
part of that tradition. Like the panhandlers of another era, millions descended upon this
outpost in the desert seeking gold. And, like the frontier towns of the Old West, Vegas in
the seventies was an oasis of unguarded cash, ripe for looting by organized gangs. In
Casino, these desperadoes come head-to-head with the authorities while the town
grapples for its identity. It's an American epic of manifest destiny in the West.
The film interweaves the grand scale of the Vegas story, its political subplots and
clashes between the law and the mob, with the relationships between Ace, Ginger and
Nicky. Scorsese likens it to "balancing five balls in the air... What I'm trying to do with
this picture is get at how the domestic situation, after 12 or 13 years, undoes the entire
empire that they created...It's based on a situation in which a relationship among three
people - the old friendships, transgressions, trusts and betrayals - is what precipitates
the
fall of the whole system."
Scorsese, fascinated by hubris, the sin of overwhelming pride or self-confidence,
feels the central theme of Casino is a classic one. "The story is the oldest story in the
world: People doing themselves in by their own pride and losing paradise. If they
handled it right, they would still be here. Everybody'd be happy. But it got out of
hand...I think I learn more in a movie or in a story when I see what a person does wrong
and what happens to them because of that. Antagonists are more interesting."
Scorsese continues, "Vegas is a place that, to a certain extent, when you make it
here, it's like power is a drug in a way. Everything's heightened here. And it could be
very delicate for people to not overdo it." Scorsese has composed an orchestration of all
the nuances of day-to-day life in a casino in the seventies that captures every detail. By
telling the story in all its minutiae, the director's ultimate purpose is to provoke his
audience into accepting the world of the casinos they see on the screen as their own.
"My desire as a film director," Scorsese explains, "is to provoke the audience.
That's always been a goal of mine. Like in GoodFellas. What these people do is morally
wrong, but the film doesn't say that. These guys are just really working stiffs. They
understand that if you cross a certain line it's death. But that's 'business.' And it is
business. In that world, it's normal behavior. There are a lot of characters and a lot of
information to get across. So the way we do it is to have these simple shots with voice-
over commentary, and every scene goes by fast, fast, fast! That's what you have to do to
show how these people lived, and make an audience really understands what they did."
To render the intriguing story behind the casino business with pathos, Scorsese
enlisted the efforts of a familiar team. His relationship with De Niro is film legend. It
has been said that when Scorsese and De Niro work together, a symbiosis occurs, a
fireworks that bursts on the screen, forged from the depths of their longtime bond as
collaborators. The same can be said of Joe Pesci who, with Casino, marks his third film
with Scorsese.
"Marty is probably the best director I've ever worked with and one of the best
directors of our generation and previous generations," says Pesci. "And Bob, we work so
well together. It's like breathing in and out. It's so easy for us - we feed off each
other.
I work with him like I work with no other actor. We have a great time, it's very creative
and collaborative between the three of us. Marty is a filmmaker, not a director. That's
why he's better than most. He can take a camera and make a movie by himself. He can
write, light, work the camera."
To portray the violence-prone, cocky Nicky Santoro, Pesci was allowed to go off
on tangents lo display his character's wild-eyed zest for the enforcing business. It is the
hazardous combination of his violent nature and dogged sense of loyalty that results in
Santoro's pursuit of the American nightmare. Scorsese and Pileggi give some of the most
graphic scenes in Casino to this character such as when Santoro finds an inventive use
for an industrial vice.
Nicky's loyalty to Ace is tested by Ginger McKenna. He fails. Pesci's love scene
with Sharon Stone will certainly be remembered as one of the more offbeat couplings in
recent film history. "'It was great working with Sharon," commented Pesci. "I think she
was great in the part. She's so sensual that my love scenes with her are probably going to
make me look hot!"
For her part, Stone is equally happy to have been chosen for the role. *'Working
with Marty was something that I didn't imagine would happen to me," said Stone,
"because he doesn't often do pictures that require an artist of my type." But once she got
through months of shooting in Vegas, Stone became aware that she was doing her best
work. "I knew I had abilities that I hadn't yet had an opportunity to demonstrate," said
the actress, adding that her character's job is to drive Robert De Niro's Ace crazy and
that
she really nailed it. "Sometimes the movie was a little bit like Who 's Afraid of Virginia
Woolf? meets GoodFellas, and we had some scenes that were pretty hairy," she added.
"We would cut, and we'd just look at each other and giggle so much because we'd been
so out there. [Bob and I] went way beyond what I understood that I could do, doing
things that I had never guessed I would be able to tackle."
To help capture the atmosphere of a bygone Vegas era, Scorsese employed an
inspired bit of casting, using veteran comic Don Rickles in the serious role of De Niro's
aide de camp, casino manager Billy Sherbert. "Billy is a casino manager and De Niro's
friend," said Rickles. "He's the guy who knows the business and knows about gamblers
and their partners. Someone who knows who he can trust and give a certain amount of
money to."
Rickles, who actually worked in Las Vegas during its golden years, added another
dimension to the piece. "Billy Sherbert is a combination of guys I've known," said
Rickles. "It didn't take a great amount of concentration on my part because I grew up in
this town. I pretty much knew these guys. I just played them like I used to see them
walking around." Scorsese knew that casting old school Vegas entertainers would add an
important level of authenticity to the film. "You can't tell a younger person how to walk
through a casino the way these older fellas did in the heyday of the Dunes and the Desert
Inn and the Sands," summed up the director.
"It was a great day then," recalled Rickles. "The Sands was a hangout for all of
us. We used to hang out there in the steam room a lot with Dean Martin and Sammy
Davis, Jr. and Frank Sinatra. What I liked about Vegas at that time, even though it was
controlled by - for lack of another word - the mob, was that there was one boss. It
wasn't like corporations today. In those days, you went up to the main office and you
saw the boss, so to speak, like De Niro plays. You went to him and said, 'Can I have
more money?' or 'Can I get a better dressing room?' It was more of a family. Now, it's
like working for the bank."
And what was it like working with Sharon Stone? "Beautiful. And if I were
thirty years younger and wasn't happily married, maybe we could work something out!"
Don Rickles is but one of many Vegas veterans who brings firsthand knowledge
of the colorful and glittery show town to the film. Comedian Alan King plays teamster
heavy Andy Stone, Dick Smothers (of the comic duo The Smothers Brothers) does a
surprising turn as a corrupt senator and Vegas greats Frankie Avalon, Jerry Vale, Steve
Allen and Jayne Meadows all appear in cameos as themselves. Real life roles are played
by local anchors Gwen Castaldi, Mike Bradley, Dave Courvoisier and Paige Novodor and
attorney Oscar Goodman.
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