Anyone who has seen Martin Scorsese’s 1995 movie Casino would agree that the storyline is quite sensationalistic. And while it’s mainly fiction, it’s based on actual people and events that took place in Las Vegas in the 1970s and early ’80s.
In honor of the movie’s 20th anniversary, The Mob Museum hosts Courtroom Conversation: The Real Story Behind Casino, on Nov. 7. Characters like Ace Rothstein, played by Robert De Niro, and Nicky Santoro, played by Joe Pesci, were based on real-life Vegas residents and mob affiliates, Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal and Tony Spilotro. At the time Rosenthal secretly operated the Stardust hotel, reporting directly to the mob outfits while mobster Spilotro worked for several Midwestern organized crime families who sent him to the desert to watch over Rosenthal. During his Vegas years, Spilotro ended up forming a robbery gang and skimming millions from casino profits, eventually landing him in Nevada’s Black Book. Many scenes and plots throughout the movie were taken straight from actual headlines and unbelievable dramas that went down when the mob still ran the city.
The Courtroom Conversation, being held in the museum’s historic courtroom, invites Oscar Goodman, attorney for Rosenthal and Spilotro, and former undercover FBI agents Marc Kaspar and Deborah Richard, among other panelists, to speak about one of the most infamous periods in Las Vegas history; discussing how fiction just might have been fact in the award-winning film.
300 Stewart Avenue, 7 p.m. Nov. 7, $25 for Courtroom Conversation, Mob Museum admission starting at $21.95. 702.229.2734 or themobmuseum.org
