CASINO Early Movie Script [May 1994 / Draft 12A -- Prior to Pre-Production]. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Starring Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci.

Trade Paperback. Bound by two metal clasps (see photograph). 11" x 8 1/2", 137 one-side pages. The pages were photocopied. Despite the photocopying it appears that this was an original script made around the time of the draft date --scripts of various drafts were most likely made in small quantities and were probably reproduced for those who needed them by photocopying. "The inspiration for Casino appears to have come to Scorsese through Nicholas Pileggi, who immediately upon the completion of Good Fellas script began thinking of a film on organized crime in Las Vegas. Pileggi alerted Scorsese to newpaper articles on the professional and domestic problems of Frank 'Lefty" Rosenthal, a Las Vegas casino manager and leading mob representative in that city during the 1970s. Like Pileggi, Scorsese saw in these materials the basis of a film on the fall of Italian American crime families in Las Vegas in the period when casinos were being corporatized. Scripted by Pileggi and Scorsese, Casino was not inspired by Pileggi's book of the same title, as the screenplay and book were written concurrently. Based on research and interviews, the book is a factual account of the decline of the mob in Las Vegas, with a focus on Rosenthal. A fictional treatment of its subject, the film alters characters' names, modifies details and transforms and transposes events. Yet there remains a close congruity between the book and the film." --Gangster Priest: The Italian American Cinema of Martin Scorsese by Robert Casillo (University of Toronto Press, 2006), page 326.