He was there through the bloodshed, the big business, and the mob’s eventual implosion.
The former mafioso-turned-witness had a contract on his head for at least a decade, and when speaking to him, it’s obvious that the remnants of his past boil the cuss stew escaping through the phone’s speaker.Ī Chicago tough guy in the mafia, Cullotta made his way to Las Vegas in the late ’70s, and became a part of the mob machine helping run the desert city. There’s a hazard to his huffs, even at his age. He drops his “R” pronunciations, and rifles off f-bombs with the grace of a hobbled Cirque de Soleil dancer. Still, the man’s words crackle and whip like the syllables were poisonous. Despite the inherent reservations, I felt no danger: Frank Cullotta is half-way through his 70s at this point, his days of pointing pistols are well behind him. There are certain thoughts that manifest when you’re engaging in conversation with a man that willingly took another man’s life. Casino captures the era, the look, the personalities. My graduate advisor, who’s consulted on a couple of films, liked to say, ‘A word is worth a thousand pictures.’ You cannot exactly capture what happened in a movie.
