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. 'He turned around and said, 'You want to have a sandwich?' And across the street from the courthouse was a little sub place.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. Spilotro noticed Rundell had stopped shooting and paused.

In fact, on one occasion, something different happened after Rundell finished shooting video and put down his camera. 'I think more or less we were a nuisance, but they knew we were doing our job and we were not on there radar as far as retaliating at us for taking pictures.' 'And that was our opportunity to get the B-roll of them coming in or out of court.'Īlthough Rundell and the rest of the media were always surrounding the characters coming in and out of the courthouse, it was all business. 'We used to sit at the bottom of the federal courthouse at the elevators waiting for the court to break,' said Rundell. There was a fairly standard routine when high-profile court proceedings were underway. Tony Spilotro served as inspiration for the 'Casino' character Nicky Santoro, played by actor Joe Pesci. 'So I was constantly there with Tony Spilotro and Oscar and the whole gang that would come in and out of there.' 'My beat was the federal courthouse,' said Rundell. Rundell's other close mob encounter came in a routine part of his job.

'I think we broke in live with it, and once we broke in the other stations started showing up,' Rundell said. Rundell was later given a commendation from his news director to Channel 3's general manager, and columnist Don DiGilio used his column in 'The Valley Times' to mock the other stations for trailing so far behind.

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