This is the second biographical portrayal of Meyer Lansky--the first being Lansky (1998), played by Richard Dreyfuss. In it, he also tells a tale of his life to a journalist.
This is the third film Harvey Keitel has appeared in about a historical figure connected to Benjamin Bugsy Siegel, and the second of those films to feature the character of Meyer Lansky. He played Siegel himself in Virginia Hill (1974), and Mickey Cohen in Bugsy (1991). Ben Kingsley played Lansky in that film.
The type of electronic motel locks where the author, David Stone, stayed at did not exist in 1981.