World Film Locations: Las Vegas

By Intellect Books Ltd

Sin and redemption. The ridiculous and the sublime. The carnivalesque excess of the Strip and the barrenness of the desert surrounding the city. Visited by millions of fortune seekers – and starry-eyed lovers – each year, Las Vegas is a city with as many apparent contradictions as Elvis impersonators, and this complexity is reflected in the diversity of films that have been shot on location there. A copiously illustrated retrospective of Vegas’s appearances on the big screen, this new volume in Intellect’s World Film Locations series presents synopses of scenes from a broad selection of films – from big-budget blockbusters like Oceans 11 to acclaimed classics Rain Man, Casino, and The Godfather to cult favorites like Showgirls and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Insightful essays throughout explore a range of topics, including the Rat Pack’s Las Vegas, the cinematized Strip, Las Vegas as a frequent backdrop for science fiction, and the various film portrayals of iconic pop-cultural figures like Elvis and Frank Sinatra. Rounding out this information are film stills juxtaposed with photographs of the locations as they appear today. World Film Locations: Las Vegas goes beyond the clichés of Sin City to examine what Hal Rothman and Mike Davis called 'the grit beneath the glitter', thus providing an opportunity to find out more about the unique position Vegas occupies in the popular imagination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books Ltd
• Release date: Feb 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781841505909

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

World Film Locations Las Vegas

WORLD FILM LOCATIONS: LAS VEGAS explores, via cinema, the unique position this city embodies within the American cultural landscape as well as the Las Vegas of the mind: a mythical dreamscape in which hopes and wishes are instantly fulfilled. While according to Mallarmé, ‘a throw of the dice will never abolish chance,’ in Vegas, a throw of the dice is perhaps the only chance needed to reverse one’s fortune, to transform one’s identity for the better. Yet as seen in Adrian Lyne’s Indecent Proposal (1993) and so many other Vegas films, these dreams are almost always shattered by what a character in Tony Scott’s Domino (2005) has dubbed ‘the most dangerous city on earth’.

This volume presents 46 scene reviews of films encompassing a range of genres and time periods: blockbusters Rocky IV (Sylvester Stallone, 1985), Con Air (Simon West, 1997), The Hangover (Todd Phillips, 2009); critically acclaimed classics The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972), Rain Man (Barry Levinson, 1988), Casino (Martin Scorsese, 1995), Leaving Las Vegas (Mike Figgis, 1995); cult favourites including The Amazing Colossal Man (Bert I. Gordon, 1957), Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven, 1995) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam, 1998), as well as Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1982), a meditation upon the anomie of modern urban life, set to Phillip Glass’s haunting melody.

Films reviewed here showcase iconic figures: Frank Sinatra (Ocean’s Eleven [Lewis Milestone, 1960]) and Elvis Presley (Viva Las Vegas [George Sidney, 1964]). So too is the figure of the Elvis impersonator embedded within the city’s fabric: central to Honeymoon in Vegas (Andrew Bergman, 1992) and 3000 Miles to Graceland (Demian Lichtenstein, 2001) is the spectral presence of Elvis, appearing throughout these films and the city ad infinitum.

Lengthier essays interrogate the representation of the city onscreen throughout film history, as well as art and culture in Vegas on and off the Strip, the Rat Pack’s Las Vegas, Las Vegas as fabled destination, science fiction films set in the city, and the Vegas western The Electric Horseman (Sydney Pollack, 1979).

Photographs of contemporary Las Vegas intersect with cinematic reimaginings of these locations, offering considerations of the city’s aesthetic dimensions in all of its contradictions: from the ridiculous and absurd to the sober and sublime; from sin to redemption; from the carnivalesque excesses of The Strip to the barrenness of the desert out of which the city arose - ‘deep in the heart of the golden west.’ The looming presence of the this arid landscape surrounding the ‘Neon Metropolis’ (Hal Rothman, 2002) is depicted in film as historic (Bugsy [Barry Levinson, 1991]); destructive (Resident Evil: Extinction [Russel Mulcahy, 2007]); Old West nostalgia (Las Vegas Lady [Noel Nosseck, 1975]).

From the nuclear bomb tests of Desert Bloom (Eugene Corr, 1986) to the kitsch of One from the Heart (Francis Ford Coppola, 1982), from the explosive violence of Domino to Speedway Junky’s (Nickolas Perry, 1999) ordinary residents disconnected from the neon lights, World Film Locations: Las Vegas goes beyond the clichés of The Strip, ‘Sin City’, and gambling palaces to examine ‘The Grit Beneath the Glitter,’ in the words of Hal Rothman and Mike Davis (2002), thus asking whether Las Vegas represents ‘the dead end of the American Dream’ - or perhaps, the beginning of fantasy.

Marcelline Block, Editor

LAS VEGAS IS ALMOST literally an imagined city, a place that entices both realists and romantics with hints that the next throw of the dice or spin of the wheel may change their luck, enrich their destinies, make their wildest hopes come true. The city’s close affinity with dreams and fantasies is confirmed by the long list of movies that have used it as a location for filming, a setting for the story, or both.

Some of these pictures are as dark and serious as a losing streak – think of Karel Reisz’s The Gambler (1974), a Dostoevsky-like meditation on the masochistic underside of gaming, and Mike Figgis’s Leaving Las Vegas (1995), about a ruined man bent on cutting his losses by drinking himself to death. Others, such as Barry Levinson’s Bugsy (1991) and Martin Scorsese’s Casino (1995), zoom in on mobsters who influenced Las Vegas history. But most Vegas pictures have aimed at diverting the mind without taxing the brain. These range from The Atomic Kid (Leslie H. Martinson, 1954), with Mickey Rooney as a gambler exposed to radioactivity - at a time when Vegas entrepreneurs pushed Nevada nuclear tests as a tourist attraction - to The Hangover (Todd Phillips, 2009), about a bachelor party so wild no one can remember it, least of all the partiers. For the debut of ‘Las Vegas as a resort in 1946’, Tom Wolfe wrote in his classic essay on the city, ‘Bugsy Siegel hired Abbott and Costello, and there, in a way, you have it all’ (Wolfe 2009 [1965]). You certainly do.

The first all-Vegas film was Ralph Murphy’s Las Vegas Nights, a 1941 concatenation of music and comedy numbers. Another early picture was The Las Vegas Story, a 1952 noir directed by Robert Stevenson for RKO chief Howard Hughes, who was moving into Vegas real estate and made sure that parts of the movie resembled what would now be called an informercial. The famous Rat Pack - Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop - star in Lewis Milestone’s 1960 hit Ocean’s Eleven, playing five former GIs aiming to rob five casinos on a single larcenous night. Viva Las Vegas (George Sidney, 1964) stars Elvis Presley as Lucky Jackson, an aspiring Grand Prix racer who sings, wagers, and romances his way to a new engine for his car. Frolicsome movies like these tied Vegas more tightly than any other American city to the ideology of pleasure-seeking consumerism.

Apart from large-scale productions that pay brief visits to Las Vegas, such as Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) and Martin Brest’s Midnight Run (1988), three subgenres prevail in Vegas cinema. Easy entertainment is the focus of comedies and caper movies such as 3000 Miles to Graceland (Demian Lichtenstein, 2001), in which shady characters played by Kevin Costner and Christian Slater rob a casino during a convention of Elvis impersonators, and the 2001 remake of Ocean’s Eleven, wherein Steven Soderbergh replaces the Rat Pack with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Matt Damon and Bernie Mac, all of whom reprise their roles in sequels released in 2004 and 2007. The second category, comprising melodramas and action-adventure films, is represented by the likes of Diamonds Are Forever (Guy Hamilton, 1971), the thriller that completed Sean Connery’s triumphant run as James Bond, and Tony Scott’s Domino (2005), starring Keira Knightley as a real-life bounty hunter.

Opposite Leaving Las Vegas / Below One From the Heart

The third group contains dramas that exploit particular facets of Las Vegas’ personality. Tapping into the city’s reputation for sexual license and freely flowing money, Adrian Lyne’s Indecent Proposal (1993) centres on young Diana (Demi Moore) and David (Woody Harrelson), who lose their savings in Vegas and almost ruin their marriage when wealthy John (Robert Redford) pays a million dollars for Diana to have sex with him. Barry Levinson’s Rain Man (1998) stars Dustin Hoffman as mentally challenged Raymond, whose gift for arithmetic wins a fortune for Charlie, his money-obsessed brother, played by Tom Cruise; but it is also in Vegas that slow-witted Raymond teaches fast-lane Charlie a lesson in humanity, most poignantly when they dance with each other in front of a picture window showing the city spread before them like a glittering, comforting dream.

The films that get closest to the heart of Vegas are the ones that share its view of life as a blend of the perilous, the unpredictable and the exhilarating.

These prestige pictures notwithstanding, the title of Wolfe’s essay - ‘Las Vegas (What?) Las Vegas (Can’t Hear You! Too Noisy) Las Vegas!!!’ - says a lot about Vegas movies, which are often boisterous and flashy, using the city’s vitality to boost their own energy levels. Even the titles tend to make a racket, as in Crashing Las Vegas (Jean Yarbrough, 1956), Honey, I Blew Up the Kid (Randal Kleiser, 1992), and Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! (1996). The airplane of Con Air (Simon West, 1997) crash-lands on The Strip and skids into the lobby of the Sands Hotel, and the