There’s a theory of editing that goes back to silent cinema that says that the same expression on an actor’s face will be perceived differently by audiences depending on how it’s edited; when a movie cuts from the face to a plate of food, you’ll interpret it differently than if it the next cut was a dead body in a coffin. Same face, different context, different perception.
Las Vegas has a similar Rorschach blot effect on filmmakers — depending on the story that’s being told, Vegas can seem like an exciting playground, a terrifying organized crime battlefield or even a metaphor about everything that’s artificial or greedy about America itself.
The release of “The Hangover,” a new comedy about a group of friends who can’t remember their unforgettable night-long bachelor party in Sin City, is another entry in the long line of films that backdrops the glittery Nevada town to suit its own purposes.
The razzle-dazzle One of the most outrageous examples of Hollywood excess comes out of a 1970 romantic drama called “The Only Game in Town,” starring Elizabeth Taylor and Warren Beatty. It’s an intimate chamber piece about an aging showgirl and a compulsive gambler, set mostly in apartments, bars and a casino or two.
How did this little movie wind up being a huge money-loser? Taylor wanted to be close to her then-husband Richard Burton, who was shooting a movie in Europe at the time, and she insisted that Vegas be re-created on a soundstage in Paris. (Francis Ford Coppola made a similarly financially disastrous error when he built his own Vegas for “One from the Heart.”)
But why rebuild Vegas when the real one is already so camera-friendly? Throw in some tracking shots of the main strip lit up at night by neon, film the Bellagio fountain from a helicopter overhead, and bam, you’ve got production values out the wazoo.
The low-budget “Swingers” certainly enjoyed a jolt of color and flash when its anti-heroes road-tripped out of L.A. for a little blackjack. (Although I’d bet a stack of poker chips that Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn, grateful though they may be over what this movie did for them, are ready to punch the next drunk frat boy who comes up to them in a bar and yells, “You are so money, baby!”)
Last year’s “21” gummed up its true story and failed to be a particularly exciting caper movie, but all the casino shots shimmered. And speaking of capers, have any contemporary movies been as flattering to Las Vegas as Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s Eleven” remake? (Not that the original movie wasn’t already a valentine to that same city circa the Rat Pack–era, just not nearly as good.)
The 007 adventure “Diamonds are Forever” and, of course, the Elvis Presley classic “Viva Las Vegas” turn the town into a lovely bauble surrounded by sand, but as lighting technology continues to improve, it’s the more recent movies that make Las Vegas seem like some kind of special effect invented by Hollywood to be the ultimate backdrop.
Married to the mob The history of Las Vegas is inextricably tied to organized crime — if Barry Levenson’s “Bugsy” is to be believed — so it’s no surprise that so many screen mafiosi have spent time there.
“Casino,” of course, ranks as the mob-biest of Vegas flicks, and director Martin Scorsese takes such relish in showing us how everything works — from what really goes on behind the scenes at casinos to the extremes to which hotels will go to win their money back from high rollers — that you almost wish he’d make an Errol Morris–style documentary on the subject.
And let’s not forget “The Godfather” parts one and two and the Corleone family’s investments in Vegas and Tahoe; does anyone drive by the Tropicana and not think of the name “Moe Greene”?
Crapping out Gambling has a few winners and a whole lot more losers, and there’s nothing like failing in front of a bank of glittering lights and well-dressed beautiful people to drive the point home. Would Nicolas Cage’s slow and boozy descent into death have been nearly as tragic in a movie called “Leaving Des Moines”? Perhaps not.
“The Hangover” certainly falls into this category, as does its direct ancestor, the whoops-we-killed-a-hooker-at-the-bachelor-party dark comedy, “Very Bad Things.” And let’s not forget how yuppie Albert Brooks and Julie Hagerty are forced to give up their dreams of dropping out of society when she blows their nest egg in a casino in “Lost in America.”
There are life lessons to be learned from these films, of course, whether they’re about human weakness in the face of temptation or the ultimate result of the mindless pursuit of pleasure. But I think I learned the most valuable lesson from the Las Vegas segment of “Go”: No matter how fancy the hotel or how attractive the presentation, never eat seafood from a buffet.
Naked beneath the rhinestones If you want to paint contemporary American society as a toxic black hole that’s been covered in a little glitter, Las Vegas awaits the opportunity to be your metaphor. That’s why, even though the film’s final shot hints at an L.A.-based sequel, “Showgirls” could take place only in Las Vegas. Everything that director Paul Verhoeven and writer Joe Eszterhas wanted to say about ambition and greed in Hollywood bears vivid, spangly fruit amidst the strip clubs and posh topless shows of the Vegas strip.
French film director Jacques Rivette once famously observed, “Of all the recent American films that were set in Las Vegas, ‘Showgirls’ was the only one that was real — take my word for it. I who have never set foot in the place!”
Similarly, Terry Gilliam’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” based on the seminal Hunter S. Thompson chronicle, turns the city into something of a twisted nightmare, the flashing and shrieking landscape of a drug trip gone bad. Or as Gene Siskel put it, “What the film is about and what the book is about is using Las Vegas as a metaphor for — or a location for — the worst of America, the extremes of America, the money obsession, the visual vulgarity of America.”
It’s kind of surprising that more European directors haven’t used Las Vegas to point fingers at American excess, although Claude Lelouch managed to make Nixon-era Vegas look dumpy and downright brown in his little-seen “Love is a Funny Thing” (perhaps most notable as Farrah Fawcett’s screen debut).
These categories barely scratch the surface of Vegas movies, from the recent “Race to Witch Mountain” to the underrated “Rat Race” to the drily funny “Midnight Run,” which all use the city in very different ways.
Until the last light goes out over the last $5 prime rib next to the last Cirque du Soleil extravaganza, Hollywood will keep loading up the vans and taking the I-15 out to the shiniest and most wonderfully tacky movie location on earth. And speaking of loading up the vans, why aren’t there more horror movies set there? When does Godzilla come stomping into town?
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