Digital Nation by Gary Dretzka

Sometimes, lately, it seems as if every journalist and camera operator not currently assigned to cover Iraq is bivouacked in the neon heart of the American Southwest, desperately trying to come up a Las Vegas-based project of their own. I, too, spend quite a bit of time on and around the Strip, and occasionally get paid to report on subjects, ranging from strippers and showgirls, to slot machines and steak joints. So far, though, no one’s had the decency to tempt me with the apple of a reality-based series of my own, populated with blond bombshells, devil-may-care gamblers and would-be moguls with more dollars than sense.

Take that back. I was interviewed recently by a German television crew exploring Siegfried & Roy’s immense popularity, and the impact of Roy’s near-fatal injury on the local economy and psyche. It’s probably as close as I’m ever going to get to having my own show on cable.

Over the past weekend, I booked some couch time to catch up on the new faux-documentary series -- Casino and American Casino -- that are running concurrently on Fox and Discovery. (Remember, I do this so you don’t have to.) TiVo affords me the luxury of recording several weeks worth of shows, and boiling them down to a couple hours of intensive viewing.

Sounds awful, I know, but the absence of commercials makes the ordeal far less agonizing. TV’s a passive medium, so it’s usually possible for me to accomplish several other tasks, while simultaneously monitoring the progress on the screen.

Nothing short of a great deal of money, however, could have gotten me to wade through the entirety of the New York Times’ recent series on Las Vegas, which, I’m told, even at about 8 billion words, managed to miss the point of the city by a mile. Nor am I looking forward to Time Magazine’s upcoming feature package on the city’s sex industry; A&E’s Ink'd, about the launch of a tattoo parlor inside the Palms; CBS’ Rob Lowe vehicle, Dr. Vegas; and NBC’s Father of the Pride (for which California’s First Lady, Maria Shriver, has agreed to shill, by interviewing Roy Horn).

No, I haven’t suddenly gone negative on Las Vegas … far from it. I live in L.A., but teach a course at UNLV, write for several publications there and love watching the World Poker Tour. I’m just kind of sick and tired of listening to outsiders try to explain the city to me -- after spending a few nights in the Bellagio -- as if they’re privy to something everyone else on the planet isn’t.

Just for the hell of it, though, I plugged “Las Vegas” into my TiVo’s subject guide and hit “search.” It pulled up more than a hundred entries, before moving into a second week’s programming. Naturally, most of the titles were on the Travel Channel, which seemingly couldn’t exist without at least one Las Vegas reference every half-hour or so. Indeed, some of the shows are so old and dusty that a hotel publicist interviewed for one show, was shown an hour later representing a completely different property.

In another bizarre coincidence, at the same time that Discovery’s American Casino was examining the intricacies of invitational slot tournaments, the same cultural phenomenon was being dissected on Travel’s Non-Stop Slots. I’ve competed in these tournaments and am living proof that, while fun, they’re about as fascinating as your average dunking booth at the county fair, and absolutely no skill is required.

Then, too, the Weather Channel is doing a special this Wednesday on a surprise storm that swamped the Strip. Comedian Dave Attell is staying up late for the Comedy Channel, to mind-meld with denizens of the Strip. Bugsy is being shown on Encore, while “Lives of Crime” is profiling the visionary gangster on Biography. Over on TBS, via the miracle of taped reruns, the Saved by the Bell: the College Years gang will once again visit Sin City. Meanwhile, the Science Channel is taking viewers on a high-tech tour of several hotels; A&E’s Airline is making a stopover at McCarron; E! will revisit Evel Knievel’s motorcycle jump at Caesars; and, by popular demand, Showgirls is airing on the Sundance Channel. Wait, that’s got to be a mistake … Sundance?

And, that represents just one week’s worth of programming. Missing, too, are countless hours devoted to poker, blackjack, billiards, martial arts, NASCAR and a dozen other Vegas-centric shows on Travel.

Fewer cop shows have been set in Los Angeles in the last 10 years, than the number of pseudo-documentaries about Sin City.

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s occasional Shooting Stars column, the end is no where in sight. Coming up is a Discovery documentary at a local addiction-recovery center; a music video from country singer Dierks Bentley, staged at the Fremont Street Experience; Britain's QVC UK channel is in town shooting Las Vegas Gems Lifestyle; an Italian feature film, A Dream Called Las Vegas; a comedy, The Indie-Pendant, about an “embattled” independent filmmaker; TBS' new reality series All American Man, in which several blokes are separated from their wives or girlfriends (or both) for three weeks; and a Swiss soft-drink commercial. Sandra Bullock just wrapped location shooting for Miss Congeniality 2.

Forget Hollywood East, Las Vegas is becoming America’s Bollywood.

The visual appeal, of course, is big bucks, big bosoms and brainy bosses. The same formula worked last fall for NBC’s surprise hit, Las Vegas, and television is nothing if not relentlessly repetitive.

Casino and American Casino seem to be populated, though, mostly by bickering bureaucrats, bean-counting executives and … well … big bosoms. The customers aren’t much better.

If these shows are, indeed, based on reality, everyone involved is in a world of hurt. Still, the likelihood is very high that much of takes place on these shows is scripted --including the buffoonish antics of the loud-mouthed high-rollers and naïve blonde newcomers -- and that presumption, at least, provides some blessed relief from the idiocy on display.

Even so, if it weren’t for the public’s willingness to drop the equivalent of their paychecks into a casino’s slot machines every day, most hotels would dry up and blow away, as would all of the arrogance and bad behavior of the principles. One service these two shows provide is explaining some of the marketing tricks used to keep the rubes coming back to Las Vegas, and changing allegiances to hotels as if they were phone companies.

Otherwise, most of the voyeuristic footage makes the casino environment -- for those not considered to be high-rollers, anyway -- seem as glamorous and appetizing as the dining experience described in the truncated second season of NBC’s The Restaurant.

(Here’s an idea for NBC: Send celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito to Las Vegas, and chronicle his attempt to extend his restaurant empire to the desert west. It would make sense for him to open a place in New York-New York, but it might be more sporting if he tried to put his name simultaneously on dining rooms in the MGM Grand and Caesars. Local bookies could then set odds, and an over/under line, on which restaurant will close first and when. It’s a natural.)

It also might be great fun to stage a special pay-per-view Texas Death Match edition of American Casino, on the sprawling patio of the Green Valley Ranch, with its panoramic view of the Strip. It would pit the property’s unctuous director of hotel operations, Michael Tata, and his underachieving assistant, Ninya Perna. The Marie Osmond look-alike may not be the world’s most accomplished functionary, but, at least, she’s pretty. I know who I’d cheer on to victory.

Las Vegas has provided a setting for movies and television shows for more than 50 years, and most have followed a familiar pattern. The Strip generally was described as a magical place, where fortunes could be won or lost in an instant, and danger, intrigue and romance lurk around every corner. Up until recently, few cameras were allowed to intrude on the inner sanctums of the gambling shrines, and no secrets or faces were unveiled … ever.

All that started to change when Steve Wynn brought his marketing acumen to the Strip, in 1989, and allowed selective access to media hungry for old-school glamour. It wasn’t until George Maloof opened the doors of his Palms to the cast and crew of MTV’s Real World, though, that the city began welcoming camera crews with open arms. Like the Hard Rock and Mandalay Bay before it, the Palms became a magnet for young adults, attracted to the kind of over-the-top action documented on Real World. E!’s Wild On would be the next to find traction among the marketing departments of once-uptight hotels, then came the dating shows and nearly every daytime and late-night talk show. The rest is history.

Not yet visible in the media portrait, however, are the smoky locals casinos, where it’s still possible to trip over the oxygen tanks of slot-players, with a cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. No where, either, are the freelance hookers who swamp the floors of some casinos after midnight, or the lines in front of the ATM machines in the first few seconds of every business day. Pretty girls are as ubiquitous on these shows as homely guys, but they never quite get around to calling a spade a spade, or “arm candy” a hooker. It’s all wink-wink, nod-nod.

In completely demystifying and demythologizing the process, though, the current crop of reality-based shows could ultimately have a negative effect on tourism and ratings. The last thing most people want to watch on their nights off, or meet on vacation, are casino employees whining about how tough they have it, when many make twice or thrice more in tips than the average Joe does in salary. Things are tough all over.

Moreover, the key characters demonstrate just how little brain power and cunning is necessary these days to run a hotel-casino, even a mid-sized property. Apparently, success is based less on teamwork, sound business policies, experience and street smarts, than on trial-and-error, buck-passing, ass-kissing, and a whole lot of luck. Either way, fear and self-preservation are the prime motivators.

The shows also suggest that, to the new crop of casino executives. a customer is only as welcome as his or her last bet. Their rank-and-file employees are generally as friendly and helpful as depicted -- if jaded, in a particularly Vegas seen-it-all way -- but, if the tip-based economy collapsed overnight, they’d get as grumpy as any big-city cab driver in a big hurry.

Unlike Fox’s The Simple Life, whose free-spirited stars ooze kooky charm, the people we meet in American Casino and Casino practically are devoid of humor. This, in a town where laughs are hardly at a premium. Paris and Nicole may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but they’ve absorbed a lot of punches and only seem to get more agreeable with time.

If any more shows as downbeat as these find their way to prime-time television, they could have an effect opposite to the one intended by the producers and their casino hosts. Worse, they could kill all the positive buzz generated by shows like Las Vegas and the World Poker Tour.

No wonder the locals miss the good ol’ days, when the “rackets guys” ran the town. No one wants to see Tony Spilotro return from the dead, but hardly anyone would complain if a few MBAs and cyber-billionaires were ushered out of town at gunpoint, with a couple dozen camera crews following in their wakes.

- by Gary Dretzka

June 30, 2004

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