Tuesday

LA? NY? Nope.
Take me to Vegas

Hot setting for TV shows. Dice, dames, escape.

By Alison Gaylin

   “I’ve had this vision in my head for the last 12 years, but I never could figure out what to do with it,” says Gary Scott Thompson, writer of the hit movie "The Fast and the Furious."
   “It’s a dead body, and then we pan up, and there’s the Vegas strip 50 feet away.”
   Thompson now has a vehicle for that vision. It’s the opening shot of “Las Vegas,” a pilot he's executive producing for NBC/Dreamworks.
   Among the pilots for next season, "Las Vegas" is getting lots of buzz, with a reported budget of $5 million and a cast headed up by James Caan in his first TV role since 1969 (he portrayed Rupert of Rathskeller on two episodes of "Get Smart").
   Yet the pilot's biggest selling point may be its location.
   If television is all about escape, Las Vegas is fast surpassing New York and Los Angeles as the hip new locale of choice for escapist primetime shows, taking us away from war and world tensions to a city that was built, if by the mob, on the notion of the big score.
   On CBS’s top-ranked "CSI," the desert destination plays a starring role.
   Shows from “Alias” to “Crossing Jordan” to “Jackass” have shot special episodes there. This year's MTV “The Real World: Las Vegas” scored some of the series’ highest ratings, while Celine Dion’s March 25 CBS special – shot live from her new theater at Caesar’s Palace -- attracted 13.8 million viewers.
    Several shows, including ABC’s “According to Jim,” are shooting season finales there. FX’s new series “Lucky,” which stars John Corbett as a Vegas-dwelling gambler, debuted to a solid 2.5 million viewers on April 8. “The Bachelor,” “Fear Factor” and “Married by America” have used the resort as an episodic backdrop.
   A new reality show will soon be spending four months there. And let us not forget February sweeps and Michael Jackson’s $8 million shopping spree at the Venetian.
   “'CSI' has sent some shows our way that want that edgy look, but it’s much more than that,” says Jeanne Corcoran, production manager for the Nevada Film Commission. “We’ve seen our TV production grow phenomenally in the past few years.”
   Revenues from Vegas TV production have gone from around $20 million in fiscal year 1999-2000 to $60 million in calendar year 2002.
   Why the surge in interest?
   In these troubled times, Las Vegas represents the ultimate in escapism, says writer and now pilot producer Thompson: “People go there for one reason: to have fun. I think that makes it a very appealing setting now.”
   Too, Vegas is suddenly hip with the demographics TV networks are chasing. The city has worked for years to shake its image as a hotbed of quickie weddings and Elvis impersonators for that of a family resort. In the process, it has become attractive to a younger generation.
   “Vegas has reinvented itself as a resource for Gen X -- the 21-38-year-olds,” Corcoran says. “We have an incredible number of nightclubs, shopping and five-star dining. Things you never used to associate with Vegas six years ago, you do now.”
   According to Thompson, it was the NBC executives who suggested Las Vegas as a setting. It was just coincidence that he happened to have the pilot's opening scene in his head.
   “They called me and said, ‘Could you do us a favor and think about Las Vegas? We’d like to do a Vegas show, we’ve had like 150 people come through, and their ideas are not good.’”
Thompson has just completed a rough cut of the pilot, which he says is nothing like "CSI," despite that grisly opening shot.
“They’re procedural, and we’re not. We’re going to follow A, B and C storylines and have fun with them. It’s sort of like ‘The New Love Boat’ on steroids.”
   Whether “Las Vegas” airs this fall, the escapist town’s popularity has nonetheless reached critical mass, which is to say ripe for spoofing.
   Among all the shows set in Nevada will be “Reno 911!” a crime show spoof set in Vegas’s decidedly unhip sister city. It will debut on Comedy Central July 23.

-Alison Gaylin is a New York writer.

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