mike davis - Libcom

LAS VEGAS OF THE MIND 31
film crew members sporting backpacks with hoses hurry to restore the
mantle of white by spraying it with a foamy substance that, on-screen,
will look like fresh snow.
For this shot, a large-format film camera is being used so that a matte
of the Chicago skyline can be added to the scene months from now in
postproduction. This process shot will last no longer than four seconds
of screen time, but shooting it here will save the crew the trouble of
leaving its home base, Las Vegas—where most of the film takes place.
The movie is Casino, a $50 million Universal Pictures production.
By Christmas 1995, audiences all over the country had seen Casino,
the story of organized crime’s decline in Las Vegas in the late 1970s and
early 1980s, written by Nicolas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese. By the end
of 1995, Las Vegas had also been featured prominently in Joe Eszterhas
and Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls and John O’Brien and Mike Figgis’s
Leaving Las Vegas.
Not everyone would see these films at the theater, but the advertising
machine and the media blitz behind Hollywood films today made it
nearly impossible not to know of them. Television spots, print ads, and
cable specials make the public aware of films’ plots and show images
from their climactic moments. The public has second, third, and fourth
opportunities to catch films on pay-per-view, cable, or at the local video
store. Images used to promote films not only rekindle memories of what
the film was about but reaffirm popular notions about Las Vegas and
Nevada.
Not only are more films shot on location in Nevada each year, but
the Silver State is specified more and more as a locale in film scenarios.
A movie set in Nevada has come to have specific meaning in the mythology
of film storytelling. Early in film history, footage shot in the
state was used in adventure serials, westerns, and prehistoric sagas, but
in the past few decades, film narratives have integrated Nevada itself
into their plots, thus constructing a pop-culture conception of the state.
This impression is filled with images, icons, and new stories that reflect
our need to include Nevada in our shifting pop culture mythology.
Today, Las Vegas is rendered in narrative film as a moral testing
ground, a special world in which a movie character’s fidelity, integrity,
and family are challenged by power, gambling, sex, and greed in a variable
landscape of neon, desert, or science-gone-wrong. To appreciate
how Las Vegas is currently depicted in film, one must first look at the
state’s early filmmaking history, the creation of the State Motion Picture
Division, and the reinvention of Las Vegas’s own image. These provide