Call the roll of the world’s great cities and it’s a safe bet this one won’t make the list. And yet, despite its legendary vulgarity, there is no other city quite like it. It is Ozymandias, the Pleasure Dome, the Land Where Dreams Come True, and if it is profoundly un-American at heart (success, here, is a product of luck, not hard work) it is impossible to imagine it anywhere but in the American West.
Every March, Las Vegas also is the setting for ShoWest, a convention that brings together the country’s theater owners and the heads of the film studios: Mom and Pop meet the movie moguls. The convention features panel discussions on the problems of independent exhibitors, how second-run theaters can get better treatment and how all theater owners can become socially and ecologically responsible. (One whole morning featured a parade of stars pitching their favorite organizations to a rather sparse audience.) There also is a trade show, jammed with candy makers, popcorn manufacturers, screen cleaners and ticket printers.
But the real business of the convention is reel business: “Product reels” they call them in the trade-a series of trailers for new movies that will be released during the year. Major studios show them to the exhibitors at a series of lunches and dinners during the convention. “Love me.” “Buy me.” “Make me yours,” they whisper. “If you buy me, they will come.”
Product reels, which spotlight a dozen or more films, are expensive to produce-up to $1 million for a half-hour presentation-but if they’re successful, they generate excitement among the exhibitors, and excitement translates into more screens and more screens mean more ticket sales.
Which is why, after an unspeakably bad lunch (chopped steak in mushroom sauce for 3,000 people just barely qualifies as food), when the room lights dim, all eyes turn to the giant screen. Who knows? Perhaps, just like in the casino, this time lightning will strike.
This is the business of NATO in convention (no, not that NATO, the National Association of Theatre Operators), and in a world of overseas business and cable rental and videocassette sales and rentals, the North American theater is still the engine that drives the train, as more than one studio exec put it. Success here is success everywhere, for studio and operator alike.
Here then, is how it looks this year from Las Vegas, after a few days in the dark:
Battle of the Titans: Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger will be arm-wrestling for your affection this year in, respectively, “Cliffhanger” (opening May 28) and “Last Action Hero” (June 18). Stallone admitted to the press that his recent comedies haven’t worked, so it’s back to action-adventure for him, but the trailer was all action and no humor (no plot either, but why quibble?). The edge goes to Arnold, who isn’t afraid to use a little humor, even on himself. When you’re larger than life, why not?.
Bruce Willis will be trying for a piece of the action box office, too, playing a Pittsburgh river patrol cop (he was busted from the city’s police force for ratting on fellow officers) in “Striking Distance.” “Die Hard” it isn’t.
And about that title-“Last Action Hero”-don’t bet on it.
Summer heat: Judging by the flurry of excitement that greeted her presence, Sharon Stone is the white-hot center of Hollywood these days. She showed up to promote “Sliver,” which teams her with her “Basic Instinct” scriptwriter, Joe Ezterhaus, for what could be the summer’s first big film. It opens May 21.
Eastwood in Excelsis: Clint Eastwood stars in another likely summer hit, “In the Line of Fire” (July 23), playing a Secret Service agent haunted by the Kennedy assassination who is tracking another presidential assassin (John Malkovich). Eastwood was also the Major Presence at the star-studded Warner Bros. lunch (which included Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Oliver Stone, Walter Matthau, Whoopi Goldberg, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford and the reclusive Julia Roberts) and he received the lunch’s only standing ovation. (Gamblers may take that as a tip for Oscar bets.)
Contenders: These films may not gross $100 million, but might just be worth $7: “Lost in Yonkers” (based on the Neil Simon play, starring Academy Award-winner Mercedes Ruehl, in the role that won her a Tony Award), “Sleepless in Seattle” (modern romance, through the classifieds, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan), “Made in America” (love, romance and artificial insemination, starring Whoopi Goldberg), “Mr. Jones” (starring Richard Gere), “Indecent Proposal” (Robert Redford offers Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore $1 million if she’ll spend the night with him) and “M. Butterfly” (the Broadway play, now starring Jeremy Irons and John Lone).
Masterpieces on parade: Can Martin Scorsese leave the mean streets behind? Scorsese and James Ivory, the director best known for “Howards End,” will release new films this year. Scorsese’s bid for class is “The Age of Innocence” (novel by Edith Wharton); Ivory’s is “Remains of the Day” (novel by Kazuo Ishiguro), both from Columbia. There are no applause meters at ShoWest, but Scorsese’s costume drama received polite and respectful applause while Ivory’s drama, which features Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, was clearly the crowd-pleaser. A genteel nod to Mr. Ivory.
Kid Stuff: There’s a lot of money resting on youngsters this year. Many studios unveiled new films in which children who ought to be in bed by 9 are the stars. They include “Dennis the Menace” (starring 6-year-old Mason Gamble, with a little help from Walter Matthau as Mr. Wilson), “The Secret Garden” (the children’s classic and successful musical, which features 10-year-old Kate Maberly), “Free Willy” (about a boy and his pal, Willy the Orca whale, starring 12-year-old Jason James Richter) and “Searching for Bobby Fischer” (about a chess prodigy, played by 8-year-old Max Pomeranc). Judging from the trailers, the kids are pulling their weight. “Free Willy” looks like the sleeper of the summer.
Saturday Night Live-The Franchise: “Wayne’s World” was a bit hit so of course there will be a “Wayne’s World 2” (in December), but why stop there? Up next: “Coneheads” (July 23), with Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin, and “Hans and Franz” (no date), in which the body builders travel to Hollywood in search of Arnold Schwarzenegger. (This, by the way, is not to be confused with “Calendar Girl,” in which three Nevada teenagers leave home in 1962 for Hollywood, in search of Marilyn Monroe.)
Judgment daze: You can’t judge a film by its trailer. If you went strictly by what was thrown onto the ShoWest screens, “Weekend at Bernie’s 2” will be one of the year’s funniest films and a certain hit, whereas “Philadelphia,” the much-anticipated AIDS drama from Jonathan Demme (“Silence of the Lambs”) will be a confusing, inconsequential little film.
Long shots: These films should be good, but will they be?: “The Firm” (based on John Grisham’s big novel and starring Tom Cruise, it produced only moderate applause from an audience that dotes on Cruise), “The Man Without a Face” (the ShoWest crowd seemed less than excited about a film featuring a disfigured Mel Gibson) and “The Hudsucker Proxy” (Warner Bros. calls this comedy “an industrial fantasy”; the trailer makes it look like a plain, old embarassment for all concerned, including Paul Newman, Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh and the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan).
Silent treatment: Woody Allen has a new film this year, “Manhattan Murder Mystery,” and a clip of it was shown after the TriStar lunch. It followed a dull trailer (“Wilder Napalm,” which languished in movie purgatory for a couple years before finally being released), perhaps to make it sparkle by comparison. But nothing seems to help Woody Allen these days, not even Anjelica Huston, who shared the screen with him. Most films, even the dull but important ones, received a small measure of applause, but “Manhattan Murder Mystery” was greeted with a chilling silence. It was the worst moment of the convention.
Odds-on favorite: Sometimes no publicity is the best publicity. After all of the product reels had been screened, the one film on everyone’s lips was one most people hadn’t seen. “Jurassic Park,” the Steven Spielberg blockbuster scheduled to open June 11, is a Universal picture but Universal didn’t spring for a lunch at ShoWest. Instead, they rented a suite at Bally’s hotel, filled it with jungle foliage and invited 120 or so of the top exhibitors to an exclusive schmooze and screening session.
The brief trailer included no special effects and only partial glimpses of the dinosaur, but it was enough to create a “buzz,” word-of-mouth publicity that is money in the bank to a studio. Exhibitors who saw the trailer were comparing it to two other Spielberg films: “Jaws” and “E.T.”
Title of the Year: From Troma, the company that produces bad movies with great titles, comes a film that was not screened at ShoWest: “Vegas in Space.” The mind reels.
