COLUMN: Shooting stars, Carol Cling

By Carol Cling
Review-Journal

      As Elvis Presley once sang in "Viva Las Vegas' " pulsating title number, "Bright light city gonna set my soul, gonna set my soul on fire. ..."
      But there's also a dark side to Neon Nirvana's intoxicating impact -- and those shadows provide the focus for an episode of the CBS medical drama "Chicago Hope" currently filming in Southern Nevada.
      Today, the "Chicago Hope" crew is scheduled to wind up four days of shooting at the Stratosphere.
      Their local sojourn is expected to conclude Tuesday at Buffalo Bill's Star of the Desert Arena in Primm, the setting for a boxing match that forces gambling addict Dr. Jack McNeil (Mark Harmon) to confront his demons.
      "It's really an important, huge, pivotal episode for his character," according to "Chicago Hope" executive producer Bill D'Elia.
      The show is slated to air March 18.
      McNeil's crisis has been "in the works almost from the creation of the character of Jack McNeil" last season, D'Elia notes.
      Initially, the "Chicago Hope" creative team hoped to dramatize Dr. McNeil's crisis at the start of the current season but, "in terms of storytelling, it didn't quite fit," explains D'Elia, who also is directing the made-in-Vegas episode.
      The storyline finds McNeil and three "Chicago Hope" colleagues -- Dr. Aaron Shutt (played by Adam Arkin), Dr. Keith Wilkes (Rocky Carroll) and hospital administrator Dr. Phillip Watters (Hector Elizondo) -- in Las Vegas to attend a hospital risk-management convention.
      While in town, McNeil runs into a college friend whose son is McNeil's godson -- whom he hasn't seen in years.
      The kid has grown up to become a professional boxer -- a light heavyweight about to face his first major bout, on the undercard of a trademark Vegas fight night.
      All of which places McNeil "in a situation where he (has) to come to grips with getting over" his gambling addiction, D'Elia says.
      Finding a place to stage that dramatic turning point, however, proved a definite challenge, according to the executive producer.
      "Some hotels didn't want to have any stories told" about "characters with a gambling problem," notes D'Elia.
      "We were trying to tell a truthful story. And some places, unless it was absolutely positive about gambling, weren't interested" in hosting "Chicago Hope."
      By contrast, the Stratosphere and the Riviera were, providing the visiting series with appropriately atmospheric Vegas settings.
      "Chicago Hope" kicked off its location visit last Thursday at the Riviera, where guest star Engelbert Humperdinck crooned "After the Loving" to the visiting doctors, who were seated in one of the La Cage showroom's distinctive zebra-striped booths.
      The show's writers put Humperdinck into the script before they knew whether the showroom veteran would be available to appear in the Vegas episode.
      "We were lucky," D'Elia acknowledges.
      But what's a Vegas visit without a little luck?
      Also on location in Las Vegas this week: Teleport USA, which is filming a documentary about male-vs.-female competition in the Las Vegas Marathon, according to Robin Holabird, deputy director of the Nevada Motion Picture Division.
      The documentary crew has been following one male and one female runner since Thursday, three days before Sunday's race.
      Post-race sequences are expected to wrap up shooting Tuesday, she says.
      Last week in Hollywood, however, Holabird and NMPD assistant director Erik Joseph ran a different kind of race during a whirlwind visit with officials at several movie and TV production entities.
      Among their calls: Disney, the Disney-owned Miramax, Paramount, Warner Bros. and Hearst Entertainment.
      Warner Bros. executives "were on us right away about our desert," Holabird reports, in connection with "a massive Middle Eastern war they want to stage next summer" for an upcoming project.
      Officials at other companies seemed more interested in Nevada's varied terrain, tax advantages and pool of experienced technicians, according to Holabird.
      "It may be the same message," Holabird says of the duo's film-in-Nevada sales pitch, "but there are still people who haven't heard it."