Sunday, January 02, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

BEHIND THE SCENES: It's All Make-Believe

The set of `Las Vegas' is full of flash, flesh and, at times, fatigue

Danny McCoy (Josh Duhamel), left, and Big Ed Deline (James Caan) often clash in their efforts to keep the Montecito casino safe and profitable in "Las Vegas." COURTESY PHOTO Vanessa Marcil, who plays Sam Marquez in "Las Vegas," says she's too frugal to gamble in real life. COURTESY PHOTO From left, James Lesure as Mike Cannon, Molly Sims as Delinda Deline, Josh Duhamel as Danny McCoy, James Caan as Big Ed Deline, Marsha Thomason as Nessa Holt, Nikki Cox as Mary Connell and Vanessa Marcil as Sam Marquez star in NBC's "Las Vegas." COURTESY PHOTO

LOS ANGELES --

At 1 p.m. on a Tuesday, we navigate through human gridlock at the Culver City studio where the NBC series "Las Vegas" is filmed.

It appears all Hollywood roads lead to the door of executive producer Scott Steindorf. Dozens of young aspiring actresses are here to roll the dice.

The bespectacled Steindorf, 40ish and fit, breaks away from the casting call and we head for the set through familiar surroundings -- a multimillion dollar re-creation of a casino.

After snaking our way through the cavernous building, we enter a glass-enclosed room. Co-stars Josh Duhamel and James Lesure lean over a boardroom table, talking with co-executive producer-writer Matt Pyken and director Bryan Spicer.

Steindorf makes introductions just as my cellphone goes off. There's something surreal about being on the set of "Las Vegas," interrupting a $25,000-an-hour production, while a tipster has hot news from the real Las Vegas: Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish, not guilty!

Pyken takes over as tour guide. As this episode's creator, Pyken, a Carson Daly look-alike, is on the set all day to retool the script and oversee the shoot. They are shooting Episode 13 of the second season's 24; each episode taking eight 12- to 14-hour days.

We settle into director's chairs in a room where Spicer is sitting in front of a TV monitor, awaiting the next scene with Duhamel and Lesure.

In "Las Vegas" they are best buds, but in this episode, which airs Monday (9 p.m. on KVBC-TV, Channel 3), they are having words over how to handle the kidnapping of James Caan's character, Big Ed Deline.

Sylvester Stallone was in the previous day, says Pyken, for a scene that had Caan held hostage in a bathtub.

At that moment, the realization occurs to me: This is the episode Steindorf and Pyken referred to three weeks earlier during a conference call. Their offer: Would I agree to play myself in a guest appearance?

They laid out the story line. After Caan's character is kidnapped, they explained, I would fall under suspicion because a pit boss points out that I have $400,000 in gambling debts at the fictional Montecito casino.

In real life I gamble so rarely and for so little that the only time I established a line of credit, back in 1979 at the then-Union Plaza, I wouldn't qualify as a minnow in a whale's world.

But my limited gambling background wasn't the reason why I passed on the invitation to make a cameo in "Las Vegas."

Playing a gambler on a hit TV show might sound tempting, and in another era few ink-stained wretches would have turned it down. But in this day and age of reality TV and media scrutiny I prefer to keep a firewall between fact and fiction.

Back on the set during my Thanksgiving week vacation visit, Scene 22 is minutes away. More Duhamel and Lesure.

A young woman from wardrobe approaches Pyken in our tiny room where Spicer is directing the show.

They are discussing, um, nipples. Seems an assistant director was just summoned to a big office and thought he was being called on the carpet, his career in the balance. When he got there, he was asked, "Are Vanessa's nipples meeting standards?"

Vanessa is Vanessa Marcil, who plays Sam, a sexy, savvy casino host. NBC censors must have a full-time job toning down the plunging necklines favored by Marcil and her alluring female castmates Molly Sims and Nikki Cox.

During a break, I engage Duhamel in small talk about his late-November sweeps-week romantic showdown with Mary (Cox).

Their on-screen relationship had been heating up and there had been hints they may be heading for the altar.

"It's over," said Duhamel, explaining why his character, Danny McCoy, backed off. "It was too soft."

After lunch, the action moves to a studio across the street for a wedding chapel scene involving feuding Elvis impersonators.

In the scene, a 400-pound Elvis shows up at the wedding as a hunka, hunka burning ex-hubbie, steamed that his ex, an Elvis chapel owner, stole away a high roller.

I won't spoil it for you but here's a hint: picture a rumble in an Elvi jungle with baseball bats and chapel statuary.

In the middle of the storm is Leigh-Allyn Baker, who plays a feisty female Elvis who is marrying off the high roller.

Baker's claim to fame: She was Miss Calloway County Fair Queen in Murray, Ky., in 1990. A year later she returned to the pageant to crown her successor, a stunning blonde named Molly Sims. Yes, that Molly Sims.

"She was so tall I had to ask her to kneel" during the coronation, said Baker, who, during her shooting breaks, chats with Marcil, who played Gina Kincaid in "Beverly Hills, 90210" from 1998-2000.

About 8 p.m., as the chapel scene drags on for take after take, Marcil wanders into the director's room where Pyken and others watch the TV monitor over Spicer's shoulder.

Chewing pomegranate seeds from a plastic bag, she sits down and joins the downtime banter. She confesses that she seldom watches the show because old habits die hard.

"Growing up I was only allowed two hours of TV a week. I'd go to the library and check out 11 books," said Marcil, who grew up in Indio, Calif., near Palm Springs. As a teen, she worked at the Wienerschnitzel "across from the Date Festival," in her brown polyester uniform.

"My parents never took me to Vegas -- not once. I didn't go until I was 18. I've never gambled. I'm too frugal."

An exotic mix of Mexican, French, Italian and Portuguese descent, Marcil is a homebody, bargain shopper and a Personal Digital Assistant fanatic.

"The only things I spend money on is real estate, cars and electronics. I went to buy a mattress and went to three mattress places and played three guys against each other, and I got a $2,300 mattress for $900."

She spends her off-hours with son Kassius, 2 1/2, and her fiance, Brian Green, whom she met on "90210" when he went by Brian Austin Green.

A middle-aged man in a baseball cap pops into the room, engaging Pyken in conversation.

Pyken introduces him as Scott Lewis, a writer's assistant on the 150-member cast and crew. Lewis is no stranger to Las Vegas. As one of Jerry Lewis' five sons, he often visited during his father's headliner days.

"I worked with (Gardner Stern, another `Las Vegas' co-executive producer-writer) on `Breaking News,' " said Lewis. "He pulled me into `Las Vegas.' Now we're trying to come up with a good story angle to get my father on it."

Pyken, the former director of the California Coalition for Reagan-Bush 20 years ago, has deep family ties in Las Vegas, too.

"My grandfather (Morris Joseph Singer) was a big gambler. When he died the family spread his ashes at Red Rocks because he loved seeing the hawks. I scattered some of his ashes on a gaming table at Caesars Palace."