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June 2006
6/30/06
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Rocky, Rambo, Cinevegas and the Jerry Lewis Interview You Can't Miss
6/14/06
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Thursday, June 15, 2006
Rocky Balboa actor Sylvester Stallone received one of the first "Walk of Fame" stars at the Brenden Theaters in the Palms resort hotel last night -- 30-years after his heroic boxing character debuted in the very first ‘Rocky’ movie. Sly cut short an editing session of his latest ’Rocky VI’ picture opening December 22 to fly to Vegas for the awards ceremony presided over by CineVegas Film Festival chairman, Dennis Hopper and Palms movie theater owner, Johnny Brenden, seen here in our Luxe Life photo.
Sly told Luxe Life exclusively " This is definitely the end for Rocky. It is the final chapter -- there will be no more Rocky movies after this one. The story of his journey through life winds up as a beautiful book-end to the first one we did in 1976. But in August, we will also resume the Rambo character with a new fourth film to be shot in Thailand. It will be dramatically pulled from today's headlines to focus on the fight to end an Al Qaeda-type terrorist threat. I have to finish shooting that by November so I can be back in America for the full December promotion of the final chapter of Rocky Balboa. Then early in the New Year, I will shoot ‘Poe.’ I've written an extraordinary script on Edgar Allen Poe's life."
Luxe Life will have the full wrap up of all the CineVegas Film Festival happenings here on Monday, but meantime as promised here's the full candid and controversial interview with 80-year-old Jerry Lewis just four days before he was rushed to a San Diego hospital with a heart attack and pneumonia that caused him to cancel his return to the live stage at The Orleans in mid-July -- his first return appearance in more than five years of battling ill health. Jerry, a good longtime friend, is still planning to go ahead with his MDA telethon over Labor Day weekend from the Southcoast after a ten-year- absence from Vegas. Luxe Life wishes Jerry a very speedy recovery and a full return to good health.
He’s also planning on a surprise return to Broadway! We got the opportunity to play catch-up over an informal luncheon and you can now eavesdrop on our very rare, no-holds barred, intimate interview.
FIGHTING DRUG ADDICTION
RL: How is the back feeling?
JL: The back is still terrible. I have a steel shunt in there now.
RL: So how are you dealing with the pain without a prescription drug?
JL: You just have to, you have to. There is nothing you can do. I had an insurance company and I didn’t know how the injury developed in the first place, so we had a clip of some of the falls I had taken in the early days and in those clips there’s 97 falls: off a car, off a building. I never saw an idiot beat up his back the way I did. So it was no surprise when they said you are going to have to learn to live with it. And that is exactly what I am doing.
Percodan was the only thing that helped, and then when it stops helping, you are using it as a social gift. I wanna feel as good as I did when I didn’t have pain. Well that doesn’t happen because painkillers heighten the pain. It makes it worse. So, if you can psychologically say to yourself , ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ you get mean spirited with that medicine, you get short and ill tempered, it is awful. So you ask yourself, ‘Should I just be a human and be in quiet pain? Or do I have to be a nasty bastard that has no pain?’ It is a very big choice.
Prednisone changes your whole personality. The terrible part of it is that it is the only drug that can save your life. I had a fatal disease you cannot easily recover from: pulmonary fibrosis, and when you do recover, you haven’t really recovered, you can only go so far, and they say you will have this bad lung the rest of your days. It is now 75% back to where it was originally.
The medication I take now, so much I bought stock in Rexall, but I have to take pills and of course pills beget pills. The ones that I take to keep the lungs solid are not great for the kidneys, so you take some for that. How does the little liver pill know when you are ill? How does a little liver pill know where to go? You take this pilland it is goes to the lungs, then you take something to balance that, and before you know it I am taking eight pills in the morning and six at night. That is 14 a day. I got to get a night job. But it is so good to be better.
RL: And the 80 lbs. that you knocked off, what did you do?
JL: I got off the medicine plus diet and exercise. I was on six grapefruits a day. My body chemistry was great for the acidity. It was helping me lose weight. Sam, my personal trainer, made sure I ate the right stuff, but you can’t do it while you are on the Percodan. The prednisone is equally as bad.
TELETHON RETURNS TO VEGAS
RL: Talk about the Muscular Dystrophy coming back to Vegas from the west coast.
JL:After the 2003 telethon, we were still at CBS in Hollywood. That was a great layout, great studio. I missed Vegas, there is something that you get when you are in Vegas and it is intangible -- is it the attractions, and the locals. I said we have to go back to Vegas, and then from 2003 until four months ago, I was trying to find the facility, and everybody has a whole different agenda now, which I have to respect. We have demographics that will tell you how many people we play to from the first hour to the conclusion. The first five hours we hold between 50-70 million people. There are hotels that want that kind of press because before you know it I am giving the hotel a five-minute plug to 50 million people. That can’t be bad. So, I went to Michael Gaughan, CEO of Coast Casinos and said let’s keep it in the family since I have a 20-year-contract with them -- the illness stopped me working back in 2000, but now we’re ready to start it up again next month. I want to go to the newest hotel in Vegas and we did: - at his brand new Southcoast. We made that happen. It is great for us internally, it is great for us sponsor wise, it is good for all the people that are there for us and we’ve got probably 23 national sponsors that we have to fit into all of our time. They love the fact that they can come to Vegas. We will probably do the best show this year. We have almost all of the good people working on the strip. I had to come here to get them. I couldn’t get them to come to LA, only because of their work schedules. There is nothing like show people. They’d give you the shirt they don’t own. I am involved with the best people in the world.
RL: Was the $59 million you raised last year a record?
JL: No, no, no, no, I went down the year before. The fist time I didn’t go up. In 2004 we dropped from 56 mil to 54.5 and then the next year I dropped another million and a half or so. It is the first time in 54 years that I dropped. Our first telethon Dean and I did together in 1950 from Carnegie Hall on one Manhattan TV station. So in New York and wherever the antenna takes you to outside of Newark, we raised $11,000. I was embarrassed so I put $4,000 of our own money to make it $15,000, so it looked better. But from that start we went on and did the first color telecast across the country, we did the first million dollar telethon, we did the first telethon out of the country and telethons in London and Paris. It is really incredible what we have done in 54 years. . It is tough to go to another country because you can’t take the money .You have to leave it where you are performing the show. So we made a deal in London, to practically single-handedly build the Muscular research center in Hammersmith. Then on to Paris the first telethon there in 1994, I raised more money -- $48 million -- in Paris than I did in the states on some of my telethons. Every year they have been doing that well if not more. I started it and they continued it. We have been working very closely with the Louis Pasteur Clinic, which now has a neuro-muscular research facility.
RL: Are the telethons the highest points of your life as you look back over the years?
JL: In terms of an accomplishment, getting something done that you plan, yeah. Everything you do after that you are supposed to. They asked me if I was going to do the benefactor, if I do it and I am terrific I am supposed to be, if I do it and I go on my ass who benefits from it? So that is always in my mind. I feel very responsible about what I have done and what I do and what it represents. Now you have people in this business that don’t understand accountability. You have to walk out on the stage and you have to sweat. I don’t understand a performer that walks out and says, ‘Oh that’s it.’ I was seven when my dad said you will be a professional the day you go out and sweat.
BACK TO BROADWAY
JL: The other good news is that I am bringing the ‘Nutty Professor’ musical to Broadway and we are stating to work on it now. I will direct the show. I’ve got a marvelous wonderfully talented kid that will star in it, Michael Andrews. We have to begin right now in order to have an October ’08 opening. We are going to take the show to San Diego, to the Globe Theater. That would probably be January ’07. We are beginning to write it and before we get all of that set up, I have another two months before we say, ‘here we go.’ The speed that we will work with is incredible. I had an awful lot of inquiries to do a show, and I saw this kid perform and he wanted to do that, and he had the money. And with those pockets I said let’s give it a shot. I was a little concerned with taking the 1963 movie that has become one of a hundred top movies so you do the best you can for theater. All I am doing is directing it in a larger frame. It is in a small frame on film and it is 70 feet on Broadway It is very stimulating and for any creative man you have your work cut out for you and you have to really work. It is a stupid way to make a fortune, but I am very happy about that. I produced the movie remakes, it was my financial pleasure. I am too old to play a part in the show. Maybe I will do a walk on. The character has to bring what I tell him to bring. I know the character. I know the character as Buddy Love, and as the professor. You have two different people that have to be played pretty tight to the belt; I am going to stick to the screenplay. The first thing I have to do is get three look-a-likes, or I can’t do the show. While I have number 1 doing the professor here, I have that one getting ready to make the change and the other one over here when I stage left to his stage right. I have been thinking of this for 3 months so I have shots, spots and stage marking in my head already.
DIRE PREDICTION FOR VEGAS
RL: You’re heading to Broadway, but what do you think of this Broadway invasion coming to Vegas? Do you think it is somewhat troubled at the moment?
JL: When you get into the Vegas that my partner and I played at the Flamingo in ’47, there were 6,000 people that lived here. We rode horses to get downtown. So we watched the development, we watched the people come into the buffets and they were offered these buffets on the house. The right people, for the right reasons, ran the town and then corporate came into town. I have a new name for the Broadway invasion in Vegas. See, I call it Howard Hughes’ Vegas. I am a local. I live here and I love my town, and when I see this garbage develop, I mean you can’t walk on Main Street or Las Vegas Blvd. I won’t walk there of course, but I had the misfortune of being in a car there the other day. I only live six minutes from the Strip and it took us 55 minutes.
I mean if they are going to gouge themselves with this building and these theatrics, what made this town? Don Rickles, Sinatra, Steve and Eydie, Tony Bennett, Martin and Lewis and Danny Thomas -- I mean people flocked to come see these live performances. Now, they go to a show, I was embarrassed to be honest, I went to see a friend of mine in a show, I was seated at a table and I thought I was playing Keno. I didn’t know where the show was. Remember that the decision makers in our business are rarely over 24. So I told them to go to Toys R Us. The town will go back to the way it was, I am making a prediction, because they are not going to be able to contain 52 brand new buildings that house 1100 patients in each one, which gives you an additional 7000 cars in our Las Vegas Valley. We can’t afford another 160,000 cars in this valley. It will get so choked that people will not go to see where the profits are.
RL: How long before this prediction comes true?
JL: I say in the next five years you are going to see them all fall by the wayside. Because the chosen come in here and they have done well. What does that mean done well? Does that mean that the audiences want to come back to see another show, I don’t know we don’t have those kinds of answers. The only thing you get is the numbers that they brought in. Everything is numbers. What about the quality? What about people being entertained?
Dean and I did shows at the Sands where there were men sitting ringside in tuxes and ladies in gowns. Now you have a guy with a shirt and his chest is sticking out. This cannot continue, and you are going to bump into to someone who is going to prevent you from going to the show you want to see. What are we doing here? Now I’m better and can resume my show I will do what I have always done. Nothing changes except that when you do it when you are forty and then you go and do it when you are 80, you have to make a couple abbreviations and I am working on that currently.
I made a contract for 20 years (at the Orleans) when I was 76. One clause says if I am playing the Orleans when I am 90, I can work with a walker. We will see if I can do that without fainting. I want to do this other routine without ICU calling. However, I will look spiffy in a tux -- I promise you that. I will do what Jack Benny did with anticipation. When he was introduced,you could count to 6 after you heard his name and before he stepped onstage. He stretched the anticipation. He walked out and gave the audience what they wanted.
RL: Do young stars of today have any of that? Or even of that caliber?
JL: No, it was in a different time. When we all played here in the hottest time in Vegas, which was 1952-1965, or something like that. There is always a cycle and that cycle will return with entertainment in Vegas. It is going to have to. Because they are going to see, they are really going to find out the stupidness of their ways. If they can make a quick buck, they will go for it. Remember, we don’t have original minds in Vegas. Everyone that is putting this stuff in the theaters, they haven’t got an original bone in their body, but if that hotel did that, ‘let us do that.’ It is the same in the picture business, if a western scores, there are 11 westerns. If there is a gay theme, there are more gay themes. What about someone sitting down and saying ' here is an original idea.' That used to prevail in this business, that doesn’t happen anymore, unless you have morons like me that still want to do that. But it is okay because I am right.
RL: You’ve talked about the things that are wrong with Vegas, what is right with Vegas?
JL: Well, I think that it is the most exciting sound of a city. And when someone asks where is your home, and I say Las Vegas, you get a reaction. Their thought process is that there are a bunch of clouds and no bed and you are running on the clouds having a wonderful time. That is what I get all the time. Vegas to the general public is the most exciting sound of any city, it compares to Paris, London and Rome.
When you get here, if they would take good care of the people that come, they would keep coming back, but I think that if it were up to the tourist bureau, they would tell you that not as many return as could possibly. With what you do for them when they are here. Everyone is looking to bite every buck they have in their pockets and that is not the way to sustain people. Everyone once in awhile has to say let’s not charge that man and his family for that. That spreads like goddamn wildfire. When I dealt blackjack and gave everyone a win there was never less than 3000 people around that table. There was a 6-page ‘Life’ magazine spread that saidyou can go to Vegas and they will give you money for free. And if you get a high roller that comes here to blow $4,000-$5,000 he will go and do that. If you take the cup away from him for dinner, he won’t come back. He expects that courtesy. If a man or a woman comes here with three kids, they should be given something like that courtesy. I mean they are spending enough, let’s find a way to get some good public relations for this town.
At The Orleans, Michael Gaughan is very concerned with the locals. He sees them as family and sees to it that you will get this or that. But for the tourists, there isn’t an owner of a hotel in this town that if you sat them down and asked why don’t you fix what is going to be a problem in this town in five years. Fix it now. Start thinking about the public relations that will keep this city alive rather than watching it slowly sink into the ocean. You have people running hotels that don’t even know that that is a part if the game we are playing. You can’t expect to last long with that. What we have to do as locals, not people in the press, but if you are truly a Las Vegan and you care, I know that my daughter is going to graduate tomorrow, she is going to have children, I am going to maybe want then to live here. I am going to want the town to be better. You can’t get better in time for me to sit back and say I told you so, but enough people with the right mind can change it.
NOT SLOWING DOWN
RL: Jerry you have been awarded your second Legion of Honor award in Paris. You have five doctorates. What does the honor mean to you?
JL: Well it is very humbling. It is a very incredible moment. Particularly I didn’t know that when I first got the Legion of Honor that that wasn’t it. It was the first of three that are presented to someone if they get to three. But they bypassed the second, I guess because I am 80, I became a Commander. The whole evening, the whole procedure is incredible, and I don’t care if you get jaded and you don’t think that such and such is valuable in your life, it will stop you and it is very humbling. It is a tremendous honor for a country to take the time to bestow that on you.
RL: So at 80 years of age you don’t want to slow down at all?
JL: What is the purpose. I will slow down when my body says rest. It doesn’t really say that to mea lot. I can’t go at the dynamo speed that I was at up until I got sick four years ago, All I have done since thenis to back off a little bit and say you can still do the things you want as long as they are worth something and the creative level is up to what you believe it should be. But the body and mind might say to you, ‘back off for a couple of days.’ Rejuvenate your batteries because the very nature of age goes only one place and you have to respect it. I did three shows today, I don’t know if I should do the fourth one. But in my heart I still feel 9. If anyone was wearing a tie and I had a pair of scissors, I would still cut it in half. I never want to be old. There is no feeling in the world like 9. Nine is innocent, 9 is mischievous, 9 is, ‘yeah, let’s do that.’ There is nothing like 9. And I believe that the child in all of us can be nurtured rather than letting it die. I am a firm believer in keeping the child within you alive. You do it easily. You can stay as young as you want to stay!
STRIP SCRIBBLES
Teen-sensation, Lindsay Lohan threw a party in the Palms basketball themed Harwood Suite as at 19 she cant go into clubs here. She did do dinner at N9NE munching through a 2 lb. lobster before shooting pool and basketball with her guests. The three-point night ended with several of her group winding up at a topless club afterwards!… ‘The Sopranos’ star Steve Schirripa (he plays Bobby Bacala on the HBO hit) celebrated the success of his new book ‘The Goomba’s Diet.’ The Riviera hotel, where Steve served as entertainment director once upon a time, is releasing a commerative limited edition of prized $5 chips with his ‘appetite for life’ image on both sides. … Sunset Strip, the sexy boy/girl rock band (pictured below) at the Aladdin has jumped to the Shimmer Cabaret at the Hilton.
TOMORROW’S TEASE
Master magician Lance Burton and the MonteCarlo resort jointly celebrate their 10th anniversaries next Wednesday. Luxe Life has an advance look at all the celebrations planned for the double event plus an exclusive chat with the Prince of Prestidigitation as he looks back over a decade of magical memories.
DAILY CINEVEGAS LUXELIFE PICKS
3-5PM -- DennisHopper’s Birthday- Casa Fuente Cigars (Forum Shops)
7PM -- Jack Black stars in “ Nacho Libre (Palms)
10PM -- Dennis Hopper’s birthday party continues at Tao (The Venetian)
TONIGHTS TIP
Heavyweight comic Jeff Beacher has open-call interviews and auditions at The Joint in the Hard Rock for star wanna-bes at his new Rockhouse opening at the Imperial Palace on July 15. Dennis Miller is back on a rant at MGM for five 9pm shows starting tonight thru next Monday. The 7-time Emmy-award winner scores big political, celebrity and topical hits with targeted sarcasm and republican humor.
CONTACT US
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Rocky, Rambo, Cinevegas and the Jerry Lewis Interview You Can't Miss
Rocky Balboa actor Sylvester Stallone received one of the first "Walk of Fame" stars at the Brenden Theaters in the Palms resort hotel last night -- 30-years after his heroic boxing character debuted in the very first ‘Rocky’ movie. Sly cut short an editing session of his latest ’Rocky VI’ picture opening December 22 to fly to Vegas for the awards ceremony presided over by CineVegas Film Festival chairman, Dennis Hopper and Palms movie theater owner, Johnny Brenden, seen here in our Luxe Life photo.
Sly told Luxe Life exclusively " This is definitely the end for Rocky. It is the final chapter -- there will be no more Rocky movies after this one. The story of his journey through life winds up as a beautiful book-end to the first one we did in 1976. But in August, we will also resume the Rambo character with a new fourth film to be shot in Thailand. It will be dramatically pulled from today's headlines to focus on the fight to end an Al Qaeda-type terrorist threat. I have to finish shooting that by November so I can be back in America for the full December promotion of the final chapter of Rocky Balboa. Then early in the New Year, I will shoot ‘Poe.’ I've written an extraordinary script on Edgar Allen Poe's life."
Luxe Life will have the full wrap up of all the CineVegas Film Festival happenings here on Monday, but meantime as promised here's the full candid and controversial interview with 80-year-old Jerry Lewis just four days before he was rushed to a San Diego hospital with a heart attack and pneumonia that caused him to cancel his return to the live stage at The Orleans in mid-July -- his first return appearance in more than five years of battling ill health. Jerry, a good longtime friend, is still planning to go ahead with his MDA telethon over Labor Day weekend from the Southcoast after a ten-year- absence from Vegas. Luxe Life wishes Jerry a very speedy recovery and a full return to good health.
He’s also planning on a surprise return to Broadway! We got the opportunity to play catch-up over an informal luncheon and you can now eavesdrop on our very rare, no-holds barred, intimate interview.
FIGHTING DRUG ADDICTION
RL: How is the back feeling?
JL: The back is still terrible. I have a steel shunt in there now.
RL: So how are you dealing with the pain without a prescription drug?
JL: You just have to, you have to. There is nothing you can do. I had an insurance company and I didn’t know how the injury developed in the first place, so we had a clip of some of the falls I had taken in the early days and in those clips there’s 97 falls: off a car, off a building. I never saw an idiot beat up his back the way I did. So it was no surprise when they said you are going to have to learn to live with it. And that is exactly what I am doing.
Percodan was the only thing that helped, and then when it stops helping, you are using it as a social gift. I wanna feel as good as I did when I didn’t have pain. Well that doesn’t happen because painkillers heighten the pain. It makes it worse. So, if you can psychologically say to yourself , ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ you get mean spirited with that medicine, you get short and ill tempered, it is awful. So you ask yourself, ‘Should I just be a human and be in quiet pain? Or do I have to be a nasty bastard that has no pain?’ It is a very big choice.
Prednisone changes your whole personality. The terrible part of it is that it is the only drug that can save your life. I had a fatal disease you cannot easily recover from: pulmonary fibrosis, and when you do recover, you haven’t really recovered, you can only go so far, and they say you will have this bad lung the rest of your days. It is now 75% back to where it was originally.
The medication I take now, so much I bought stock in Rexall, but I have to take pills and of course pills beget pills. The ones that I take to keep the lungs solid are not great for the kidneys, so you take some for that. How does the little liver pill know when you are ill? How does a little liver pill know where to go? You take this pilland it is goes to the lungs, then you take something to balance that, and before you know it I am taking eight pills in the morning and six at night. That is 14 a day. I got to get a night job. But it is so good to be better.
RL: And the 80 lbs. that you knocked off, what did you do?
JL: I got off the medicine plus diet and exercise. I was on six grapefruits a day. My body chemistry was great for the acidity. It was helping me lose weight. Sam, my personal trainer, made sure I ate the right stuff, but you can’t do it while you are on the Percodan. The prednisone is equally as bad.
TELETHON RETURNS TO VEGAS
RL: Talk about the Muscular Dystrophy coming back to Vegas from the west coast.
JL:After the 2003 telethon, we were still at CBS in Hollywood. That was a great layout, great studio. I missed Vegas, there is something that you get when you are in Vegas and it is intangible -- is it the attractions, and the locals. I said we have to go back to Vegas, and then from 2003 until four months ago, I was trying to find the facility, and everybody has a whole different agenda now, which I have to respect. We have demographics that will tell you how many people we play to from the first hour to the conclusion. The first five hours we hold between 50-70 million people. There are hotels that want that kind of press because before you know it I am giving the hotel a five-minute plug to 50 million people. That can’t be bad. So, I went to Michael Gaughan, CEO of Coast Casinos and said let’s keep it in the family since I have a 20-year-contract with them -- the illness stopped me working back in 2000, but now we’re ready to start it up again next month. I want to go to the newest hotel in Vegas and we did: - at his brand new Southcoast. We made that happen. It is great for us internally, it is great for us sponsor wise, it is good for all the people that are there for us and we’ve got probably 23 national sponsors that we have to fit into all of our time. They love the fact that they can come to Vegas. We will probably do the best show this year. We have almost all of the good people working on the strip. I had to come here to get them. I couldn’t get them to come to LA, only because of their work schedules. There is nothing like show people. They’d give you the shirt they don’t own. I am involved with the best people in the world.
RL: Was the $59 million you raised last year a record?
JL: No, no, no, no, I went down the year before. The fist time I didn’t go up. In 2004 we dropped from 56 mil to 54.5 and then the next year I dropped another million and a half or so. It is the first time in 54 years that I dropped. Our first telethon Dean and I did together in 1950 from Carnegie Hall on one Manhattan TV station. So in New York and wherever the antenna takes you to outside of Newark, we raised $11,000. I was embarrassed so I put $4,000 of our own money to make it $15,000, so it looked better. But from that start we went on and did the first color telecast across the country, we did the first million dollar telethon, we did the first telethon out of the country and telethons in London and Paris. It is really incredible what we have done in 54 years. . It is tough to go to another country because you can’t take the money .You have to leave it where you are performing the show. So we made a deal in London, to practically single-handedly build the Muscular research center in Hammersmith. Then on to Paris the first telethon there in 1994, I raised more money -- $48 million -- in Paris than I did in the states on some of my telethons. Every year they have been doing that well if not more. I started it and they continued it. We have been working very closely with the Louis Pasteur Clinic, which now has a neuro-muscular research facility.
RL: Are the telethons the highest points of your life as you look back over the years?
JL: In terms of an accomplishment, getting something done that you plan, yeah. Everything you do after that you are supposed to. They asked me if I was going to do the benefactor, if I do it and I am terrific I am supposed to be, if I do it and I go on my ass who benefits from it? So that is always in my mind. I feel very responsible about what I have done and what I do and what it represents. Now you have people in this business that don’t understand accountability. You have to walk out on the stage and you have to sweat. I don’t understand a performer that walks out and says, ‘Oh that’s it.’ I was seven when my dad said you will be a professional the day you go out and sweat.
BACK TO BROADWAY
JL: The other good news is that I am bringing the ‘Nutty Professor’ musical to Broadway and we are stating to work on it now. I will direct the show. I’ve got a marvelous wonderfully talented kid that will star in it, Michael Andrews. We have to begin right now in order to have an October ’08 opening. We are going to take the show to San Diego, to the Globe Theater. That would probably be January ’07. We are beginning to write it and before we get all of that set up, I have another two months before we say, ‘here we go.’ The speed that we will work with is incredible. I had an awful lot of inquiries to do a show, and I saw this kid perform and he wanted to do that, and he had the money. And with those pockets I said let’s give it a shot. I was a little concerned with taking the 1963 movie that has become one of a hundred top movies so you do the best you can for theater. All I am doing is directing it in a larger frame. It is in a small frame on film and it is 70 feet on Broadway It is very stimulating and for any creative man you have your work cut out for you and you have to really work. It is a stupid way to make a fortune, but I am very happy about that. I produced the movie remakes, it was my financial pleasure. I am too old to play a part in the show. Maybe I will do a walk on. The character has to bring what I tell him to bring. I know the character. I know the character as Buddy Love, and as the professor. You have two different people that have to be played pretty tight to the belt; I am going to stick to the screenplay. The first thing I have to do is get three look-a-likes, or I can’t do the show. While I have number 1 doing the professor here, I have that one getting ready to make the change and the other one over here when I stage left to his stage right. I have been thinking of this for 3 months so I have shots, spots and stage marking in my head already.
DIRE PREDICTION FOR VEGAS
RL: You’re heading to Broadway, but what do you think of this Broadway invasion coming to Vegas? Do you think it is somewhat troubled at the moment?
JL: When you get into the Vegas that my partner and I played at the Flamingo in ’47, there were 6,000 people that lived here. We rode horses to get downtown. So we watched the development, we watched the people come into the buffets and they were offered these buffets on the house. The right people, for the right reasons, ran the town and then corporate came into town. I have a new name for the Broadway invasion in Vegas. See, I call it Howard Hughes’ Vegas. I am a local. I live here and I love my town, and when I see this garbage develop, I mean you can’t walk on Main Street or Las Vegas Blvd. I won’t walk there of course, but I had the misfortune of being in a car there the other day. I only live six minutes from the Strip and it took us 55 minutes.
I mean if they are going to gouge themselves with this building and these theatrics, what made this town? Don Rickles, Sinatra, Steve and Eydie, Tony Bennett, Martin and Lewis and Danny Thomas -- I mean people flocked to come see these live performances. Now, they go to a show, I was embarrassed to be honest, I went to see a friend of mine in a show, I was seated at a table and I thought I was playing Keno. I didn’t know where the show was. Remember that the decision makers in our business are rarely over 24. So I told them to go to Toys R Us. The town will go back to the way it was, I am making a prediction, because they are not going to be able to contain 52 brand new buildings that house 1100 patients in each one, which gives you an additional 7000 cars in our Las Vegas Valley. We can’t afford another 160,000 cars in this valley. It will get so choked that people will not go to see where the profits are.
RL: How long before this prediction comes true?
JL: I say in the next five years you are going to see them all fall by the wayside. Because the chosen come in here and they have done well. What does that mean done well? Does that mean that the audiences want to come back to see another show, I don’t know we don’t have those kinds of answers. The only thing you get is the numbers that they brought in. Everything is numbers. What about the quality? What about people being entertained?
Dean and I did shows at the Sands where there were men sitting ringside in tuxes and ladies in gowns. Now you have a guy with a shirt and his chest is sticking out. This cannot continue, and you are going to bump into to someone who is going to prevent you from going to the show you want to see. What are we doing here? Now I’m better and can resume my show I will do what I have always done. Nothing changes except that when you do it when you are forty and then you go and do it when you are 80, you have to make a couple abbreviations and I am working on that currently.
I made a contract for 20 years (at the Orleans) when I was 76. One clause says if I am playing the Orleans when I am 90, I can work with a walker. We will see if I can do that without fainting. I want to do this other routine without ICU calling. However, I will look spiffy in a tux -- I promise you that. I will do what Jack Benny did with anticipation. When he was introduced,you could count to 6 after you heard his name and before he stepped onstage. He stretched the anticipation. He walked out and gave the audience what they wanted.
RL: Do young stars of today have any of that? Or even of that caliber?
JL: No, it was in a different time. When we all played here in the hottest time in Vegas, which was 1952-1965, or something like that. There is always a cycle and that cycle will return with entertainment in Vegas. It is going to have to. Because they are going to see, they are really going to find out the stupidness of their ways. If they can make a quick buck, they will go for it. Remember, we don’t have original minds in Vegas. Everyone that is putting this stuff in the theaters, they haven’t got an original bone in their body, but if that hotel did that, ‘let us do that.’ It is the same in the picture business, if a western scores, there are 11 westerns. If there is a gay theme, there are more gay themes. What about someone sitting down and saying ' here is an original idea.' That used to prevail in this business, that doesn’t happen anymore, unless you have morons like me that still want to do that. But it is okay because I am right.
RL: You’ve talked about the things that are wrong with Vegas, what is right with Vegas?
JL: Well, I think that it is the most exciting sound of a city. And when someone asks where is your home, and I say Las Vegas, you get a reaction. Their thought process is that there are a bunch of clouds and no bed and you are running on the clouds having a wonderful time. That is what I get all the time. Vegas to the general public is the most exciting sound of any city, it compares to Paris, London and Rome.
When you get here, if they would take good care of the people that come, they would keep coming back, but I think that if it were up to the tourist bureau, they would tell you that not as many return as could possibly. With what you do for them when they are here. Everyone is looking to bite every buck they have in their pockets and that is not the way to sustain people. Everyone once in awhile has to say let’s not charge that man and his family for that. That spreads like goddamn wildfire. When I dealt blackjack and gave everyone a win there was never less than 3000 people around that table. There was a 6-page ‘Life’ magazine spread that saidyou can go to Vegas and they will give you money for free. And if you get a high roller that comes here to blow $4,000-$5,000 he will go and do that. If you take the cup away from him for dinner, he won’t come back. He expects that courtesy. If a man or a woman comes here with three kids, they should be given something like that courtesy. I mean they are spending enough, let’s find a way to get some good public relations for this town.
At The Orleans, Michael Gaughan is very concerned with the locals. He sees them as family and sees to it that you will get this or that. But for the tourists, there isn’t an owner of a hotel in this town that if you sat them down and asked why don’t you fix what is going to be a problem in this town in five years. Fix it now. Start thinking about the public relations that will keep this city alive rather than watching it slowly sink into the ocean. You have people running hotels that don’t even know that that is a part if the game we are playing. You can’t expect to last long with that. What we have to do as locals, not people in the press, but if you are truly a Las Vegan and you care, I know that my daughter is going to graduate tomorrow, she is going to have children, I am going to maybe want then to live here. I am going to want the town to be better. You can’t get better in time for me to sit back and say I told you so, but enough people with the right mind can change it.
NOT SLOWING DOWN
RL: Jerry you have been awarded your second Legion of Honor award in Paris. You have five doctorates. What does the honor mean to you?
JL: Well it is very humbling. It is a very incredible moment. Particularly I didn’t know that when I first got the Legion of Honor that that wasn’t it. It was the first of three that are presented to someone if they get to three. But they bypassed the second, I guess because I am 80, I became a Commander. The whole evening, the whole procedure is incredible, and I don’t care if you get jaded and you don’t think that such and such is valuable in your life, it will stop you and it is very humbling. It is a tremendous honor for a country to take the time to bestow that on you.
RL: So at 80 years of age you don’t want to slow down at all?
JL: What is the purpose. I will slow down when my body says rest. It doesn’t really say that to mea lot. I can’t go at the dynamo speed that I was at up until I got sick four years ago, All I have done since thenis to back off a little bit and say you can still do the things you want as long as they are worth something and the creative level is up to what you believe it should be. But the body and mind might say to you, ‘back off for a couple of days.’ Rejuvenate your batteries because the very nature of age goes only one place and you have to respect it. I did three shows today, I don’t know if I should do the fourth one. But in my heart I still feel 9. If anyone was wearing a tie and I had a pair of scissors, I would still cut it in half. I never want to be old. There is no feeling in the world like 9. Nine is innocent, 9 is mischievous, 9 is, ‘yeah, let’s do that.’ There is nothing like 9. And I believe that the child in all of us can be nurtured rather than letting it die. I am a firm believer in keeping the child within you alive. You do it easily. You can stay as young as you want to stay!
STRIP SCRIBBLES
Teen-sensation, Lindsay Lohan threw a party in the Palms basketball themed Harwood Suite as at 19 she cant go into clubs here. She did do dinner at N9NE munching through a 2 lb. lobster before shooting pool and basketball with her guests. The three-point night ended with several of her group winding up at a topless club afterwards!… ‘The Sopranos’ star Steve Schirripa (he plays Bobby Bacala on the HBO hit) celebrated the success of his new book ‘The Goomba’s Diet.’ The Riviera hotel, where Steve served as entertainment director once upon a time, is releasing a commerative limited edition of prized $5 chips with his ‘appetite for life’ image on both sides. … Sunset Strip, the sexy boy/girl rock band (pictured below) at the Aladdin has jumped to the Shimmer Cabaret at the Hilton. TOMORROW’S TEASE
Master magician Lance Burton and the MonteCarlo resort jointly celebrate their 10th anniversaries next Wednesday. Luxe Life has an advance look at all the celebrations planned for the double event plus an exclusive chat with the Prince of Prestidigitation as he looks back over a decade of magical memories.
DAILY CINEVEGAS LUXELIFE PICKS
TONIGHTS TIP
Heavyweight comic Jeff Beacher has open-call interviews and auditions at The Joint in the Hard Rock for star wanna-bes at his new Rockhouse opening at the Imperial Palace on July 15. Dennis Miller is back on a rant at MGM for five 9pm shows starting tonight thru next Monday. The 7-time Emmy-award winner scores big political, celebrity and topical hits with targeted sarcasm and republican humor.
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