Against the Odds

LAS VEGAS —  For the sunbathers around the pools and waterfalls of the Mirage resort hotel, it’s an afternoon of trade-offs.

Because it’s so hot, the strawberry daiquiris aren’t staying slushy. On the other hand, the guests can pretend to nonchalantly dip in the water to cool off--and coyly position themselves in the background as the Panavision cameras film Chevy Chase floating on a pool lounge.

Warner Bros.’ traveling family man, Clark Griswold of Chicago, is rested from his European vacation and now it’s time for “Vegas Vacation,” and folks here on a real vacation are trying to get in on the action.

And because the Mirage--like other hotels in Las Vegas--doesn’t want to inconvenience its guests for the sake of Hollywood, the pool remains mostly open to swimmers, and director Stephen Kessler is having to cope with dozens of wannabe extras.

He has planted the pool area closest to Chase with bona fide extras. But several dozen real hotel guests behind the extras are prompting giggles. They’re standing waist deep in the water, staring toward Chase like so many hunting dogs alerting to prey.

When an assistant director suggests that they would look more natural if they didn’t stare, everyone complies and the scene is shot with not much difficulty.

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It ends up being one of the easier scenes to shoot in Las Vegas, which likes to present itself as a film-friendly town but where, Hollywood knows, nothing comes as easy as it looks.

Director Andy Tennant, for instance, never thought there would be a problem grabbing a night shot of the emblazoned Strip for his upcoming romantic comedy, “Fools Rush In.” It was just about 2 in the morning--when authorities allow film crews to encroach on Las Vegas Boulevard--and several blocks of hotel and casino lights provided the signature Strip backdrop that Tennant needed.

“We picked a location where the lights were beautiful, and we were just about ready to shoot when, at 2, all the lights on the Strip went dim,” Tennant said.

Many of the Strip’s businesses turn their lights down after 2 a.m. to conserve power, it turned out. But nobody had thought to warn Tennant.

Producer Michael McDonnell grabbed a phone and called Caesars Palace, where much of the film already had been shot. He talked the graveyard shift electrical engineer into turning the lights back on as a favor.

“Then he called every other hotel and asked them, ‘Do you want Caesars to be the only hotel on the Strip to show up in the movie?’ One by one, the lights came back on,” Tennant said.

Vegas isn’t always that accommodating.

As a rule, hotels and casinos here have no use for Hollywood, unless a particular script flatters them.

“Las Vegas is probably one of the few towns in the world that doesn’t need Hollywood and doesn’t get all that excited about it,” said Patricia Marvel, spokeswoman for Las Vegas’ newest spectacle, the Stratosphere, a 1,149-foot observation tower.

“We tell filmmakers they have to be flexible and be willing to shoot at 3 in the morning. If you have to have your shot at 7 p.m. on a Friday night, go away. We don’t need it.”

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But Hollywood needs Vegas, so it shoots when it can.

“If a casino allows us to film at all, it’s normally during the graveyard shifts--from midnight to 7 or 8 in the morning,” said Kokayi Ampah, a Warner Bros. location manager who lined up the pyramid-shaped Luxor for Tim Burton’s upcoming sci-fi comedy, “Mars Attacks!”

“We’re used to shooting 12- and 13-hour days,” he said. “You can’t do that here. This is one town where filming isn’t a prime industry. Gambling is, and they don’t want us in the way of that for too long.”

When shooting does go on in casinos, the impact on gamblers usually is minimal. Tennant said one high roller, a couple of pits removed from the cameras, made $450,000 at a blackjack table and seemingly never noticed the filming.

Other gamblers simply grow bored watching the late-night filming on these open sets and move on to the slots after watching several takes of the same scene, Ompah said.

There have been classic exceptions. Robert Redford’s horseback romp through the Caesars Palace casino, for “Electric Horseman,” was a real slots stopper, Caesars employees recall.

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Part of the challenge of shooting in Las Vegas is the heat. “It seems that everyone always wanted to shoot Fremont Street wet, to get the reflection,” said Robert Hirsch, who heads the Nevada Film Commission.

“And I’d always be admonishing film companies that they’d have 90 seconds to get the shot because, after that, the water will have evaporated.”

(The downtown Fremont Street has since been converted into a canopied pedestrian promenade.)

Tennant said that during a scene in “Fools Rush In,” shot at the Desert Inn golf course, actor Matthew Perry was supposed to get in his convertible--with black-leather interior--and drive off. “The first time he sat down, he shot right back up because it was so hot. And the second time he leaped back up again. So we decided to keep that in, and make it a running gag.”

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One of the cardinal rules in this city, everyone agrees, is that gamblers and hotel guests not be inconvenienced by filmmaking. That rule was almost a scene killer during the 1988 filming of “Rain Man” in a two-story suite at Caesars.

The shot: Tom Cruise is going to teach Dustin Hoffman how to dance; out the window is the magical Las Vegas twilight, when the soft, darkening sky is punctuated by glowing neon marquees.

The scene had to be shot within just a few minutes, or the moment would be lost.

“Directly overhead was another suite with a Jacuzzi tub large enough for six people,” said Caesars spokesman Phil Cooper. “Unfortunately, the customers--very good customers--were using the tub, and the crew mikes picked up the vibration.”

The hotel could not bring itself to ask the guests upstairs to turn off the Jacuzzi. But with Barry Levinson’s approval, the dilemma was resolved.

“We asked them if they’d like to come down and meet Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise,” Cooper said.

They couldn’t turn off the water jets and get downstairs fast enough.