Obligatory Road-Trip Vegas Scene #1: LOST IN AMERICA

As I said at the start of this 5-part series, there are tons of movies that are completely set in Las Vegas, but here, inspired by wife's trip to Vegas this week, I’m talking about those scenes in cross-country road-trip movies in which the Nevada gambling mecca makes a brief cameo appearance.

We're now down to #1 on the list of Obligatory Road-Trip Vegas Scenes and it's a doozy:

LOST IN AMERICA (Dir. Albert Brooks, 1985)

Now this is the opposite of those scenes (like in STARMAN and RAIN MAN) where the characters breeze into town and win big. In this should be comedy classic, married couple Albert Brooks and Julie Hagerty decide to quit their jobs and hit the road in a Winnebago. An excited Brooks tells Hagerty: “This is just like in ‘Easy Rider,’ only now it’s our turn!”

But Brooks doesn't know his wife has a gambling problem when they roll into Vegas and get a suite at the Desert Inn. Their plan was to get re-married the next morning, but Brooks wakes up to find that Hagerty has left the room. He finds her frantically gambling in the casino repeating “come on back to me, 22, 22, 22…”

The Desert Inn Casino Manager (a great cameo by Garry Marshall) takes Brooks aside: “She’s been here all night; she’s not on a lucky streak. I think you should talk to her.” 

Check out the scene here:

An equally amusing scene follows in which Brooks tries to get Marshall to give them back their money, which Brooks calls their “nest-egg,” by trying to sell them an advertising slogan: “The Desert Inn has heart.”

Like many other movies road-trip movies that have a Vegas detour, there's a scene at the Hoover Dam after Brooks and Hagerty leave town.

LOST IN AMERICA is available on DVD.

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Obligatory Road-Trip Vegas Scene #2: HARRY & TONTO

It’s now time for #2 in my 5-part series focusing on those scenes in cross-country road-trip movies in which Las Vegas makes a brief cameo appearance. This series was inspired by my wife Jill’s trip to the Nevade gambling mecca over the last week for the NAB Show.

Obligatory Road Trip Scene #2: HARRY & TONTO (Dir. Paul Mazursky, 1974)

Art Carney won an Oscar for his part as a retired widowed schoolteacher who takes a trip across country when he's evicted from his Upper West Side apartment in New York City. Carney's best friend in the world is an orange tabby cat named Tonto, who he walks on a leash.

In this charming road-trip movie's Vegas scene, Carney visits a casino (one that's not identified) has a few drinks and is accused of being a “cooler” by a guy at a Blackjack table who loses everything. After exiting the establishment a drunk Carney gets arrested for urinating on the casino's wall.

It's a good thing this will stay in Vegas because it's hardly anything to write home about.

The highly recommended HARRY & TONTO is currently available on Netflix Instant.

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Obligatory Road-Trip Vegas Scene #3: BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD DO AMERICA

We’re down to #3 in my 5-part series focusing on those scenes in cross-country road-trip movies in which Las Vegas makes a brief cameo appearance.

So here’s Obligatory Road Trip Scene #3: BEAVIS & BUTTHEAD DO AMERICA (Dir. Mike Judge, Mike de Seve, Yvette Kaplan, & Brian Mulroney, 1996)

It’s not a very significant scene (is any scene significant in this movie?), but it’s one that stands out to me because of how Vegas is depicted. The exterior shots of the Nevada gambling mecca resemble the backgrounds that Bill Meléndez created for the Peanuts movies in the early ‘70s.

According to IMDb: “All of the hotel/casinos shown in the Las Vegas scenes actually exist. In contrast, Mike Judge’s ‘more serious’ show, King of the Hill, used fake hotel/casinos during a visit to Vegas.”

In the scene, which I think is supposed to take place at the Luxor Hotel Casino we see folks rolling dice, and playing the slot machines (of course, Beavis mishears slots as ‘sluts’), while a band is playing “Love Rollercoaster.” Beavis & Butthead though, are preoccupied with this:

Before long the iconic immature duo are escorted out of the establishment by security guards, but not before busting some moves on the dance floor. Surprisingly B & B and their only feature film to date does little to exploit the city of sin. Decent little detour though.

Check back for Obligatory Road Trip Vegas Scene #2.

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Obligatory Road-Trip Vegas Scene #4: RAINMAN

As my wife is in Las Vegas right now for the NAB Show, in this 5-part series I’m taking a look at those scenes in cross-country road-trip movies in which the Nevada gambling mecca makes a brief cameo appearance. Because of scenes like these, when I was a kid I never thought anybody actually lived in Vegas - I just thought everybody on a road trip would have to stop there, gamble then got back on the road to somewhere else.

Only when I visited there for the first time in 2009, did I see it as an actual living breathing community and not just a place that pops up on the big and small screen every now and then. I understand why I held onto those cinematic visions of Vegas for so long – the place is so surreal and outlandish that it seems like it could only exist in the movies.

So here’s Obligatory Road Trip Vegas Scene #4: Barry Levinson's RAINMAN (1988)



This one is similar to the Vegas scene in #5 (STARMAN), except Dustin Hoffman as Raymond Babbit doesn’t have supernatural powers – he’s an autistic savant who has an incredible memory. Raymond’s brother, Charlie (Tom Cruise) realizes that he can exploit it by counting cards in Vegas and winning big. In the car on the way into town, Charlie tells Raymond: “Casinos have house rules. The first one is they don’t like to lose. So you never never show that you are counting cards. That is *the* cardinal sin, Ray.” “Counting is bad.” Raymond replies.

Once in Vegas, Charlie pawns his watch and the film cuts to a quick montage of shots of Caesar’s Palace. The brothers aren’t there to take in the sights though – Charlie briskly takes his brother to one of the clothes shops in the Forum so they can get suited up in Armani and hit the Blackjack tables (Incidentally the shot of them making their entrance on the escalator into the casino was memorably parodied in THE HANGOVER).

Check out the RAINMAN Vegas scene here:

For folks who’ve never been to Vegas, but only fantasized about it while playing online casino games, scenes like this give them all the noisy spectacle of the strip in an appealing glitzy flash. Love that funky Hans Zimmer synthesizer score driving the sequence too.

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Obligatory Road-Trip Vegas Scene #5: STARMAN

Of course, there are tons of movies that are completely set in Las Vegas, but in this 5-part mini-series (inspired by wife's trip to Vegas this week) I’m talking about those scenes in cross-country road-trip movies in which the Nevada gambling mecca makes a brief cameo appearance.

Because of such scenes, when I was a kid I never thought anybody actually lived in Vegas - I just thought everybody on a road trip would have to stop there, gamble then got back on the road to somewhere else.

Only when I visited there for the first time in 2009, did I see it as an actual living breathing community and not just a place from the movies. I understand why I held onto those cinematic visions of Vegas for so long – the place is so surreal and outlandish that it seems like it could only exist in the movies.

We’ll start the countdown of Obligatory Road-Trip Vegas Scenes with:

#5: STARMAN (Dir. John Carpenter, 1984)

Way before he was “The Dude,” Jeff Bridges got an Oscar nomination for his role as an alien being (only identified as “Starman” although nobody calls him that in the film), who has taken the form of a recently deceased Wisconsin man. Karen Allen plays the man’s widow, Jenny Hayden, who has to deal with the craziness of having the physical presence of her husband back again, but his body is being controlled by something that came from Outer Space.

Jenny is abducted by Starman, but, as expected, she falls for him during their road trip to Meteor Crater in the desert of Arizona where he can meet up with his alien buddies on a very CLOSE ENCOUNTERS-looking mothership.

Before they get there, they catch a lift into downtown Las Vegas (Bridges’ bird-like movements when reacting to the world of bright lights surrounding him is priceless), where Jenny sees that the Starman can make the slot machines do what he wants them to do.

Carpenter cuts to Starman and Jenny walking through Binion’s Horseshoe Casino. Despite his earlier win, Jenny is skeptical about pulling this off, and wants them to start small, but Starman is already working his magic on a Super Jackpot machine that advertises a $500,000 Payoff.

Those amazing alien powers work like a charm.

The next cut is to Starman and Jenny driving a brand new Camaro out of town. It’s one of the funniest shots in the movie.

I always loved scenes like this when I was a kid. An alien or somebody with super natural powers can easily make a bunch of money by taking a trip to Vegas and manipulating the machines with their minds. How would these gifted ones deal with playing poker online on sites like this I wonder.

So I suppose the house always wins unless a member of a superior alien race is playing the game.

Stay tuned for Obligatory Road Trip Vegas Scene #4.

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