Las Vegas Film Fest

PHOTO: n 2005, Las Vegas's 100th anniversary, CineVegas organized a reunion of 100 past and present showgirls.

I was justs in Las Vegas - so this story appealed to me as one of those off the wall things Vegas is famous for. Enjoy.

The New York Times
June 4, 2006
A Very Vegas Festival: Off the Wall on Screen
By PAUL CULLUM

DURING Howard Hughes's fabled four-year tenure in the late '60s on the top floor of the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, he took a hands-on approach to at least one part of his billion-dollar empire: the city's only television station, the CBS affiliate KLAS-TV, Channel 8, which he purchased from the Las Vegas Sun publisher Hank Greenspun. America's richest private citizen, as described in Michael Drosnin's "Citizen Hughes," spent much of his time programming three films a night, which he then watched commercial free, between 11:30 p.m. and 6 a.m., in a codeine-induced haze.

"Hughes would nod off at 2 in the morning and wake up, call the station and have them rewind the film," said Danny Greenspun, chairman of the Greenspun Media Group and Hank's son.

So it may be fitting that Mr. Greenspun and his wife, Robin, have spent a portion of their inheritance to finance a brazenly unconventional film festival in Las Vegas, the home of what was effectively the original TiVo.

Now in its eighth year, CineVegas, which opens next Friday and continues through June 17, bills itself as "The World's Most Dangerous Film Festival." The motto refers in part to the festival's well-known antics: When Hunter S. Thompson failed to show up at one scheduled function, administrators sent a golf cart full of showgirls to fetch him. But it also reflects the preference of the program director, Trevor Groth, and his colleague Mike Plante — longtime Sundance Film Festival programmers who moonlight at CineVegas — who like to gamble on films that might not find a place elsewhere.

"The easy metaphor for Vegas is taking a chance on something," said Mr. Plante, who points proudly to the festival's enthusiasm for the Japanese extreme horror director Takashi Miike, or the experimental filmmaker Nina Menkes, whose "Queen of Diamonds" features a 17-minute card-dealing sequence.

This year's festival will open with "Strangers with Candy," the feature-length prequel to the Comedy Central series about a middle-aged ex-addict who returns to high school. (The picture is scheduled for release within in the month by ThinkFilm, after having spent time on the shelf at Warner Independent Pictures.) And although closing night will feature "Lies and Alibis," a more mainstream comedy starring Steve Coogan and Rebecca Romijn, it will be augmented by the locally produced "Wet Dreams," a documentary wherein Ms. Romijn realizes her lifelong dream of choreographing a water ballet for the Bellagio fountains.

An Outlaw Cinema Panel will feature Abel Ferrara, Gregg Araki, Bobcat Goldthwaite, Ms. Menkes and fellow experimentalist James Fotopoulos. Taylor Hackford will also use the opportunity to screen his little-seen 1973 documentary "Bukowski," about Los Angeles's undeclared poet laureate.

Hank Greenspun, who died in 1989, owned one of Las Vegas's largest real-estate empires and was always visible, whether it was during his brief stint as press secretary for Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo Hotel or as an anti-Red crusader at the Sun. By contrast, both Danny and Robin, who is president of CineVegas, have kept a low media profile even while endowing the Las Vegas Art Museum, serving on arts foundation boards and engaging in what Danny calls "entrepreneurial philanthropy."

A cheery couple in the bloom of middle age, the Greenspuns are book collectors (their upscale bookstore Culture Dog crashed and burned in the late '80s), as well as movie buffs. They are partners with Scott Steindorff in Stone Village Entertainment, whose forthcoming films include an adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera" and a proposed remake of Akira Kurosawa's "Ikiru," which they plan for Jim Sheridan to direct.

"Danny is that rarest of rich guys — he's an enthusiast," said Dave Hickey, an art critic and long-time Las Vegas resident whose wife, Libby Lumpkin, is the director of the Las Vegas Art Museum. "The thing I like about them most is they're genuinely without malice; their agenda is spotless as far as I can see."

CineVegas is now completely contained at the Palms, a youth-oriented "neighborhood casino" off the Strip, across the freeway from Caesar's Palace, in which the Greenspun family owns a 6.8 percent stake. The Palms was the site for a season of MTV's "The Real World" (in a suite that now rents for $10,000 a night) and offers stripper poles in private rooms. And it was at the Palms that Britney Spears found a slumbering George Maloof — the owner — at 6:30 one morning to help find a way to help in getting her late-night marriage successfully annulled.

The casino's Ghostbar and poolside Skin Lounge are perpetually awash in Britney clones, which has proved to be a salient draw for celebrities, the lifeblood of any festival. Dennis Hopper, winner of its 2003 Marquee Award for lifetime achievement, stayed on to become the festival's chairman, patron saint and golden Rolodex, tapping pals like Mr. Hackford, Jack Nicholson, Julian Schnabel, Christopher Walken, Sean Penn and, this year, Laurence Fishburne and Christina Ricci to show up and receive an honor. (Helen Mirren will also attend, as will Sylvester Stallone for the 30th anniversary of "Rocky.")

"I felt I could be helpful to them," Mr. Hopper said. "I just thought there should be more of a connection with Hollywood.

It is probably safe to assume that the festival will also continue to honor its connection with local culture, as it did last year, when Robin Greenspun organized a event by 100 showgirls, led by Rhonda Fleming and "Showgirls" star Gina Gershon, for the 100th anniversary of Las Vegas and the 45th anniversary of the Folies-Bergère appearing at the Tropicana Resort & Casino.

"We have the advantage that, because of where we are and the control that we have," said Ms. Greenspun, "we're able to do some pretty off-the-wall things."
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