Monday, Jan. 24, 2000 | 10:51 a.m.
Boyd Gaming is going Hollywood and the Nevada Film Office couldn't be happier.
The Las Vegas casino company that operates the Stardust hotel-casino on the Strip, downtown properties and Sam's Town on the Boulder Highway is working with the NFO and the Entertainment Development Corp. of Las Vegas to market its properties as potential locations for Hollywood film crews.
"It's a great marketing and publicity outlet," said Dan Stark, director of marketing for Boyd Gaming.
"We have one of Las Vegas' show business icons, Wayne Newton, performing in what is a classic Las Vegas showroom," Stark said. "We have all those antiques at our property downtown. We want to use every opportunity we can to show that to people."
Stark said parlaying the notoriety of Newton at the Stardust is a no-brainer.
"Wayne Newton is great to work with because he has such a great sense of humor and he isn't afraid to parody himself," Stark said.
Newton has "National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation" and the James Bond thriller "License to Kill" on his Hollywood resume.
And another celebrity is considering another Boyd property for the small screen. Judge Mills Lane has visited Sam's Town and is considering bringing his courtroom TV show to Las Vegas.
Lane, who tapes a courtroom show in New York every week, is looking at a new court show in which the judge can dispense frontier justice in a western setting right after playing a few hands of poker.
Stark said some of the logistical hassles that come with inviting a film crew to the property are offset by the benefits.
"Sometimes it's a little difficult to schedule, but overall, it's worth it," Stark said.
Boyd's enthusiasm for opening its doors to Hollywood is just what the Nevada Film Office is looking for, said Charlie Geocaris, director of the office in a presentation to the Nevada Development Authority.
Geocaris and two of his seven-person staff last week showed NDA members how the small division of the Nevada Commission on Economic Development is marketing the state to filmmakers.
Film production is one of the emphases the NDA is stressing to diversify the economy. The NDA has established a partnership with the Entertainment Development Corp. of Las Vegas to steer some of the business to Southern Nevada.
The film office is also stepping up its use of the Internet to communicate with production companies about available locations across the state.
"We can scan and transmit photos directly to producers," said Robin Holabird, deputy director of the office and the agency's primary Northern Nevada contact. "Instead of taking 24 hours to show a producer what a place looks like, we can do it within a few minutes.
"Sometimes they'll want to see what a certain meadow looks like with snow on it, so I can go out and snap a shot of it, have the film processed, scan it and send it directly to him the same day," Holabird said.
High-budget motion pictures are the best money generators for the state, but the NFO isn't going to turn down the opportunity for still shots or commercials.
"When you get someone like Dreamworks in here, they'll spend $100,000 a day," Holabird said. "We took some film executives up to Mount Charleston and they couldn't believe they were less than an hour away from Las Vegas. They said, 'This is one of your best-kept secrets.'
"We're trying to show them we're diverse, flexible and creative."
Nevada's flexibility allows it offer what Holabird refers to as the state's G's.
"That's glamour, glitter, guns, girls, gangsters, gambling and, a soft G, genre," Holabird said.
Geocaris said the film office is expanding its website and increasing its scope of directories. In addition to online and print versions of location and rural guides, Geocaris hopes to build an index of roads and highways, particularly for car companies that like to film commercials in Nevada's wide-open spaces.
Jeanne Corcoran, production coordinator for the NFO, said the agency's web site averages 24,000 hits a month.
Because of the nature of Hollywood and show business, companies that open up their properties are reaping additional exposure, Holabird said. The rest of the community gets much of the spin-off.
"It's jobs for locals and business for vendors," Holabird said. "When they were shooting 'Sister Act' (in Reno) somebody almost always ordered pizza after a day's shooting. I'm sure the pizza restaurants really liked the Hollywood crowd."
Southern Nevadans also were involved in some unusual commerce, courtesy of film producers.
Holabird said extras hired as background players for the film "Showgirls" spent hours watching strippers perform. And, she said when Alfred Hitchcock came to Southern Nevada years ago, he put children to work gathering cockroaches to shoot a scene.
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