Landing the Las Vegas strip
Not easy for performers to break into Sin City
David Copperfield — the slickly sensational illusionist who is widely considered the most successful magician of all time — is best known for such grand stunts as making the Statue of Liberty disappear and levitating over the Grand Canyon, but he’s an experienced escape artist too.
The 56-year-old has wriggled from a steel box barrelling over Niagara Falls, from an imminently exploding building and from detention in one of Alcatraz’s grim cellblocks (outfitted though it was with a curiously powerful smoke machine).
But once upon a time, he was stymied not by the act of getting out, but getting in. Specifically, he couldn’t figure out how to break into the lucrative Las Vegas scene.
“I couldn’t break into Vegas,” he recalled in a recent interview. “I was already on network TV but for some reason I couldn’t get in — I mean, Tom Jones didn’t want me as an opening act. I just couldn’t break in.”
Eventually, Copperfield found a way — Bill Cosby caught his show and offered him a co-headlining spot. And now, he’s one of the premiere attractions on a Las Vegas strip dotted with more stars than a planetarium.
But fittingly for a city where slot machines keep scoring and drinks keep pouring on a roundthe-clock basis, there’s no rest even for Vegas veterans.
Celine Dion is the reigning queen of the Strip and the similarly Canuck-bred country superstar Shania Twain will begin her first residency at Caesars Palace on Saturday. Surely, the seasoned, widely adored Twain is set to become the next major Vegas attraction.
But Las Vegas is also a cutthroat cultural capital that can shake an entertainer’s ego.
“I used to just dread coming to Vegas,” said flame-haired comedian Carrot Top, who now has a standing headlining engagement at the Luxor.
So, why does Sin City inspire such anxiety in its performers?
For one thing, many Vegas tourists make entertainment choices on a whim.
“It’s not the same kind of commitment of the audience (that you get elsewhere),” said Copperfield, who performs multiple shows per week at the MGM Grand.
“(On tour), people will have bought tickets three weeks before ... and they’ll think about you and they’ll think about the show and they’ll look at your TV specials, and then they’ll come to the show really excited to see just you.
“Here in Las Vegas, the decisions are made a day before or the day of.... You really have to be on the top of your game, because you’re not going to be able to coast on the fact that they love you so much you can do anything.”
“You do have a lot of people that may never have a clue what you do,” Carrot Top said.
Instead of basking in the glow of an adoring crowd waiting in anticipation, most Vegas entertainers find themselves devising strategies to win over every crowd at every performance.
“You’ve got a lot of out-of-town, out-of-country tourists — just don’t expect them to know what you do. That’s why I like my banter,” said Mandy crooner Barry Manilow, a Vegas mainstay.
“I kind of tell them who I am until I get to the songs that they know. And by the end, of course, we’re all good friends.... But I had to go slow to get to the point where they felt comfortable with me because I know that most people of those people out there did not know what they were seeing. ”
Opening a dialogue with your audience also brings a unique set of challenges in Las Vegas. The city draws an array of tourists so diverse that certain aspects of certain shows — particularly word-heavy standup acts — are sure to be lost in translation.
“Even our show last night, our crowd wasn’t great,” Carrot Top said. “But when I went into the audience to meet and see who’s out there ... there was a row of kids who were literally 21 years old, and right next to them someone who was 70, and someone on a breathing machine, and someone with a Seeing Eye dog.
Even once a performer has “made” it — usually, by landing a coveted regular gig at one of the Strip’s imposing mega-hotel-casinos — few ever overcome the persistent pressure that comes with competing with hundreds of other big-name performers for the leisure dollars of the town’s tourist pool.
“There is a feeling of that,” Carrot Top said. “Vegas is a tougher crowd. They see fire exploding at Cirque (du Soleil) shows and people doing flips and cars burn- ing. And I’m like, ‘Hey look, here’s a cowboy boot with a kickstand!’ It’s like, ‘what?’
Most performers can’t afford an off night.
“No matter if I’m sick or I’m tired, I gotta remember: that’s the one time they’re going to see me and they’ll remember if it’s a good show, hopefully for a long time,” said comic magician Nathan Burton, a regular performer at Planet Hollywood.
It all sounds pretty daunting, but there’s good news for Nevada newbies like Twain — beyond the fact that Shania: Still the One is destined to be a ticket hotter than her series of midriff-baring tops that set the ’90s ablaze.
Performers who succeed in Las Vegas can largely bid farewell to the demoralizing rigours of the road. They can give their families a measure of stability rare in the entertainment world. They can become a one-person tourist destination.