
Lost Los Vegas
IS IT JUST A COINCIDENCE that Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls, Mike Figgis’ Leaving Las Vegas, and Martin Scorsese’s Casino, three would-be down-and-dirty 1995 Hollywood tributes to lost Vegas, all went into production at more or less the moment when, led by the refurbished MGM Grand Hotel, America’s fastest-growing metropolis began promoting itself as the new Orlando? Lost Vegas became Vegasland, a wholesome middle-American theme-park resort or, as Nick Tosches calls it in his intro to the recently published, elegiac anthology Literary Las Vegas, “a corporate-run nightmare draped in the cotton candy