It's no surprise that Las Vegas is a popular location for movie-makers. The world's premier bling and ker-ching metropolis with its hotel icons, cartoonish landmarks, sci-fi hedonism and franchised greediness is the ideal setting for gangsters, players, hookers and high rollers.
In the past decade, The Cooler, Swingers, Very Bad Things and Scorsese's epic Casino have all been set in Vegas. TV is hip to the bright lights and heartbreak of the city, too. Currently, there's the Sky One series Las Vegas with James Caan, and CSI Vegas, a tense drama of forensics set amid the decadence of the Strip.
Vegas has always encouraged film-makers because movies help perpetuate the city's mythical status and double up as glossy tourism commercials for the town - even if they are as darkly comedic as 1998's Very Bad Things (a Vegas bachelor party with coke and hookers and multiple killings). And the hotels (14 of the biggest 15 hotels on earth are located here, comprising the most casino floor space in the world, taking around $6 billion a year) bend over backwards to help.
But, as with pretty much everything in Vegas, you have to know the right people. Producer Jerry Weintraub discovered this when he worked on 2001's Ocean's Eleven, a Gucci'ed up, George Clooney-starring remake of Sinatra and co's flaccid 1960 original, deciding to make the then brand-new Bellagio hotel the focus of the new movie. "The reason we selected the Bellagio," said Weintraub, "is that it's the prettiest hotel in Las Vegas. In addition, at the time I made our deal, it was owned by Steve Wynn, who is a very dear friend of mine. He trusted me with the reputation of his hotel. Even though we were going to rob it."
Why do directors love Vegas? Easy. The city is built like a film set on a Gulf War budget. Some of it - like the New York, New York hotel, with its mini Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State and Chrysler Buildings - actually looks like a functioning film set.
The city also generates its own movie industry. Vegas's stories and characters - like Barry Levinson's Bugsy (a 1991 bio-pic of maverick gangster Bugsy Segal, who established the first ever casino in Vegas) - come to directors fully formed. Sometimes they are even still alive. In Ocean's Eleven, Andy Garcia's character Terry Benedict says: "If you should be picked up buying a $100,000 sports car in Newport Beach, I'm going to be extremely disappointed." This is a reference to the real-life 1994 kidnapping of Steve Wynn's daughter, Kevyn. Ray Cuddy, one of the kidnappers, was caught in Newport Beach a week after Wynn had paid a sizeable ransom, trying to buy a Ferrari with cash.
This is typical Vegas. It is a barely believable place whose rapid development appears to have been plotted by Hollywood scriptwriters.
It took me a day or so to acclimatise to all this, to fully accept that moral introspection, integrity and informed aesthetic judgment are not qualities that are required on a trip here. Best to ease your mind into a kind of comfortably dumb, infantilised Jackass mode and just enjoy sin city's sensory overload. Then, just as you are starting to come round to the idea of Vegas's Big Gulp lifestyle, the capital of ADD USA goes and changes its mind on you.
According to the local zeitgeist, themed resort hotels are out. Old news. They belong to that period of ancient history - say, five, seven years ago - when Vegas was trying to rebrand itself as a family destination. Despite the thrill rides and family shows, the experiment didn't work. It led to a decline in per-visitor gambling revenues because family men just don't bet as much as single, fortysomething wise guys. And anyway, under 18s are not allowed on the casino floors. They're not even allowed out on the Strip after 9pm unless accompanied by their parents.
So, the theme in Las Vegas now, if there is a "theme" at all, is ... "Vegas". Classic Vegas, in fact. Grown up, sophisticated Vegas with luxury condos and boutique hotel experiences.
On my visit, I stayed at the Wynn, the newest hotel on the Strip, positioned on the site of the old Desert Inn, a Vegas classic itself which played a major role in my favourite Vegas movie, 1985's Lost In America.
The Wynn is some piece of work. From the outside, it looks like it's been designed by the architects from Bladerunner's Tyrell Corporation - a vast, crescent-shaped, glass monolith sitting on the end of the Strip like an onyx chess piece from the 1970s.
But the Wynn is no longer the talk of the town. That honour currently belongs to Las Ramblas, a new development shortly to "break ground" between the Hard Rock hotel-casino and the proposed W hotel, which will take in 4,400 condominium and hotel units in 11 high-rise towers, along with shops and a 48,000-square-foot casino (ie modest by Vegas's gaming behemoth standards).
In a neat life-imitating-art twist, Las Ramblas is being fronted by a man who may very well turn out to be the saviour of old-school, cool Vegas: single, fortysomething wise guy George Clooney, who became enamoured of the city while working on Ocean's Eleven.
OK, so we'll never know just how much Clooney has invested in the $3bn project (although he claims he wants to be a "real investor". "How much did I put in? A lot. A lot more than I expected"), but his roguishly commercial good looks and Rat Pack redux appeal have not been lost on Las Ramblas's marketing team. In advertising material, he wears a tux with an artfully unfurled black tie and holds a martini glass.
Clooney has said that the hotel at Las Ramblas will be smart and sophisticated. "More Tony Bennett than Britney Spears. I want it to be like old Vegas and old Hollywood. It's going to be a classy joint." Brad Pitt, a known architecture fan and an Ocean's Eleven co-star, is being mooted as the possible designer of one Las Ramblas's buildings and there's even talk of a Rat Pack-ish "jackets required" dress code at the hotel - a concept unheard of since Sinatra's day.
Looking around at Vegas's current sartorial landscape, at the baseball caps and luridly coloured sportswear ensembles that fill the tables and man the aisles of slots, it's a concept that might very well be unworkable, too.
Way to go
Getting there
Virgin Atlantic (08705 747747, virginatlantic.com) flies London-Las Vegas from £283 incl taxes.
Where to stay
Wynn Hotel (+702 770 7100, wynnlasvegas.com), room-only rates from $179 (Sun-Thurs).
Further information
visitlasvegas.co.uk, 0870 5238832.
Country code: 001.
Flight time Gatwick-Las Vegas: 11hrs.
Time difference: -8hrs.
£1 = 1.71 dollars.
