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| Vegas stars (l-r) Dennis Quaid, Michael Chiklis |
Thispast spring, after actor Michael Chiklis met with Ralph Lamb, the real-life inspirationfor Chiklis and Dennis Quaid’s new western drama Vegas, “I walked away from lunch, called my wife, and said, ‘Wow!We have stories for years!”
In the mid 2000s, the MGM movie studio had commissioned abig-screen bio based on Lamb, a fourth-generation rancher who served as LasVegas’ Sheriff from 1960 to 1978, the period in which the soon-to-be gamblingand entertainment mecca was rising from empty desert. The studio turned to author and screenwriterNicholas Pileggi, who had already depicted the period in his 1995 film Casino. But even as the writer’s first outline was delivered, everyone involved realizedthat with Lamb’s wealth of amazing stories, his life would make a great ongoingseries instead.
“It’s kind of what I call the low-hanging fruit of SheriffLamb,” says Greg Walker, who, after Pileggi then turned the idea intotelevision, was brought on board as the showrunner of Vegas. “Every story Lambtells, you just realize it’s a no-brainer. They’re filled with such rich detail. With such vivid characters, you can’t help but think about how his worldcould come to life on screen.”
Reading Pileggi’s pilot, “I got to page five, and washooked,” Walker remembers. “As soon asthe DC-6 flew over Lamb’s cattle, I was in. I loved the clash between the modern world and the Old West.” Quaid, too, cites that first script as whatlured him to play the colorful sheriff in this, his first television series. Vegaspits Quaid’s Lamb against Chiklis’ Vincent Savino, a Chicago gangster and savvybusinessman with designs on the budding gaming empire. “It’s a story about how all that powercorrupts on both sides,” says Quaid. “Because the lines in Vegas were hazy back then. It was a different set of rules.”
“In Vegas, youhave two men who are thrust into the spotlight of being kings,” Walkerexplains. “One who wants it, in Savino,and one who’s reluctant, in Lamb.” Withthe face-off between the two men and their allies – including on Lamb’s side,his younger brother Jack (Jason O’Mara) and the town’s Assistant DistrictAttorney Katherine O’Connell (Carrie Ann Moss) – as its underlying construct,“we created a hybrid procedural and character-based drama,” Walker says. “The show has the adrenaline and satisfactionof solving a mystery, but at the same time, there are multiple characters’stories getting more and more complicated, with greed, envy and desire whirlingaround this world of crime.”
With Vegas’ 1960setting, Lamb and his deputies won’t be enforcing the law using fingerprints orcomputers or cell phones like in that other Vegas-set mystery, CSI. “He is also not a guy who’s going to put a gun in people’s faces week toweek,” Walker says. “He’s going to solve things with his own hands,man-to-man.” That type of character, theshowrunner says, “is something Dennis is uniquely equipped to play. There are very few men who have that kind ofstillness, that raw, masculine power. Wejust don’t build them like that anymore.”
Vegas’ pilot wasshot, coincidentally, in the small town of Las Vegas, NM, where an oldcommercial row, last updated in the early 20th Century, could begussied up with props and CGI neon to look like the Fremont Street of ‘60s SinCity; the series will build it all from the ground up in Santa Clarita,CA. Undoubtedly, today’s audience willbe paying close attention to all that period detail, because we’re so intriguedby the town’s formative years.
“We’re all interested in how Vegas became Vegas. Today it’s a fantasy world where you can getanything you want, and to watch how that was made is very captivating,” Walkernotes. Like Lamb, the town itself is anatural for a Hollywood treatment, its story comprising two cinematic archetypes,the cowboy and the mobster. “These aretwo worlds that we’re very familiar with, but we haven’t ever seen themtogether. When they collide, there’ssomething very electric.”
VegasPremieres Tuesday, September 2510 PM Eastern / 9 CentralCBS
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