Los Angeles Times - June 18, 2008

But some events created by locals that are happening now are also great fun for outsiders. I have been covering the CineVegas film festival, which is owned by Danny and Robin Greenspun. This is the same family that owns Las Vegas Weekly, where I am on staff. In fact, today one of the films showing at the festival is a documentary on family patriarch Hank Greenspun, whose life, when not creating a media and real estate empire in Vegas, found him constantly in the midst of the national zeitgeist, including important cameos in the Zionist movement, fighting McCarthyism and even Watergate.

Anyway, CineVegas has achieved a lot of success because the Greenspun family has doggedly backed a high-end ambitious film festival in this town, where no one thought a film festival could break through the din of live entertainment in Vegas. Now, after a decade of support, CineVegas artistic advisory board chair Dennis Hopper told me Sunday, the status of CineVegas is finally reaching parity with the ambition the festival has always shown. "The great thing right now is that we are finally getting sponsors and it is beginning to pay for itself and the theaters are packed," Hopper said. "But, really, it took Danny and Robin Greenspun to really believe in this and support this and work hard on this for years to get us to this level."

Another special event in a very different sense also took place this weekend: the Golden Rainbow's 22nd Annual Ribbon of Life benefit variety performance. This year the rotating benefit was hosted at a Harrah's property, Paris. Entertainers make far less than most people realize, and Golden Rainbow was started by Strip performers in the '80s to help peers living with HIV/AIDS.

From the beginning, Golden Rainbow worked at being an intensely local charity. The mission statement printed on each Ribbon of Life ticket: "Golden Rainbow provides housing and direct financial assistance to men and women and children living with HIV/AIDS in Southern Nevada."

This year, along with the show and the silent auction, organizers told me Golden Rainbow raised a record $300,000.

Next year, if you are in Vegas around Father's Day, do not miss the Ribbon of Life show. Though it is now a tradition that has outlasted most casinos on the Strip, it is a show I hadn't gone to until now. I will never miss this event again.

The Ribbon of Life production offers a rare collaboration between performers, choreographers and costume designers from almost every major show on the Strip. And the performance is special because of all the creative working together for this annual benefit of a mere two performances (Saturday and Sunday). One quirk of the benefit is that the shows take place in the afternoon so that everyone can be at their evening performances later. And because the show took place during the day, the audience had the sort of family component you rarely see in a Vegas showroom, with lots of kids.

The show was all pleasure. Performers in Vegas shows often have more talent than a successful production in this town allows them to display. So Ribbon of Life's variety skits are a sort of creative liberation for a lot of performers to go all out. As a result, these skits, while containing many elements familiar to Strip entertainment, were far different from what these performers usually do. Some material, like a skit debating the Iraq war, offered dialog too raw in its politics for tourists. Another routine choreographed to "Eleanor Rigby" captured the song's loneliness and darkness in ways different from the way, say, Cirque's Love treats the same song.

Yet, Ribbon of Live was not artsy and envelope-pushing in the extreme. This was mostly family entertainment. In fact, there were cute touches that no Strip production would offer, such as a Muppet number that featured children in Muppet costumes being guided and/or carried by professional dancers (probably mom or dad). Nothing that innocent and adorable would be in an official Strip show. There were also performers of different ages, sizes and shapes than you normally see on the Strip. But even the elderly showgirls were still capable hoofers. Imagine an amateur variety show put together for charity by world-class entertainers and you get the unique vibe of Ribbon of Life.

My favorite moment was provided by the present and former cast members of "Mamma Mia," called "You Gotta Get a Cirque Show." In the skit (pictured above), the cast members ponder their future in the face of plans to close "Mamma Mia." They realize this means adapting to a Strip gone Cirque. The Canadian circus troupe currently has five permanent shows on the Strip, and Criss Angel is set to open at Luxor in September, Cirque's next show on the Strip. So, there were plenty of Cirque performers among the 300 onstage volunteer entertainers who participated in Ribbon of Life this year. The Cirque performers actually seemed to be laughing harder than anyone as the skit mocked their supremacy and the envy that generates on the Strip. While the number is funny, there is nothing mean-spirited about this act, more rueful.

Ribbon of Life's longevity has made this performance a beloved Vegas tradition. But as one of the organizers of the benefit, Thomas Bruny (who by day is director of marketing at Fremont Street Experience) reminded me, "I love doing this show. But when we started doing this, I would have been crushed to know 22 years later, we would still be doing it. There is an entire new generation at risk. So, while I love this show, each year I think about more people who aren't here anymore."

(Photo by Sarah Gerke)

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