The romantic sway of the fountains of the Bellagio Hotel became cinematic history after Steven Soderbergh lensed his film “Ocean’s Eleven” in front of the dancing water, set to the tune “Clair de Lune” by Claude Debussy. Now a Las Vegas, NV staple, the swirling spray is a must-see for all visitors on the strip.
Variety got the gang back together with set decorator Kristen Toscano Messina and actor Elliott Gould to discuss filming the 2001 heist flick. For the uninitiated, “Oceans Eleven” is a remake of the 1960 film of the same name, and follows Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt) as they put together the perfect crew to walk away with $160 million from the casino. Messina discussed the logistical questions that arose as they mapped out the filming process in collaboration with the famous hotel.
“[The Bellagio was] excited about the prospect of having us there, because it was going to be great PR for them,” Messina said. “But I think it was also difficult to decide how much access they were going to give us and whether they were going to be able to close off parts of the casino, or the restaurants, or their facilities to make it possible to shoot.”
Some parts of the hotel simply could not be replicated easily, Messina explained.
“There were things that would have been just really difficult to reproduce the scale of, and the casino floor is one of those because it’s cavernous. It just goes on and on… We knew we needed to get that, also the exteriors, the fountains.”
Gould, who plays one of the “Eleven” recruited for the job, spoke about Soderbergh and how he landed the role of Reuben Tishkoff: “Stephen is very smart. He’s very bright, brilliant. And he’s honest. I met Steven, just the two of us. We had a little something to eat just the two of us. And then he said, ‘I’ll cast you.’ That was simple as that”
Messina also explained some of the unexpected issues that go along with shooting a heist film.
“Coming up with stacks of money is actually a big challenge that people probably wouldn’t realize. But you can’t just Xerox money and reproduce money — the government frowns upon that. So there’s a lot of parameters to making giant blocks of money and a lot of different techniques for doing it that all kind of come together.”
Watch the full episode of Variety’s “ Locations: Hotels on Screen” above.
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