Set decorator Kristen Toscano Messina and actor Elliott Gould sat down with Variety to discuss filming "Ocean's Eleven" at the iconic Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, NV, where part of the 2001 heist comedy takes place.
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00:00 I have sentiment about our picture and the relationships in the picture.
00:06 Brad, Matt, Don Cheadle is fabulous.
00:10 Casey Affleck, George Clooney, come on, and Julia Roberts.
00:14 She's a doll.
00:16 Now they tell me that I paid my debt to society.
00:19 Funny I never got a check.
00:21 So it was going to be challenging.
00:28 We knew to shoot in a working casino and hotel.
00:31 They don't have lulls in their business as far as I know, or very little.
00:36 They're busy all the time.
00:37 And obviously there's a lot of money exchanging hands there.
00:40 And so I think they were excited about the prospect of having us there
00:45 because it was going to be great PR for them.
00:49 But I think it was also difficult to decide how much access they were going
00:54 to give us and whether they were going to be able to close off
00:56 parts of the casino or the restaurants or their facilities
01:01 to make it possible to shoot.
01:03 In the end, when we did shoot there, I think that it was really
01:06 exciting for their guests.
01:07 We always had a crowd of people around.
01:09 And so I think it kind of added to some of the fun of being there
01:13 for the bystanders.
01:15 Sometimes we just get surprised by how they decide to shoot something.
01:18 Or what shows up on film is maybe not always the way you
01:21 planned for them to shoot it.
01:23 So you try to be prepared, but we don't always know.
01:27 I think we try to make it look great in real life and imagine that,
01:33 but don't always know exactly what they're going to shoot.
01:37 In terms of locations that we were able to shoot at there,
01:40 there were things that would have been just really difficult
01:43 to reproduce the scale of.
01:45 And the casino floor is one of those because it's cavernous.
01:48 It just goes on and on.
01:50 So that would have been difficult to recreate.
01:51 So we knew we needed to get that.
01:53 Also the exteriors, the fountains.
01:56 So we knew we had to shoot that.
01:57 There were things that we knew up front we would never be able to shoot in,
02:01 like their money counting room or their safe or vault.
02:04 They were great about letting us have access to see
02:07 what the reality looked like.
02:08 They let us go down into the inner hallways.
02:11 They let us see their money counting room,
02:13 which I think we were maybe the first people to ever have access
02:17 to something like that.
02:18 There was a lot of security involved.
02:20 Don't believe we ever saw the actual vault.
02:23 Quite sure it was not as interesting as the one that we built.
02:26 You know, it was really fun doing the money counting room
02:29 and it was really fun doing the vault,
02:32 just because we did get to...
02:34 Well, there's a lot of manufacturing of things
02:36 and there's a lot of problem solving that goes into doing that
02:39 because in the case of the vault,
02:41 that's really making it up from our imagination.
02:44 And, you know, there was a lot of action that needed to take place in there.
02:46 So there were a lot of specifics for that.
02:48 And you just want it to look interesting.
02:49 And in real life, it probably doesn't.
02:51 Coming up with stacks of money is actually a big challenge
02:56 that people probably wouldn't realize,
02:58 but you can't just Xerox money and reproduce money.
03:01 The government frowns upon that.
03:04 So there's a lot of parameters to making giant blocks of money
03:07 and a lot of different techniques for doing it
03:10 that all kind of come together.
03:11 And then the money counting rooms,
03:12 we did get to see the money counting rooms
03:15 where everything is made out of plexiglass and lucite
03:19 because you can't be able to stash money under the table.
03:23 And so we had to build all of that and create all of that.
03:26 So that was kind of just something different that I hadn't done before.
03:29 We're just supposed to walk out of there
03:31 with $150 million in cash on us without getting stopped?
03:35 Yeah.
03:41 You know, Stephen's amazing to work with,
03:44 and he's a great director for the creatives and the design department
03:49 because he really kind of is very collaborative
03:53 and lets us kind of have an idea and run with it.
03:56 So that, you know, makes it very satisfying to work with him.
03:59 Oh, you know, my favorite scene was probably
04:01 when they're at Ruben Tishkoff's house
04:03 and all kind of planning early on in the film.
04:06 So that was a really fun set to do.
04:08 Oh, Stephen is very smart.
04:11 He's very bright, brilliant,
04:16 and he's honest.
04:19 I met Stephen, just the two of us.
04:21 We had a little something to eat, just the two of us.
04:24 And then he said, "I'll cast you."
04:28 That was as simple as that.
04:29 For us to cast me as Ruben,
04:34 and I remember Akim Tomaroff from the original.
04:37 I know some of his career.
04:39 He was, anything he did was amazing.
04:44 So Akim Tomaroff created the role that I play,
04:48 and then they, we cast me and gave me
04:53 the relationship of that guy with all of the fellas.
04:58 What, did you guys get a group rate or something?
05:00 It was fun making those movies.
05:03 The cast and crew all got along really great.
05:05 There was a real sense of camaraderie amongst the cast, clearly,
05:08 and there were a lot of dinners and drinks
05:12 after the filming of the day,
05:15 and a lot of times the crew would be invited to those things as well,
05:18 which is not always the case, so it was fun.
05:21 It was really kind of fun and exciting to shoot in the Atrium Garden
05:26 because they have a massive floral department at the Bellagio,
05:30 and they have a huge full-time staff.
05:33 They import thousands, or probably hundreds of thousands of dollars
05:37 worth of flowers regularly,
05:39 and they're constantly changing it with the seasons.
05:41 I think it's very different to work in a place than to visit a place,
05:46 and sometimes I'm surprised by that because, of course,
05:49 I have an idea of what it would be like to work in Las Vegas,
05:53 but in reality, there are a lot of people that are working there and living there,
05:57 so there's a lot more depth to it than what you would see.
06:01 Vegas is an amazing place,
06:04 and the Bellagio, I like the way that sounds,
06:08 but also the Bellagio with the music at the end moves me now.
06:14 [Music]
06:21 [Music]
06:24 [Music]
06:27 [Music]
06:30 [Music]