‘The Last Showgirl’ Captures A Vegas So Real You Can Almost Taste It

“It’s real,” enthuses director Gia Coppola as we discuss acclaimed drama The Last Showgirl over Zoom. “These are real stories and I’ve experienced my own versions of them. It’s a heartbreaking reality and truth, and a lot of it is a systemic economic circumstance. I think the strength of these women, and getting to know them as people, these actors is really inspiring. I think women in general, their perseverance, is unique.”

The Last Showgirl, written by Kate Gersten, sees Pamela Anderson play Shelly Gardner, a seasoned showgirl facing an uncertain future after her career comes abruptly ends after 30 years. Jamie Lee Curtis plays Annette, Shelly’s waitress best friend and former showgirl, alongside co-stars Dave Bautista, Brenda Song, Kiernan Shipka, and Billie Lourd. The Last Showgirl, whose Hollywood premiere was one of the events canceled due to the devastating LA fires, lands exclusively in theaters on Friday, January 10, 2025, after a limited awards qualifying run in December. The Last Showgirl is not currently available on streaming.

Anderson and Curtis are receiving substantial acclaim for their powerhouse performances and the lightning in a bottle chemistry they share.

“What’s so fun about being a filmmaker is that it’s a collaborative medium. As a director, I just put all these pieces together and let it flourish,” Coppola explains. “I knew. I had this instinctual feeling that this was going to work energetically, and that they were going to be great friends. I’m glad I was right.”

Creating A Las Vegas So Real You Can Almost Taste It

When it comes to the Las Vegas and the filmmaker’s vision is executed with such precision and vitality the audience can almost taste and smell it. All of it makes The Last Showgirl tangible, tactile and almost experiential.

“Las Vegas is such a sensory overload,” she says. “It’s visually littered with lights, and in every little corner, you’re bombarded. Sonically, there’s always music. You go to the casino at six in the morning and there’s dance music playing. It never stops. Even when we were filming down in the basement, there was always music which is really hard for production.”

“Then there are always odors like a weird Febreze smell everywhere, which is nauseating, or food smells. I wish I could make it a scratch and sniff movie because that would be so cool. I always talked about the sensory overload of Las Vegas and the music, and so I’m glad that you feel like you can smell it and taste it. I think those elements are so overbearing when you’re there that you only hope it can kind of transcend and come through.”

Coppola, also known for Palo Alto and helming videos for Carly Rae Jepsen and Halsey, uses Las Vegas’ light, an intoxicating blend of natural and neon, to stunning effect.

“I was a photography major in college, so I feel very sensitive to light. I find that my mood is very much dictated by it,” she explains. “In New York, for me, for some reason I feel like I can’t see properly. I feel very cloudy there, but in Vegas or California, there’s a different awakening for me when I’m there, an inspiration. I would go to Las Vegas during college, when I would drive cross country to drop my car off, and I would stop there. I would take photos and always wonder what life was like and about people’s day to day lives. Once my friend got pick pocketed, and we went to report it to the police, but it led us down the canals of the casino. I saw behind the scenes, the Employee of the Month plaques, and so on.”

“Literature, journalism and documentary and photography were also all part of my mode of inspiration and there’s something about Vegas in the daytime that’s very sobering. I was going off of my own experience of how I wanted to see Vegas and how I have seen it. The circumstance of who these characters are, and following them on their journey, leads you into the daylight of their day to day lives rather than you know when you’re in the casino where you have no concept of time.

‘The Last Showgirl’s Costumes Are The Real Deal

Aside from The Last Showgirl‘s aesthetic elements, Coppola, the granddaughter of director Francis Ford Coppola, went the extra mile to make sure that the costumes that Anderson and her fellow showgirls wore were the real deal. She couldn’t have got more real if she wanted to.

“My mother, Jacqueline Getty, was the costume designer, and was adamant, like, ‘You have to get the real costumes. This movie doesn’t work unless you have them. You can’t replicate that.’ It’s true,” the director recalls. “What they did back then was that they spent millions of dollars on feathers alone. That was what was so beautiful about those shows and that level of production does not exist anymore. We were so fortunate that we got those actual Bob Mackey and Pete Menefee costumes out of the building. They hadn’t left the building in 30 years and they are like museum pieces.”

“Pamela says there are name tags are still written within the seams of the dresses and the pieces. They’re real pieces of art, and they’re heavy. They’re no joke; they’re like armor and not designed to be in a movie. They’re huge, and you’re trying to figure out how to capture the camera within these giant costumes. You can’t mic them anywhere because they’re so bedazzled. It was a real dance within itself, trying to juggle with them, but they are like set pieces in a way.”

‘The Last Showgirl’ Was Filmed In Just 18 Days

All of what the audience sees on screen in The Last Showgirl was filmed in a little over two weeks and for just $2 million. That meant it was all hands on deck at all times. The result is one of the best films of the year and is absolutely worthy of the recognition and acclaim it, and everyone involved, is receiving.

“I’m just that good that I can do it in 18 days. I’m kidding,” Coppola laughs when I ask how she pulled it off. “It was a labor of love and I feel like everyone was in it for the right reasons. We all wore many different hats. Jamie Lee Curtis was moving gear if she had to. She showed up on set on time and would hang out. It was the same with Dave Bautista, too.”

“Everyone was willing to support the movie because we care about this story. Also, because we were shooting on film, we couldn’t waste our time. We had to be stringent about what we were going to capture. Our cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw is a pro. She was doing handheld and it was a collaborative effort. Because we didn’t have any idle time, we couldn’t overthink things.”