VIVA Las Vegas

DEREK C. BLASBERG talks to filmmaker GIA COPPOLA and the one and only PAMELA ANDERSON about how destiny (and Coppola's determination) brought them together for their new movie, THE LAST SHOWGIRL

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I've never been married, but one time I was the groom in a Las Vegas wedding-themed photo shoot. Filmmaker Gia Coppola was the bride. We were shooting a fashion story for the May 2012 issue of this very magazine. I was on set as the stylist, but when the Elvis impersonator we'd hired went AWOL, I stepped into the King's white polyester bell-bottoms to save the day. Thankyou. Thankyouverymuch.

No, this month's column isn't about how I'm a fashion hero. (But it could be, dammit!) It's about the revelation that is The Last Showgirl, Coppola's new film set in Sin City and starring Pamela Anderson as an aging dancer whose feathered, bedazzled career comes to an abrupt end. It's a stark, moving performance that has earned Anderson a Golden Globe nomination, along with something even more elusive: critical acclaim for a serious role.

In December, nearly 13 years to the day from our faux nuptials, I meet Coppola and Anderson at the Hotel Chelsea in New York. In person, Anderson's beauty is electrifying. It was big news in September 2023 when Anderson arrived at the Isabel Marant show in Paris without a stitch of makeup, marking the unofficial dawn of her barefaced era. "I'm not trying to be the prettiest girl in the room," she said then. "I feel like it's just freedom."

Coppola's own connection to Vegas is deeply personal. Her grandfather Francis Ford Coppola, the Oscar-winning director, would go there for inspiration and take her along. "When I was young, he brought me because it's a great place to write," she told me back in 2012. "It's open 24 hours, you can get a burger whenever you want it, and, since everything is inside in Las Vegas, you never know what time it is. You don't feel pressure to do something before the sun sets."