I’ve long maintained that one should always take the museum tour. For many of us, to truly absorb the culture-rich offerings of an exhibit, a bit of thoughtful handholding is the key to unlocking its depths. The Neon Museum, famous for its dazzling expanse of larger-than-life historic neon tours, understands this. It has revealed its newest guided experience, the Viva Las Vegas Movies Tour, created by the institution’s own in-house cineaste. And anyone with even a passing interest in the mythmaking machine that is cinema will walk away hooked.
The 45-minute tour is anchored by the research of Johann Rucker, the museum’s senior manager of research and scholarships. For Rucker, a UNLV film program graduate, the project carried personal weight. A former docent himself, Rucker quickly became the museum’s defacto movie correspondent.
“I’d constantly get asked movie questions … I was just getting sent people constantly,” he says. “That pet fascination and that curiosity that our visitors might have had at that time really turned into a pretty big part of our programming here, which I’m really proud of.”
Finding and mapping the film narratives embedded throughout the Neon Boneyard was no small feat. And while he expected an avalanche of titles, Rucker and his team were able to scale the list down to 50 films. His original tour draft ballooned to 22 pages before training supervisor Matt Martello distilled it into an elegant guide for the docents.
“He gets it down into bullet points, core narratives, key facts … so that they can also then personalize it on their own and find their own connections with it,” Rucker says. “That’s something that I think is true for every one of our tours at the museum, no two visits are the same. Depending on what guide you get, you get a different perspective, different sense of humor, presentation style.”
You’ll learn about films foundational to Las Vegas’s cinematic reputation like Martin Scorsese’s Casino, alongside lesser-known gems like Cool World and the cult-classic erotica drama Showgirls. But as Rucker puts it, “It’s not just the independent films or the stuff you’ve never heard … but it’s also not just the blockbusters, and it’s also not just the classics.”
For true film buffs, the tour dives head-first into the deep cuts.
“You’ve got really in-the-weeds sort of stuff that I’m very proud of putting in there,” Rucker says. “Anything from Boulder Dam, 1936, directed by Frank McDonald. You’ve got Saboteur, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, the Joe Louis Story [by] Robert Gordon and a whole bunch of nerdy stuff that you might not immediately think, ‘Oh, that’s Las Vegas.’”
You’ll leave with small revelations tied to motion pictures your friends have never even heard of. You’ll snap photos of signage from Steiner’s Cleaners, whose claim to fame was handling the costumes for Casino and Fear and Loathing. You’ll even learn about the very first film screened at El Portal Theatre on Fremont Street in 1928. The tour is a fount of information, poured out by all-knowing docents who leave ample time for questions and curiosity.
“Growing up here as a cinephile, you think of other cities as having these rich cinematic lineages. Las Vegas fully deserves to be on that list. The stories that filmmakers like your Scorseses and your Francis Ford Coppolas, your Sofia Coppolas ... find within the city are singular,” says Rucker. “Las Vegas is a place of freedom. It’s a place of liberation, but it’s also a place of bright designs and isolation. Every filmmaker that makes a movie here has a very particular way to use the city. And I think that is one of the strengths that comes across through the film tour.”
VIVA LAS VEGAS MOVIES TOUR Daily, 6:30 p.m., $35+. Neon Museum, neonmuseum.org.
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