Transcript of interview with Roger Thomas by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White, August 31, 2016

i AN INTERVIEW WITH ROGER THOMAS An Oral History Conducted by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White The Building Las Vegas Oral History Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ©The Building Las Vegas Oral History Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2016 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Editor: Stefani Evans Transcribers: Kristin Hicks, Frances Smith Interviewers: Stefani Evans, Claytee D. White Project Manager: Stefani Evans iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of the UNLV University Libraries. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank the University for the support given that allowed an idea and the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University Nevada, Las Vegas iv PREFACE As he reveals in this oral history, Roger Thomas is, among many other things, a son, a father, a brother, a husband, a student, an artist, a visionary, and a philanthropist. As the second son of Peggy and E. Parry Thomas’s five children, Roger was raised a Mormon child of privilege and civic responsibility. The banking family summered in Newport Beach, wintered in Sun Valley, and taught their children by words and deeds that it is not up for debate if you will be involved in your community; the only question is how you will apply your talents and resources to benefit your community. Roger absorbed the lessons well. As a child who struggled in school but excelled in art, he attended his last two years of high school at Interlochen Arts Academy, graduating in 1969, finally finding himself “in an v environment where what I did had currency.” From there he earned his BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Studio Degree from Tufts University before returning to Las Vegas and eventually joining Steve Wynn’s team in 1981. As Executive Vice President of Design for Wynn Design & Development, he is the man in whom Steve Wynn places his trust to make real at each Wynn property the Wynn design philosophy: aim for a constituency of highly sophisticated, well-traveled, very educated people and give them a reality, a now, that is so fetching, so alluring they wish to be no place else. As he was mentored by his father and Steve Wynn, he too is mentoring those who will follow him. At Wynn, the next generation will carry forward the Wynn idea of evoca-texture, of creating “moments of experiential emotion that result in a memory so captivating and so unique that if you want to repeat that you have to come back.” At home, he collaborates with his daughter on a children’s book that has the potential to become a series; she is the illustrator, while he provides the words. Roger Thomas sat for this interview five days after his father, E. Parry Thomas, passed away in Idaho. Instead of postponing the interview to a more convenient time, Roger kept the appointment and explained, “This is for UNLV. If I’d cancelled my father would have killed me.” vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Roger Thomas August 31, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White Preface…………………………………………………………………………………….……..iv Discusses Las Vegas childhood as second son of Peggy and E. Parry Thomas; recalls his attendance at West Charleston Elementary School, Hyde Park Junior High School, and Ed W. Clark High School until transferring to Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, graduating from there in 1969, and matriculating to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Tufts University, working summers in high school and college for the Yates-Silverman interior design firm………….……………………………………………………………….………………….1–6 Tells of partnering in design with Jane Radoff in 1981, of his family’s “interlocked” relationship with Steve Wynn, and of how he came to work for Wynn; speaks to how Wynn views all people as individuals independent of race, creed, color, or sexual orientation and to Wynn’s philosophy of emotive design and how it played out at Bellagio……………....................……………….7–18 Recalls Wynn selling Bellagio and creating at Wynn Las Vegas and Encore “something no one's ever seen before,” a unique Wynn style, which developed out of thirty years of creative partnership between Steve Wynn, DeRuyter Butler, and Roger Thomas...………………………..…….18–28 On remodeling his own creations, he ruminates that good design—classic proportion, classic detailing, and symmetricality—is timeless no matter how many times we resurface, recolor, and reimagine it if we do it intelligently, responsibly with an eye to sustainability. Discusses the evoca-texture design of reinventing Chinoiserie for the twenty-first century at Wynn Palace in Cotai and returning Chinese art treasures to their native country to honor China…………………..….29–39 Speaks of mentoring his heir apparent at Wynn Resorts as his father mentored Steve Wynn and others and to the importance of developing mentee-mentor relationships that carry legacies forward; also shares plans for twenty-one licensed collections of the Roger Thomas Collection lines of indoor furniture and outdoor furniture, carpeting, wall covering, lighting, hardware, passamenterie, and jewelry.……………………………………………………………....….39–47 Talks about supporting the arts in Las Vegas and at UNLV; reveals his daughter’s talent as an illustrator and shares their collaboration on a children’s book, and offers his thoughts on other people who should offer oral histories for Building Las Vegas……………….………....….47–58 vii 1 Good afternoon. It is August 31st, 2016. Stefani Evans and Claytee White are in Roger Thomas' exquisite office in Las Vegas. Mr. Thomas, if you would, please pronounce and spell your first and last names. My name is Roger Thomas; R-O-G-E-R, T-H-O-M-A-S. And my middle name is Parry, P-A-R-R-Y, which is the same name my father was known by. Why don't you tell us about your early life? And I believe that name plays a part in that. It does. I was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1951, the second child of E. Parry and Peggy Thomas. My father shortly after that was sent by Walter Cosgriff of the Continental Bank and Trust of Salt Lake City to Las Vegas to see about the problem of the Bank of Las Vegas. When he arrived he noticed that it wasn't so much a problem as an opportunity. He convinced the Continental Bank and Trust, one of the stockholders, as well as Nate Mack, who was currently chairman of the board of the Bank of Las Vegas, that they had an opportunity to become the primary lenders to the gaming industry in Nevada. My father was assigned the task of converting the Bank of Las Vegas to do that. He told my mother that the family was going to move to Las Vegas for three years. That was in 1954. We have never left. Three years later, he gave my mother a rather, for them, extravagant gift at Christmas—the only thing my father ever borrowed money to buy—it was a coffee diamond cocktail ring, with which he announced she wasn't going anywhere. Part of the family lore. The mother of my daughter wears that diamond today. So I grew up in Las Vegas. We started life on Ellen Way in central Las Vegas. But my mother is a lover of horses and wanted to live in the country. So we moved all the way out to the edge of the desert at the corner of Alta Drive and Rancho Road; they were both dirt roads at the time. I remember them being paved. We lived across the street from the Kaltenborn family and 2 they had not only stables but a racetrack. We began our country life. When you left our small neighborhood on that corner and Rancho Circle, you rode out into the desert until...as far as you wanted to ride out into the desert. You could ride over the mountains if you so desired without ever hitting civilization. There was a little bit of house development right along the Charleston corridor, a tiny bit in Twin Lakes, a little bit on Rancho Road, but not so much. We were truly out in the country. I attended West Charleston Elementary School, no longer called that; it's now Howard Wasden [Elementary School]. I went to Hyde Park Junior High School and then was one of the inaugural class to go to Ed W. Clark High School. I was one of five children. There are four boys and a youngest girl. I am the number-two position, and I fulfilled the role of the troublemaker. I was very difficult as a child. I was always contrary. We learned later that I had some severe learning disabilities, for which I will always be grateful because they gave me my talents as well. And so I was not only a difficult child but [also] a difficult student. I had some identity crises going on as well and acted out in various ways, which got me a ticket to be the only child in my family to attend a boarding school, fortunately. The week we decided that Roger needed to go out of state—actually that was suggested by one of the more highly placed judges in Clark County—Interlochen Arts Academy, a really extraordinary educational experience, was on the cover of Life Magazine. I wrote an application that day, enthusiastically including my drawings. I had always been very active in art and planned to be an artist when I grew up. I was accepted at Interlochen and was there within a month and it was one of the greatest experiences of my developing life. Interlochen is a school where you major in music, drama, dance, or the visual arts. I went as a harpsichord major, but I went through the art department on the way to the music 3 department and never got to the music department. The art department was so captivating in terms of just its physical plant—a huge ceramics department, a beautifully equipped sculpture department, enormous painting department with all of the right equipment. I was so enchanted, I never got to the music department and I can't read music today. I probably could if I tried hard. I graduated from Interlochen in 1969 pretty much at the top of my class. I finally found myself in an environment where what I did had currency, and I thrived. I went from there to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston with a small segue to Boston University, which had actually asked for my attendance. I was guaranteed advanced placement and a lot of perks to go to Boston University. While I found the university itself exciting, the art department was somewhat provincial compared to my experience in the Northern Michigan town of Interlochen, which was highly advanced, and I didn't fit the art department. I transferred to the Museum School and I was admitted there as a second semester junior at the ripe old age of seventeen. I stayed at the Museum School for four years. The School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston is the art department for Tufts University. I matriculated at Tufts as well, and I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with both a Studio Degree from the Museum School and my degree, which had a strong art history component, from Tufts University. What to do with Roger after he graduates from art school in a banking family? CLAYTEE: So before you do that, how did you get to the harpsichord? How did I get to a harpsichord? Good question. Well, I told you I was the contrarian in the family. There wasn't a harpsichord in Las Vegas. Exactly. But there were pianos and I had been a student of piano and not a very good student of piano. One of my learning disabilities was dyslexia, and highly dyslexic people either have a natural 4 ability to play a musical instrument or a natural ability to not play. To never play one. Really they should not. But I loved piano music, and so I forced myself to learn piano. It was very, very difficult for me. I was not a gifted piano player. But in learning about piano I learned about the early historical origins of piano and that was the harpsichord, and I fell in love with the harpsichord and vowed to play one. That would be my life's profession if I could ever get near enough to one. Interlochen had two. And so I declared myself a harpsichord major. That lasted two weeks. Okay, good. I was a harpsichord major for two weeks. I played one, but I never really played one. So that explains the harpsichord. So what to do with the art student? With Roger, yes. During my years of high school and college, it was a family policy that as soon as you got a driver's license you got a job during the summers. It was not optional. My very first summer job was at the Union Bank in California. My family history is that while we grew up in Las Vegas, we had a summer home in Newport Beach, [California]. We were there because the Mack family, Jerry Mack being my father's business partner in all things—banking, real estate, anything they did—the Mack family were a Los Angeles family with deep Las Vegas roots and had had a presence in Newport for decades before we also took a presence there. My teen years were growing up in Southern California during the summers. We also had a winter home in Sun Valley, Idaho. Sports played a big part in our family, but not the sports most families have. We were not 5 team players. We were individual sportsmen. So we skied. We water skied. We swam. We body surfed. I, at one point early in my career, took up high diving. So we did things that you did in a solo position, not as a group, and we did them well. I've always said there is no dysfunction in my family at all; we function individually very well. During my high school and college years, my second job was for Yates-Silverman, who was not only the interior design firm in Los Angeles that was creating the interiors for many of the Valley Bank branches that were then flourishing—Valley Bank being the inheritor of Bank of Las Vegas; that was the new name of the larger statewide bank—they also had a long history of doing many of the hotel/casinos in Las Vegas headed by Bill Yates and Charles Silverman. They were the inheritors of a very old and important firm in the history of Las Vegas architecture and design called Parvin Dorman. Parvin Dorman was a Los Angeles company, one of the very first interior design companies that did hotels in Las Vegas. They did the Fremont and the Mint and the Sahara and the Thunderbird and on and on. I mean, they were the major interior design firm called in to do any Las Vegas project. They understood the showmanship required in the public areas and they understood the durability and economic aspects required for guest accommodations. They did them well. They did them with great style. I learned my craft by working for them every summer of my education and I learned it well enough that when I graduated from high school, the Valley Bank Plaza, which is now the Bank of America Building at the corner of Fourth and Bridger, was being built. It was an enormous development project for Las Vegas that Irwin Molasky was building and Valley Bank of Nevada was, of course, funding, financing and becoming the most prime tenant, taking the first three floors. So occupying the first three floors of a large high-rise building in Las Vegas had not been done by a company yet. My father realized that he needed someone to watch the 6 design firm. Jerry Mack was a great client to design firms, very active, very intelligent about the profession. He spoke the vocabulary. He was creative and had great ideas. But Jerry, too, was a little busy. So I came to Las Vegas to look over the family interests. I had kind of a stipend. I was still living at home. I understood the business and I understood the people who were actually performing the work because Yates-Silverman was designing the first three floors for Valley Bank. And I was hired to be the liaison. I also started a design firm with a former supervisor of mine at Yates-Silverman named Sally Miller who had decided she wanted to leave Yates-Silverman and start her own firm. So we started a design firm in 1973 after my graduation named Miller Thomas. Valley Bank was the kind of bread-and-butter client that allowed us to get our doors open and then we had various other projects, none of which are notable enough for my biography. [Laughing] Although I do want to mention that I had a first residential client in Las Vegas for which I am still grateful, and that was Barbara Greenspun. And my very first commercial client in Las Vegas, other than Valley Bank, was Done Fine and the D. Fine men's stores. The first store design I ever did was the D. Fine store in Caesars Palace. Its bones are still there. I can still find my DNA in that store. Oh, that's amazing. They need a redo. So as years developed, a couple of years on, Sally and I were asked to open the Las Vegas branch of Yates-Silverman. They needed to expand. They needed a local branch. They were doing an awful lot of work in Las Vegas and not only hotel work. They were doing residential work for hotel owners. They were doing ancillary business jobs for people in the gaming industry mostly or the financial industry. We had a fairly fine name as financial 7 designers. So Sally and I headed that office. Sally left that partnership about two years later at Yates-Silverman. It was then in that part of my career when Charles Silverman introduced me to a friend of his, the wife of the purchasing director at Caesars Palace who in those days was William Radoff, and I was introduced to Jane Radoff, kind of, as Charles called her, "an artsy gal who you might get along with." Jane and I got along famously and became design partners for over two decades. Not only created all of our financial work together—I was the director, but Jane was very much an important part of the creative direction of all of our projects. I did that until 1981. I married along the way once to Marilyn Harris Hite with whom I had attended West Charleston Elementary School in the third and fourth grades. Her family moved to Prescott when she was this the fifth grade. I believe that's correct. Then she had moved back to town just about the time I moved back to town. Her family were a trust client at Valley Bank and old friends of the family. Her family originated in Ogden, Utah, as did my father's family. Her mother and my father grew up together. We had old family ties. Marilyn and I married in 1976 and we divorced in 1978, no children. During the time I was married to Marilyn, we were supporters of Nevada Ballet Theatre in the very early years with Vassili Sulich as the creative director and Nancy Houssels doing everything else. Nancy to this day is one of my very closest friends and one of the people I most admire in our community. So I was asked to be on the board of Nevada Dance Theatre. My wife among other accomplishments was an active member in her family foundation and her family foundation was a supporter of ballet both in Utah and in Las Vegas. Her family was also one of the most important cultural art supporters in the community of San Francisco. Her aunt was Phyllis Wattis, whose name is on nearly every cultural institution in the Bay Area, one of the 8 great, great art supporters. Also in her family is the Kimball family of Utah and their name is on every institution that matters there. So she had a great tradition of that. I served. She did not want to serve on the board, but she loved the idea that I did. So I served on the board of Nevada Dance Theatre. One of my co-board members was Elaine Wynn. I had met Steve and Elaine Wynn when I was thirteen and my father introduced us. My father was Steve's mentor and sort of became his father. Steve very much—and Elaine very much—folded into our family. We've always thought of Steve as an older brother. Steve has always thought of himself as an older brother. And I've always thought of Elaine as an older sister, but she doesn't like being called an older anything. So we just call each other brother and sister, practically. We acknowledge that we're family. Every year Nancy and Kell Houssels, at their beautiful Rancho Circle home, hosted a board directors' dinner. It was something we all looked forward to every year. It was a close-knit community of supporters of the ballet and really composed of some of the most important business people in Las Vegas. I represented not only the Harris-Wattis Foundation, but the Thomas family philanthropic efforts in the ballet. Other members of the family were becoming involved in philanthropy with other areas, Opportunity Village and the University and other areas. But I always took the arts position for the family. At that dinner Steve said, "What are you doing, kid?" I told him a couple of things I was working on, the Lady Luck Hotel and Casino being one of them. Andy and Susan Tompkins were at the same dinner. They were also on the board and great supporters and dear friends. Steve said, "Well, I'm about to break ground on the most exciting project ever built in Las Vegas and I could use some more design talent. Want to come and work for me?" I said, "Are you serious?" He said, "I'm very serious. You can start tomorrow. Come to my office and we'll talk 9 salary." He said, "What are you making now?" And I told him. And he said, "Well, I can do better than that." So the next day...I was at that time in negotiation with Charles Silverman about buying half of the stock in the Yates-Silverman Company and becoming a partner or at least a third. Bill Yates was very old and wanted to sell his portion of the company and I was the obvious choice. So I was in stock negotiations when this proposal came through. And I thought that night about how to answer the question, and I was torn because honor told me that I really needed to honor the negotiations I was in the middle of, but my heart told me that I would regret not finding out what working with Steve would be like. I had known Steve long enough to know that he was exciting, visionary, saw the future of Las Vegas more clearly than any other individual in Las Vegas that I knew, had goals that were so lofty that they were the same ones I dared had, dreams that were like my dreams. And so I talked to my dad about it and he said, "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Business deals come and go. Charles and Bill will understand that. That won't be a problem. Will they be disappointed? Probably. But they'll get over it. They're businessmen. This is about your life and your future. And if this is part of your dream and you want to see if it's part of your dream, go for it." Smart man. So I called Charles and said, "Thank you very much for the opportunity. I'm honored, but must decline." And I called Steve and said, "I'm yours." That was in 1981 and I've had the same job ever since, although the title has changed. And, thank God, so has the salary. [Laughing] But Steve and I have been partners, really, in design ever since then. Working with Steve on design is not like being an employee. It's very much being a 10 partner at the table. He always listened to my voice. He always allowed me to do the concepts and present first and then talk about them. He had the power of thumbs up and thumbs down. I'm at about ninety-six percent thumbs up. So I think I'm very lucky. But he also has the genius to make everybody who works with him better than they think they can be. He's demanding. His fame for being demanding seems to some people as being a difficulty; to me it only seems like being one of the greatest assets that I have ever been affiliated with in a long career because I was able to attain heights, create things that I didn't know were in me simply because they were demanded. So I rose to the demand and I was capable of that. So it was a great, great plus. So do you think it's different with men, the way men see Steve Wynn and the way other people see Steve Wynn? I guess I mean women. Are you talking about a gender difference? Yes, yes. Is that possible? No. I think there's an individual difference in the way you see Steve Wynn. I know Jane Radoff saw Steve Wynn in the same way that I saw him, as demanding and wanting to feed that demand, as a woman. I know that Elaine Wynn often talks about reaching heights with Steve in partnership with Steve that she's not sure she could have done by herself. She's always credited Steve as being an instigator of that. We are a company that has always, always had women in primary areas of responsibility, always, always, not just recently, not in the last ten years or twenty years, but for the last thirty years there have always been women in great areas of responsibility, and they all see Steve the same way. This is great because everybody we've interviewed—but they've been all men—have said exactly or similar things to what you are saying now. So my thoughts about Steve Wynn are up there someplace. 11 Well, he is the...I think that visionary businessmen are that way not only because they see the future of their particular industry, but they also see the future of civilization. Steve has always been someone who has recognized that individuals are always judged as individuals. Race, creed, color, sexual orientation, it doesn't matter to him. It has never mattered to him. It has never mattered to him. I don't know if you know that Steve, because of a prompting I gave him, which was prompted by my husband to me, was the first Nevada gaming company to offer full benefits to same sex partners of employees, the very first. When did he do that? It was 2000; it was the very first Christmas party for Wynn Resorts. We were a rather small group—I'm employee number nineteen—and we could get our arms around everybody in one room at that time. It was a really small group. But offering same sex partners all benefits– Yes. My husband, Arthur Libra, had the idea. I brushed it with Steve. I told him I thought it was a good idea, because in our industry with entertainment and hotels, there are so many gay men and women involved in it that we would have the pick of the litter; these are also some of the most talented people in the industry, because for some reason typically gay individuals often have extraordinary talents. He said, "Well, that's a nice secondary benefit, but I'm going to do it because it's right. I didn't realize that I needed to do it. We're going to do it tomorrow." So he just didn't know that he hadn't already done that. He assumed that that kind of acceptance and support was due all humans and should be part of everything that he's involved in or anyone else is involved in. He didn't know that he hadn't done it because it seemed such a natural concept to him. So he has always been a judge of individuals. He's also an individual who has always valued his handshake and his word, just as my 12 father did and as I learned from my father. That's why I was so torn about my direction of employment. I felt my word had been given. "Yes, I'm interested in buying half the stock in the company." And I didn't know that I could get out of that with honor, and I could because it was a business deal and I had had a different business proposition. So the rest is, as they say, history. But one of the other reasons I went to work for Steve is very early, long before I went to work with Steve, we had conversations as family members. We were always together for Christmases and for Mother's Day and for other events. Our families always were together. Our family, as I said, spent a lot of time wintering in Sun Valley and so did Steve and Elaine. They also had a home in Sun Valley, much because Dad did. And so we spent a lot of time together. Their two girls, Gillian and Kevyn, grew up with our family and are very close friends of our family. We are indeed completely interlocked as family. Steve would talk about how he thought Las Vegas had to change. When you grew up as a child who was very artistically oriented, who wanted to make a difference in the world, who thought New York was the center of the universe because that's where creation happened, you got kind of an inferiority complex about your hometown. I was at school in both Michigan and Boston. At Michigan I was in school with kids from all fifty states and nine foreign countries, and I was to have much that same experience in Boston, which is a very cosmopolitan group of students from all over the world. Las Vegas had a reputation that didn't jive with my self-image. Steve had always said that he wanted to change Las Vegas; that Las Vegas, as he found it, wasn't enough; that it was a place of great opportunity; that the precept that drama and destination were key to what was going forward, but that many opportunities had been left on the table and that he was going to take advantage of those. One of those is he thought that the design in Las Vegas did not give enough credit to the 13 sophistication and education of its constituency, of its clientele, of its customer. He said, "You always assume that your client is the most highly educated, sophisticated guy in the world. The rest of them will get onboard. But if you don't have that guy, if you can't make him feel right, you haven't done it. You can't get to the top. You want to aim for the top. And the top is a group of highly sophisticated, well-traveled, very educated people. They know what's going on right now in the world and they want to see what's next. They know what's happened. They want to see what's happening." I never forgot that. Part of that lesson was you don't use fake marble. You don't use fake metal. You don't try to fake anybody out and you don't try to make them believe they're anywhere where they aren't really. Give them a reality, a now that is so fetching, so alluring that they don't want to be anywhere else and you've got them. So that's the design philosophy I've followed my entire career and it's not one that I learned in a design school. It's nothing I learned from teachers. It is in line with what I learned about the history of art. It is in line with an artist wanting to speak the truth of his time and that requiring him not speak the truth of some other artist or some other time. And that's how innovation in the arts happened; that's how Impressionism and contemporary abstract expressionism and every other ism has occurred on the planet. And so I've wanted to redefine what Las Vegas looked like. I wanted to be proud of my city and I wanted to do that with someone who wanted to be proud of his city, too. So that's why I love the Bellagio. Why, thank you. So Bellagio everybody thinks was an effort at themed design and it wasn't. It was an effort at...We were both inspired. In the Mirage, Steve and I, because our families were so in sync, were both at that point traveling in tropical climates. Steve was spending a lot of time in Hawaii; my family was spending more time in the Caribbean. But the vocabulary is the same. 14 And that's how the Mirage became the way the Mirage looked. That's why you've got a tropical fish tank behind the front desk and palm leaves and huge palm trees in the atrium. At Bellagio, his family was spending more time in the south of France and I was spending every second I could get in the north of Italy. So we decided that we wanted something. He said, "I want you to create the most beautiful, most sophisticated hotel on planet Earth." [Whispering] That's what he always says. [All laughing] Always. But don't you get excited? Yes, every time. But he says, "We have to be much better than the Mirage and much better than the Golden Nugget." So with Bellagio we talked about what that might be. Steve and I don't talk in terms of, is it going to be white marble or black marble? Is it going being gold metal or silver metal? Is it going to be patterned or solid? We never talk about the materials. We talk about the emotions. We want it to be dramatic. With Bellagio the emphasis was to be romantic. It needs to be romantic. That's how dancing waters happened. I grew up watching the dancing waters around the pool of the Desert Inn. I had talked to Steve about that. He didn't have that memor