Charlie Rose - Guest: Steve Wynn - 5.20.97

Charlie, man, it's great to be here. It has changed since I was here. A lot different, isn't it, to see it now?

You know, the hotels were there, there were eight of them or nine of them, and there was just desert in between. And everybody wore cowboy boots and cowboy clothes and rode horses and it was a cowboy place with a strange kind of exotic energy. There were all those unmentionable characters, you know, that you read about, the Kefauver Committee talked about it. And I think people came to Las Vegas as much to see the characters as they did to gamble and to see the shows. The place itself was a spectacle. And very, very overwhelming, too. I mean, you know, the action, the excitement, the people staying up all night. It infected my father. He was greatly, greatly influenced by it. He thought this was the most fabulous place in the world.

I was here for two weeks, my father was here for three. And at the time, I had the notion that this must be, again, you know, a kid does everything because of his father. My father was completely enthralled by this place and so I saw the place through his eyes. And his enthusiasm and his fascination with it affected me. So I took on those notions that this was the most fabulous place and I had a very romantic version of Las Vegas.

If you believe that, if it doesn't, it doesn't. Stockholders, we're going to meet a bunch of new lawyers and get yelled at. I've had this maybe naive notion that if you did a job well enough when it came to the business, again, my experience has been molded here in Las Vegas, but that if you built a place that appealed to the broadest range of people, if you did it well enough, if you had a rudimentary, fundamental understanding of who those people were that were coming to Las Vegas, why they were coming, and God knows that was no secret, it was just a big party, a place for color and excitement and a tempo that you couldn't get anywhere else, that if you gave people a better version of that, that the same energy would infect them that affected my father and I 45 years ago. Every time that we've tried something in our company's history, and I've been on a job now 25 years, every time we've tried something fanciful or wacky or outlandish, if we've done it well, if we've sort of kept the faith, if we've held the line, we've never been disappointed. We've had no failures. So the company grew, got better and better, got more and more employees, made more money, got a better credit rating, which allowed it to take on bigger projects like the ones you described a second ago. And I've still got the feeling that if we do it well enough. Another thing that's happened, we, like the Three Little Pigs, built these houses of brick. We spent more money than other people had spent to do things that other people hadn't done at the time. Not that we were so blazingly original, everything is sort of springing off what happened before us, we're inspired by other buildings and other hotels and other places. But the fact of the matter is, every time we did something well, we were rewarded. We've never had a failure. I have, along with my colleagues, the men and women of the company, we've become accustomed to this pursuit of excellence and we most importantly, we've learned to trust it.

There is no monolithic answer to that question. There's a lot of things going on out here at the same time. And if you drive down the Strip like you and Elaine and I did to come to Channel 10 to do the show, you see it all at once and it's a bit much. The fact of the matter is that place by place, company by company, there's quite a diversity of attitude and opinion on what's going on. But what is it? A final destination for entertainment is yes. It's the place where folks are coming from every culture, regardless of their economic or their cultural background, whether they're from Asia, Latin America, North America, Europe, whether they're middle class, upper middle class, very rich, or normal folks, blue-collar workers, they're journeying to Las Vegas because this is a city without, at least if it's an original, Charlie, it's an original. It's a town without a speck of hypocrisy. Here, blatantly, Las Vegas, a party that doesn't stop. It's like a flasher. It's like a woman, you know, remember that in the '60s and '70s, they flash, there's no subtlety.

Good question, and the answer remains to be seen. History will be the judge of that. But what I'm trying to do, and I say this with humor, I'm trying to get past Siegfried & Roy, who's my friend and we've had those fights all these years at the Mirage and done really well with them, and they're a great part of our scene here in Las Vegas. But I'm trying to broaden the appeal of Las Vegas to a wider group of adults so that people who don't think of coming here will now think of coming. And I think of the relationship, and these are things that are both important to both of us, the relationship of fine arts to the psyche of the citizens of the world today. And I'm beginning, I'm convinced, this is not in a faddish, esoteric, you know, affected kind of interesting thing for the very few who are dilettantes that go to museums. I think that fine arts have a powerful bedrock kind of appeal. Elaine and I went to a show last year in Chicago at the Fine Arts Center of Degas, the Impressionists. God, couldn't get near the building. And the show was extended for weeks and weeks and weeks and they were charging like 15 bucks to get in. Every time there's a big show at a major city of Picasso or Matisse or Degas or Renoir or someone like that, everybody shows up. We are living in a time when people are beginning to ask different questions. Maybe it's because all of the complexity of urban life is rolling over all of us. But I'm hoping that the fine arts at the Mirage, at Bellagio, which is really what sparked this, I'm hoping that it's going to awaken another, you know, another sort of spot in people. They'll say, 'Hey, let's go, I hear the place is special. They've actually got all these great paintings on display free in the lobby.' And maybe people are going to get a different idea of, if not Las Vegas, at least of our property and what happens.

You know, in that regard, I had a moment of real good judgment crisis. I was offered the opportunity to buy a magnificent Rembrandt that was a scene of Saint Peter in prison. And then this wonderful picture, this tormented man is there with a light shining through the top of the cell. Obviously, it's right after he betrayed Jesus. And you could see all the great detail of Rembrandt, you could see all the pain and suffering and guilt in his face. The painting was to die for. I mean, you didn't have to love art, you're in the company of this painting, your eyes, I mean, you just stared at it transfixed. And I wanted to buy the painting so much to have a Rembrandt in Las Vegas, but the subject matter frightened me a little bit. Now you asked this question in relation to someone like Pablo Picasso. Picasso is a lusty Spaniard. He belongs in Las Vegas. You know, it's okay, I'm not afraid of it. You know, if anything, you know, someone say I may overshoot the mark. I've never been disappointed by counting on the good taste of the public. It's not true that everybody sees everything the first second, but when people walk into a beautiful place, they say, 'Oh, this is for me.' And they get a good feeling. They know that whoever is responsible for it has a good opinion of them.

I studied, I took a couple of courses in art history at the University of Pennsylvania in 1960 or '61. And I thought how wonderful it was looking at those pictures, never dreaming that I'd ever have a chance to do so in such intimacy as we are talking about tonight. And I thought it must be a wonderful thing to collect art, to actually be responsible and have possession of such things, if not ownership, at least for a while, to hold them. I never realized how good it was really going to be. And frankly, you know, I go twice a day to see the paintings and it's good for my soul. But you know, everybody else at the hotel where we keep them at the Mirage, the security guards, the dealers in the particular area where we're keeping them temporarily, the maintenance guys that work on the lighting, every one of them are now into Monet and Renoir and Picasso and Matisse and Modigliani. I am totally stunned by the wide-ranging, strong response of everybody, not just myself. It's much better than I ever thought, much better. My life and the life of my family and friends has been overwhelmingly enriched by having the proximity to these paintings, which I'm hoping is going to rub off on everybody else.

Look, putting dolphins in the back of the Mirage wasn't exactly what you call a hardcore P&L kind of thing to do. I mean, the bean counters, if I was ever subject to the review and the control of an accountant, that's probably one of the great advantages of being a stockholder in the company as well as the CEO. If I had ever been under the control of some of the MBAs and accountants that have taken over Las Vegas in the modern era, we wouldn't have dolphins, we wouldn't have white tigers all over the place, let alone art.

My father was a sensuous, enthusiastic, and lovable man. He wore his heart on his sleeve and had nothing but goodwill. Everybody that knew and loved him, he was a man-child. He was a boy. I went to school with him, and they thought he was a freshman. He was slim and youthful and he had an attitude that was like a kid that never had grown up. He was very good at his business, promoting bingo games and getting lots of people to come because he loved his customers. He had a gambling problem, which was an interesting thing, which was an interesting part of my youth. But my father was a man who believed that in life, don't be worried about what you think of everybody else, worry about what they think of you. And being a success in life wasn't easy. When a man or a woman had achieved success, they were worthy of respect. And if everybody could do it, everybody would, but they can't. So my dad was a guy who was very respectful of other people and of his customers, the ladies that came to play bingo in his bingo hall, and of all people that were very successful in life. My dad had a great sense of respect for others. And if he was hard on anybody in life, it was himself. He was a great, great pal of mine. He had surgery, he died on the table. He was one of those unfortunate people that had rheumatic fever as a child that left him with a damaged aortic valve and that led to heart failure in his early 40s. And finally got to the point where if he didn't have a surgery, probably wouldn't have lived a month. So they did a very avant-garde surgery in those days, what Arnold Schwarzenegger just did, they replaced his aortic valve. But there had been too much damage to his heart and he never got off that heart-lung machine. And my mother and I, my mother Zell and I, we got to have one of those experiences where you sit in the waiting room and the doctors walk in with the masks down and say, 'I'm sorry.' And my world collapsed when that day happened. I think probably one of the things that's helped me in life was that when you're a young man and your world revolves around your father and he is everything to you and you lose a person like that, it's such a devastating event that you can say, 'Well, nothing, this is the worst thing that could have ever happened to me. Nothing, nothing worse than this could have ever happened.' And when that worst thing happens, well, hell, the rest of the things that can happen to you don't seem so awful after that. So I've never been as afraid of anything as I was losing my father as a kid.

I would give, except for the security of the kids and Elaine, I'd give it all for an hour with my old man in the Mirage, walking on one of those corporate planes we fly our customers around in. My father, oh, what a moment that would be. Gosh, oh, my mother and I and Elaine and I, we talk about it all the time. My children never met their grandfather and that would have been a great thing. But look, my mother's here, she's alive and well, thank goodness. She's in Las Vegas.

Two months from graduation. I'm 21 years old, 1963.

Boy, I'll tell you, the world got saved from that, too. I didn't end up being a lawyer. But I was going to go to law school. I did for a semester go to Georgetown Law School, which was right there where the bingo was in Washington. But Elaine and I got married as we had planned to do. My father had helped us plan a wedding. In fact, she was the daughter of a friend of your father, that's how we met. They played gin together. They were both gamblers, my father and Elaine's dad, a guy named Sonny Pasco, were both degenerate gamblers. If they got around any form of gaming, and it didn't have to be legal, I mean, they gambled on sports with a bookmaker or they gambled at cards with each other and other guys, you know, they were just fellas that loved to be in action.

Yes.

Well, this all surfaces when the place opens and it all takes about 60 days. The investigation surfaces that a judge from Detroit and a fellow that owned a paving company may be fronting for Detroit hoodlums. And at the same time, Howard Hughes is living across the street in the Desert Inn Hotel and decides that he's afraid the ceiling is going to fall on his head or something, he's got to own the Frontier. And he dispatches his Mormon banker, Edward Perry Thomas, to buy out the Sands and the Frontier and the Silver Slipper and everything else. And between the disclosure of the investigation and the publicity that followed, myself and some of the other shareholders were dying to find the exit. Hughes's arrival was very fortuitous and we pushed for the sale. And it took from the hotel opened in July, we found out about the connection in August, we started negotiating to sell the hotel, and we concluded the transaction in November. So the career at the Frontier, because of these factors, lasted for four months.

I buy a distributorship, I buy distribution.

I was banging on the back door. I was a purveyor in Reno and Las Vegas selling liquor, wine, and beer.

No, no. And you know, every time I denied that, people would say, 'Sure, would you expect him to admit it?' Like we sold him the hotel and then I bought this piece of property while I was a liquor distributor next to Caesars.

It was a parking lot. It's a little tiny skinny piece of property, 160 feet wide.

I don't want to extend this, but I'll tell you that it was a combination of being on my toes, I knew something, and luck. Howard Hughes's affairs have been run by a former FBI agent named Robert Maheu. Maheu had taken over at the request of Hughes and tossed out the old Hughes guard of Mormons and other people from Los Angeles. They resented that. But this fellow Maheu had the ear of Hughes. It took a while, but the old guard ousted Maheu. Now Bob Maheu still lives here. And there were a lot of internal wars going on. But finally the old guard ousted Maheu and whisked Howard Hughes out of Las Vegas to the Bahamas. This all happened with blitzkrieg speed. Hughes is in the Bahamas, Maheu is out, and the old group is back in, a guy named Bill Gay. And that following week, I make a suggestion to Perry Thomas that I'd like to talk to the real estate guy for Howard Hughes, who had been with it for 23 years, who had been out of favor, now is back in charge, a guy named Herb Nauleau, wonderful man. I'd like to talk to him about that skinny piece of property they own next to Caesars, which is a parking lot. What I didn't know that made the transaction work is Hughes owned the Landmark Hotel and was paying rent on the parking lot to a third party. Shows you how quaint life works. The guy's name was Cliff Jones, he's a former lieutenant governor. He owned a parking lot, was getting ten thousand dollars a month from Hughes at the Landmark. Hughes was getting a thousand a month for a parking lot from Caesars Palace on the Strip. Both pieces of property were useless. I had once looked at the Landmark and I knew that Hughes had an option as the tenant to buy the parking lot from Cliff Jones for a million dollars and thereby saving a hundred and twenty thousand a year, that is to say 12 percent of his money. He was only getting a thousand a month, or twelve thousand, at the other parking lot. I said to Herb Nauleau, 'Why don't you let me give you a million dollars? You're only getting 12 grand from Caesars a year, you'll save the rent of a hundred and twenty thousand and use this money to buy the Landmark parking lot.' Herb Nauleau said to me, which was very uncharacteristic, well, it wasn't my idea to buy the damn piece, it's too skinny anyway. But Steve, he doesn't sell anything. If you've got a million dollars, and I don't think you do, you ought to spend it and have a good time. Howard Hughes doesn't sell anything. I went to the bank and told Perry Thomas this story. Perry Thomas says, 'What a fetching idea.' What I did not realize at the time was that Cliff Jones owed Perry Thomas some money and couldn't pay it. But because Perry was a friend and the bank had a long relationship, they weren't going to sue the guy. But if Cliff Jones came into some money, he had signed the lease over to the bank that if they sold the property, if Jones got the money for the parking lot, it was pledged to the bank. Perry heard me tell the story and said, 'We'll get the million, this is a terrific idea.' He picked up the phone, called Bill Gay, because he was used as banker, and said, 'Listen, I got an idea, I think it's time. The guy's made an offer on a piece of property that you own, it's too small, land next to Caesars. I think it's time you take that money, you can buy the parking lot at the Landmark and save yourself some money.' Bill Gay said, 'Let me get back to you.' And he sent a fax to the Bahamas. Fax went to the Mormon guards, Mormon secretaries. Hughes was in the Britannia Beach Hotel. Hughes read the fax and said, 'Sell it.' Called back Perry. Gay called back Perry Thomas. Five days later, Perry lent me the money because I could pay it back myself and another guy who had more money than me, a guy named Abe Rosenberg, was one of my suppliers. We put up the million dollars. Perry Thomas took the million and paid himself off. Everybody got something out of it.

Two and a quarter.

We made a million dollars. My end of it was seven hundred thousand and Abe's was 300.

That's right, that's my investment.

That's compressing the story, but that's really what happened. And I'm 30, just turned 31 years old, and I've become the chairman and the president.

That happened later. That happened 10 years later.

That happened five years later. First we straightened out the Nugget and made more money, then we went to Atlantic City. And in 1978, when gaming opened up in...

Atlantic City, we wanted to go there as a company, but the Valley Bank, Perry Thomas's bank, excuse me, couldn't lend the kind of money you needed to build in Atlantic City. We took 100 million or more, and we were a small company. We were worth 5 million, and it was a little crazy. But I met Milton, my best friend at the time was a guy named Stanley, and I'm proud to say this lunatic is still my best friend, and he's Michael's cousin. Stanley's chairman of Zenith National Insurance company, and he's Michael Milken's cousin. And Michael Milken says, 'I can sell some junk bonds.' And Stanley goes to see Mike and says, 'You got to help Steve, my friend Steve Wynn. His Golden Nugget wants to build a hotel in Atlantic City.' Milken says, 'Let me meet him, bring him over.' And I went over to meet him in the summer of '78 in Los Angeles where Drexel Burnham Lambert had their offices. I had a broken leg, I was on crutches, and I met Milken who was 32, I was 36. He asked me a few questions, listens for about an hour about New Jersey, about the history of the Golden Nugget, and says, 'Okay, I think it's probably time that we take on a gaming client. We'll raise the money for you to enter the market in Atlantic City.' And he did. Raised 125 million dollars. You then sell that place, was a big hit, made 80 or 90 million dollars a year. That put us in a different league with the cash flow.

Well, we were there until '86, and it was tough. It was very antagonistic, a lot of regulations. Well, it was worse than that. There was an attitude that all the guys from Las Vegas and anybody in gambling was a hoodlum or a gangster, and that this was something that was shoved down our throat, but we're going to regulate these bums. And it was very intimidating and, unfortunately, it was very disrespectful. It's not that way now.

Yeah, yeah. It's a whole different world today. It's matured, you know, 20 years changes a lot of stuff.

Well, now they are. They just bought Valley. No, they're... Resorts International was there, Caesars was there, later on Trump came along, and Bally bought the place from us, and they were there with a great place, the Bally's Park Place. And competition was always very keen in Atlantic City. We were able to make more money than anybody else, even though we were the smallest one, because again, we weren't selling gambling, we were selling the sporting life. We had Frank Sinatra doing commercials about this is a great saloon to hang out at.

Actually, it was, but I can't say it was an original idea, Charlie. I mean, Frank Sinatra had been identified with the high life, you know, the good times, the Rat Pack. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Peter Lawford. When I was a kid at the Sands, I mean, I was picking up on some energy that maybe was right at the end of its day, but to me the energy was real. And it turns out that Frank and Dean had a couple of really good seasons left in them, and Frank and Dean worked there together with Kenny Rogers and Lionel Richie, Diana Ross. And the Golden Nugget captured everybody's fancy, not as a gambling hall in Atlantic City, as a place to hang out. All the Jews and all the Italians and everybody else from the East Coast used to like to come down to the Golden Nugget on weekends because it was fun to be there. They would see each other. It wasn't so much about craps or blackjack, it was about people.

No, they wanted to stop Trump. Okay, that's why they made me the offer, which was very generous, because he couldn't then buy. Yeah, they had a rule that you couldn't have more than three casinos, and Bally had two, so if they bought the third one, Trump would have to have more than three.

No, I got the pleasure in the 450 million. All right, so I didn't know Trump.

I want to make clear, I got a lot of pleasure out of the transaction, but it had nothing to do with Donald. The pleasure was what you made, all that money.

This all happened in late '86, and we had just bought the property from Hughes that the Mirage sits on. And the timing was perfect because we could come back and concentrate on designing that hotel. And once again, Michael Milken steps in.

Yes, but by that time the Golden Nugget had a track record, and we raised the money for the Mirage quite easily. Mike, of course, did it, and because of Mike, we paid less for the money than anybody else.

Absolutely. Well, first of all, he could envision these things, you know. In every stage of your life, it seems to me that, you know, as aggressive as you think you are and as ambitious as you may be, you need to have your judgment and your confidence reinforced by others whom you respect. My father, Perry Thomas, when I was very young, Perry's faith in me was more important than my confidence in myself. I figured, Perry Thomas believes in me, I must be okay, at least reasonably so. Mike Milken, like Perry Thomas, saw Las Vegas coming, maybe more than I did, frankly speaking, maybe more than me, Charlie. Michael saw gaming as an answer to a lot of different things in America: extra leisure time, the desire for integrated entertainment, and entertainment jobs in search of a place to deposit. He saw that all and talked about it in great detail to me. And when I said we've got this property, because I always wanted to have a big strip hotel, I want to take a crack at Caesars and the Sands, I wanted to be another one of the roadmarks in that progression.

Yeah, yeah, when you get there, what is it? Have to come on this program to find out. I know what I get a thrill out of. I've always loved the idea of making places where people go, 'Wow,' that are wonderful. I'm a true romantic in a literary sense, in the sense that it's wonderful to build a world that, as George S. Kaufman said, 'The way God would if he had money.' Remember that old crack that George S. Kaufman made? I find when I was a kid growing up in Florida, Elaine and I, our parents, remember I said our dads played gin, they did it at a place called the Fontainebleau, and there was a guy named Ben Novack that built this place. And the Fontainebleau was a magnificent environment, and everybody from around the world wanted to be in it. And I thought, how wonderful it is to make your own world where everybody has fun.

That's the group. Bill Harrah.

Ever. Like, remember Joel Grey in the opening scene of Cabaret? 'Willkommen, welcome, in here everyone is beautiful, the band is beautiful.' That's the way I think of it. In here, everything is beautiful. The paintings are beautiful, the volcano is beautiful. You come here, you have a good time, and you can forget your problems. I know when I go there that it has that effect on me. Even today, I like doing that. That strikes me as enough fun for any adult male to want to have, or female. I think that's a good life.

I find a casino a very intense place. My moments in the hotel would give me the greatest personal satisfaction are when I'm walking around the fringes, the more non-casino, the villas and the places, the dolphins, the front, the atriums, the things that really bring the people. The casino is like the cash register, but it's the non-casino stuff that's the hook.

But Charlie, if that was it, they don't have to come here anymore. If that was it, then the spread of gambling would have proved once and for all that Las Vegas was nothing more than a gambling town. So they come here because they want to watch Siegfried and Roy, they go to the party, they come for the party. They come for them. I think they always came for the party. I don't think they came for the gambling. Because it's a way to get away from whatever is the routine of your life and go somewhere where you can see life as special and different. And it's like, didn't you see Disney? Walt Disney is what for you?

Walt Disney had, of course, a really idyllic view of the world, played with electric trains and then bigger model trains, which is how Disneyland got started, his trains. And Walt Disney wanted to make fantasy come to reality. I think that we're doing the same thing. Walt Disney once said, 'I'm going to give every American a chance to let his imagination go wild.' Right? What's better than that? To me, if you've got the insight, if you've got the access to talent, if you've got the courage to see it through, and you can make things that people, that the wonderful images that live in people's imagination, come to life. I mean, everybody has a view of Europe, of the good old days of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly racing down the old road from Monte Carlo to Cap Ferrat. Everybody has this view of the Riviera. Now, when you go to the Riviera this summer, you may find the reality and your fantasies don't mesh. Yeah, but at Bellagio, my new hotel, they will.

My dad never had the chance to deal with these elements in his life, but my father's aspirations to his bingo halls were immaculate. They were clean. The parties that he would, he always had theme parties every week for his guests, for the bingo ladies. That's why they loved coming there. He said, 'Steve, they don't care about women, they care about the activity of being here.'

For 10 minutes, half hour maybe. A guy who was working for us in Maryland, it happened at the bingo in Maryland where I worked when I was a student, made a crack and called the customer a sucker when she walked away. My father was infuriated. He was offended. 'What right do you have to say that?' Because my father taught me this too, because he had a store, a person who did us the courtesy of coming here to buy something for us. And that's where her leader came, and that's where it is.

Because you had to pay ransom, the thing you wouldn't want to visit on your worst enemy. It's not like TV. Real terror is not like television. You know, ever since you're a child, every person talks to themselves in a certain voice. No matter how old you are, that voice never changes. Since you're a kid, when you're hysterical inside, the voice goes too fast. Parts of your body shake. It's hard to control your breathing when you're alone. Thoughts scream through your head at a terrible speed, and you say, 'Whoa, stop, hold it.' The cold, kidnapping is a cold-blooded event in the sense that for a moment, for some horrible period of time, you are being told by someone that they're going to execute someone who you cherish, and that your behavior, your conduct, will determine the outcome of an execution. This notion may sound terrible to hear me say it, but to live it is really a subject that is not worth talking about, because I will never communicate as long as I ever try, unless I'm talking to some poor misbegotten creature like myself who's been through it. And listen, we were lucky, Kevin was back the same night. There are people... but that's not true. But while it's going on, you don't know. And let's not tell you how bad it was, Charlie. I wouldn't wish it on the guy that did it. And I'm plenty hot at him. I would love to have broken his nose, you know, not a capital offense. He didn't hurt her, but it was the worst, absolutely the most inexplicable terror I've ever felt.

For five years, we lived together like young kids do. The money thing, the estate, all that was done, cut and dry. She says, 'Let's get all this stuff passed.' We had absolutely nothing holding us together except the question was, would you stay? And the thought never entered my mind for one second not to. And then finally, after five years, we got remarried in the same place on the same day that we did the first time, at the Waldorf on June 29th. We were divorced between year 23 to year 28. Now it's year 33, and when people say, 'How long you've been married?' we say, 'Net or gross?' We had a divorce that didn't work out, but it was an interesting experience. It's probably a good idea to dissolve the contract every 20 years or so, just to see if it's cool. We got everything, and even the marriage for the second time, all the money.

Or you mean my eyes? Your eyes. If I was born with it, congenital, yeah, it's a genetic thing, retinitis pigmentosa. And you know, a tough piece of information to get the first day you find out. Someone says, 'Look, your vision is in doubt. You're going to slowly but surely lose your eyesight.' And you say, 'Well, how slowly and how surely?' And they say, 'We don't know for sure. There's a chance you may never actually not be able to see, but you are going to be handicapped as time goes by. There are things you won't be able to do, like drive a car or see in the dark.' That's what happens. It's worse in the dark, at night. You totally can't see in the dark. It's that part of your eye that involves the evening and dim light that goes. When you're a teenager, really. I found out about this when I was 29. I was very lucky. I had very good eyesight as a kid, so that I started with a lot, sort of like a reserve. Yeah, so I still am able to live a fairly normal life. I mean, I don't drive a car, and I can't run around in the dark. I have to grab a hold of somebody if I'm in a theater or someplace like that, or a lounge somewhere. But I don't take it personally, you know. You could take a handicap of any kind, and as you get to be our age, sooner or later some doctor is going to tell you something you don't like. And you could decide right then and there that, 'Oh God, the anticipated horror of it is so awful that I might as well end my life on the spot.' But you never say to yourself, 'This is God's revenge because life has been so good, because I've had opportunities that few men have had, and I've got such a great life, and this is God's revenge.' I am absolutely convinced, as we sit here tonight, that he's on my side. If there's ever been a sucker that... somebody is on my side up there.

It infuriates me. I can't find something that's right in front of me. But look, it's an inconvenience. And the measure of my health, my mental health, is my ability to treat it as such, to minimize it, not to deny it. But Charlie, you and I have been together, and I say it's dark, I grab your shoulder, right? I don't feel embarrassed about that. It's not my fault. Listen, there's a lot of things I can't do besides see in the dark. I can't shoot a basket like Michael Jordan, I can't jump as high as Mikhail Baryshnikov, and I can't carry a tune. But there are a lot of things I can do, and what I do in life is I focus on the things I can do.

I'm not the kind of person who dwells on the things that I can't do, except carry a tune. I'm part of the singing impaired. There are things that I would love to see in my lifetime, or I'd like to know. I'd like to see my children have the kind of a life that Elaine and I have had. But what father wouldn't? I would like to see the people that have grown up with me at my company experience the kind of personal satisfaction that comes with stretching, trying great, great, trying big projects. There are an awful lot of them now whose whole life and identity are linked to these projects. These men and women are headed for some great victories, or if we're wrong, some very difficult moments. I will get more pleasure out of having a front row seat to that process, because I've already had my moments in this, and financially I'm in good shape. But there's a whole generation of people at the Mirage companies that are testing themselves, and it's a very egotistical thing to say, but being part of creating those kinds of opportunities, the human ones, that's a very, very heady kind of thing.

Frankly, I think they made a mistake. I honestly thought they were pulling my, our leg. I would have never dreamed anything like that would happen, Charlie. And when asked by Fortune, 'What do you think, what do you attribute it to?' There can only be one answer: it sure is how late the slot machines, they're everywhere in Las Vegas and every place else these days. We've been supporting the, we're in supporting these outfits that want to stop the spread of gaming.

They call him on the phone occasionally to tease him. I'd give him a donation if it wouldn't destroy the credibility of his group. But when Detroit passed a law, I said, 'Tom, you're slipping, let's go, get out there.' I got not much time, I got to get to some other things. One is this notion of this city and this culture and the higher... what's the most, just out of curiosity, somebody wants to know this, what's the most money ever lost at one of your casinos by one person?

70 million.

No, in a night.

Three years. In three years.

Yep.

No, someone from another country who had 70 million dollars to spare at the time.

I was there for many. It involved many, many sessions, many weekends.

So the fun of it? Yeah, perhaps. Yeah, gambling's fun in moderation, yeah, sure, it's great.

I sure do. But I believe in the business I'm in, I know exactly what I'm talking about. This is a subject that I've spent my life on. I know about problem gaming. I was one of the first board of trustee members of the National Association for Pathological and Compulsive Gambling in Washington. It's a subject with which I am familiar. It's my wife's work. Bill Sapphire is a wonderful author, and I've enjoyed him many times on this subject. He is strident and, unfortunately, not well informed. Someday he's going to make it. He believes that gambling has a pernicious effect regardless of the facts. He doesn't really understand business, and someday he'll take a more intellectual and a more scholastic approach to this, and he'll learn the whole story.

A few places should have turned it down that didn't. Like this, the installation of big integrated gaming facilities, the good news and the bad news is they draw a big crowd, they create a lot of jobs, they pay a healthy tax. But what's the bad news? They play hell with the infrastructure, they change the neighborhood. You can't put Walt Disney World in the average town and expect that town ever to be the same again. Big things, you know, when you hit a town with all those people around Orlando, that's right, Orlando's never going to be the same. Yeah, right. You put, it's great, everybody talks about how wonderful it is to put 100 or 200 million dollar payroll into a city, everybody does good, but the fact of the matter is these kinds of things change a community. I think the best thing for communities is first of all to have an idea of who they are and what they want and where they ought to go. That's the job of political leadership. And once they do that, if creating a tourist industry is on their agenda and that's the best thing for them, then probably this subject of casino resorts has something to offer. But just to think of casinos just for the taxes or just for this or that has led to a lot of short-term confusion.

I did not.

I bought five percent of the company for investment purposes and called up when I had three percent and told Lew Wasserman it was an investment. I had no intention of doing it.

He said to me through, through Felix Rohatyn, 'At 4.9, we love you. At five, it's enemy action.' I said, 'Thank you very much,' and I never went past 4.9.

I sold it, yeah.

In the case of MCA, I wasn't thinking that. You were thinking just of investment. There was a time when I thought it'd be wonderful to see if we could take a big position at Disney because of my childhood fascination with Walt Disney. I learned about MCA because Milken gave me three companies to read about: ABC, MCA, and Disney, for comparison. It's American Broadcasting Company, Walt Disney Corporation. And I read these big studies on each of the companies that had been done by investment banking firms like Wertheimer, Morgan Stanley. And when I read, I lost my interest in Disney because I saw it was a business and it wasn't what I thought anymore. ABC was not something that interests me. But the balance sheet and the asset value of MCA so captured my attention that I made the investment of 100 million with the company's money.

Well, if I, I asked Wasserman permission through a friend of mine, Merv Adelson, 'Would it be okay if we bought 10 percent?' And through Felix Rohatyn, '4.9, you're fine, Steve. At five, we're not happy.' So I couldn't do it, and I didn't want to be a pain in the neck, and we weren't in that business, and I stopped.

No, none. Not Hollywood, not Wall Street, not Detroit. Too late. We do chicken. Every time somebody diversifies, they fall right on their patootie. I'm not interested. My business is tough enough. Why go get aggravated with someone else? So just be the best. That would be good. I'd like to be the best at what we do. You know, everybody in my company is in love with our image and pursuit of excellence. And nobody in the company, I mean this from top to bottom, is willing to give that up. Everybody likes the idea that the Golden Nugget, Treasure Island, Mirage are immaculate, they're fanciful, and they're lovely. And if we can grow and keep that image, then we'll keep building hotels.

Oh, thanks, Charlie. It's fun to have you here in town.