al Nevadan at Work Column

By Howard Stutz, Las Vegas Review-Journal

Oct. 4--The entertainment industry always beckoned Trent Othick.

Despite everyone's best efforts to the contrary, especially by his show business-entrenched future father-in-law, Othick wanted to make movies and television shows rather than have a career in law or gaming.

He's been successful. Othick has produced feature films, such as "Yonkers Joe" in 2008, and the 2004 short-lived reality television series "The Casino."

But in the past few years Othick found a new calling: Broadway.

Through his Las Vegas-based GO Productions, Othick is producer of "A Bronx Tale," the one-man play staring Academy Award-nominated actor Chazz Palminteri that begins a two-week run on Wednesday at The Venetian.

Othick had never produced a Broadway show when he and Palminteri became close during the filming of "Yonkers Joe." Palminteri authored and performed the original "A Bronx Tale" off Broadway in the early 1990s. He wrote the screenplay and appeared in the 1993 film version that Robert De Niro starred in and directed.

Palminteri thought Othick and his partner in GO, John Gaughan, were up to the task.

"I had never even produced a high school theater play," Othick said. "I was wondering if Chazz still had the rights to the play when John said, 'Let's do it.' "

Othick said his only exposure to Broadway came from film director and producer Robert Lieberman, his future father-in-law, who was married at the time to actress Marilu Henner. She was appearing in "Chicago" on Broadway and Lieberman took his soon-to-be son-in-law to New York.

"He did not want the person marrying his daughter to go into show business," Othick said. "I had other ideas."

"A Bronx Tale" had a highly successful five-month run on Broadway, one month of which was interrupted by the theater district's first-ever strike. Othick took the show on the road to 17 different cities, including Los Angeles; San Francisco; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Baltimore; Minneapolis and Atlantic City.

The shows at The Venetian, which run through Oct. 18, are the last of the tour.

The challenges of producing "A Bronx Tale" gave Othick the theater bug. He said it's possible to produce Broadway shows from Las Vegas.

"You can operate out of Las Vegas and not lose a beat," Othick said.

QUESTION: What challenges did you initially face with producing the show?

ANSWER: We were in production (of "Yonkers Joe") so it was a pretty stressful time. I had heard all the horror stories about Broadway and at one point I tried to convince John that maybe we shouldn't do this. The people we were working with thought we were nuts because we had never worked on Broadway.

We found a theater but only had it for a few months. We hired a director and things fell into place.

QUESTION: Did you promote the show differently than other Broadway producers?

ANSWER: We were so green that we almost walked into a trap because of the strike. Ticket sales exploded and we did about $2 million in advance sales. We opened in October to great reviews from The New York Times and the New York Post. The gossip columnists all came to see the play and raved about it. I knew we needed to knock it out of the park in the few months we had the theater.

I advertised at New York Yankees games and on subways. We were looking for a real blue-collar crowd. I grabbed a guy off the street in the Bronx and we did a radio ad with him. We did unconventional things and we went against every conventional thought. It wound up working in our favor.

The strike cost us a month, but Chazz added extra performances and the theater gave us an extra week. Chazz was determined the show would be a success. We were the first show on Broadway to recoup our costs and make a profit that year.

QUESTION: Why do you think this show will succeed in Las Vegas?

ANSWER: Right after it opened on Broadway, I had an agent come up to me and say the show was perfect for Las Vegas. It has gambling and nostalgia. It kind of brings people back to Old Vegas, to the old mob days. It did really well in Atlantic City.

QUESTION: What lured you to show business?

ANSWER: My brother (Matt Othick) was the athlete and I was the entertainment guy. One of my first purchases was a video camera, which I used to film his basketball games or his golf swing. I worked my way through college as a disc jockey. I thought about getting into the music business, but that didn't seem like the right thing to do.

I enrolled at Whittier Law School and clerked for Oscar Goodman and David Chesnoff. At the same time, they were filming the movie "Casino" in town. One day, De Niro came in to see Oscar and it gave me a rush. I quit law school because I couldn't be creative. They were telling me how to think. My father-in-law begged me to continue, so I went back and quit again.

I had gone into The Mirage training program. But the movie "Vegas Vacation" was filmed while I was working there and got my juices going again.

QUESTION: Did you get a "big break" in Hollywood?

ANSWER: I took some production assistant jobs and then hooked up with Bob Dylan's son. We produced the Yahoo Internet Online Film Festival. I had never produced any kind of event in my life. It was like Broadway. I was thrown into it and turned out to be a success.

QUESTION: How did the television series "The Casino" come about?

ANSWER: I had started Insomnia Entertainment with Tim Poster, Tom Breitling and Lorenzo Fertitta. Tim and I were old friends from high school. I had been living in Los Angeles and wanted to move back. At the same time, Tim and Tom were buying the Golden Nugget.

I had seen ("Survivor" producer) Mark Burnett's show "The Restaurant" and I called my father-in-law. We both thought Tim and Tom and the Golden Nugget would be a great idea for a reality show. We pitched the concept to Mark Burnett and he was sold in five minutes. We had to persuade Tim to do the show because of the marketing value. We had offers from all four networks and we went with Fox.

In the end, we were not happy with the show at all. We didn't have control and we were furious over the cheeseball stories. Mark lost interest because he was at war with Fox. We did 13 episodes. Ironically, it got better in the second half because we persuaded Fox to put more gambling into the show. It was actually a hit in Australia and Canada and we made pretty good money off the show.

QUESTION: Which form of entertainment do you prefer?

ANSWER: Once you get a film in the can, it's all about hustling the product, trying the find an honest distributor. It sometimes takes two years to make back your investment. You might wait another year for the DVD revenues or selling the foreign rights. With Broadway, the results are much quicker and the financial experience is more fun.