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'60 Minutes' Gives 13 Minutes of Love to Steve Wynn

April 13, 2009 at 8:56 AM | by | Comments (0)

Last night, CBS' 60 Minutes aired a segment on Steve Wynn, aptly titled "The King of Las Vegas." We assume it was mostly supposed to focus on exactly how Wynn — "The Man With the Midas Touch — has kept his company afloat and has even managed to open up a new property (Encore Las Vegas, if you're just tuning in) during these tough economic times, but it was mostly a Steve-Wynn-is-awesome piece. Which we don't mind at all, because Steve Wynn is pretty awesome.

So: Charlie Rose attended the opening of Encore to interview the King of Las Vegas and to check out just how Steve Wynn — whom Rose has known personally and professionally for a number of years — operates. Naturally, one of the first questions he asked Wynn was why he opened Encore in such tough economic times, to which Wynn candidly replied, laughing: "If I had any idea that this [recession] was going to happen, I wouldn't have. We started this project four years ago."

Rose even interviewed Elaine (and yes, sadly, even 60 Minutes mentioned that the couple has filed for divorce but their business relationship remains unaffected), who spoke of Steve rather glowingly: "he brings a business man's intelligence and awareness of what it takes to make a property successful and yet he can put that on the side shelf and go crazy making the most extraordinary environments. He understands innately what the public will respond to." Again, lots of general statements and not a whole lot of specifics, really — but how specific can you get in a 13-minute segment?

The second half of the piece was mostly biographical stuff: from his retinitis pigmentosa (an incurable disease that causes its victims to go blind over time) and how he once accidentally poked a hole in one of his Picassos, to his childhood (his father ran Bingo parlors) and his role in making Las Vegas the city that it is today.

Speaking of his impact on Las Vegas — he opened the Golden Nugget, the Mirage and the Bellagio (among others), brought entertainment to the strip and really sort of invented Vegas glitz — when that came up in the interview, he smiled with those super-bright pearly whites and said, "I've been given too much credit for that, really." Awww.

If you missed the show, you can catch the Steve Wynn segment here. Tell us what you think.

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