SARMOTI with "20/20" Vision

Did you watch the Elizabeth Vargas hour on "20/20" about Siegfried & Roy? Of course, we did. If you didn't, go check it out on the ABC site. It's all there, at least it is for now.


Here were some of our impressions:

* Lots of nice tribute material to S&R, reminding us of what made them unique and exceptional. Good to be reminded.

* ABC said S&R sold $57 million in tickets a year. Over a 13.5-year run at Mirage, that's only $769.5 million. We in the media were told last weekend they grossed $1.5 billion. Huh?

* Lots of tap-dancing around exactly what kind of couple they were, which wouldn't have happened if they had been straight and on-again/off-again involved, i.e. Sonny & Cher. But the Siegfried-goes-to-the-Greek-monastery part was fascinating and I wanted to know more about that.

* Speaking of Cher, WTF? How did she land on Planet SARMOTI? By wearing more sequins?

* A reasonable degree of skepticism in Vargas' voice about the "Montecore was helping Roy" crapoganza but no outside tiger experts to talk about how laughable that is. Plus, the comments from famed tiger behaviorist Stephen A. Wynn were utterly maddening.

* No reference at all to the USDA's 233-page report on the incident that concluded it was, in fact, a tiger ATTACK. Also, no reference to the MGM Mirage and S&R getting the USDA to suppress the video from that night. Is it me, or is it odd that a major news network did a one-hour report on a topic and didn't cite the fact that the government did an 18-month investigation and released a massive public document on the matter?

* The comments from the audience members who were at the show where Roy was mauled were interesting but not terribly descriptive. Probably could've saved trouble just by excerpting quotes from news reports at the time.

* I did not doubt that it was Roy on stage last weekend but many other people did and I accepted the notion that if he was switched out I could have missed it. But the "20/20" footage confirmed that that was what I saw, that it was Roy there the whole time. And other footage showing his ability to speak and walk backed up to me that he was totally capable of doing what he did on stage.

* I'm more convinced than ever that that tiger was absolutely, positively not Montecore on stage at the Bellagio, unless they call all of their tigers Montecore. Had it been the same tiger that attacked Roy, much more on that would have been dealt with in the TV special. We would've gotten close-ups of the tiger, we would've seen rehearsals, etc. Instead, Vargas added in that the cat was Montecore at the very end, as an afterthought. Anyone catch a screen cap of the parts where they said the tiger being shown was Montecore? Would still love to compare markings.

* In the same vein, it was odd that Siegfried and Vargas both referred to "the cats" backstage when, in fact, there was only one animal in the performance. Not sure what that's about except that I don't know that ABC got the all-access pass that they claim to have gotten.

* Incredibly touching to see all those ex-castmates backstage after the Bellagio performance. And loved seeing Robin Leach taking those photos that, according to the Review-Journal's Norm Clarke, annoyed the organizers. I say more power to Robin, who deserved something for his yeoman emceeing efforts. (And, no, I'm not just saying that cuz Robin's a little sore at me at the moment.)

So what'd YOU think?

This Week's LVW col: Suspicions of SARMOTI

Here's this week's Las Vegas Weekly column examining why there's so much suspicion surrounding the Siegfried & Roy event last weekend. Enjoy. -sf

Real magic

Roy Horn's moment onstage was an emotional watershed; too bad it couldn't escape the past

By STEVE FRIESS

Forget for a moment whether the white tiger on the stage really was Montecore. Forget whether it really was Roy Horn under the mask for the entire 10-minute performance at the Bellagio last weekend. And forget, even, that Siegfried and Roy and their managers have spent the better part of five years telling ridiculous tales about what actually happened between Montecore and Horn that awful night at the Mirage, despite the fact that there were 1,500 horrified witnesses.

We’ll get back to all that shortly. But let it all go for a moment.

I did. It was the only way to take in one of the most genuinely emotional events in the history of Las Vegas. Many speculated afterward that much of the show may have been fake, staged. But the awkward, bittersweet smile on Roy’s face when he and Siegfried peeled off medieval gothic masks and soaked up the adulation of a teary-eyed, standing crowd at the benefit for the Cleveland Clinic’s Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Research?

That part was real. That part, when a man who was not supposed to be alive—much less ever walk or utter a syllable again—was up there enjoying a last bow? That was real. The evident and deserved satisfaction of enjoying one last hurrah after redefining Vegas entertainment and spectacle and delighting untold millions of people in their careers?

No illusion. All real.

What a shame, then, that there were so many skeptics. But the fault for that belongs solely with Siegfried, Roy, MGM Mirage and their handlers.

It’s never easy, as a journalist, to let go of the tricky past. Those of us who covered the attack on October 3, 2003, have long memories of how this story was handled, what lines of baloney were being fed to the public and how something tragic became needlessly controversial.

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.com

Was it really Montecore?

Siegfried & Roy's folks have said since Saturday night that the tiger that appeared with the duo was, in fact, Montecore, the same cat that mauled Roy in 2003. There's no real way of knowing and we had to take their word for it when we were writing on deadline.

Yesterday, though, an image of the threesome on stage at Bellagio for the comeback/goodbye appearance was distributed. Here's a close-up blown-up of Montecore:


And here's a photo of Montecore in earlier years:


It's really hard to tell, but I can't imagine any two tigers have identical markings. So the trick would be to compare the images to determine if the markings were the same. The older image -- the only one I could find that clearly stated it was Montecore and had a close-up facial shot -- is very difficult to compare to the side view in the image distributed to the press by Curtis Dahl Photography.

Anyone have any thoughts? See something I don't see? I will be watching the "20/20" report on Friday with great interest to see if there are any clues behind the scenes. Of course, since the video of the actual tiger attack was suppressed by MGM Mirage and the USDA's investigators, there's still no way to know because ABC could be shown any big tiger and told that this was the same one.