Veteran comic Brenner is the Westin show

Friday, Oct. 31, 2003 | 8:32 a.m.

A dream comes true for comedian David Brenner Saturday when he begins a 44-week engagement as the headliner in his own showroom at the new Westin Casuarina Hotel and Spa.

"What a great thing for a comedian," Brenner said during a recent interview at his northwest Las Vegas home. "This gig is for me for the next five to seven years."

Brenner has always promoted himself as an entertainer who belonged on the Strip. Even when he was downtown at the Golden Nugget two years ago (November 2000 through October 2001), most of his fans made the long trek from South Las Vegas Boulevard to see him.

Actually, the Westin isn't exactly on the Strip, but it's close enough to suit the cerebral comedian, whose observational humor has been challenging audiences to think as they laugh since he became a standup comic in 1971.

"It's 50 yards from Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo, the busiest intersection in the city," said the 58-year-old Brenner. "I'm in the Upper East Side of Vegas."

The Upper East Side of Manhattan is New York City's high-rent district.

Brenner says being exactly on the Strip isn't as important as it once was. A number of headliners now perform at popular venues off the Strip, including Penn & Teller and the Scintas at The Rio.

"The Rio isn't on the Strip," Brenner noted. "The Palms isn't on the Strip. The issue now is how far off the Strip you are."

The 825-room Westin hotel was formerly the Maxim, which opened in 1979 and fell into bankruptcy several times under different owners before it closed in 2000.

Columbia Sussex Corp. of Fort Mitchell, Ky., a family owned company that has 50 hotels nationwide, bought the property last year for $38 million and spent $80 million in renovations.

The company owns and manages nearly 60 hotel franchises under several major brands, including Westin, Sheraton and Marriott.

In addition to the hotel, spa, restaurants, meeting rooms and a small casino, the Vegas Westin includes a 250-seat theater.

The room, tiny by today's Vegas standards, has been sublet by the hotel to PR Entertainment. Brenner, who will perform nightly from 8 to 9:30, said in the near future another performer might have a show there from 10:30 p.m. to midnight. A later show and an afternoon show also are possible.

"(Pr Entertainment) leases the room," he said. "They can do whatever they want."

However, their authority isn't carte blanche. The Westin maintains the right to approve entertainers who perform there. Brenner says he was their personal choice to be the resident headliner.

"I want a small showroom," Brenner said. "I don't want the responsibility of 400 or 600 seats. I'm not Celine Dion, I don't need 4,000 seats."

He said for the first two or three months he will be working seven nights a week until he can determine which is the slowest night. Then he will decide when the room will be dark.

After his performances, Brenner will be selling his latest book, "I Think There's a Terrorist in My Soup."

"I've never merchandised before," Brenner said. "But I think the book is important. It teaches us how to laugh at every problem, from being overweight to 'Where is Osama bin Laden?' "

Fans should enjoy the book, filled with his witty observations on topical events.

Brenner's biggest fans are the well-informed.

"If people do not read the newspaper or watch the news or pick up Time or Newsweek, don't come see me," he said. "I do current events. If you're not cognizant of what's going on in the world, I'm a waste of your time."

To keep his material fresh he reads more than six newspapers a day and 80 to 100 magazines a month. He spends hours every day surfing the Internet and watching news shows.

"It's great for show business, but the worst part about it is that 90 percent of everything I read is not funny and it's in my head," Brenner said. "You can't spend that many hours reading this stuff and not having it affect you personally."

Revealing his compassionate side, Brenner says employees of the Siegfried & Roy show who were summarily fired after Roy was attacked by a tiger earlier this month will be admitted free to his 90-minute comedy show during the first week of the run.

"I was upset that 267 people got fired within 24 hours," Brenner said. "I understand they were given garbage bags, some severance pay and told to get out. So, I'm inviting everyone from Siegfried & Roy to come see my show, whatever they did, for the entire week -- even if they just brought water to the lion."

He says he isn't sure how he would have handled the situation had he been in charge.

"I'm not the person to ask," Brenner said. "Ask Steve Wynn. He would come up with a humanitarian answer. Knowing the man, working for him for six or eight years, he would never have fired 267 people from the show and just said, 'Good-bye Charlie.' "

The Philadelphia native says he wishes the gangsters were still in charge.

" 'The boys' were totally person-friendly," Brenner said.

Brenner has been acquainted with elements of the mob most of his life. His late father, Lou (a one-time vaudeville comedian), ran numbers. Brenner himself ran numbers when he was a child.

"With the boys, you struck a deal and shook hands," he said. "I worked for these guys 12 or 13 years, and there was never anything that wasn't there that I asked for. You couldn't mess around with them, of course -- if you went against them there was a contract of a different kind, otherwise they were always hospitable, always asking about your family and everything."

All on a handshake.

"When I went to work for the Golden Nugget in 2001 I had to sign a 37-page contract," Brenner said. "I told them, 'I don't understand -- the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Constitution all together add up to about nine pages of writing that changed the world forever.' "

Brenner says tens of thousands of dollars are paid to lawyers to argue every point of a contract, "then when they get done they can violate the contract whenever they want and say, 'Take it to arbitration.' "

"Do you think the mob ripped off the American public of billions of dollars like the CEOs have done?" he asked, "Who's the mob, anyway?"

During and after Brenner's gig at the Golden Nugget, he spent weekends flying around the country performing. He says he's physically beat and wants to stay closer to home.

"(Traveling) has taken a major toll," Brenner said. "I stay in shape, but I'm exhausted. The main thing is the harassment at the airport with security."

Brenner's two other attempts to find a permanent room in Vegas failed. He said there were several reasons why he left the Golden Nugget, but the main one was that he was forced to fulfill his contract and work the night of 9-11.

"When I was told I had to work that night, that just soured me," Brenner said. "Not that I was going to stay anyway, but that was the deciding factor."

In March, Brenner experimented with doing weeknight gigs at the Suncoast Mondays through Thursdays, and working out of town on weekends.

"We tried it for four weeks," Brenner said. "I know it would have been successful, my numbers were building, but I think they were nervous about the Monday-through-Thursday concept."

He can't wait to launch the new gig.

"Compare my flying on four to six airplanes every weekend to opening my garage door, getting into my car, driving down Flamingo, doing 90 minutes six or seven nights a week and then driving home," Brenner said. "This is a piece of cake."