Britney Spears, empty seats, politics … the juggernaut continues

Planet Hollywood Resort is running high-profile Britney Spears promotions while RadarOnline reports that ticket sales aren’t amazing for her shows.

Radar published Ticketmaster seat maps, explaining tickets remained for nearly half of her Halloween weekend shows a day before the weekend.

Billboard magazine reports Britney sold only 73 percent of seats in October with zero sell-outs.

Radar said audiences have low energy, too. That’s no surprise, however, since some superfans have publicly complained of perceived lip-syncing issues, $2,500 meet-and-greets, and Britney’s sometimes-sluggish moves.

Of course, Planet Hollywood gets international press whenever Britney gets slammed like this. So, Britney might be a hot potato, but people pay more for hot potatoes than cold ones.

What’s worse, in this go-along-to-get-along town, Norm Clarke reported Wednesday in the Review-Journal that Caesars disinvited Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman from attending Wednesday’s key-to-the-city event for Britney, a political power play.

Meanwhile, one of Britney’s promotions was to give free tickets to people named Britney, Britany, and other variations.

Think about that: A Britney by any other name is more welcomed at Planet Hollywood than the mayor of Las Vegas.

Just in time to distract us from this Radar report comes a Wednesday story in US magazine saying Britney has a new boyfriend, Charlie Ebersol, whose dad has been producing TV sports for decades.

If Britney wanted to alleviate all this pressure to sell a whopping 4,600 tickets each show — at a top-tier price of $525-plus-fees per seat — why doesn’t she just say:

“Look, y’all, that’s a lotta dern expensive seats to fill every doggone night, so sometimes we gotta drop a curtain halfway up the seat line, and by the way, I’m cutting my regular tickets down to $45, and I’m slashing my meet-and-greet prices to $100, because I feel bad for modern Millennials who can barely afford to pay their college loans, let alone come see me prance around while we all hear ‘Toxic.’ ”

But what do I know? I never did learn how to think like a multimillionaire juggernaut.

DEBBIE + CARRIE + TODD

As I reported last month, Debbie Reynolds and daughter Carrie Fisher will perform together for stage shows for the first time, Friday through Sunday at the South Point.

Debbie’s son Todd, who owns a Vegas condo with Debbie, will be there, too.

Debbie and I were talking about these South Point gigs when she gave me this little scoop:

“I just bought the doors to the Dunes hotel, because it was a ‘D,’ ” Debbie said. “I don’t have a place to put them.”

“You’re such a crafty woman,” I said.

“There’s always opportunity,” she said. “When you look around you, there’s opportunity and fun things to do.”

We got to talking about recent changes in the law, allowing gay people to get officially married in Las Vegas.

“I’m happy that we have all the laws that changed,” said Debbie, who co-starred in the classic coming-out movie, “In &Out.”

I asked her how much easier life might have been for gay friends in old Hollywood, if America were as gay-friendly then as now.

“It would have been easier. It would have been happier in a sense — less hectic, I imagine,” she said.

“We never really talked about being unhappy. Although, it was ‘isolated.’ They (LGBTQ people) don’t have to be isolated. Today, you can do as you wish, sort of. But I still see everybody congregated together — those who they get along with.”

Then, Debbie and I talked about all the nude photos actresses have had stolen from them and posted online.

“Everybody’s naked on the Internet,” I joked.

“I don’t want to be nude then nor now,” Debbie, 82, said and laughed. “Especially not now.”

Her generation of performers weren’t about nudity, she said.

“It was always humor. Everything is humor. Everything is fun. Nude doesn’t necessarily mean fun. Nude is nude.”

But there was plenty of nudity in vaudeville, which was “great fun,” she said.

“Oh my. You had Lili St. Cyr. You had strippers who wore pasties,” she said.

“There was always comedy mixed in with the nudity. It was all a combination of everything. It’s very different today.”

“Everything gets crazier, Debbie,” I said.

“Everybody’s in a hurry. To where, I don’t know. Because it seems to be going nowhere,” she replied. “Just take it easy. Back up a while. Smell the sunshine.”

Doug Elfman’s column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Email him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.