BEFORE: On-again, off-again. Worked another screening of "A Haunting in Venice" last night, now I've got another day off, so I'm stuck at home again today, and will be on Thursday, too. But the weekend's going to be busy, I'm working both days. I don't control the shifts, if I did I'd give myself a much more regular schedule. Nothing to do at home but watch movies and research some upcoming film festival deadlines...I started that "Ahsoka" show on Disney Plus, watched three episodes on Sunday night, but it's a tough slog because nothing really seems to be HAPPENING, which I usually demand from a show. I had this same problem with "Andor", not much happened in the first few episodes and I had to walk away from it and pick it up again later. This damn strike has gone on too long, and it's left me with a bunch of terrible shitty shows to watch. Time to start doing some chores around the house that I've been putting off, I guess.
Tom Hanks carries over again from "A Man Called Otto".
THE PLOT: The life of American music icon Elvis Presley, from his childhood to becoming a rock and movie star in the 1950's while maintaining a complex relationship with his manager, Colonel Tom Parker.
AFTER: Well, I have to say this movie could have been a real mess, given that the director is sort of known for creating spectacle over substance, and also doing questionable things like putting modern songs in period pieces ("Moulin Rouge") and also allowing his actors who are not generally known for their singing abilities sing modern songs in period pieces. And the last feature he directed was "The Great Gatsby", which came out nearly ten years ago and made him the bane of English teachers everywhere who were just trying to get their students to read a damn book from cover to cover and not just watch a Leonardo DiCaprio film and call that homework. Is there spectacle here? Of course, but there's also a story, and although I was just a kid when Elvis died, I've got some knowledge of the man and more importantly, the mansion.
You can learn a lot about a person by visiting their house, and in 2017, on our first of three BBQ Crawls across the South, we spent 3 days in Memphis (between Little Rock and Nashville) and really, there's only one important thing to do in Memphis - eat barbecue, of course. But we also figured that Graceland would be an important stop - you don't drive from Dallas to Nashville and NOT visit Graceland, after all. We saw the house, the cars (SO many cars!), the gold records, the shooting range, the gold records, the jumpsuits (SO many jumpsuits!) and we had lunch at Gladys' Diner before we toured Elvis' planes. Because you don't go all the way to Memphis and NOT visit Elvis' planes, we figured. And Col. Tom Parker's plane was there, too, because the story goes that he would arrive first in a city when Elvis was on tour, and make sure that everything was set up the way it needed to be, then Elvis would arrive on his private plane the next day.
So we stood on Elvis's plane, the Lisa Marie (with a conference table and blue suede furniture) and we visited Elvis' racquetball court (complete with pinball machines and a piano), we toured Vernon's office and the yellow TV room (where Elvis reportedly once shot a TV dead) and we stood where we could peer into the infamous "jungle room". The only place they didn't let us go was on the second floor, which of course is where Elvis died. And of course we visited Elvis' grave by the pool, which is just as much a tribute to excess as, well, everything on the grounds. You can learn a lot about someone by visiting their home, and my wife ended up saying, "THIS is what happens when you give a 25-year-old like a billion dollars." She's not wrong - Elvis bought every car and motorcycle he ever saw, including the ones that he drove in his movies, which is weird because they probably would have given him those cars, if he'd only just asked for them, but no, he bought them. (He even had the 1966 Mongrel T that he drove in the 1966 movie "Easy Come, Easy Go", which was designed by Batmobile creator George Barris, and was repurposed as the "Jokermobile" on the 1960's "Batman" TV show. It's nuts, look it up.)
Later that night, we had dinner in a wild game-themed restaurant that was located on top of a giant pyramid that contained a very large Bass Pro Shop (complete with a bowling alley, giant fishtanks and live ducks and alligators in a giant fake swamp) and we could step out on to a balcony after dinner and watch the sun set over the Mississippi River. Yeah, that happened. Then two days later, when leaving town, we visited the Sun Records Studio, which amazingly is still there - well, it was declared a landmark at some point. This is where Elvis' recording career began and also where he participated in the "Million Dollar Quartet" sessions that also featured Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. We didn't have time for the full tour, because we had to drive to Nashville, but I just wanted to stand in the lobby and take some pictures, and I was happy to see that Roy Orbison memorabilia was also highlighted in the decor. (Hey, when is somebody going to make a biopic about Roy?)
What was my point - oh, right, Graceland! This film absolutely NAILED the look of Graceland. When I worked at a screening of this film last year, I peeked in to monitor the screening (you know, to make sure the picture and sound were running OK) and I caught some of the characters standing in the living room at Graceland, and I IMMEDIATELY knew where that was, because I've been there. Now I believe that this movie did not film at the actual Graceland in Memphis, so that means that somebody had to re-create those rooms somewhere else, perhaps on a set, and they did so, EXACTLY. And probably the way those rooms looked back in the 1950's, not the way they look now, however, somebody did an amazing job. This movie should have won an Oscar for interior design, only I don't think that's a category. OK, art direction, then. Or Production Design, I think they call it now. But no, this film was nominated for 8 Oscars and didn't win any -
Sometimes I can also learn things about a movie just because of my OCD method of demanding that all my movies be linked together by actor. This occasionally causes juxtapositions that give me greater insight - though these come in flashes and most times don't even come at all. One example is realizing that three romance movies in a row were all based on "Cyrano de Bergerac", but there are many similar examples. Just this past week there were three Tom Hanks movies in a row where his character was recovering from the loss of a family member, a dead daughter in "Asteroid City" and a dead wife and child in "Pinocchio" and "A Man Called Otto". But here the Tom Hanks connection yields another hidden truth - if Geppetto was played by Tom Hanks, and so was Col. Tom Parker, then by transitive properties, Tom Parker is symbolic of Geppetto, and Elvis is the puppet! The little wooden boy who wants to be a real millionaire! OK, so the analogy doesn't work exactly, because Col. Parker was like a father figure to Elvis, but he was also the Stromboli character who put him to work in the puppet show, and maybe he was also the Blue Fairy that brought him to life. But work with me here, Elvis at one point made reference to "the salt mine" that was performing at a Vegas casino, and from there it's a short leap to being turned into an enslaved donkey because of his love of "root beer".
So who was Colonel Tom Parker? Well, he wasn't a Colonel, for starters. He was a Dutch immigrant (real name: Andreas Cornelis van Kuljk) who pretended to be a good old Southern boy, because that was part of the con. He was a former circus carny (really, everything connected to the circus is a scam, just look up P.T. Barnum) who then became a concert promoter, and really cashed in when he could find a good-looking white boy who could sing black music, thus creating a whole new untapped market of teen girls who were becoming sexually aware and needed somebody to focus on. Now, how much of Elvis's success was being in the right place at the right time, and how much of it was based on the marketing genius of this Svengali circus refugee, who told him at the start of each performance how hard to rotate his hips? We may never know. And he sure did well by Elvis by getting him cast in Hollywood movies, as each one brought him a bit closer to completing his collection of classic cars, and each one brought him a bit closer to sleeping with every actress in Hollywood. But fame costs, doesn't it? And Elvis paid the price, because unlike Pinocchio there were always strings attached - and then when Elvis finally cut those strings, that's when Col. Parker added up all his expenses over the years, and submitted like a $9 million bill for his services to Vernon, Elvis' father and business manager, who clearly wasn't, umm, taking care of business properly.
When we visited Graceland, we noticed some things - like there were portraits of Elvis and Priscilla during happier times, and of course there's no mention of them splitting up, so visitors can continue to live in an imagined world where they lived happily ever after. Also, there were portraits of Elvis during his skinnier days, and as you might expect, no photos or portraits of him in the later years, when he would ride into downtown Memphis on his Rupp Centaur three-wheeled motorcycle as he was too big for a conventional motorcycle. Elvis went from being larger than life to literally being larger than life (in terms of volume). So there's something of a whitewashing effect when telling Elvis' story, because not everybody wants to get into the addiction angle. So it's a credit to this film that they dive (not too deep, of course) into the drugs and Elvis' affairs - but they totally missed the food addiction and they kind of skip forward to Elvis' death.
Look, I get it, the movie's two and a half hours long at that point, and something's got to be trimmed somewhere. But they glossed right over the Lebowski years - there no depicttion of "Fat Elvis". Maybe if they had featured Elvis looming large in his later years, Austin Butler could have won an Oscar - because that was the year that Brendan Fraser won for "The Whale", just saying. We all have our own personal "fried peanut butter & banana sandwiches", and that's OK - well, mostly OK, as long as you're not doing damage to your health or your mental health. And maybe we all have our own personal "Dr. Nick", which is a metaphor for whoever or whatever gets you through the night, or gets you your drugs or your fried food or your hook-ups.
So we're left with Elvis' friendship with black musicians and appreciation for black music, which is kind of a nice way of saying he stole his whole act from them. B.B. King apparently taught him how to go on tour, and Little Richard apparently taught him how to sing an x-rated song but in a way so that nobody would really notice. If you look up the original lyrics for "Tutti Frutti", you may learn about some things that you didn't really want to know (HINT: the song is not about an ice cream flavor) and really, the world's second most explicit rock song is probably "Jailhouse Rock", if you want to get into it.
Then there are the touchstones of Elvis' career, from the Louisiana Hayride performance to leaving Sun Records for RCA, appearing on the Steve Allen show with Milton Berle and an actual hound dog, serving in the miiltary in Germany for 2 years, appearing in movies and marrying Priscilla, and then filming the Christmas TV special in 1968 on the night when RFK was shot. Then Parker single-handedly invented the concept of the Las Vegas Residency, signing Elvis up for a 5-year contract, supposedly to keep him from doing international tours, since Parker didn't have a passport and couldn't leave the U.S. Priscilla divorces Elvis because of his drug addiction, Elvis fires Col. Parker, Col. Parker submits his invoice for two decades of expenses, and Elvis dies not from a heart attack or a drug overdose but because of "his love for his fans" - these are Col. Parker's words, not mine, so they're rather questionable.
So what really killed Elvis Presley, was it drugs, high cholesterol or fame itself? I believe it was some combination of the first two, but if you want to make an argument for fame being the true "silent killer", I'm willing to listen. I've watched many documentaries about rock bands and other music artists who found themselves on a big hamster wheel that they couldn't (or wouldn't) get off. They make a hit record, great, but then the record company wants another one, pronto, and so they go right back into the studio, then after a few albums they go out on tour, but that means they need costumes, equipment, roadies, and a staff to handle things, and then comes the live album and another tour, and then even if they take a break, the staff needs to get paid and the company needs to stay in business, because who can live on just royalties? And if you didn't write your own songs, you're even worse off - so it's time to pump out another album or go out on the road again, to feed the machine. Of course they could just STOP at any time, unless they signed one of those killer five-album contracts, in which case they can't. And even if they could, that would mean they might not be famous any more, and people would forget about them - and according to this movie, that was Elvis' greatest fear.
To date, Presley remains the greatest-selling solo artist in recording history, although there are some asterisks involved - Elvis got his Grammys not for his rock and roll, but for his Gospel recordings. And 99% of his gold records were for songs that were from the Lieber and Stoller songbook, or written by other musicians like Carl Perkins - so essentially he was a cover artist, probably the most successful cover artist in history. Hey, the Beatles started out as a skiffle cover band, but eventually they wrote their own songs, while Elvis had to resort to covering "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Long Tall Sally" for the Hawaiian comeback special.
NITPICK POINT: I realize that some editing has to take place somewhere, or else a film about Elvis' life would be just as long as, well, Elvis' life. But there are some GLARING omissions here - there's mention of the first live satellite broadcast ever, but where's a re-creation of the Aloha special, live from Hawaii? Where is the Ed Sullivan show, for that matter? And where the HELL are the fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches? What about Elvis going to visit Richard Nixon? Well, I guess two movies about that have already been made.
Also starring Austin Butler (last seen in "The Dead Don't Die"), Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson (last seen in "Kangaroo Jack"), Richard Roxburgh (last seen in "Hacksaw Ridge"), Kelvin Harrison Jr. (last seen in "Cyrano"), David Wenham (last heard in "Peter Rabbit"), Kodi Smit-McPhee (last seen in "The Power of the Dog"), Luke Bracey (last seen in "The November Man"), Dacre Montgomery, Leon Ford (last seen in "The Light Between Oceans"), Gary Clark Jr. (last seen in "Miles Ahead"), Yola, Natasha Bassett (last seen in "Hail, Caesar!"), Xavier Samuel (last seen in "Blonde"), Adam Dunn, Alton Mason, Shonka Dukureh, David Gannon, Charles Grounds (last seen in "Crazy Rich Asians"), Josh McConville (last seen in "Fantasy Island"), Kate Mulvany (last seen in "The Great Gatsby"), Gareth Davies (last seen in "Peter Rabbit"), Chaydon Jay, Christian Kisando, John Mukristayo, Miles Burton, Gad Banza, Nicholas Bell (last seen in "The Great Raid"), Anthony Phelan (last seen in "Unbroken"), Sandro Colarelli, Cle Morgan, Charles Allen, Natalie Bassingthwaighte, Liz Blackett, Mike Bingaman, Christian McCarty, Tony Nixon, Andrea Moor, Mark Leonard Winter, Hugh Parker, Thomas Larkin, Hilton Hyppolite Denis, Christopher Sommers, Terepai Richmond, Alex Knight, Elizabeth Cullen, Angie Milliken, Jack McGirr, Miranda Frangou, Ruby Gonzales-Judd, Greg Powell, Patrick Shearer, Sarah Ogden, Ian Gardiner, Melina Vidler, Alex Radu, Ant Aggs, Josie Cross, Christina Fern (last seen in "San Andreas"), Doll Hunt, Jenna Kenney, Katrina West.
with archive footage of Walter Cronkite (last heard in "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood"), Jimi Hendrix (last seen in "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool"), George Harrison (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Paul McCartney (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Lyndon Johnson (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in TIme"), Robert F. Kennedy (last seen in "Citizen Ashe"), Martin Luther King (last seen in "Respect"), Frank Sinatra (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Elvis Presley, and the voice of Jimmy Carter (last seen in "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali")
RATING: 7 out of 10 Christmas songs that never got recorded for the Comeback Special.
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