Staff Picks: Elvis
Films that can't help falling in love with you.
Feature Presentation’s Staff Picks is not a best-of list. How do you even craft a list of the best of something as subjective as film? This is a list designed to highlight films (and occasionally television shows or other mediums of entertainment) of a certain theme or topic. It’s a watchlist, they are suggestions. Movies on this list will very in quality, length, genre, and home video or streaming availability.
This list’s theme: Elvis Presley
Jailhouse Rock (1957)
After serving time for manslaughter, young Vince Everett becomes a teenage rock star.
On this day, Elvis Presley's birthday, let's talk about movies that run the gamut of his life and public image, from movies with him to movies about him.
This is only Elvis' third movie, but he's already a superstar. He's so famous and so well-liked that this movie, one where he murders a guy, goes to jail, gets out of jail, and gets famous for singing a song about how awesome jail is, didn't affect him at all.
The title song is just as fun as you hope and the music video inside of the movie is the best part of the whole thing. The American Film Institute agreed - they placed it at 21 on their 100 Years...100 Songs list.
Bye Bye Birdie (1995)
The musical revolves around an Elvis Presley-type rocker who’s about to join the Army. To mark the occasion, his manager’s secretary arranges for him to kiss a random fan goodbye on The Ed Sullivan Show.
I have to admit that Bye Bye Birdie isn't really a great musical. It's a product of that '50s/'60s theatre-making where songs (and songwriting) seem to come before (any semblance of) the story, so all of the best songs (in Birdie's case: "Put On a Happy Face," "One Boy," "Kids") have little to nothing to do with the plot. It's all still really fun though, with the Elvis-crazed mania stuff all working like a time capsule.
So what's the issue? Well, all of this can also make the show feel dated and difficult to pull off with fidelity all these years later. Luckily, as in the case of this 1995 tv movie, if you can get folks who can make it work, like Jason Alexander, Vanessa Williams, Marc Kudisch, Tyne Daly, and George Wendt, it can be exactly what they always wanted to be - an easy, fun, pop-charting good time.
The King (2017)
A cultural portrait of the American dream at a critical time in the nation’s history. Set against the 2016 American election, The King takes a musical road trip across the country in Elvis Presley’s 1963 Rolls Royce.
Early on in this Rolls-Royce set road-trip documentary, producer and amateur Elvis scholar Ethan Hawke says, “When my grandfather was alive, America’s greatest export was agriculture. By the time my father grew up, it was entertainment”.
That single line more or less sums up the entire documentary. Elvis as export. Elvis as product. His music, his movies, his merchandise, his persona, his likeness. It's about how those things correlated with 20th century America and its politics, and how it permeated the culture of other countries. It's not difficult to see how Elvis works as a metaphor for consumerism or civil rights and race relations, but I'm a little less convinced that Elvis' 1977 death is akin to September 11th or the 2016 election. Nonetheless, it makes a hell of a case. It never feels like a stretch.
Bubba Ho-tep (2002)
The “true” story of what really did become of Elvis Presley. We find Elvis as an elderly resident in an East Texas rest home, who switched identities with an Elvis impersonator years before his “death,” then missed his chance to switch back. He must team up with JFK and fight an ancient Egyptian mummy for the souls of their fellow residents.
Remember the good ole days when the craziest conspiracy you'd ever heard was that Elvis was still alive? Or the cover-up of JFK's "assassination?" Now we've got people believing there are barrels of child elbows being sold on the black market...
2002 was the good ole days, hence Bubba Ho-tep. It's a one-joke movie, sure. It's oddly paced, takes forever to get to the action...or horror...or whatever you'd call it. But at the end of the day, it's got Bruce Campbell as an aging Elvis and Ossie Davis as a black JFK¹ and just lets them go back and forth for over an hour, which is fun enough.
¹"But Jack, no offense but...President Kennedy was a white man."
"That's how clever they are. They dyed me this color, all over. Can you think of a better way to hide the truth than that?"
Elvis: That’s the Way It Is (1970)
On July 31, 1970, in Las Vegas, Nevada, Elvis Presley staged a triumphant return to the concert stage from which he had been absent for almost a decade. His series of concerts broke all box office records and completely reenergized the career of the King of Rock ’n’ Roll.
Between Elvis and Priscilla, Elvis' personal life has been examined and scrutinized by a whole new generation lately. And that's valid. He was not a very good person. But would you be if fame and fortune and all its perils took over your life?
When you watch this concert film, however, you can understand the appeal. His Vegas shows were the best of him as a live performer (remember how it was the best scene in Elvis? This is 100 minutes of that...) and he's crushing it in front of those crowds. And, let's be honest, he still crushes it watching it back over 50 years later. He's crooning, he's smooching, he's karate chopping, he's sweating all over the damn place. I would have loved to see that show live, but I'll happily settle with this.
Credit: Each plot synopsis comes from Letterboxd via TMDb.