Last weekend’s Elvis screening didn’t happen at the actual Graceland, but at The Guest House at Graceland, a super-sized, Vegas-styled hotel resort-slash-tourist trap located a quarter-mile north of Graceland.
Roughly 40 junketeers plus some TikTok influencers were taken around Memphis and shown Beale Street, the original Sun Records studio, etc. But what about the Lorraine Motel?
After the screening three Presley women — Priscilla, Lisa Marie (former beard wife for Michael Jackson) + Riley Keough — took the stage along with Baz Luhrmann, Austin Butler, Tom Hanks and others and showered the film with praise.
What were they gonna do…say it was not bad or pretty good or an in-and-outer? They’re following the script because the film enhances the Elvis brand…that’s it.
Elvis opens on 6.24. The big question is, how will Millennials and Zoomers react? Because Elvis isn’t as much fun as Bohemian Rhapsody — not with Hanks’ performance as Col. Tom Parker bringing everyone down.
@alecia_davis Priscilla & Lisa Marie Presley on the new Baz Luhrmann biopic, ELVIS. #priscillapresley #lisamarie #austinbutler #tomhanks #elvis #elvismovie ♬ original sound – Alecia Davis
HE’s visit to Memphis in February ’09, or 13 and 1/3 years ago:
“Yesterday I rented a fairly inexpensive car from National/Alamo around 1:45 pm after landing at Memphis Airport, and soon after began my quickie tour of the four big tourist attractions. I loathed Graceland, felt awed and saddened by the Lorraine Motel, didn’t much care for the Disneyland/Universal City Walk vibe of Beale Street, and loved the little shrine that is Sun Records, the small-scale, modest-vibe recording studio that was begun by the great Sam Phillips in 1950, and is now a down-homey, old-time funky studio and and souvenir shop.
“Graceland, the former home of Elvis Presley and a shrine to the money that his music and movies continue to earn, is close to Memphis airport and located on an ugly straightaway called Elvis Presley Blvd., which is littered with tacky blue-collar chain stores and fast-food franchises and unsightly warehouses and car washeries.
The area is flat and character-less with amber-brown grass and very few trees, except for a relatively small forested area near Graceland.
“The area around Graceland was probably wide-open country (or close to it) when Presley first bought the place in early 1957 for $100 grand — now the Graceland commercial milieu is indistinguishable from the crap and clutter along New Jersey’s infamous Route 22. One look and you want to escape.
“The tourist stores pandering to the Presley fans are located across the street from the walled-in main property, which consists of a long upsloping lawn, a modest-sized home with a kind of southern-style neo-colonial design with a brick facade, and a couple of buildings built alongside, including what looks like a barn or a horse stable. It’s said to have 23 rooms but it didn’t look all that big to me. Presley is buried in the back yard (we’ve all seen the photos), but I took one look at this parched, depressing, over-hyped sucker attraction and decided to shine it.”
HE’s first reactions following Cannes Elvis screening: Elvis isn’t quite as bad as I feared, but several sections are punishing to sit through. It’s a flashy, pushy, often exhausting carnival sideshow, very primary and primitive, clearly made for the ADD peanut gallery…a fairly blunt tool.
Baz Luhrmann understands the whole Elvis Presley story chapter-and-verse, and the film covers every last important or noteworthy story point, but God, what a crushing, staggering drag to hang out with fatsuit Tom Hanks (as Colonel Tom Parker) for 159 minutes.
Using Parker’s perspective as a framing device was an understandable decision, I guess, but the Hanks presence seems to drain so much of the film’s potential. It kills so much of the music, the invention, the potential fun of it, the all of it. At times it feels as the film is mainly about Parker with Elvis as a prominent supporting character.
Just as Parker became more and more of a pestilence (a constantly interrupting or stifling figure) in Elvis’s life and career, Hanks’ performance becomes more and more unwelcome and deflating from an audience perspective.
Ladies and gentleman, the villain of Elvis’s life! The guy who stifled and nearly smothered Elvis’s career because Elvis was too complacent or blinded or drugged by the big money to see what a bloated, selfish, gambling-junkie, revenue vacuum cleaner Parker had become.
Austin Butler does a good workmanlike job in the title role. He apparently gave everything he had. As Owen Gleiberman has written, Butler looks less like Elvis than the young John Travolta mixed with Jason Priestley. But he worked it hard. Respect.
I adored the moment in which Elvis’s “Memphis mafia” (i.e., the principal parasites) is introduced as if part of a TV show opening-credits sequence. One of Baz’s best moments.
Sidenote: Luhrmann ends it with the famous Las Vegas “Unchained Melody” a capella performance with a sweating Elvis sitting down at the piano, etc.
Going by the online trailers, I’ve been noting all along that the film seems to avoid the “fat Elvis” period, but it doesn’t. Because the “Unchained Melody” sequence is TOTALLY FAT FAT WHITE JUMPSUIT ELVIS…fat, fat, dessicated, dessicated, FAT FAT HEART ATTACK SWEATING SWEATING FAT FAT DEAD. But such a soulful delivery of a song.
It doesn’t seem to be a Butler fatsuit thing as much as a Butler face-paste…footage of the real fat Elvis with the singing, sweating Butler digitally inserted.
