With Baz Luhrman‘s Elvis (Warner Bros., 6.24) only five months away from opening commercially (and a month sooner if it premieres at the ’22 Cannes Film Festival, which may or may not happen in May) it’s surely time to take a fresh look at John Carpenter‘s Elvis, a nearly three-hour ABC TV flick which premiered on 2.11.79.
It was praised for being harshly realistic as far as The King’s anxieties, failings and foibles were concerned, and particularly for Russell’s performance, which had a fair amount of rage and nailed Presley’s voice.
Carpenter’s film aired only 18 months after Presley keeled over on the toilet seat in August 1977. It ends on an upbeat note in 1970, and therefore skips the decline years — no looking to persuade President Nixon to make him a special narcotics agent in December ’70, no fat Elvis, no prescription drugs, no peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches.
Will Millennials and Zoomers in particular give a shit about an Elvis movie? Presley pre-dates even the boomers as his heyday was between ’54 and ’58, back when the nothing generation kidz of the ’50s (kids who dressed in chinos and loafers and wore flattops and admired James Dean and Marlon Brando) was in their mid to late teens.
To the average Millennial or Zoomer Presley might as well be Johnny Ray or Frank Sinatra.
Five years ago Shout Factory restored the original elements of Carpenter’s film to create a first-rate Bluray. The original TV cut apparently ran 168 minutes but the Bluray runs 11 minutes longer — 179 minutes. I can’t find an HD trailer for the Bluray — only a trailer for the 2010 Shout Factory DVD version. Plus an awful-looking “pink” trailer.
