After Time Warner took over as the cable provider for my area, they included an intriguing feature as a part of the package to which I subscribed: a digital video recorder. I realize I'm late to this game, that everyone has been using Tivo for years now, but this metal box has turned out to be a new obsession of mine. I have more hours of stuff recorded now than I could probably watch by the end of the year if I stopped working and just devoted myself fulltime to what I have stored already. Earlier this year, I started trying to watch all of the films that have ever been nominated for Best Picture (winner or not), and the DVR just makes it too easy. About 30 such films are broadcast each week so you can imagine that I fill up the recorder all the time, and I get behind very often too. (No, I'm not watching thirty films each week. Rest easy. I still have a semblance of a life away from the TV.)
Occasionally, however, I find space and time for something other than an allegedly "award-worthy" film. Such was the case with a documentary that I recorded in August and finally watched this past weekend:
Elvis: That's the Way It Is. I have a complicated history with the King (or "Alvin," as a friend and I used to call him). We're both from the same region of Mississippi, although I'm from a little town even farther north and east than Tupelo. So I grew up with the story (the legend? the myth?) of the poor boy who made good. My mother was always a fan (still is); when she was a teenager, she had a skirt covered with images of him (an article of clothing that would undoubtedly be worth a lot on Ebay these days but which was cut into pieces years ago to be used in making a quilt). I can also recall watching "Elvis: Aloha from Hawaii" with my grandmother. The day he died in 1977 (the 30-year anniversary of which prompted the showing of
Elvis: That's the Way It Is and various other of his films) members of my family managed to get their hands on several copies of the Memphis Press-Scimitar, a newspaper long since defunct but the one that "broke" the news first that late summer day when I was 14 years old.
I've seen Elvis performances on film many times, including his "comeback special" where he wears that black leather outfit (don't act like you don't know the one I'm talking about). But this particular documentary was new for me. I thought I had seen it before, but I couldn't recall any of it once I started watching it. Reportedly, this concert at the International Hotel in Las Vegas was a return to live performing for Elvis after all of those years in Hollywood toiling away at films like
Clambake,
Harum Scarum,
Change of Habit,
et al. The film starts with rehearsals here in Los Angeles at the old MGM studios. Elvis sports those huge, wicked sideburns he grew in the early '70s, and he looks incredibly fit and very tan when he walks into the rehearsal studio. With that disheveled black hair and that perpetual impish twinkle in his eye, he manages to sing and joke his way through a variety of songs. Before he even steps onto the stage for the live performance, you're entranced.
I know he became a parody of himself toward the end. I know the drugs and the drinking led to his demise. I know that so many people today only know the "fat Elvis" of later years, not realizing that was a very, very brief period of time in his life. People go to Graceland and see the gaudiness of his home; they buy the vials of "real Elvis sweat" and alleged fragments of his gold lame outfit as if they were paying for indulgences during the Middle Ages. People go to the Nixon Museum in Yorba Linda just to buy a t-shirt featuring him and Nixon shaking hands. But you forget all of that--at least I did--while you're watching him perform live.
I'll admit that I wasn't a huge Elvis fan when I was growing up. Truthfully, I don't even remember many of his songs being played on the radio because he wasn't the hottest singer on the charts at the time. I'm sure I must have occasionally seen him on TV, but none of those appearances resonate with me now save for the Hawaii concert and that's because it was "live via satellite": a big deal in those days because it was still new technology. I don't even know that he was a truly remarkable singer for most of his career. Sometimes he would exercise those muscles and perform in a way that made you realize how much power he had, but he often chose pretty lousy material and frequently sang it haphazardly. (In that way, he reminds me a great deal of Dean Martin, another man with a remarkable voice who never really seemed to stretch himself enough artistically.) In my mind, the only song in the film that even approaches greatness in terms of his performance is "Suspicious Minds." (Maybe "Poke Salad Annie," but that has a lot to do with his physicality rather than his voice.) There's certainly an exciting rawness to his early recordings, but he was reaching a peak in his talent during the late '60s and early '70s in terms of his vocal quality; listen to some of his gospel recordings from that time if you want the proof.
But this movie reminded me of some things about him that I had forgotten or perhaps not even realized. He's wearing a series of those white jumpsuits that would become so iconic. There's a different one for each night at the International. And they're pretty wild: fringed, belted, embellished. And each one has a v-neck that's split down to his navel. You can see the definition of his chest and just how tan he is. (I kept thinking how he would fit right in today in West Hollywood; he has that same body type that is so prized nowadays, and he was fond of showing off his body to its best advantage.) These outfits are pretty form-fitting, and Elvis looks amazing in them. Say what you will about how ridiculous he might have looked in later years when he gained weight, but he knew how to fill out that white polyester in 1970. He's sexy, and when he flashes that crooked grin or half-smile of his, you can easily see why so many people screamed when they saw him perform live. He doesn't need to swivel his hips--although he can't keep that left leg still--to draw the crowd's attention any longer.
Elvis was also willing to take some gambles in his shows. He had back-up singers who were black (The Sweet Inspirations) and white (The Imperials). And watching him rehearse with them, you realize just how at ease he was with people of different races. He also chose songs outside of his own repertoire. He sings music from the Righteous Brothers, the Beatles, even the Bee Gees. This was not some rehashed traveling greatest-hits package he's singing. This was a man showing that he was still "current." And even though he's singing someone else's hits, he performs them in his own way; he reinterprets these tunes rather than merely copying them.
What most struck me about Elvis in this film, though, was his rapport with the audience. He is so clearly at ease with them; you can see that he loves them, that he needs them. He plays with them throughout the concert, making jokes and messing up lyrics just to get a laugh or a smile from them. He's pretty risque at times too; he makes several off-color remarks throughout the film. And he kisses dozens of people in the audience--on the mouth, directly, not a peck on the cheek. He goes out into the audience while singing "Love Me Tender," and the women line up to kiss him and be kissed by him. It's astonishing. I can't imagine any performers doing that today. They'd be too afraid.
I'm not sure what compelled me to record this film, and I can't really figure out what has compelled me to write about it and/or Elvis now. About a decade after he passed away, I did write a poem about visiting his birthplace in Tupelo. It was a pretty somber poem about the emotions you feel as you see just how little he started life with and then realize just how ridiculously out of control his life became. So maybe this film was another way to remember him in a good way, as a man enjoying himself in his chosen profession. Maybe I was just wondering what Elvis was like during that time, how he looked, how ready he was for performing--whether he still had "it" at that point. I record a lot of stuff now on this DVR and oftentimes never return to it. Things stay trapped in that machine for months. Sometimes I even delete a program I've recorded because I can't recall what possessed me to think I wanted to see it in the first place. However, I'm glad I took a chance on this one.
