Elvis: The Man, The Legend, The Manager?

Baz Luhrmann’s ELVIS crams the rise and fall of rock ‘n roll legend Elvis Presley into a questionable biopic – because it’s told from the POV of his manager!

Tom Hanks (under obese makeup) plays Colonel Tom Parker, the enigmatic manager who shepherded Elvis into the stratosphere, in an astounding performance only slightly less slimy than Jabba The Hutt. Parker’s constant narration keeps justifying how he “made” Elvis rather than “sponged” off him. Does maverick filmmaker Luhrmann feel that Parker was getting a bad rap in modern society, and his venal methods needed to be humanized? Because, let me assure you, I was of the generation that just missed the Elvis craze, and Elvis’s manager means even less to me, occupying not one iota of brain space, as surely as he doesn’t occupy the thoughts of a whole generation of short attention span asshats who wouldn’t know Peter Grant or Brian Epstein or Troy Carter if their music careers depended on it. So why frame the whole movie around Parker?

Maybe Luhrmann is counting on the populace having forgotten Parker as a real life figure, as he and his co-writers (Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner) turn Parker into the caricature of everything we suspect about leech managers, yet evoke our sympathies when they reveal what a pathetic and rudderless man Parker was, with no background, no country, no friends – hell, he wasn’t even a colonel; we’re manipulated to feel that his exploitation of Elvis Presley is justifiable due to his psychological need to attach himself to something familial. The dramatic license is draped over this movie so hard, it looks like an octopus strangling its prey.

And Parker’s story – like that octopus – overshadows the legend of Elvis that this movie is trying to purvey. For example: see how long I spent talking about Elvis’s fucking MANAGER?

Austin Butler (ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD) is Elvis—I mean… Austin Butler IS Elvis. This 31-year-old hound dog embodies the innocence, the charisma, the pathos, the moves, the swagger, the sex… The movie’s shortcomings are far removed from Austin Butler. Luhrmann FOUND his Elvis… he just couldn’t find the story to drape around The King’s shoulders like a sequined cape, rather than a hungry octopus.

Life events blaze before our eyes: young Elvis attending gospel meetings, spying black folks singing that debbil rock and roll, interactions with dad Vernon (John Roxburgh), the death of mother Gladys (Helen Thomson), marrying Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), in and out of military service, touring and pills, firing guns and making movies), with Parker and Elvis constantly butting heads over either pleasing the establishment or fooling them into accepting the “white boy with black hips.”

ELVIS is filmed beautifully, directed creatively, but it loses the essence of the era it is trying to convey when it smashes in hip hop songs and filmic techniques that take us out of the times. For example – there is a medley of Elvis songs, interspersed with raw versions of black people singing them (excellent storytelling and filmmaking choice!) – and then there is a scene of a black woman singing Hound Dog integrated with a hip hop beat… FUCK THAT!

Another example of poor judgment is how the movie starts throwing in modern tics (glaring Taratino titles, Dutch angles, smash-pans and stressed filmstock) while its early sequences capture a reminiscence of 50s filmic techniques, with split screens and Kodachrome fuzz. So after hitting us with bombastic filmmaking, when the actual impactful elements of Elvis the performer are unleashed onto an unsuspecting public… they don’t seem so mighty. How can a modern audience grasp the heady sensual outrage when Elvis shook his pelvis, if the movie has already worn out its sensationalism in the movie-MAKING itself? In trying to convey Elvis’s dynamism onstage being so stimulating to the people of the era that it spurred women to unbidden orgasm, the filmmakers ironically left themselves nowhere to go by shooting their load so early with the snazzy filmmaking, having over-stimulated our senses into apathy.

And of course, we can’t watch any biopic these days without WALK HARD entering our thoughts whenever filmic shorthand is used, as when Elvis’s bandmates introduce him to drugs. Or when a person turns into a superstar with time compression, by representing how they got people to dance on the strength of one song at a sock hop. On the other hand, this legendary man DID set panties aflame with his electrifying performances – there must have been one crossover gig where it went from plain excitement to demagogue frenzy. But it’s all Dewey Cox by now…

The five-million-dollar man-spread.

If only the whole movie emulated the Las Vegas International Hotel sequence: not only recreating the iconic performance from 1970’s ELVIS: THAT’S THE WAY IT IS, but adding another dimension, illustrating the relationship between talented-yet-naïve performer and sincere-yet-predatory manager, in a glorious juxtaposition of simultaneous winning/losing. While Elvis is onstage performing Suspicious Minds (“We’re caught in a trap / I can’t walk out / Because I love you too much, baby…”) Parker is inking a deal with the hotel owner – on a napkin, no less! – for 5 years and 5 million. This duplicitous act is literally carried out right under Elvis’s nose, after Parker had promised Elvis that he would send him on a world tour, and NOT tie him up in a residency. (We know this sequence of events never happened in this way, but this is what “dramatic license” should be used for – making things dramatic, not arbitrarily adding wrong facts to a real person’s life.)

And just like Hanks’s manager in THAT THING YOU DO, where we imagined horns growing from nice Mr. White’s big forehead as he demanded the master tapes, we see the horns on Parker’s temples as he evilly jokes about the 5 mil: “That is what my boy would expect… Now… what are you going to pay ME?” (Throughout his career with Elvis, Parker took 50%! Why are we humanizing this black hole scum again?) The Hotel Manager would write on the napkin, “all debts cancelled, plus lifetime credit at the hotel,” adding, “You do whatever you want, Colonel, as long as that boy stays on that stage!”

That day that everyone decided 50% is a damn good deal and ruined it for the rest of us musicians forever.

And under this plotting of his life pathway, there is Austin Butler, singing: “We’re caught in a trap / I can’t walk out,” resplendent in his bellbottom high-collar diamond-studded whites, pulling the greatest Elvis impersonation since Kurt Russell (ELVIS, 1979). Alternately looking exactly like Kurt and Elvis in so many shots we just give up and perceive only Elvis Presley. (Matter of fact, there are montages where footage of the real Presley is mixed in with Butler, and only a keen eye will catch him.)

And as the chorus repeats and repeats, growing in intensity yet going nowhere, like some ominous Shepard-Risset glissando – “We’re caught in a trap / I can’t walk out” – Elvis is oblivious, yet inadvertently singing his future. And with the last line – what are we meant to think? “Because I love you too much…” – that Parker loved Elvis so much (or at least the income he generated) that he was caught in as much of a trap as Elvis was – that he couldn’t walk out either, on threat of ruination.

The ending sequence is tear-jerking. Butler starts the song Unchained Melody on piano, and there is a flashback to him as a young boy (a smart device used throughout the movie – intercutting between the current rendition of the song and its roots on where Elvis heard it/was inspired by it). When the shot cuts back to Elvis… it really IS Elvis!

Elvis Aaron Presley. Under a career montage, we see The King forcing out that song through a drug-addled haze, and yet retaining his distinctive vocal prowess. The star power and the tragedy hit us like a hurricane – knowing this was the end of his life (a few days later he would be dead), it is enough to drive us weeping into home base.

The movie had wound down to the point where Parker was openly threatening and scheming against Elvis and father Vernon (who tried to manage him), and besides revealing what a pathetic husk of a man Parker was, a citizen of no country, a man without a friend, Parker’s machinations had become a bad taste in our mouths, so the final scene of Elvis is a bittersweet uplift, and yet a reminder that all legends must surely… deal with managers who would be forgotten if it weren’t for directors shoving their unkempt stories in our faces— Jesus Christ, Baz! – What were you THINKING?!

END

A film that takes us somewhere, yet goes nowhere.

Quentin Tarantino once again brazenly rewrites history in his scintillating homage to La La Land of the 1960s, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD.

Hollywood 1969. Two tales intertwine – one, a tale of an actor and his stuntman, hustling for work in a business that has moved past their cowboy attitudes and advancing ages; the other, a tale of a rising young starlet going somewhere, while her throughline goes nowhere.

And that’s the small gripe I have with this meticulously made film: a little less homage, a little more story.

Writer-director Tarantino paints two fictional characters from scratch and portrays one real life character; the fictional pair are actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stuntman bro Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt, as leathery and runneled as Tommy Lee Jones), while the historical character is Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), who is connected to real life acquaintances that would scar history forever – the Manson Family (portrayed as peripheral characters, including a lookalike who could be a young Liam Neeson or, I’m guessing, Charlie Manson).

Tarantino also re-dresses Hollywood the town (either in CGI, practical effects or a combo of both) in the glitter gown it wore in the ‘60s, from the shop facades on Hollywood Boulevard, to the car models from that era, down to the street signs, bus shelters and billboards. And credit where it’s due – that effort in itself is a stunning achievement!

However, Tarantino seems to have lost his throughline in chasing his art. Firstly, only movie-philes would know or care that he has brought 1960’s Hollywood to life so fastidiously; secondly, he spends way too much time with eyes on Sharon Tate. Movie might have benefitted had Tarantino simply followed the two buddies (with their own compelling narratives), because by inserting Tate and rewriting her as a survivor of the “Tate Murders,” her appearance in the film is meaningless to any cinemagoer with no knowledge of her real history (victim to the Manson Family, that murdered five people in Roman Polanski’s Los Angeles home in 1969), and she ultimately becomes nothing but a red herring to those who do know the history. Tate happens to be Rick Dalton’s neighbor, therefore a motivating subplot for actor Dalton, who craves to make contact with Tate’s director husband, Polanski. After the film’s climax (in which Tate is not involved), she appears as a concerned neighbor, in the smallest of comedic payoffs.

That being said, allow me to commend IN HOLLYWOOD for its sudden, savage climax – one of the most satisfying payoffs in cinematic history, with Brad Pitt pulling out his big dick for the type of studied gore-ballet that Tarantino is renowned for. The crafted gutshock blunt blow to our skulls doesn’t get any better. It’s Hero Time.

Most women have to be held back when confronted with The Pitt.

Like the two films that inspired its name (ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST and ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, both directed by one of Quentin’s heroes – Sergio Leone), ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is a tale about a few connected characters set against the backdrop of a kaleidoscopic cultural sprawl. Definitely a passion project for Quentin (who admits 1969 holds a rose-colored grip on his youth), movie is a pastiche wrapped in a homage and doused liberally with roman a clef, packed with Easter eggs, classic rock, in-jokes, and parts for all his brahs.

There’s ice-cool Timothy Olyphant and ice-veined Michael Madsen as cowboys, Kurt Russell as a producer (and narrator), stuntwoman Zoe Bell as his wife; there’s even Bruce’s daughter Rumer Willis and Kevin Smith’s daughter Harley Quinn, as Manson cultists. Leo, of course, did DJANGO, and even Pitt has crossed paths with Tarantino before… remember Floyd the stoner in the Tarantino-penned TRUE ROMANCE? “Don’t conden-send me, man! Fucken kill you, man!…”

Al Pacino is producer Marvin Schwarz, who steers Dalton toward spaghetti westerns out-of-country, to build an overseas cachet and return a hero (a real life gambit that rocketed none other than Clint Eastwood to stardom); Margaret Qualley is Pussycat, a free spirit who tempts Booth to the cult; Bruce Dern is old George Spahn, who allows the Manson Family to camp at his Spahn Movie Ranch (which features in the other prime scene of the movie – Booth visiting the eerily stagnant Ranch and talking his way through the ominous female hippies to visit old George, who may be… dead? prisoner? worse?…)

Martial artist Mike Moh plays Bruce Lee (during his Kato period in THE GREEN HORNET), comparing dick size with Cliff Booth on the set of a movie. Booth ends up getting kicked off the set for beating up Lee. Now that’s just wrong. No matter how funny or artistic license the scene is – no one beats up Bruce Lee!

Rare picture of Bruce Lee at one of his Fight Club meets.

The primo performance in this movie is Leo. His Dalton looks haggard, old, he’s coughing, smoking, clearing his throat, he has a slight stutter (which is beautifully played by DiCaprio, not as a full-blown “b-b-b-but” type of impediment, but an occasional slight hesitation when he is talking to people in uncomfortable situations), his usually pretty eyes are bloodshot with lack of sleep, but also with the knowledge that every hour he rests is one less hour he is spending trying to stay on top of a profession which is leaving him in its wake. Though he’s starred in his share of TV serials, his confidence as a viable leading man is waning, because he cannot get the breaks to transition to the big screen, (like Steve McQueen and other contemporaries).

On the cusp of a new decade, Dalton feels aged and used up, realizing the movie industry is No Country for Old Men. And we are in the fibers of his being and suffering with his soul through his existential crisis. And I personally feel every bladed inch of his anxiety; that character – is ME. And I’m guessing a lot of YOU as well…

His crisis is brought to a head when he meets a precocious little girl on set (an outstanding performance by young Julia Butters, who is reading a book where the hero feels the world has moved on without him. Dalton confesses “I’m more useless every day,” and breaks down in tears in front of her.

Tarantino is transmitting directly into my darkest limbic fluids, that place where hope goes to die, my sunken place…

While Dalton is Acting The Shit out of his angst, Pitt’s Booth – also in the autumn of his career – comes across as still vital and more in touch with his previous power. He seems happy to flit from one odd job to the next, always the faithful second banana to Dalton, his stuntman skills serving him well in street fights, drifting, and taking life on the chin; in essence, DiCaprio has the meatier role, while Pitt has the meat.

“I’m having such a good time doing nothing in this movie.”

The Rolling Stones’ Out Of Time drives us into the third act, and I found myself wondering why I was not gripped around the throat yet, which is the usual modus operandi for Tarantino films at this late stage. Also, besides Dalton and Cobb starting a new life chapter, eyes are back on Tate, and no one will fault me for thinking the Stones song is a harbinger of her doom, “Baby baby baby – you’re out of time…” (hinting that her time is up soon?). Not only that, Russell’s narration describes the people who would be the real life Manson victims moving in next door with Tate – but in this movie, they do NOT meet a tragic end, and are therefore useless to this movie’s plot, yet the narration continues this red herring throughline! Looking back on it, I’m actually getting annoyed. Technicians and actors spent days, weeks on these scenes; editors, lighting, costumes, et al, only to have this thread completely dropped when the Manson Family – led by the real life character “Tex” (Austin Butler) – skulked up Cielo Drive to start the mayhem. And Tarantino cut out all Tim Roth’s scenes for that non sequitur garbage?!

Maybe Tarantino is right, when he says he only has 10 films in him. In this penultimate one, he is finding it hard to clear his own high bar; his own legacy of leaving us breathless for weeks, months, years after viewing his iconoclastic product. Besides the compelling performance from Leo and the mantastic muscle of Pitt, this film wasted more time meandering up and down the Hollywood Hills than idiot tourists searching for the Hollywood sign.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, “The 9^th Film from Quentin Tarantino,” definitely ends with a bang not a whimper, which flavors our exit libido, however, do we allow Quentin to skate on the body of the film being “merely great,” or do we insist on nothing less than gripping from film start to final frame?

We await Quentin’s 10^th, insisting on, and anticipating, the latter…

END