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Weekend Weirdness Review: John Carpenterв s Elvis Starring Kurt Russell

2010-03-07 03:36
Weekend Weirdness 8217; favorite J.C. directed a nearly three hour epic about The King starring his main man Snake Plissken, and yet the project felt like it was on the verge of being forgotten by younger generations. How could this occur when the movie in question, John Carpenter 8217;sВ Elvis, is arguably a better country music biopic than Walk the Line, and exudes an unpretentious but fetching style reminiscent of Hal Ashbyв s Woody Guthrie biopicВ Bound for Glory Well, until this week, Elvis wasn 8217;t available on DVD, and the film 8217;s prior home video presence was spotty at best. Originally made and airedВ as a high profile ABC mini-series in в 79 8212;only two years after Elvis Presley had exited Earth for the celestial kingdom to join his momma 8212;the project remains an anomaly for Carpenter in terms of genre and medium. LikeВ several of our readers, I was moderately aware of the film 8217;s existence in the past but figured, It 8217;s probably a rather safe family deal. No rush. And yet Elvis historicallyВ marked the first collaboration between Carpenter and Kurt Russell, sparkingВ aВ legendary partnership (The Thing, Big Trouble Little China, Escape from New York) and making this too-probable footnote an important one. Carpenter 8212;who would be in my top five directors of all time simply for making They Live 8212;was not a rookie going into the production. He had wrapped Halloween shortly before Elvis and has claimed over the years that his celebrated score to Halloween is what landed him the gig. (To hear him tell it, Elvis producersВ apparently found his ability to craft unsettling synth jams qualification enough.) Included on the new DVD is a grainy on-the-set featurette, wherein a longhaired Carpenter in dark sunglasses states that he 8217;s a longtime fan of Elvis Presley and his music. He adds that he was intrigued by the man 8217;s gradual transformation into a mythic icon, and one might infer a certain empathy via heady ambition and artistic brilliance. At film 8217;s start, my eye for Carpenterв s signature attitude and dedication to cool was registering high, and almost thrillingly so. We are introduced to The King half-slouched in a hotel room of rich reds as he watches fictional cowboys and Indians war it out on television. Russell, then an electric 27 years old, is playing The King in 1969, later into Presley 8217;s career, but he more than looks the part: jet black hair, thick в burns, gold rings, gold watch, gold jangle, quivering upper lip on a break. In these introductory scenes, Russell stares with intense quiet out of Presley 8217;s gold plated sunglasses, the iconic and vain shades connoting a double-minted Vegas deity. Itв s evident in just minutes that Russell is playing the man larger-than-life and reveling in it. (If you 8217;re a Carpenter fan, it 8217;s easy to imagine the director doing back flips at finding the perfect actor/vessel to channel his acute punkish energy.) When the television set switc...
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