Once in awhile it pays to be friends with movie critics. I know two harmonizing movie critics who sing together in an acoustic duo band called The Dark Room Men. Nick Allen who writes movie reviews for RogerEbert.com and Pat McDonald who writes movie reviews for HollywoodChicago.com. I was at a recent r&r show and they both told me I MUST see "The King."
Maybe I'd ignore one or the other, but I just couldn't ignore both of them. So yesterday afternoon my friend and I sat in the great, vintage, Chicago movie palace, The Music Box Theater and watched Eugene Jarecki's astonishing, inspiring, and masterful film.
Chuck D. (Public Enemy): "Elvis was a hero to most, But he never meant shit to me you see, Straight up racist that sucker was Simple and plain, Mother fuck him and John Wayne, 'Cause I'm Black and I'm proud..."
Yes, Elvis, his rise and fall, kind of parallels the rise and fall of America. Elvis is the Great White Whale of American culture. Rise from dirt poor, humble roots, rocketing to unimaginable fame and fortune, the long years of $ and decadence, finally a big, blubbering addicted mess, dying on the throne at forty two.
A young white man singing like a black man, taking the world by storm.
Tupelo to Memphis (home of the Three Kings - B.B. Martin Luther & Elvis), to New York to Hollywood to Vegas. Vegas the great, over-blown, totally hollow mecca to the buck. A slow-mo death in Vegas. Too much time, too many $$, too much attention. The great Elvis chronicler Peter Guralnick was a consultant on the film, so we get the full story, told brilliantly in all it's glory and horror. The film tracks nicely with his double-volume bio of the King: "Last Train to Memphis," & "Careless Love."
America itself is reflected in the Elvis story. The country started out like the young, extraordinary, uniquely gifted young Elvis, and now America finds itself in it's Trumpified, opiod-addicted, trash-culture, money-obssessed, bloated, sodden, sick Vegas Elvis. What a story. Elvis was both Ahab and Moby Dick. Highly recommended!