By Walker Joyce
In my humble opinion, the Movies and popular music have gone to hell. I’ve written more than a few columns on these topics to prove my points and lament what IS compared to what WAS.
During my coming-of-age phase in the 1970s, I bought records by the ton, played my stereo night and day, saw plenty of bands, and averaged 3 or more trips to the cinema per week. Ah, those were the days, my friend. I thought they’d never end.
Until they did.
Nowadays, I rely on my own archives for tunes and films, even cling to technology like cassette tapes, VHS videos and DVDs that are now obsolete. I rely on the Turner Classic Movies channel to consume pictures, and I can count the number of movie tickets I buy in a year on one hand.
Recently, however, I was lured to a multiplex to see a first-run feature, and it was worth every penny. Ironically, it starred a guy who’s been dead for nearly half a century.
I refer to EPiC, which is an acronym for Elvis Presley in Concert, and it really is an epic event. Technically, it’s a documentary, but its structure also makes it a concert film. However you want to label it, it’s as thrilling as any flick you’ll see this year or the next few.
It’s also a picture that must be seen on a big screen with a state-of-the-art sound system, so don’t wait for a streaming version. Leave the house and find it at an honest-to-God movie theater before its initial release ends.
Baz Luhrmann, the Australian director who made an acclaimed biographical drama about Elvis just four years ago, is the auteur again. Still, instead of a scripted story with actors, he presents the Real McCoy onscreen. When you finish this 97-minute immersion, you’ll leave the premises feeling like you just saw Presley live from the best seat in the house.
Luhrmann heard about lost footage while making his biopic and mounted a search for it. It led him to an actual salt mine in Kansas, where the Warner Brothers studio stores its negatives underground, in perfect climate-controlled vaults. There he found hours of outtakes from two prior Elvis concert movies, That’s the Way It Is and On Tour, plus home movies and other things.
It took him and his crackerjack technicians over two years to sort through the reels and restore both the images and the soundtracks. Then many more months to edit everything into an organic narrative, resulting in an Oscar-worthy product.
They even manage to let Elvis narrate his own story, layering in the contents of press interviews at key moments.
Perhaps Luhrmann’s best accomplishment is revealing that Presley was not just a great singer and stage performer, but also a consummate musician who created his shows from the ground up, using free-wheeling rehearsals to perfect his instrumentalists and backup vocalists. Elvis had a full orchestra, a rhythm section, and two vocal quartets behind him, but despite having an actual conductor on hand, he directed everything, from the order of the numbers to the fanfares and the cut-offs.
The clips were shot when Elvis was at the height of his career, during his Las Vegas residency. He never looked or sounded better, nor did he ever care as much—before the drugs and the boredom took over.
He does most of his hits plus a bunch of less-familiar material, and when he takes the last bow, nobody will question why he’s still called The King.
