Jodie Cormer and Austin Butler ride bikes in The Bikeriders. (Courtesy Focus Features)
It’s hot, and you need to be in an air-conditioned movie theater. Lucky you, the lineup is stacked this week.
The Bikeriders
Arkansan Jeff Nichols, who is brother to Lucero frontman Ben Nichols, directs Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, and Jodie Comer in this biker gang epic. The Vandals MC began in the 1960s as a simple club for outcasts who like to ride. Over time, the organization slowly evolves into a dangerous organized crime syndicate. Can the original founders turn things around before the law cracks down?
The Exorcism
Russell Crowe stars as an actor who is playing a priest in a movie that looks a lot like The Exorcist, but for legal reasons is not. When he starts to see real demons, his daughter Lee (Ryan Simpkins) suspects he’s using drugs again. But the truth is much more complicated.
Inside Out 2
Pixar’s latest is the biggest hit since Barbie, breaking the box office cold streak that has had some predicting the death of the theatrical experience. Well, turns out all you have to do get people in seats is make a great movie and market it properly. Who knew? Read my rapturous review in this week’s Memphis Flyer.
Time Warp Drive-In: Odd Noir
On Saturday, June 22, see three Coen Bros. masterpieces under the stars at the Malco Summer Drive-In: The Big Lebowski, Fargo, and No Country for Old Men. “Nobody fucks with the Jesus.”
Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya are star-crossed lovers in Dune: Part Two
When I recently rewatched David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Dune with filmmaker Mars McKay, we agreed that Lynch had omitted one of Frank Herbert’s most important themes. In Lynch’s version Paul Atreides, a nobleman from a decimated great house, is in hiding from his enemies on the desert planet of Aarakis. When he’s rescued by the nomadic Fremen, they discover that he is their prophesied messiah, and he leads them to victory over their Harkonnen oppressors, and in the process, they install him as emperor of the galaxy. It’s a standard Chosen One narrative, like King Arthur or Star Wars.
But in his 1965 novel, Frank Herbert makes it clear that the whole situation is a setup. Paul’s mother Lady Jessica is a Bene Gesserit, an all-female order of space witches who are the power behind the throne on hundreds of worlds. Over the course of centuries, the Bene Gesserit spread a belief in a coming messiah on many worlds, while they secretly manipulated dynasties in order to breed a psychic superbeing called the Kwisatz Haderach. When their demigod is finally born, he will have an army ready to serve him no matter where he goes.
Paul knows this, and wants no part of it. He has visions of billions of people killing and dying in his name, and tries desperately to avoid his fate. His victorious ascendence to the galactic throne is actually a defeat.
Denis Villeneuve understands that Paul’s interior conflict is central to the emotional impact of the story. The mounds of burning bodies from Paul’s visions are the most indelible image of Villeneuve’s 2021 Dune, and the creeping dread of jihad hangs over Dune: Part 2 like smoke from the funeral pyres.
Paul Maud’Dib rallies the Fremen in Dune: Part Two. (Courtesy Warner Brothers)
The first installment ended with Paul and Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) joining the Fremen tribe led by Stilgar (Javier Bardem). Part Two begins light years away in the palace of Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken), who is starting to think that helping House Harkonnen ambush House Atreides was a mistake. His daughter Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) writes in her journal of rumors that Paul survived the massacre.
Meanwhile, on Arrakis, Stilgar’s band fights off Harkonnen attacks as they head for the relative safety of the deep desert. Paul’s guerrilla war in the desert — which Lynch’s version all but omits — provides some of the most thrilling sci-fi action in recent memory, even before Paul becomes Muad’Dib by riding a giant sandworm through the desert.
Bardem’s magnetic performance proves crucial. Stilgar steps in as a jovial father figure to the grieving Paul. But he’s also a Fremen fundamentalist who takes the prophecies seriously, and Lady Jessica makes sure he sees Paul as the “voice from outside” who will lead them to victory and make Dune green again. Chani (Zendaya), the beautiful warrior who takes a shine to Paul, sees the would-be Mahdi for what he is. “You want to control people? Tell them to wait for the messiah to come,” she spits.
Paul and Chani’s love story is heartrending. They cling to each other as the currents of history threaten to pull Paul away from his humanity. If they can kick the Harkonnen off the planet without calling millions of Fremen religious fundamentalists to jihad, maybe they could make a life together in the aftermath. But when Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) replaces Harkonnen commander “The Beast” Rabban (Dave Bautista) with his more competent cousin Feyd (Austin Butler), the Fremen are backed into a corner, and holy war becomes the only way out.
Sandworms attack in Dune: Part Two. (Courtesy Warner Brothers)
Dune is the product of Herbert’s very 1960s obsessions with religion, desert ecology, and psychedelic mushrooms. Nevertheless, it has only become more relevant over the 60 years since its first publication. One need not look far to find leaders cynically using religion for political gain, or sparking savage wars of extermination by appealing to ancient scripture. The clarity Villeneuve brings to this multilayered story is its own kind of miracle, and he’s able to do it without sacrificing the visceral action blockbuster cinema requires.
None of this heady stuff would mean much without the human element. From Dave Bautista’s petulant manchild Rabban to Josh Brolin’s crusty warrior Gurney, everyone in the sprawling cast delivers. Rebecca Ferguson is especially creepy as she whips believers into a frenzy while mumbling conversations with her unborn child.
But Zendaya and Chalamet are the beating heart of Dune: Part Two. It ain’t easy to draw real human emotions out of such fantastical material, but these two movie stars make it look like it is. Like Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, they try to carve out a little solace in the midst of war, only to find out the problems of two little people ain’t worth a hill of beans in this crazy galaxy.
I knew Austin Butler was going to win a Golden Globe Award the other night. Not that I really “knew” — as if I had a list of who was going to win what. But I just had a premonition.
Butler won best performer by an actor in a drama for his role as the King in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis movie at the Foreign Press Association awards ceremony, which was held January 10th at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California. Among those seated at his table were Priscilla Presley, Lisa Marie Presley, and Jerry Schilling.
I was very happy when I heard Butler’s name announced as I watched the show on TV. What a great guy. I only met him one time. That was during the Memphis premiere of the movie June 11th at the Guest House at Graceland.
First off, Butler complimented me as soon as he met me that night. He said I had a good look. He liked the hair and my bolo tie. Maybe the glasses, too. I think he meant it. And I’m a pushover.
Austin Butler at the Memphis premiere of Elvis at the Guest House at Graceland (Credit: Michael Donahue)
But he was so engaging and friendly and he answered my questions. I posted a “We Saw You” column about the premiere, but I never posted the video I took while I interviewed him.
So, here it is. It’s short and I probably sound like an idiot, but it gives you an idea of why I knew Butler was going to win a Golden Globe.
Jerry Schilling at the Memphis premiere of Elvis at The Guest House at Graceland (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Jerry Schilling was Elvis’ buddy for 23 years after he played football with the King one hot Memphis afternoon on July 11, 1954.
Schilling, who was 12 at the time, went on to become part of Elvis’s entourage, a business associate, and a long-time friend.
Now Schilling is watching himself being portrayed on screen in Elvis. The motion picture, which opens June 24th, was directed by Baz Luhrmann and stars Austin Butler as Elvis. “I think the movie, overall, is the best piece of work in a project done on Elvis,” Schilling says. “One, I think it answers a lot of questions by just telling the story of misconceptions of my friend.”
And, he says, Luhrmann, “put his heart and soul into it and put together an unbelievable cast.”
The project took 11 years from the idea to the finished movie, Schilling says. “There were sets burning up in Australia, Covid, you name it.”
But the delays “gave them time to really marinate this story. And everybody went back and rethought it and made it a much better film.”
Schilling now is manager of The Beach Boys, who recently released Sounds of Summer: The Very Best of The Beach Boys box set.
Author of the 2006 book, Me and a Guy Named Elvis, Schilling also has been involved in numerous Elvis-related projects. “Over the years, I have produced more shows on Elvis than I think anybody can count. I’ve cast or been part of casting various actors to play Elvis over the years. And I’ve worked with others cast by other people.”
He thought Michael St. Gerard, who played the King in the 1990 Elvis TV series, was “innately Elvis, because he was playing the younger Elvis and he didn’t have the high collars and jumpsuits and everything. But when I saw Austin Butler, he had the young Elvis down. He had the middle. He had the end. He didn’t overdo it.”
Austin Butler at the Memphis premiere of Elvis (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Butler concentrated on the part, Schilling says. “For years he did nothing but become Elvis. He was not a performer, not a singer, but a terrific actor. It was Denzel Washington who brought Butler to Baz Lurhmann. They had done something on Broadway — The Iceman Cometh. Denzel was so impressed with his work ethic.”
Butler’s role as Elvis was “multi-faceted,” Schilling says. “He did a lot of his own singing, which Michael didn’t do. I will never take anything away from Michael St. Gerard. I was in awe of him.”
But Butler was “so sincere. He fell in love with the character. He said it was like, ‘I can climb Mt. Everest.’ That was the challenge.”
But, Schilling says, “He doesn’t overdo it. He does it subtly. None of that curling the lip, ‘Thank you very much,’ all the bullshit. He’s got charisma. You want to be around him. You like him. And, you know what? When he walks in the room he’s got that little shyness Elvis had as well. It’s like a magnetic attraction goes to him.”
And, he says, Butler “fell in love with Memphis.”
Butler and Lurhmann spent time in Memphis and Tupelo, Schilling says. “They really put their heart and soul into this movie and I think it shows on the screen.”
Schilling met Lurhmann three years ago at dinner with an RCA executive during the promotional tour of the Elvis Presley: The Searcher at HBO documentary that Schilling conceived. “I think he was still looking for his Elvis at this point. He just said, ‘If this ship pulls anchor, I want you on it.’”
Baz Luhrmann at the Memphis premier of Elvis (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Schilling and Priscilla Presley got together with Tom Hanks — who plays Elvis’ manager, Col. Tom Parker — before filming began. “Priscilla ran into Tom Hanks’ wife, Rita Wilson, at the grocery store and Rita said, ‘Why don’t you and Jerry Schilling come over for dinner?’ This is two weeks before Tom went to Australia to start filming. So, we go there and Tom opens the door and the first thing he says is, ‘Jerry, are we going to talk about the Beach Boys or Elvis?’”
Hanks is a huge Beach Boys fan, Schilling says. But they spent the next three or four hours talking about Elvis and Parker. “Priscilla and I really wanted to give a full picture of Colonel Parker to Tom.”
The movie was “pretty much finished” when Schilling met Butler. “Priscilla and I went to New York for the Metropolitan Gala that Baz Luhrmann invited us to.”
They met Butler in a revolving door at The Carlyle hotel on their way out to dinner a few days before the gala. “He comes in and says, ‘Hi,’ to both of us. Seems like a nice guy. Good looking guy. It’s Austin. So, he goes, ‘Oh, my God.’ He’s really nervous. He says, ‘I want you two guys to be happy with this.’”
Schilling and Priscilla wouldn’t commit to going to the Cannes Film Festival for a showing of Elvis until they saw the movie. So, Lurhmann arranged a special screening of the film for the two of them. “I purposely didn’t sit next to her. I sat down, wanting to have my own thoughts. I wanted her to have her own thoughts. Half way through, I’m beside her. By the end, Priscilla looked at me and said, ‘Well, I guess we’re going to Cannes.’”
Priscilla Presley at the Memphis premier of Elvis (Credit: Michael Donahue)
They knew Luhrmann was going to make his type of movie. “Baz is a very private filmmaker. He’s going to do what he wants to do. So, you never know” — like the Russwood Park concert scene, where Elvis/Butler pulls out all the stops with his seductive gyrations, shakes, and wiggles. Schilling was 14 when he went to that show. “In real life, it was much more subtle than they make it in the movie ‘cause you’re making a movie. But he did make the statement and he did his own show. And it was a ‘wow’ show.”
Elvis had recently appeared in a tuxedo singing “Hound Dog” to a dog on TV’s The Steve Allen Show after being introduced by Allen as “the new Elvis Presley.” Elvis, Schilling says, told the Russwood audience, “I’m not going to let those people in New York change me. That was his way of saying, ‘You’re going to get the real Elvis.’”
Was Parker a villain in real life? “The film is really difficult for me because I know the controlling side of the Colonel. I know the bullying side. But I also know the human side of the Colonel. I don’t think he was dishonest at all. The only concern I have was when Elvis wanted to do A Star is Born and travel overseas and have his own production company.”
Tom Hanks at the Memphis premier of Elvis (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Elvis eventually started his own production company with himself and Schilling as heads of the company. But he never got to travel overseas. “The Colonel didn’t want it known he wasn’t an American citizen. But, creatively, the Colonel was really holding Elvis back.”
Elvis did “some good movies,” but most of them were the same type of musical. “I think I lost my friend at an early age because of creative disappointments. He was embarrassed and he tried to fight. And the machinery was too big.”
As for Elvis’s ambitions, including doing more serious roles, Shilling says Parker and other business associates “killed all that.”
With every Elvis musical, there was a soundtrack, “no matter how good or bad the music might be. At one point, Elvis said, ‘I’m not doing any more of this stuff.’ And the Colonel said, ‘You’ll fulfill your contract or you’re not doing anything.’”
As for Schilling talking back to Parker in the early days, he says, “Listen, I wasn’t in a position most of the time to be telling Colonel Parker what to do, or any of that.”
Schilling stopped working for Elvis for a time and went into film editing. “Because I quit working for him, I didn’t have to be under the Colonel’s supervision. For me, idolizing, looking up to Elvis as a 12 year old, and him not having a hit record when I met him, to be able, years later, to discuss a movie of his or a tour of his, that’s full circle.”
But, Schilling says, “There was a human side of Colonel Parker. Did he love Elvis Presley? Yes. Did Elvis love the Colonel? Yes.”
And, he says, “It was the best team. Elvis never forgot what the Colonel did for him in the beginning. It’s hard to get all that in the film.”
Schilling is portrayed in the movie by Luke Bracey. But Schilling hadn’t met Bracey when he, Priscilla, Hanks, and Butler flew to Cannes. “I asked Tom Hanks, ‘So, how was Luke Bracey playing me? I haven’t met him.’ He said, ‘He was the voice of reason through the whole thing.’ And Austin said, ‘Yep. He really was.’”
“I think what it means to me — and I think what the message they were trying to give me — is so many times the guys around Elvis were these hangers-on who laughed when Elvis laughed. And were just ‘yes’ men.”
Schilling wasn’t one of those. He remembered when he “challenged” one of Elvis’s decisions. “And he goes, ‘Okay, you can go back to Memphis if you don’t like it.’ Over the 23 years I knew him, we had three or four arguments. It wouldn’t have been a real friendship if we hadn’t.”
Schilling was “totally pleased” with Bracey’s portrayal of him, which he says was respectful and based on facts. “They read my book, I’m sure, more than once. Austin told me they read everything.”
Schilling says Bracey “doesn’t overdo anything. And yet when it was time to maybe have a difference of opinion whether it was Elvis or it was the Colonel, he played it right. He didn’t come back and do a big argument, which I wouldn’t have done either. He got me down.”
In trying to put Elvis’s life in perspective, Schilling says, “We’re all familiar with the ‘68 Comeback Special’ and what that did to Elvis’s career when it was really, as the movie says, in the toilet.”
Elvis, the movie, is “the ‘’68 Legacy Comeback,’” Schilling says. “I think this is going go do for his legacy what the ‘’68 Comeback Special’ did for his career while he was alive. It gives viewers an understanding of how special this man was.”
Schilling adds, “Ironically, 68 years ago in July was when Elvis’ first record was played, and when I met him.”
When I interviewed him, Schilling was headed to see the Elvis movie with Priscilla for his fourth time, and Priscilla’s fifth. “I’m glad this movie will be a record years from now for the history of Elvis, the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and of Tupelo, of Memphis. It really needed to be documented. If this was written and not filmed, I would put it in the National Archives.”
Austin Butler’s performance as Elvis is electrifying.
The most insightful film I’ve ever seen about Elvis Presley is “The Singing Canary,” a five-minute experimental short by Memphis director Adam Remsen. It contains neither images of Elvis nor his music, only footage of astronauts and rocket launches. Remsen’s voice-over casts Elvis not as a singer or entertainer or idol, but as an explorer of new psychic spaces.
Yes, Elvis was supremely talented, superhumanly good looking, and unbelievably charismatic. But it was sheer luck that he came along at exactly the moment in history when a combination of rhythm and blues, amphetamines, and television could transform a penniless truck driver into the most famous person who had ever lived. “No one had ever been in his position before. He did the best he could,” said Remsen. “He was just living his life, making the best choices he could. As it happened, he was unprepared to make those choices, in one way or another.”
Who could have been prepared? The only people who had been as famous as Elvis circa 1957 were pharaohs. A decade later, The Beatles would express relief that, when they were thrown into the maelstrom of modern fame, at least they had one another. Elvis was alone, going through stuff no one in the entire 300,000-year history of Homo sapiens had ever gone through before. “He was the singing canary we sent into the gold mine. And when the singing stopped, we learned it was dangerous in there.”
The latest big screen attempt to tell The King’s story shares this view of Elvis as a martyr for the information age. Baz Luhrmann is one of a handful of directors with an instantly recognizable style. As technically exacting as he is bombastic, Luhrmann’s films are the closest thing we have to the lavish MGM musicals of Old Hollywood. Emotions are heightened, the cutting is frenetic, and realism is an afterthought. Music and montage are Luhrmann’s love language, and everything else is in service of maintaining the momentum. When he’s on his game, Luhrmann can sweep you up and transport you to another place like the tornado in The Wizard of Oz.
This film rises above the simple jukebox musical I feared we would get when I heard Luhrmann was taking on the story of The King. Credit for much of its success must go to Austin Butler, who has the unenviable task of trying to bring to life the most impersonated man in history. On the Louisiana Hayride and at the triumphant July 4, 1956, Russwood Park homecoming show, Butler is electrifying. He’s got the cheekbones, and he knows how to use them.
Austin Butler as Elvis Presley.
The racial politics of the era are never far from the surface. In Luhrmann’s vision, Elvis’ smoking-hot sexuality was what made him dangerous. But what scared The Establishment about this poor white kid singing Black music was not how he danced — it was that Elvis represented a crack in the South’s Jim Crow apartheid. He didn’t just laugh at the minstrel show; he identified with B.B. King, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Little Richard. Some of the white kids who followed him would go on to discover The Bar-Kays, Sam Cooke, and Aretha Franklin, and begin to think, “Hey, maybe these Black people are humans, just like me.”
But the protean summer of ’56, which has for so long formed the fetish of rock-and-roll, doesn’t interest Luhrmann as much as the Vegas era. It begins with an elaborate staging of the ’68 Comeback Special. Instead of focusing on the in-the-round jam session, which remains one of the greatest live musical performances ever put before a camera, Luhrmann finds meaning in Elvis’ selection of “If I Can Dream” as his closing number. Butler delivers the moment with maximum gravitas.
Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks) advises Elvis (Austin Butler).
Luhrmann’s most polarizing decision is to tell the story from Col. Tom Parker’s perspective — and not just because of Tom Hanks’ accent. Having the villain as the narrator is a very Shakespearean choice, intended to make Parker into Iago, a malignant influence confiding to us about the lies he’s whispering in the hero’s ear. Parker was the consummate confidence man and a natural-born carny barker. In the early days, he and Elvis were an unstoppable team. When Elvis was languishing in Vegas, it would have been better if he were alone. Parker gets the blame for Elvis sitting out the Civil Rights fights of the late ’60s and for missing opportunities to tour the world. He gets credit for the groundbreaking Aloha from Hawaii concert, the definitive document of Elvis’ late period. But Luhrmann declines to use the first satellite broadcast to a global audience of one billion as a climax, like Queen at Live Aid in Bohemian Rhapsody. As for Hanks’ performance as the shady Dutch immigrant, let’s just say that the veteran actor knows when to put the ham on the sandwich.
Elvis (Austin Bulter) and Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge).
The standouts in the sprawling supporting cast include Helen Thomson’s sad turn as the alcoholic Gladys and Olivia DeJonge’s uncanny Priscilla. The Power of the Dog’s Kodi Smit-McPhee gets a standout cameo as Jimmie Rodgers Snow, one of the first people to understand the depth of Elvis’ power. During the early film’s frequent digressions into the Beale Street music scene, Yola Quartey and Shonka Dukureh each get show-stopping moments as Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Big Mama Thornton.
Ultimately, your reaction to Elvis is going to depend on whether or not you can vibrate on Luhrmann’s frequency. I was a fan of the director’s early work, like Romeo + Juliet, but found The Great Gatsby off-putting and snoozed through Australia. Elvis is a return to the explosive Luhrmann of Moulin Rouge. He freely twists the songs, sometimes in ways that are insightful, and sometimes in ways that betray a lack of trust in the material, like using anachronistic hip-hop beats whenever we return to Beale. The film is massively overstuffed with striking images, but that kind of sounds like complaining because you have too many scoops of delicious ice cream. It’s understandable if you find the constant barrage of visual information disorienting or the constant dance on the edge of camp cloying. But when Elvis is on stage, and Luhrmann is on fire, you understand why The King will live forever.
Austin Butler, who plays Elvis, and Michael Donahue at the Memphis premiere of “Elvis.” (Credit: Austin Butler)
If Priscilla Presley gives her seal of approval to your portrayal of Elvis in a movie, that’s all you need.
And that’s exactly what Priscilla, who was married to The King and is the mother of their child, Lisa Marie Presley, did during the Memphis premiere of the Baz Luhrmann movie Elvis, which stars Austin Butler as Elvis, on June 11th at The Guest House at Graceland.
“Elvis morphed into you,” Presley told Butler on stage before the movie started. “You had his guidance.”
Stars from the movie, director Luhrmann, and members of the Presley family, including Lisa Marie and her daughter, Riley Keough, and Elvis’ buddy and business associate, Jerry Schilling, were at the premiere. They all gathered on stage at one point. The movie is slated to open nationwide June 24th.
The Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Earlier, I talked to Priscilla and people involved in the film.
I asked Priscilla what sets Elvis apart from other movies and documentaries about the performer. “It’s very sensitive to me and the family,” she says. “Baz has done an amazing job in this film. This has been two years. I know he’s been wanting to do this forever, do a movie on Elvis. But, with Baz, I get a little nervous because Baz does what he wants. He’s got an eye. He’s got such style. But now dealing with such a sensitive story was a bit worrisome [as to] where he’s going to take it.”
But, she says, “It is a true story between the ups and downs of Elvis and Col. Parker, but with his stylized way, beautiful way. Especially with Austin Butler, who plays Elvis so realistically. He had him down pat to the point of a gesture. He studied him for two years. And the story will prove it. When you see it, you think you’re seeing Elvis Presley. But, again, he is not Elvis Presley. He is an actor playing Elvis Presley. And that’s what I like about it, too. He’s not trying to be Elvis. He is his own person.
“But the story is a wonderful story and I think it’s a different take on what we normally see.”
Priscilla Presley at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)
I asked Butler, who described Elvis as “such a complex human being,” what was the most difficult part of Elvis for him to play. “One of the most challenging things is the fact that he has been held up as either a god-like iconic figure or as this caricature that is not the real man,” Butler says. “So, for me, it was stripping all that away and getting down to his humanity.
“And the challenging part about that is you want to be incredibly technical. You want to be meticulous about all the details. But it could never be the details sacrificing the humanity.”
Luhrmann told me Elvis movies were shown at the theater in the small town where he grew up. “The matinees were the Elvis movies,” he says. “So, like as a 10-year-old, he was the coolest guy in the world. And then I grew on and all that. He was always present.”
As for making Elvis, Luhrmann says, “I didn’t do this so much out of fandom, although I have a great respect for him. I did this because I really believe he is at the center of America in the ’50s, ’60s, and the ’70s. And he is a way of exploring America. To understand that he was this rebel in the ’50s and it was dangerous to do what he was doing. And his relationship to Beale Street and people like B. B. King and then him being put in a bubble in Hollywood and then finding himself again in the [Elvis] ’68 [Comeback] Special and reconnecting with gospel, his great, great love. And then, to put it bluntly and to quote one of his songs, being caught in a trap in Vegas. That’s the sort of tragedy of that.
“And yet, what he’s left behind, as you see in that last great performance of him is still the voice and still the spirit. To me, whatever you say about Elvis, he was a spiritual person. And that comes from his love of gospel.”
I received direction from Baz Luhrmann, who showed me how to properly take a selfie, at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Baz Luhrmann)
Kelvin Harrison Jr., who plays B.B. King in Elvis, told me what drew him to the role. “For me, it was just how smart he was and how savvy he was with his business,” he says. “This was a very strategic man, in my opinion, but also [he had] so much heart and soul. And a simple man. He literally was working in the fields, and literally put up a wire on a post and started learning how to play and find sounds playing one string. That is so incredible to me. So I was just so inspired by the tenacity that he had, and just the rawness.”
Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Jerry Schilling at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)
In the movie, Elvis is astonished at the stage presence, complete with the most amazing moves, of Little Richard. Alton Mason plays Richard in the film. What attracted him to the role was “how powerful, how outspoken and loud he was,” Mason told me. “How sexy he was. How fly he was. And his aura.”
Mason, who said the revered gospel singer Mahalia Jackson is his great-great-great-great aunt, also told me, “I had to develop empathy for not only who he was, but the period and the time that he was in. And him being that in that time, it takes a lot of power, a lot of fearlessness, to choose to be so different in a time like this. It was an amazing learning experience for me, too.”
Michael Donahue and Alton Mason at the Elvis premiere. (Credit: Alton Mason)
I loved what Tom Hanks, who plays Col. Tom Parker, said on stage before the movie began: “As an actor I found myself shooting in castles in which kings once lived in. I shot in palaces that have been turned into museums that were the homes of kings. I shot in museums in which kings and queens have lived in.”
But he told the audience to notice that all of those kings and queens “have an ‘s’ on the end of them. Meaning that there were more than one. At Graceland, we are visiting the home of The King.”
Tom Hanks at the Elvis Memphis movie premiere. (Credit: Michael Donahue)President and CEO of Elvis Presley Enterprises Jack Soden and his wife, Leighann, at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Joel Weinshanker, majority owner of Elvis Presley Enterprises and managing partner of Graceland Holdings LLC and EPE, and Kim Laughlin at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Hal and Geri Lansky and their daughter, Lia Lansky, at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)We Saw You
The town of Centerville’s welcome sign says it all: “A Real Nice Place.” Police chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) and officer Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) don’t have to work too hard to keep the peace. When The Dead Don’t Die opens, they’re checking out a report by Farmer Miller (Steve Buscemi) that old Hermit Bob (Tom Waits) has been stealing his chickens. The investigation goes pretty much nowhere, because Chief Robertson thinks Farmer Miller’s an asshole, and all Hermit Bob will say is “fuck you.”
As they head back to the station, Cliff and Ronnie notice that there’s something weird going on. This is, of course, the set up to nearly every zombie film ever made: Two people, their heads buried in the daily minutiae, slowly come to realize that their world is being overrun by the unquiet dead.
You probably don’t associate director Jim Jarmusch with the genre, but he has obviously seen a few zombie movies in his time. Jarmusch’s primary directing mode has always been that of the observer. He favors letting things play out in long takes, the better to get to know his characters, warts and all. His 1989 masterpiece Mystery Train, which immortalized the down-and-out Memphis of the era, lingered on the bewildered faces of Jun and Mitsuko, the Japanese tourists who were discovering the real America. In Night on Earth, he got a career best performance from Winona Ryder by simply riding around in a cab with her.
(l to r) Bill Murray, Chloë Sevigny, and Adam Driver star in Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die.
But he’s also always had a taste for genre pictures, such as his 1995 Western Dead Man, where he shot Johnny Depp in creamy duotone while demolishing the genre’s black and white morality plays. His last foray into supernatural horror was 2014’s transcendent Only Lovers Left Alive, where Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston played centuries-old vampires feeling the weight of immortality.
As one of the godfathers of independent film, Jarmusch knows how to get a project done by rounding up all of your friends and showing them a good time while they work. The difference with Jarmusch is the quality of the friends’ talents. Sara Driver, who became his partner while he was making his first film Stranger Than Paradise, appears as a zombie. Steve Buscemi, who here sports a “Keep America White Again” hat, rode with Joe Strummer in Mystery Train. Tom Waits spouted gruff wisdom in Coffee and Cigarettes. Bill Murray was the lead of Jarmusch’s 2005 film Broken Flowers. The director worked with Iggy Pop for years to make a documentary on The Stooges. Tilda Swinton, so chillingly elegant in Only Lovers Left Alive, appears in The Dead Don’t Die as an eccentric coroner who is aces with a samurai sword. Adam Driver was magnificent in Paterson, Jarmusch’s last film. The list goes on.
Murray and Driver, joined by Chloë Sevigny as Officer Mindy, first try to make sense out of the dead rising from the grave with a hunger for human flesh, then try to contain the zombie contagion. They also serve as their own Greek chorus, commenting on the action as it happens around and to them, delivering sly in-jokes, and making the occasional meta foray. There are references to earlier Jarmusch films, such as the road-tripping tourists, played by Selena Gomez, Luka Sabbat, and Austin Butler (slicked up like Strummer), who pick the wrong time to hole up in a seedy room at the Moonlight Motel. Jarmusch, the consummate indie film hipster, gets a laugh at their — and his own — expense with the line “Infernal hipsters and their irony!”
In the tradition of George Romero, who invented and perfected the modern zombie picture, Jarmusch uses the walking dead as satirical mirrors of society. Like the ghouls in Dawn of the Dead, they are drawn to the things they coveted in life, only in this case it’s wifi and chardonnay.
As a zombie comedy, The Dead Don’t Die never reaches the manic heights of Shaun of the Dead; but then again, it never tries that approach. Jarmuch’s sense of humor is dry as a bone, and his pacing deliberate. Hermit Bob, who watches the zombie apocalypse gather strength through cracked binoculars, serves as the director’s alter ego. He can’t fully participate in the rapidly decaying human society, but he can’t look away, either. One line in particular from The Dead Don’t Die seems designed to resonate through Jarmusch’s entire filmmaking career: “The world is perfect. Appreciate the details.”
