And
here I'll bet ya'll thought I forgot
m'man's birthday.
Not
a #@*%ing chance...
If
you hadn't noticed, and it would be kinda
hard not to, 2005 was a really bad year
for the old Beerman. A festering mid-life
crisis, work woes and chronic depression
have ruled the roost for the past eight
months or so...But I am getting better,
and I do see a light at the end of the
tunnel -- I just hope it's not an oncoming
train.
2005
was a year of self-evaluation,
reevaluation, and looking back at past
mistakes and screw-ups -- with much
wailing and gnashing of teeth, wondering
where I went wrong -- to find out exactly
how I wound up where I'm at right now.
Which, sadly, is nowhere in particular...
And
as it is with all self-diagnoses, we
usually wind up going back to the very
beginning to see where it first went awry.
And to go all the way back to my
particular beginning, we get to the root
of my obsession with a certain
rock-n-roller.
One
of the worst kept family secrets in the
old Beerman's household is that me, myself
and I was an unexpected souvenir of Mom
and Dad Beerman's trip to Las Vegas in
February of 1970. For one night in
particular, I've been told, after seeing
Elvis Presley in concert at the
International, in a certain hotel room at
the Frontier Hotel, I came to be.
That's
right.
I'm
an Elvis baby -- and no, Elvis is NOT
my father. Read it again.
How
do I know this for sure? Simple. A little
basic math, and I asked.
 |
| E'yup.
Thanks, mom. |
I
also find it kinda ironic that my father
and Elvis died within a year of each other
-- weird, but that's neither here no
there. And some times I think that's when
and where most of my problems started,
that same year, but that's neither here
nor there either. Which
brings us to this week's (or
this month's?) film, This
is Elvis
-- a docudrama on the life and times/rise
and fall of Presley: from his humble
beginnings, to becoming the King of Rock
and Roll, to lowly Private, to floundering
actor, to the Comeback and his eventual
self-destruction that critic Pauline Kael
rightly called a pop-culture horror movie.
Who am I to argue with that?
The
film begins at the end, with the breaking
news of Elvis's death and the world's
reaction to it. We see patched together
shots of numerous interviews with the
mourners lining up outside the gates of
Graceland, and later news footage of the
funeral. We
then backtrack to a young boy in Tupelo
being exposed to the rhythm and blues.
Elvis (Ral
Donner) narrates while we watch him
mature into a national sensation. After
which, the film mostly dumps (to
it's betterment) the recreated
stuff for the real thing, including his
earliest appearances on the tube. (The
Dorsey Brother's Stage Show
and The
Milton Berle Show
segments
shown in their entirety.)
The
film covers everything you probably
already know, but has a few nuggets that
you might not know about including footage
of Elvis in court after an altercation at
a gas station, a duet with Liberace from
his Las Vegas show in '56 (which
tanked, by the way), and footage
from several surveillance cameras from
when the police filmed his early concerts
to make sure he didn't do anything
obscene.
Amazing.
And
the documentary just doesn't focus on
Elvis, but shows how the country reacted
to him -- from the laughable fanatics, to
the cantankerous fuds, to the depressing
racists who condemn him for inciting
unspeakable acts with, using the least-offensive
term, that jungle music.
This
is Elvis
was the brainchild of Malcolm Leo and
Andrew Solt -- who also had a hand in
several other documentaries on other
musical luminaries such as the Stones,
John Lennon and The Beach Boys, and
about nine volumes worth of something
called The History of Rock and Roll.
(And
also, strangely enough, a tribute to
B-movies with It
Came from Hollywood.) While
those two took the writing and editing
credits, the executive producer was none
other than David L. Wolper -- the man who
gave us the TV mini-series with Roots,
a look at the paranormal with The
Man Who Saw Tomorrow,
The
UFO Connection
and The
Unexplained,
and the moronic idea of turning Casablanca
into a television series with David Soul
as Humphrey Bogart.
Their
results, here, are an equally mixed bag. Combining
live footage, news reports, and home
movies with staged recreations of certain
pivotal events, we see where things went
right, where things went wrong, how it
fell apart, and then spiraled out of
control at the end. And that's where the
film ends, we've come full circle, the
King is dead -- and not to get all
meta-physical on you, but the film doesn't
get into his resurrection all that much as
a pop-culture icon (it was released
in 1981). And I won't say Elvis is
bigger in death than he was in life, but
the margin between the two is getting
smaller every year.
Some
of the fan interview footage seen is
staged for the film, making it a little
disingenuous, but the film really cooks
when it using the behind the scenes stuff
-- the most hilarious being a scene in a
limousine after a show where Elvis let's
his guard down and starts talking about a
certain encounter with a certain groupie
(if you know what I mean, and I think
you do.) The
musical montages also work well, usually
as transitions from one period to another,
"G.I. Blues" cranks up
when he gets drafted, and I noticed my
foot was tapping along to "Promised
Land" during the rapid fire edits
of Elvis hitting the road again after the '68
Comeback Special.
One
thing I truly appreciated about this
picture was that instead of just showing
us snippets, they made the wise decision
of showing the entire songs or montages,
whether it be from one of his early TV
performances -- including a bizarre
western sketch with Steve Allen, to his
films, to his later concert performances,
we see it all. It results in a running
time of damned near three hours,
but this is where the film excels.
But,
my god, is that later concert
footage hard to sit through.
You
can't feel sorry for him, but you can feel
for him. We can rant and rave about the
Colonel, Dr. Nick, and the leeches around
him screwing things up, but these were his
choices and he made them. And in the end
-- bloated, incoherent, and babbling, you
just can't believe it's the same guy. And
all you can do is shake your head and
wonder what might have been.
I
guess I should consider myself lucky that
mom and dad saw him when they did. Elvis
was back at the top of his game then,
still riding high on his comeback, and
hadn't completely fallen apart yet. And
according to my mom, he put on a helluva
show that night. And I sometimes wonder
what might -- or might not have been if it
hadn't.
Thanks,
E.
|
