Baz Luhrmann’s EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and has a handful of public screenings through Sept. 14, needs a subtitle, like “Why Elvis Was The King?”.
The Elvis busts, Elvis impersonators, velvet Elvis, Elvis weddings, gaudy Graceland interior décor, later-life health struggles, pill dependency, and how he died, found in his bathroom at age 42, has overshadowed a simple indisputable fact: Elvis was one-of-a-kind, extraordinarily handsome, cool, charismatic, funny, and an amazing singer, arranger and song interpreter from gospels to the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel.
No Elvis impersonator, not even Austin Butler, who was nominated for the best actor Oscar for his immersive performance in Luhrmann’s 2022 biopic, Elvis, comes close. Sorry. EPiC is that reminder.
The 96-minute film, which does not yet have distribution, is culled from 59 hours of never-before-seen footage found in the vaults of the Strataca salt mines, including band rehearsals and onstage performances for his wildly successful Las Vegas residency at the International Hotel, where he played seven days a week, two shows a day, for seven and a half years (1969-1976) — it was supposed to be only a three week stint.
To provide context, there are cuts of enamoured girls to accusations his swoon-inducing hip-swivelling and electrifying rock ‘n roll was contributing to juvenile delinquency to his two-year stint in the army and starring movie roles in mostly music-based romances. But, in his own words, he wanted to return to the stage. Hence the Vegas residency.
On hand to introduce the film, the Australian director, who first came to TIFF over 30 years ago with Strictly Ballroom and went on to make other grand productions, such as Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge, and The Great Gatsby, told the sold-out room that he does not view EPiC as a concert film or a documentary, rather “kind of a tone poem.”
“It’s Elvis, the person, telling you about his life through song and through words,” he said.
The film proved so electrifying in places, the audience erupted into applause and some even stood up and danced.
After the screening, Luhrmann returned to the stage with co-creator Jonathan Redmond and talked for about 15 minutes.
“It was 59 hours’ worth of film that we had scanned back in 2018, 2019 for research purposes on the movie [Elvis], but it’s 59 hours of film, which had no sound at all,” said Redmond. “Now, we have the music performances. So, we knew we were going to be okay there, but it was not synced up at all. So it took two years at Warner Brothers to sync up the picture to the music performances.”
Added Luhrmann, “One thing I will tell you in a world of AI and Auto-Tune, that man sings like that. We heard that voice with nothing around it. It doesn’t matter what’s going on out there. It doesn’t matter what condition he’s in. He is never out of tune and he is always spiritual when he sings.”
The director also revealed that there is a possibility of “a sequel,” based on the sheer volume of footage they uncovered, including the whole 1972 Hampton Roads Coliseum concert in Virginia and 45 minutes “unbroken on tape,” in which, “he just talked about his life [to his bandmates] and he was so unguarded.”
Luhrmann is clearly on a mission to replace our image of the hokey Elvis with the reason he became such an icon: magnetism and musicianship.
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