Baz Luhrmann’s stylish and exuberant movie Elvis starring Austin Butler is held in high regard by Priscilla Presley, his daughter Lisa Marie, and Elvis’s good friend for 23 years, Jerry Schilling. In a June 2022 interview in the Memphis Flyer, Schilling (played in the film by Luke Bracey) stated that “I think the movie, overall, is the best piece of work in a project done on Elvis.” Their appreciation of the film suggests that it captured the essence of Elvis and his career.
The 2018 two-part HBO documentary Elvis Presley: The Searcher complements the film by providing information and insights from family, friends, musicians, historians, and Elvis himself. Priscilla Presley, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Emmylou Harris, Robbie Robertson, Jerry Schilling, Sam Phillips of Sun Records, and historians provide voice-over commentary while photos and videos of Elvis are shown. There are also interviews of Elvis and concert footage.
Luhrmann’s film largely corresponds to the facts presented in the documentary with a couple of cases of artistic license. For example, Elvis was drafted and that’s why he went into the Army and not to avoid jail.
Both Elvis and The Searcher highlight the influence of Black musicians and gospel music on Elvis’s music. What the documentary makes clear is how unique he was in the era of segregation. Petty states that he was interested in Black music when most whites were not. In addition, his music and movement on stage created a lot of controversy because of concern about race mixing.
Elvis incorporated rhythm and blues, country, and gospel in his music and made a new genre, rock, popular. After his TV appearances, Robbie Robertson notes, “That’s when we saw somebody who can sing better than other people, could move better than other people, had style better than other people. In the pop world, when he came along, it broke glass.”
In addition to types of music, Elvis absorbed everything. Schilling notes that “Elvis picked up everything. He was the most eclectic human being I have ever been around. He would pick up something from another singer or he would pick up something from a guy walking down the street and he’d say, ‘Jerry, look at that walk. I’m going to use that walk.’”
When he was in the Army in Germany, he listened to Italian crooners and used the sound on “It’s Now or Never.”
Colonel Tom Parker was painted in a very negative light in Elvis, while the documentary is somewhat more balanced in this regard. Elvis knew that Parker could help his career more than his first producer, Sam Phillips, could. The Colonel was a promoter with no real knowledge of producing music, and he got RCA to buy his Sun contract and got Elvis appearances on TV shows and in movies. Parker also made sure that he and Presley had a financial interest in what Elvis sang through a contract with a music publishing company. Priscilla called him a father figure for Elvis.
The documentary does show the dark side of the relationship. For example, Luhrmann’s film treats the Colonel’s role in the 1968 Comeback Special as a comic episode with the Colonel wanting Presley to wear a Christmas sweater and sing Christmas songs. Steve Binder, the director of the TV show, recounts a conversation in which the Colonel said that Elvis wanted a Christmas song, “Don’t you Elvis?” Elvis had his head down and replied, “Yes, sir.” Binder continued, “I watched Elvis cower to Parker.” “The Colonel says, ‘Okay, then, we’re in agreement.’” According to Binder, Elvis walked out with his head high and said, “(expletive) him.” Ultimately, there was no Christmas song in the special.
Both the film and the documentary also hold the Colonel responsible for hurting Elvis’s career and his health.
Elvis, the film, doesn’t focus much on his movie career but all the years when he did two films a year for a total of 31 movies kept him away from the music scene and hurt his music career. It was depressing for him at the end. He wanted to be a serious actor, but he had no script or song approval and was required to sing in the movies. After the first few, the quality of the films and music wasn’t good.
According to Priscilla, “The humdrum movies he was given, boy chases girl, boy gets girl, they get married and it’s happily ever after, that’s not Elvis Presley. He was not that man. He was much deeper than that. After a movie, he felt trapped. He dreaded the next script because he knew it would be the same thing over and over again.”
Luhrmann’s choice of “Suspicious Minds” with the phrase “caught in a trap” repeated over and over again underlined how Elvis felt about the years of shows that the Colonel negotiated with the International Hotel in Las Vegas. He was worn out physically and his addiction to prescription medicine became worse. He starred in 31 movies, recorded 784 songs, and appeared in 1,684 concerts, according to the documentary.
Both the film and the documentary end, appropriately, with Elvis himself singing. His performance of “Unchained Melody” in the movie showed his enormous talent as did his performance of “If I Can Dream” from the 1968 Comeback Special in the documentary.
