\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div> \t\t\t\t\tElvis circa 1970<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSilver Screen Collection\/Getty Images<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tEPiC <\/em>shows why this is a golden age to be an Elvis fan. His place in pop culture has exploded in the past 10 years, with portraits like Eugene Jarecki\u2019s documentary The King <\/em>or Sofia Coppola\u2019s Priscilla,<\/em> or his late daughter Lisa Marie\u2019s memoir. That\u2019s the state of the Presleyverse in 2026, 70 years after this bratty kid blew up into the world\u2019s most controversial superstar. EPiC<\/em> reopens all the questions that people once used to think were settled. How is there so much life in this dead man? How does the Elvis icon always keep evolving with the times? What is it that makes him the ultimate American obsession, after all these years?<\/p>\n \n\tWhile making the 2022 biopic Elvis,<\/em> Luhrmann and his team found 69 boxes of lost reels, containing 59 hours of previously unseen footage, kept in storage at a salt mine in Kansas. It\u2019s mostly outtakes from the concert films Elvis: The Way It Is<\/em> and Elvis on Tour.<\/em> But Peter Jackson\u2019s team in New Zealand gave it the Get Back<\/em> treatment, restoring the footage to life, as Elvis blazes onstage in 1969. There\u2019s no commentary or talking heads \u2014 the only narrator is Elvis, from previously unheard audio footage from one of these rehearsals. He tells his tale with a painful candor that\u2019s a surprise to hear. \u201cHollywood\u2019s image of me was wrong, and I knew it,\u201d he says, raw anger in his voice. \u201cAnd I couldn\u2019t say anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n \n\tElvis is always changing, always in motion, getting demonized or rediscovered.\u00a0In the Fifties, he\u00a0was despised by elite tastemakers like Ed Sullivan, Steve Allen, and Bob Hope, who called him \u201cthe Tennessee Twitcher.<\/a>\u201d Frank Sinatra condemned his music as \u201ca rancid-smelling aphrodisiac.\u201d In the Seventies, he was mocked as a Vegas has-been in a jumpsuit; in the Eighties, as a cultural colonizer. He symbolizes everything about America at its extremes: fame, corruption, sin, sex, drugs, rags-to-riches, decline-and-fall, death. The accusations aimed at Elvis are always in flux, but they\u2019re a key part of his unique vitality. The worst thing that could ever happen to Elvis\u2019 legacy is if he stopped offending, outraging, or confounding people. But it\u2019s bizarre that nearly 50 years after his death, he\u2019s still a guaranteed argument starter. That might be the most American thing about him.<\/p>\n \n\tThat\u2019s also why everybody wants a piece of him now. When Elvis died, his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, vowed, \u201cI\u2019m gonna keep right on managing him,\u201d and that\u2019s been the world\u2019s attitude as well. After his death, Elvis got more famous than ever, arguably the world\u2019s favorite dead guy. He lives on in a swirl of mystery and mythology: the rockabilly Fifties, the drugged-out Seventies, the Jungle Room, the postage stamps, the fried-peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches. So it\u2019s always been easy to lose him in the image. \u201cThe image is one thing, and the human being is another,\u201d he says candidly in EPiC.<\/em> \u201cIt\u2019s very hard to live up to an image \u2014 I\u2019ll put it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n \n\tNot so long ago, it looked like Elvis was fading as a cultural icon. He wasn\u2019t as controversial or compelling as he used to be. Ten years ago, when I interviewed Greil Marcus, the critic who wrote definitive studies like Mystery Train<\/em> and Dead Elvis,<\/em> he discussed Elvis\u2019 decline as a public figure. But that\u2019s definitely changed. \u201cIt\u2019s not surprising the way that Elvis came back,\u201d he said when we revisited the topic in 2025<\/a>. \u201cThe Elvis story continues to mutate, especially as more and more filmmakers come in to write the story in their own way. Not just with the Baz Luhrmann film, which I think is a great film \u2014 maybe not as great as his version of\u00a0The Great Gatsby.<\/em> But also the whole slew of documentaries in the last 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThere\u2019s always been different Elvises for different eras. He turned into a new kind of cultural obsession in the Eighties, when he started to get spotted in supermarkets and shopping malls around the country, the dead King risen to life. The theory went that he faked his death, which is why he spelled his name wrong on his own tombstone. (He was \u201cElvis Aron Presley,\u201d not \u201cAaron.\u201d) The Nineties were madly in love with Elvis, to the point where the Naked Gun <\/em>movies could get laughs by casting 1960s Broadway star Robert Goulet as Priscilla Presley\u2019s love interest \u2014 an in-joke for fans who knew that her husband hated Goulet and would shoot out TVs at the sight of his face. The King was bigger than ever. His daughter married Michael Jackson. Bill Clinton was the first presidential Elvis impersonator, going on The Arsenio Hall Show<\/em> to play \u201cHeartbreak Hotel\u201d on sax<\/a>. (Bill\u2019s favorite was \u201cI Want You, I Need You, I Love You,\u201d because of course it was.)<\/p>\n \n\tHis kung fu was still strong in the early 2000s, when a Dutch techno remix of \u201cA Little Less Conversation\u201d became his umpteenth posthumous hit. But until lately, it was almost heretical to focus on Elvis as an artist, because it was just too easy to simplify him into a rhinestone-studded metaphor for whatever theory you might be pushing. It\u2019s tough to imagine a movie this serious happening 10 or 15 years ago.<\/p>\n \n\tBut EPiC <\/em>documents the most mysterious and inexplicable thing about Elvis: his music. The art he made used to get so overshadowed by his myth. Case in point: Luhrmann\u2019s appalling 2022 biopic, which totally bungled the story of his musical development, getting the \u201cHound Dog\u201d story ass-backwards wrong. Yet this movie is great enough to atone. It feels so timely because it focuses on the music, still the part of his story that nobody can explain away. It doesn\u2019t get into the drugs, barely mentions his family. It\u2019s the portrait of the artist in 1969, at 34, finally returning to the stage. \u201cI just missed it,\u201d he says. \u201cI missed the closeness of an audience, of a live audience. So just as soon as I got out of the movie contracts, I started to do live concerts again.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThere\u2019s footage of Elvis in the 1950s, when he was the most loathed and feared figure in pop culture, a symbol of sexual liberation, racial integration, cultural mobility, a hillbilly boy trespassing where he didn\u2019t belong. It\u2019s startling to see the bitchy pride Elvis took in this. An interviewer asks him with contempt, \u201cYou call it singing, what you do?\u201d The kid simply drawls, \u201cWell, I sold 5 million records.\u00a0Somebody<\/em>\u00a0calls it singing.\u201d No defensiveness in his voice \u2014 just the most relaxed kind of confidence, a sexy brat with zero shame. When a more sympathetic reporter asks, \u201cDo you think you\u2019ve learned from the criticism?\u201d he replies with a straight face, \u201cNo, I haven\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBut America took him down anyway, trapping him in the Army \u2014 as he mourns in EPiC<\/em>, \u201cI got drafted and overnight it was all gone.\u201d (He once saluted my Uncle Don, his captain in the German tank corps.) As soon as Elvis returned, he got locked right back up in the Hollywood hamster wheel, cranking out movies at the rate of three per year. Some were pretty great despite themselves, like Blue Hawaii<\/a><\/em> or my beloved Girl Happy<\/a>.<\/em> (Or \u2014 I swear \u2014 It Happened at the World\u2019s Fair.<\/em>) Some were downright delightful, like Viva Las Vegas, <\/em>with his muse Ann-Margret. But most were garbage. He hit rock bottom with Change of Habit<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> a rom-com starring Mary Tyler Moore as a nun. Elvis: \u201cMaybe there\u2019s somebody else?\u201d Mary: \u201cYou could say that.\u201d It was the last act of a desperate man.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tEPiC<\/em> is Elvis returning to the fans, rekindling their torrid romance. In one great moment, he croons the Beatles\u2019 \u201cSomething,\u201d until he gets to the line \u201cSomething in the things she shows me\u201d and quips, \u201cVery suggestive lyrics, man!\u201d He strolls through the room, letting fans kiss him, grope him, mess up his hair \u2014 the ladies\u2019 hysteria is something to behold. (Best fan sign: \u201cYou Kiss Me I Quiver.\u201d) In his high-voltage \u201cPolk Salad Annie,\u201d he cracks some risky jokes, changing the lyrics \u2014 \u201cGot a little morphine, got a little hashish\u201d \u2014 and miming a toke on a joint. He grabs his guitar for a medley of \u201cLittle Sister\u201d and the Beatles\u2019 \u201cGet Back,\u201d belts recent hits like \u201cBridge Over Troubled Water\u201d or \u201cI Shall Be Released\u201d or the gospel hit \u201cOh, Happy Day.\u201d When he needs a drink of water onstage, he announces, \u201cBoy, I tell you, it gets dry up here, man. It\u2019s like Bob Dylan just sat in my mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSuspicious Minds\u201d is a pure rock blowout, the movie\u2019s astounding peak. He goes into a power-twitch trance, shaking in ecstasy along with the crowd, the music reverberating out of his pores, right up to the moment when he signals the band and cuts it dead. He achieves the same effect on \u201cBurning Love,\u201d as well as ballads like \u201cCan\u2019t Help Falling In Love\u201d and \u201cI Can\u2019t Stop Loving You.\u201d He\u2019s the King \u2014 but a King who\u2019s hungry to win people over. Celebrities like Cary Grant and Sammy Davis Jr. come to see him. The movie ends with a note that Elvis did 1,100 concerts between 1969 and 1977, sometimes three shows a day. There\u2019s also a great poetic epitaph from Bono, who says, \u201cElvis made America before America made him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tOnstage, 1972<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFotos International\/Archive Photos\/Getty Images<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThese days, America\u2019s most high-profile fan is the current president, who is obsessed with how Elvis embodies American realness in all the ways he can\u2019t. He keeps trying to force his way into this story. Most notoriously, he turned a 2024 campaign rally into a DJ party<\/a>, standing zombie-stiff to the sound of Presley singing \u201cAn American Trilogy,\u201d<\/a> which also appears in EPiC<\/em>. It was the King\u2019s Civil War medley of \u201cDixie,\u201d \u201cThe Battle Hymn of the Republic,\u201d and the spiritual \u201cAll My Trials.\u201d Marcus summed it up in Mystery Train<\/em>: Elvis \u201csignifies that his persona, and the culture he has made out of blues, Las Vegas, gospel music, Hollywood, schmaltz, Mississippi, and rock & roll, can contain any America you want to conjure up. It is rather Lincolnesque; Elvis recognizes that the Civil War has never ended, and so he will perform \u2018The Union.\u2019\u201d But the distance between Abe and Elvis is nothing compared to the gap between Elvis and Trump.<\/p>\n \n\tThat\u2019s why Presley\u2019s music speaks to the country we\u2019re living in now. Right from the beginning, he was a radically ambitious artist, in addition to everything else he was. His first Sun single was a blues tune, Arthur Crudup\u2019s \u201cThat\u2019s All Right,\u201d revamping the chords, the lyrics, the tone. Elvis added a new verse of girlish sighs, cooing \u201cI need your loooovin\u2019<\/em>!\u201d \u2014 which we now think of as the highlight. But for the flip side, he howled Bill Monroe\u2019s bluegrass hit \u201cBlue Moon of Kentucky,\u201d the Appalachian hillbilly anthem. Pairing these songs on the same single \u2014 from two of the nation\u2019s most despised underclasses \u2014 was a revolutionary vision of America. It scandalized people before anyone even knew how he looked or moved.<\/p>\n\n
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