“Elvis & Nixon”

Elvis & Nixon recalls Elvis Presley’s 1970 rendezvous with President Richard Nixon at the White House. If, like me, you’ve never read Jerry Schilling’s first-person account in Me and a Guy Named Elvis: My Lifelong Friendship with Elvis Presley, your next best bet is to go with the movie. Come to think of it, Liza Johnson’s take is kicky enough on its own merits, you can forget any comparison at all.

Already from the opening sequence, the film draws you in with sound and sight of Nixon’s audio recording about the unlikely meeting. Wait a few beats and there’s Kevin Spacey as the titular president demanding to know who the (expletive) set it up. The way his aides Egil Krogh (Colin Hanks) and Dwight Chapin (Evan Peters) squirm suggests just what they’re up against with this brazen bid to impose on the boss’s nap hour.

A psychedelic title sequence set to Sam & Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Comin’” blazes images of the Vietnam War and countercultural explosions back home. In a few rousing moments you get the zeitgeist of the era along with the film’s encouragement to have fun.

So it’s off to Graceland, done up in mod grey, white and the same imperial yellow as the Oval Office curtains. The King of Rock ‘n Roll is on a secret mission and his boyhood pal Schilling (Alex Pettyfer) is the only one he can trust to help him. Schilling is working as a film editor at Paramount when the call comes in from his former “Memphis Mafia” boss. “We’re at a crossroads. It’s make-or-break time,” intones the King. Sounding very much like the oracle he believes he is, he laments that drugs are “messing with kids’ minds.” You can’t help but relish the irony that the alcohol and prescription opiate addict, the voice behind “Hound Dog” and “Jailhouse Rock,” the gyrating subversive whom CBS cameramen could only shoot from the waist up — that this man now covets a federal narcotics badge to make undercover busts.

Continue reading here: http://www.thalo.com/articles/view/1216/tribeca_spotlight_elvis_nixon_a_meeting_of_movie