#this is elvis

[thetaoofzoe]

This is Elvis

This Is Elvis: The Lost Theme Song

With all of the hype surrounding Baz Luhrmann's upcoming biopic, ELVIS, many fans will fondly recall the first official movie of Elvis' life, 1981's This Is Elvis, which, for better of worse, is the benchmark against which all subsequent attempts are measured.

One of the well-known names involved with This Is Elvis was Jerry Schilling, who was hired as a Consultant on the film. 

As most fans know, Jerry was a long-term friend of Elvis, having met him in 1954, when, as a 12-year old, he wandered into one of Elvis' pickup football games at Guthrie Park in Memphis. That was the start of a friendship that lasted throughout Elvis' life and since 1977 he has been involved with many Elvis-related projects including Heartbreak Hotel, Elvis And Me,  Elvis: The Great Performances, Elvis: The Lost Performances, Elvis In Hollywood, Elvis By The Presleys, Elvis & Nixon, and Elvis Presley: The Searcher. For a time he was also a Director of Elvis Presley Enterprises. However, Schilling's experience in the entertainment industry extends beyond Elvis, and he has been involved in a number of capacities, including managing acts as diverse as Billy Joel, Jerry Lee Lewis, and The Beach Boys.

Beach Boys, Dennis and Carl Wilson with Myrna Smith - 1981

In a recent interview with David Beard for Endless Summer Quarterly (a publication dedicated to The Beach Boys), Jerry explained that in the fall of 1980...

"I was looking for a theme song (for This Is Elvis). Carl and Myrna were up at Caribou Ranch (a recording studio in Colorado) working on his first solo album. I went up to Caribou just to check out how everything was going and because I was doing the film at the same time, I said 'I'm looking for a theme song for a project that's titled This Is Elvis. If you guys have any ideas and want to do a demo, we might use it'. So, Myrna wrote the lyrics, Carl wrote the music, and the two of them recorded a demo (however, in the end) Warner Brothers' publicity department felt the title track should be an Elvis song."

The track was then all-but forgotten. However, as Jerry continues...

"in 2014, Billy Hinsche (one third of the 1960's group Dino, Desi & Billy, and later a keyboardist for the The Beach Boys backing band, and one-time brother-in-law of Carl Wilson) called me and said 'Jerry, do you know about this song that Carl and Myrna did called This Is Elvis?. I said 'No.' I had completely forgotten about it. He said 'Well, I have a copy, and it's your voice at the end saying 'That was it!'. I said 'Send it to me Billy.' Once I heard it, I remembered the whole story, and it tells who Elvis was - the lyrics and the music. It's simple, it's sweet, and it's deep. It's emotional to talk about it because all three of these people - who were so close to me in my life - are all gone. (Elvis passed away in 1977, Carl in 1998, and Myrna in 2010), But boy, this is a great piece of all of their music left behind honouring Elvis and done by Carl and Myrna."

The song was eventually released in 2015, with proceeds from the sale going to the Carl Wilson Foundation (Carl had died from cancer, with one of the Foundation's aims being to raise funds for cancer research).

Listen to Myrna sing 'This is Elvis'

Source : EIN

[the-wonder-of-ep]

I don’t like thinking about him today. I don’t like remembering how sick he was, imagining how much pain he was in, wondering if he knew how little time he had left.

As somebody who believes in the great big beautiful beyond, it probably shouldn’t affect me as much as it does—I know he isn’t trapped in that breaking body anymore, or shackled to a world of stifled creativity—but the footage of those final concerts is just so sad.

He’s exhausted, he’s struggling to move and stumbles over some of the lyrics of fan-favorite songs…but then he smiles, and those eyes sparkle amidst his bloated face. His spirit, his love for his fans is still so alive…it makes me want to cry.

He legitimately gave us everything he had. He gave everyone everything he had. He deserved to go out with dignity, with compassion and all of that love returned in full.

Instead, ask any average Joe about Elvis, their first instinct is usually to make a joke about toilets and cheeseburgers.

How did we reach that point? How could the world he cared for so much, devoted so much of himself to it literally killed him, treat his legacy, his memory like this? Why was that passed down, instead of those beautiful eyes, that boyish smile, struggling to put on one last helluva show?

I don’t understand it. This world is so cold sometimes.

Elvis, I’m so sorry.

[chasingwildflowers]

this is elvis is on max and i decided to watch for the first time in years and damn if i didn’t cry like a baby again.

[james-p-sullivan]

look at this baby 🥺

[star-shard]

This is Elvis (1981) review

This is Elvis is known as one of the first big documentaries about him after his death. It's unique in showing a lot of clips of his life, including home video that had been previously unseen by the public before. Along that there are some classic performances, with a few scenes done by actors to fill the gaps where no filming was done at the time just to make it fit the pacing.

I'd recommend this one. It's cool seeing all the footage put together and it's done rather respectfully. (Do keep in mind Tom Parker's actions aren't really addressed in this one, his financial abuse hadn't come to light yet).

There might be more interesting Elvis tributes/documentaries that came later, but this one got the job done. It's currently available on HBOmax.

[moviegroovies]

urgh. well? it’s been a while since i’ve posted anything fully coherent on this blog (not that you can tell, ha, ha) despite my employment at a movie store and the fact that i’ve watched at least 87 movies in the past few months that i could easily have debriefed into the void. in the spirit of updating more regularly, here’s what i think i’ll try: mini-reviews of all the movies i’ve seen in the last week! in order: 

the tao of steve: donal logue felt a little bit like discount jack black in this one, but i know him from gotham, so who am i to judge?

breakfast on pluto: wait, wasn’t the LAST thing i posted on here about cillian murphy being my boy girlfriend? well, kitten was my girl girlfriend. could have done without the glam rock group of white irishmen who dressed up as indigenous americans (this character in the book was apparently a lawyer, too, so that was just invented wholecloth for the film? for some reason), but everything besides that made me cry. i loved kitten. liam neeson was almost tolerable for once. ruth negga was there!! 

this is elvis: okay my brother saw elvis (2022) a couple weeks ago and is on a kick, i was only half-present for this one. this sure was. elvis. (i will say this version of the story paid far less heed to the influence he took from Black musicians than baz luhrmann’s take--which is an unnecessarily nice way of saying they had literally ONE scene of young elvis watching a Black man playing a guitar and conveniently ignored the rest; conversely, they did at least state out loud that priscilla was 14 (!!) when they met, which was something elvis ‘22 glossed over. all-in-all, i’m essentially elvis’d out.... at least until we convince my brother to sit down for bubba ho-tep.)

thor: love and thunder: disappointing. no loki. valkyrie was shafted. other people have disected it better than i’m currently equipped to so let’s say 3/10 and skip right ahead

meet joe black: this one i watched last night so it’s freshest in my mind; i have some thoughts. basically... it was okay. conceptually i was intruiged by the death-as-a-character thing; that was far and away the standout element. (idk if you’ve noticed--perhaps if you’re very, very new around here, but i love a good bit of the supernatural interacting with the mundane.) hopkins was good, but his role struck me as a bit... inconsistent? honestly, i just wasn’t sure what they were trying to SAY with him; he’s introduced as a wealthy, workaholic businessman (honestly my first thought--which continued well into the film, especially when it was revealed he made his fortune in the news, was succession), but death--THE death!--chooses him as a guide for his exemplary life. now, pre-character journey, death struck me as kind of childlike, insofar as he was ignorant to how things work, and carelessly selfish, so maybe something could have been explored with the idea that a rich man really leads such an upstanding life that he could possibly deserve his delirious wealth being a similarly naive fantasy, but that way of thinking really went unchallenged right to the end of the movie; bill was a complicated, but ultimately good man. he earned his wealth, unlike his conniving weasel of a former assistant, drew. (who was, incidentally, my favorite character after brad pitt’s death. he served, he gave cunt, he died was exposed for tax fraud. etc.) there was never a scrooge moment. 

i’m too communist for this movie, but i digress.

so, whatever, i guess that was what it was--one of the foregone conclusions on which the film’s premise is built. the bigger problem, then, was that exact aforementioned premise: it never comes through! the whole story is supposed to be bill, chosen to guide death/joe black in human affairs, but if you watch the movie, very little actual guiding gets done! joe follows bill around into a couple of humerous situations, but bill never deliberately TEACHES him anything worthwhile; in fact, the only thing that the “choice” of bill as the guide really serves is the romantic plot between joe and susan, and that. well, i don’t use the words “romantic plot tumor” very often, but... romantic plot tumor. their scenes put the whole movie on hold for me--or, really, they felt like a very DIFFERENT movie than the subplot with drew and bill’s business. there was some other weirdness; allison knowing she was her father’s unfavorite and never getting any resolution there (i don’t think they went in with the message “parents should have a favorite child/it’s okay for a parent to love one kid more,” but...?), brad pitt’s jamacian accent and the euthanasia subplot...

all said, though, it was kind of worth it to see brad pitt be a weird little freak. 

death and taxes. peace on earth.

[ssunvulcan1981]

UKRAINIAN PEOPLE FOR ELVIS PRESLEY

УКРАЇНСЬКІ НАРОДИ ДЛЯ ЕЛВІСА ПРЕСЛІ

[elvistheonlyking]

[myrecordcollections]

An episode of interview as included in the “This is Elvis” commemorate album 

[darkcirclesaremyaesthetic]

Night night ✨

[movieposters]

This Is Elvis (1981), Malcolm Leo

[mubiblog]

This is Elvis Japanese poster

[simplyelvis]

Little things I should have said and done I just never took the time

[elvistheonlyking]

The Jungle Room

[myrecordcollections]

Presley first performed the song at the Las Vegas International Hotel (later renamed the Hilton) on July 31, 1969, and the 45 rpm single was released 26 days later. It reached number one in the United States in the week of November 1 and stayed there for that week. It would be Presley's final number-one single in the U.S., on the Billboard Hot 100, before his death

This version from the “This is Elvis” soundtrack that added in voice clip from the documentary movie