This image released by HBO shows Elvis Presley, the subject of Elvis Presley: The Searcher, a two-part, three-hour documentary that premiered on April 14.The Associated Press
- Elvis Presley: The Searcher
- Directed by Thom Zimny
- Starring Elvis Presley, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Priscilla Presley
- 108 minutes and 97 minutes
- Premiering on HBO, April 14
The often superb new HBO documentary on Elvis Presley begins disappointingly, giving no clue of the quality to follow. Elvis was a “searcher,” we are told early in. It is a vague, uninspired claim that doesn’t hold up. Former wife Priscilla Presley, a banal disappointment in contrast to other much more useful interview subjects (including Bruce Springsteen and the late Tom Petty), offers this deep thought: “When I look at photos of Elvis when he was young, I see that little boy in him.…”
As anyone would, right?
Elvis was born in a shotgun house in Tupelo, Miss., “the poorest of the poor,” it is asserted, as images of a random black family are bizarrely shown on screen.
His father did time for cheque forgery, a criminal act that is forgiven in the film because he did it to put food on the table. After a short prison stay, Vernon Presley “lost his spirit” and didn’t work much.
Premiering on April 14, the two-part Elvis Presley: The Searcher is at its thoughtful best when it explores Elvis’s psyche and explains his creative choices and inspirations. It is compelling, though often apologetic. It can’t be stressed enough, for example, that all the pills Elvis abused were prescribed ones.
Directed and produced by the Springsteen documentarian Thom Zimny, The Searcher is authorized, which translates to excellent access to atmospheric shots taken inside Graceland and the like. But it also means that Priscilla, whose peculiar wooing by Elvis began when she was 14, was the only woman interviewed for the film. (No film-set scuttlebutt from co-star Ann-Margret – what happened in Viva Las Vegas stays in Viva Las Vegas, apparently.) Blandly, Priscilla closes off the story of her first date with the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, 10 years her elder, with this: “And the rest was history.”
Some history, though, Elvis’s – there’s literally nothing like it.
Most people who care to know that history are already familiar with it. Which is why director Zimny threads Elvis’s unique chronology with insight into the Heartbreak Hotel singer’s artistic impulses. Sadly, those aspirations were bluntly thwarted and eventually stunted by Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’s manipulative manager and self-interested career charter. Parker was a glorified merchandise hawker, the film suggests, with no eye toward his client’s best interests. (This is not a controversial contention.)
Zimny positions the 1968 televised comeback special Singer Presents Elvis as the bridge between Young Elvis and Old Elvis. Though perceptive off-camera commentary abounds (from historians, writers and musicians), the standout contributors are rockers Petty and Springsteen, particularly the latter. “You hear performers in the beauty of invention, discovering it and doing it in the moment,” says Springsteen. “You’re out on the frontier, an exciting and pristine place to be.”
As Springsteen talks, we hear the hit cover of the Arthur Crudup blues That’s All Right, Presley’s first single, in 1964. Elvis sang, “That’s all right mama, just anyway you do,” and nobody did it anyway near the way Elvis did it. While performing Hound Dog on The Milton Berle Show in 1956, Presley’s band had no idea the singer was going to add a bump-and-grind outro to the song. They kept their eyes on him and followed his lead – how could you not?
It is completely fascinating to hear Springsteen explain Elvis. “You’re excited about a sudden discovery of self – of your powers, your abilities and what you can do with them,” he says. It is clear Springsteen had studied Elvis religiously. The thing is, Springsteen could be talking about himself as much as he was about Presley. So, an intimate understanding of the man being documented.
Particular attention is given to Presley’s roots in gospel music, a genre which became a refuge for him. Graceland, his reasonable mansion in Memphis, Tenn., was a place of escape as well. Either at home or on the road with his trusted entourage, Elvis increasingly lived in a bubble, “unmoved from the earthly experience,” says writer-musician Warren Zanes.
Elvis was either unwilling or unable to break through the bubble. The film’s titular notion that he was a searcher doesn’t ring true. A line from Suspicious Minds could have been used to crystallize Elvis instead: “Caught in a trap.”
Brad Wheeler