Director Baz Luhrmann, alongside editor Jonathan Redmond and Graceland archivist Angie Marchese, shares behind-the-scenes details of the production of “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert” in an interview.
The film brings together previously unseen footage of concerts, interviews, and statements from the King of Rock, recorded during six shows in 1970 in Las Vegas and four additional performances during the 1972 U.S. tour.
Baz Luhrmann, director of “Moulin Rouge” and “Elvis” (2022), said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that he remembers his reaction when he received the news that the singer had died on August 16, 1977.
“And my most vivid memory was thinking: This isn’t right. I should have met him. We were going to be friends. And that stayed somewhere deep in my mind,” he recalled.
Luhrmann explained that the film reels of the concert recordings took a long time to be released because they were in MGM’s possession and stored in salt mines in Kansas for preservation purposes.
“It was a bit like ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’,” the director joked. Of the 65 reels that had been stored, a large portion was damaged, missing, or unusable.
He says that he and Redmond managed to convince Warner Bros., the studio behind “Elvis,” to “at least digitize the material with the intention of doing something with it.” From that point on, they decided that the singer himself would tell his story.
“When we found Elvis speaking about his life in his own voice, it became something else,” Redmond said in an interview with the outlet in January.
+Check out the trailer for “Elvis Presley in Concert”
“He wasn’t telling us anything I didn’t already know, but hearing him say it was far more powerful,” he continued.
The clips were restored to the best possible quality with the help of Park Road Post, a division of Peter Jackson’s WingNut Films, which specializes in film restoration.
The film features more than 20 hits by the King of Rock, including “That’s All Right,” “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,” “Suspicious Minds,” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”
“It’s as if he’s alive. It’s as if you’re at a concert and he’s there,” says Angie Marchese, Vice President of Archives and Exhibitions at Graceland.
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“EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert” arrived in IMAX theaters across the U.S. on Thursday, February 26. Source and images: YouTube NEON. This content was created with the help of AI and reviewed by the editorial team.
