Baz Luhrmann

The man that brought us Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge! and The Great Gatsby, was never going to disappoint with a biopic of the musical legend Elvis Presley.

Austin Butler is brilliant as The King, giving a true born-for-the-part performance. Butler went method for the role, becoming so committed to his craft that he stopped being able to identify his own voice. Elvis welcomes the husky vocals of Doja Cat and indie band Tame Impala. Woven around vibrant costumes and decadent sets, the soundtrack compliments the musical extravaganza of Butler's performances.

There would be no Yola without rock-and-roll architect Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Now Yola gets to become her in Baz Luhrmann's Elvis.

But she was still new to town then, and the success, she says, “wasn’t mine.” Her sound has always been an amalgam of styles and genres, indebted to the crate-digging, completist culture of her hometown and the genreless nature of U.K. radio. “It’s creating a new monolith, that erases Americana, blues, roots, classic soul and cross genre artists like myself who just so happen to be black women in an adjacent space.” Folk-rock artist Lilli Lewis suggested that shoehorning Yola into a genre that doesn’t fully encompass her sound might actually benefit her, as “there’s so much money in country,” providing greater visibility. Yola empathizes with Elvis in a way, too; he is portrayed in Luhrmann’s film as more of a bystander to his own career than the tenacious King. Walk Through Fire earned Yola Grammy and Americana Music Honors & Awards nominations and articles that fawned over the new Nashville talent with the great big voice. She has spent the past two years putting together a trusted band, a co-writing cohort, and a more cross-genre sound that better reflects her core interests — with influences as varied as Mary J. Blige and renowned Black drummer James Gadson. Her sophomore album, Stand for Myself, released last summer, marked the start of a kind of artistic self-ownership she hadn’t been afforded earlier. Yes, Elvis spent his childhood in a Black neighborhood in Mississippi, and, yes, he came of age in Memphis just as Black blues, gospel, and soul were coalescing into this hot new sound called “rock and roll.” But the split screen juxtaposing Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup (played by another respected musician, Gary Clark Jr.) performing “ That’s All Right” with Elvis’s attempt to match him note for note, inflection for inflection, is perhaps not as honorific a flex as Luhrmann intended. “The easy narrative is ‘He’s the appropriator,’ ” she says. The film’s focus is not on Elvis the man but Elvis the moneymaking machine, and in the context of the business, Elvis’s exposure to (and imitation of) rock’s Black originators feels like a means to a necessary, highly lucrative end. “You’re gonna experience Black shit if you’re just around Black people,” she says. If we don’t have that drag-wearing Black man being as free as he feels he can be, enough to inspire Prince” — her eyes widen as she imagines the alternate timeline — “then what happens if we don’t have Prince? We wouldn’t know what kind of postapocalyptic music nightmare we’d be in if we don’t hold things up to the light.” For Yola, there was simply no passing up the opportunity to play a woman so integral to the development of her own sound. Her debut album, 2019’s Walk Through Fire, was a commercial and critical success, landing her on editorial playlists and the radar of film producers. “And you don’t know that you’re missing it,” Yola says.

The director-extraordinaire connects with V Magazine Editor-in-Chief, Stephen Gan, to discuss Austin Butler channeling the ethos of the King of Rock N' Roll for ...

And therefore he wrote a song that explains about his relationship with Elvis. So it's the same with Maneskin, I just thought, “Oh, Maneskin, they're rooted in of the moment, young, glam rock.” And they wanted to interpret the song “If I Can Dream.” So partially, for me, it was going through and saying “Who would do that work the best?” It's like casting. So I explained it to Yeti and Yeti explained it to Doja. She got on the phone with me and within five seconds she said “I get it. BL: In the movie, you hear classic Elvis...you hear Elvis' voice, and you hear a lot of Austin singing Elvis. And a lot of people still don't understand that it's actually Austin—I had to post something on TikTok to prove it. And I really thought, to understand Elvis growing up as he did at one point in the Black community and his home life and journey, the only other person I think who really had that experience in a contemporary way is Eminem. Now I don't know Eminem very well so I wrote to him. So it felt like everywhere you turn, it was a Doja and Baz moment from Coachella, to the [Elle Magazine] event a few days ago. And so we thought, “oh, that would be a great idea.” And I asked RCA and they put me in touch with Yeti—and they're like brother and sister (Yeti and Doja)…they've been working together since the beginning. I can’t put my finger on it, his singular focus was to humanize Elvis: not Elvis the Halloween costume, not Elvis the icon, but this man and his spirit. From the moment he walked into my life, he was fusing his soul with Elvis’s. This wasn’t a method acting thing, this was something else. People keep saying “divine timing, it’ll happen at the right time.” This timing in the world and the launch, it feels so perfect. I didn’t have divine timing, but I did feel like we needed a film like this. I felt like we needed to have a story that leaves hope, you know? BL: There was a moment when it looked like the film wouldn’t happen.

The biopic may be long on spectacle and short on insight but with Austin Butler's knockout performance as The King at its heart, it's well worth watching.

For all of the movie’s visceral, visual appeal, it remains to be seen if all of Luhrmann’s razzle-dazzle will be enough to save “Elvis” from the miserable box-office fate of so many films aimed at adults this year. If “Elvis” does manage to attract a large audience to a film about someone with whom many younger moviegoers are only vaguely familiar, that might be Luhrmann’s best special effect of all. But Luhrmann found him in the relatively unknown Austin Butler from such series as “The Shannara Chronicles” and “The Carrie Diaries.” Butler doesn’t just capture Presley hip-shaking, live intensity but his conflicted, off-stage persona as well. “Elvis” may rankle biopic purists — the presence of such contemporary musicians on the soundtrack as Eminem and Jack White is probably enough to do that alone — but its sheer stylistic verve and palpable energy are enough to make it worth watching. He wants to plumb the relationship between Presley and his secretive, Svengali-like manager Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks, doing a wait-why-is-he-talking-like-that Dutch accent) and it’s here where the movie stumbles. The appearances by Alton Mason as Little Richard, Gary Clark Jr. as Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup and the singer Yola as Sister Rosetta Tharpe may be brief but they are absolutely electric while Kelvin Harrison Jr.’s B.B. King bears a relatable wisdom that helps keep Presley grounded.

Acting icon Tom Hanks has revealed why he signed on to play Colonel Tom Parker in Baz Luhrmann's epic biopic despite the role being worlds away from his ...

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Austin Butler turns in a stellar performance as Elvis Presley, though much of Baz Luhrmann's stylish music biopic 'Elvis' is a narrative mess.

Butler makes for a phenomenal King of rock ’n’ roll because, rather than going the impersonator route, he grows into being Elvis just as the real one did, from truck driver to musical deity. However, at the risk of checking into Heartbreak Hotel, don’t get your hopes up for a cohesive classic befitting a King. And the plot (for better and for worse) covers a ton of Presley’s life. After Elvis’ brief foray into Hollywood, he and Parker land in Las Vegas, where Presley has a musical comeback, but goes down a bad path as the Colonel pulls strings behind the scenes like a devilish puppet master. Not so shockingly, "Elvis the Pelvis" doesn’t play well in the conservative Bible Belt of the South. Bad Luhrmann’s musical drama “Elvis” has all the pomp and pompadour one would expect by putting Elvis Presley’s iconic life on screen.

Australian director Baz Luhrmann has revealed in a recent interview that a four hour-long version of 'Elvis' exists. "I mean, I have a four-hour version, ...

Presley met Nixon in the White House in 1970 while both were at the height of their popularity. "I would have liked to lean into some of the other things more," Luhrmann continued. "What happens is he starts doing wackadoo things – like going down to see Nixon," the 59-year-old explained.

SPIN's Sarina Bellissimo caught up with the director of the new 'Elvis' movie Baz Luhrmann!Baz c...

The longer cut explores Elvis's addiction to barbiturates and his infamous meeting with Nixon.

I mean, there’s lots of stuff that I shot like the relationship with the band, I had to pare down, and it’s so interesting how the Colonel gets rid of them,” Luhrmann explained. someone who’s got such a hole in his heart like Elvis [was] constantly looking and searching for love and finding it onstage but nowhere else.” “I would have liked to lean into some of the other things more.