This is the Las Vegas Elvis we forgot about, the one with the great cheekbones who karate chops and sings the fire out of “Suspicious Minds” and “Burning Love.”
The guy who smooches his way around a packed ballroom of weeping, ecstatic female fans.
The Elvis who wears a white polyester jumpsuit that is, truth be told, at least a size too big for his lean frame.
“The Halloween costume is the Elvis many years later,” says Baz Luhrmann, director of the new documentary “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert” (in IMAX Feb. 20, theaters everywhere Feb. 27), which is built around electrifying, never-before-seen rehearsal and concert footage from Elvis Presley’s groundbreaking residency at the International Hotel. “But the Elvis of 1970 that you see in this film is the Elvis at the absolute pinnacle, almost like he’s flying so close to the sun. He’s almost inhuman on stage, and yet so human.”
The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll speaks with surprising candor about his disappointment in his film career, underscored with a peculiar clip of Elvis being hounded by a dude in a cheesy dog costume. “Hollywood’s image of me was wrong, and I knew it,” the singer laments. “And I couldn’t say anything about it.”