If in 2022 Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, starring Austin Butler, restored a bit of glamour to Elvis Presley’s legacy, then EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, out now in IMAX, brings the whimsy. In the new film—which, by Luhrmann’s description, is neither a documentary, exactly, nor a concert film (though it has elements of both)—Presley has arrived at the International Hotel for what will, unbeknownst to him, turn into a seven-year residency. It’s around 1969 and he’s 34, still in his prime.
What makes up most of EPiC’s jam-packed 90-minute runtime is footage—recorded by MGM for two early ’70s concert films and then left to rot in a salt mine in Kansas, which Luhrmann discovered during his research for Elvis—of Presley in rehearsals and then on stage, where he runs through a repertoire that includes his greatest hits (“Hound Dog,” “Jailhouse Rock”), some new material (“Burning Love”), covers (“Yesterday,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water”), and gospel songs (“How Great Thou Art,” “Oh Happy Day”). It’s an amazing showcase, underscoring the range of his musical tastes (and beauty of his voice); the lunacy of his fans, who fling themselves into his path at every opportunity; and, possibly more than anything, his endearing goofiness, both in public and behind the scenes.
We spoke to Luhrmann about his collaborators on the new film, the magic tricks he employed for the soundtrack, and deciding to let Presley speak for himself.
Vogue: To start, I’d love to know how or when you landed on the genius title for this project.
Baz Luhrmann: Yeah, you think, why didn’t someone else come up with that before? Jonathan Redmond and I were partners in this, and to be honest, I just know we were riffing around ideas—Elvis something, Elvis in Concert. The acronym might’ve been Jonathan, it might’ve been me, it could’ve been Fletch. We had a thread with everybody on it, a group chat, and we were calling it things like Elvis Walks in the Park or something. I said, “Well, what about Elvis Presley Concert or Elvis Presley’s Concert?” And then we went, “Hang on—that’s EPIC. Great title for the movie!”
Peter Jackson, I know, helped you to restore the footage you found. His Get Back documentary about the Beatles was such a moment. Did you watch that at the time? Was that a point of reference?
My view on The Beatles: Get Back is that I recommend it to anybody who wants to understand the collective creative process. If you work in a group—a theater company or something—I always say, “Watch Get Back.” It’s the best documentary on how you hand the baton around creatively. And it looks great.
I reached out to Peter Jackson. I went down to New Zealand and said, “Look, what do you think?” Peter was not particularly an Elvis guy, but he said, “Wow, seeing Elvis rehearse… I didn’t realize he created like that.” So it was a revelation for Peter too.
I was going to ask about the rehearsal footage, because you linger on it for quite a bit. What did you see in that footage that you wanted the audience to see?
I think one of the biggest revelations in so much of the material is how funny he is—how goofy. I feel like he’s doing it to disarm everyone in the room. He tries to humanize himself by being really sort of silly. But the very unique thing about Elvis Presley is that, first of all, he takes a song like “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and makes it into a gospel power ballad. And the other thing is, he doesn’t rehearse steps. He literally uses his body to conduct, and the band never knew what he was going to do. He kept them all on tenterhooks. And he did it to the audience too. He’d goof off with them. He’s like, “Hey, I might look like this—but I’m also just a bit of a geek.”
He made himself so available to his audience. All those shots of him kissing women…
He gives himself completely to the audience—sometimes three times a day. I think there’s this fever he gets himself into. And the whole kissing-the-girls moment—which would never fly today—is done in this kind of innocent way. I mean, he kisses them, but they kiss him back. When we did the premiere in Toronto, there was a woman just crying and saying, “I was one of the girls. He kissed me, and my life was never the same again.” The kissing is kind of him physically removing the barrier between himself and the audience.
Yes, very much giving them what they want. You’re someone with such a distinctive visual vocabulary—people can identify a Baz Luhrmann film pretty quickly. Did it feel limiting at all, relying on existing footage?
Actually, I’d say it’s one of the most enjoyable things I’ve made, because I didn’t have to go through the whole process of writing with someone, pre-production, shooting the footage, wondering if I cast it right. Someone else already shot the material. I knew it was cast right, because the lead actor was pretty damn talented. There was still a lot of labor—lots of hours. Johnny did most of the cutting. I did a lot of work on the music. But there’s something wonderful about not coming in spiritually exhausted. The biggest job you have to do is watch a lot of footage.
And then you have to make storytelling decisions. When we found this really rare 30 minutes of Elvis just talking about his life, we went, “Oh, look—let’s get out of the way.” Every Elvis doc had lots of other people talking about him. We didn’t want that. We wanted him to tell his own story. That’s how we made our decisions.
One thing he talks about—and I remember this being referenced in your Elvis movie too—was the fact that he’d never traveled outside the United States except when he was in the service. It made me think of him as this distinctly American product. Do you agree with that? Can you imagine him existing anywhere else?
He says in the movie that he thinks he’s only going to do that concert once, and he’s building up to go to England and Europe and Japan. He’s really excited to go to these places. But then he tours the U.S., and then he does Vegas again and again and again. The real reason is that the Colonel [Tom Parker, Elvis’s manager] needs to keep him there. He’s like a bird hitting his head against a glass wall. And I think that’s what kills the spirit within him.
So in a way, we’ve tried to make this the world tour Elvis dreamed of but never had. And right now, as I’m speaking, people are filing into theaters. One of the great things—like last night at the Chinese Theatre in LA—people were clapping and dancing, saying they felt like they were at an Elvis concert.
I also wanted to ask about the music, which you referenced. In another interview, you talked about the work you did on “Oh Happy Day,” kind of creating Elvis’s fantasy version of that performance. I’d love to hear about that process.
We’ve got this one tape—only one camera—and he’s riffing on “Oh Happy Day” with the Sweet Inspirations. But the Sweets’ track wasn’t really strong enough for 5.1. He used to sneak into East Trigg Church and see Mahalia Jackson and the Black gospel choir. He was so in love with that sound. It was such a big deal for him. We thought, well, this isn’t meant to be strictly a documentary or a concert film. Why don’t we put Elvis with a choir? Shannon Sanders has this amazing Black gospel choir in Nashville—I know him well. I said, “Shannon, do you think you could get the choir together and rock it out with Elvis?”
It’ll be interesting when the soundtrack comes out and people get to hear him in a different way.
Some of it is directly the sound off the stage, and some of it is remix, fantasy stuff. Sometimes we’ve taken several Elvis tracks and made new works. It’s a double album, so there’s a lot of music. And I want kids to take that “Oh Happy Day,” do dance mixes, and send them to me.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.