Anna Wintour, Baz Luhrmann, and the Cast of Elvis Host a Special New York Screening

“I would like to thank you for making time for us tonight,” said Anna Wintour, addressing Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin at last night’s Manhattan screening of Elvis. Between them, the husband-and-wife duo claim a lengthy list of credits on the film, which offers a whistle-stop romp through the life of the king of rock and roll: He’s the director and co-writer, she’s the costume and production designer, both are producers. And since the film’s debut at Cannes last month (which earned it a 12-minute ovation), the pair, along with their cast, have been on a whirlwind promotional tour. “Baz, if this audience knew your mind-blowing travel schedule over the past few months, they would either think you’d missed your life calling as a Qantas pilot or that you were suffering from a severe sleep disorder.”

Baz, on stage at the DGA theater in Midtown Manhattan, gamely acknowledged the Elvis crew’s geographical zig-zagging: Paris, Cannes, three premieres in Australia, and another in Los Angeles were followed by a trip to Graceland, Elvis’s Memphis, Tennessee home, where the Presley family saw the film. (From the start, Elvis Presley’s estate granted Luhrmann permission to make the film, but more than that, it gave him access to Presley’s extensive archives, which he eagerly mined to guide his storytelling.) “But here we bring it back to New York City,” Luhrmann said, “to the city we live in and the city we love, with the people that we love.” 

Like in Luhrmann’s masterpiece Moulin Rouge!, Elvis relies on a narrator—though in this case, it’s the antagonist, Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’s lifelong manager, who sets the stage. Played by Tom Hanks (who dons a prosthetic nose and some bodily padding), Parker has a nebulous background, a hard-to-place accent, and a self-serving professional style that pushes Elvis toward cringey career moves, drug use, and an endless Las Vegas residency. In the film’s opening scene, Parker explains that while he tends to be blamed for Elvis’s death at age 42, everyone’s gotten it all wrong—without him, Elvis wouldn’t have existed in the first place. Still, he’s hardly the movie’s hero: From the minute Austin Butler’s Elvis hits the stage, clad in a billowing rockabilly-pink suit, the audience is presented with its object of affection.

Among those seated was a fashion-heavy crowd that included Vera Wang, Batsheva Hay, Victor Glemaud, Jonathan Cohen, and more. And from the film, there was Butler, Olivia DeJonge, Yola, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Alton Mason, and Tom Hanks. Beaming, Luhrmann welcomed them all to the stage one by one before the 159-minute cinematic extravaganza began.

Introducing DeJonge, who plays Priscilla Presley, Luhrmann shared remarks from Priscilla herself. “She said, ‘Thank you for selecting a young actor who could really make me look so good and be so true to me.’” The British musician Yola, meanwhile, appears in the film as Sister Rosetta Tharpe. “[She was] the inventor of rock and roll—no doubt about it,” Luhrmann explained.

Luhrmann went on to praise Harrison Jr. for his role as the legendary B.B. King—a confidente of Elvis’s—and Mason for his rousing interpretation of Little Richard. He then amused the audience with Hanks’s introduction. “One of the real joys is to find a new name, to give them a chance, a few lines, and see how they ll do. And this one has done fairly well.”

Regarding Butler, whose portrayal of Elvis was electric and, at times, uncanny, Luhrmann also recounted Priscilla’s reaction: “I can t believe, after all this time, what Austin Butler has done to create my husband,” she told him, adding, “If he was here today, he would say, ‘Hot damn, you are me.’”