Priscilla Presley's "Elvis and Me"
From the memories of Priscilla Presley comes an intimate portrait of the King.
By Susan Littwin
The usual production problems are apparent on-set today: There's rain and a location house too small for the crew. The director has a cold, and leading actress Susan Walters is nervous about playing the emotional scene where 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu discovers that her father isn't her real father.
But these are the usual problems. Curled in a stray chair beyond camera range is a good-looking man who introduces himself as Jerry Schilling. The name is familiar. "Well, I'm one of the characters in the movie, " he explains matter-of-factly. Shilling, a creative consultant on the film, was one of Elvis Presley's boyhood friends and later became a member of his entourage. One night he and Priscilla angered Elvis by chatting in the kitchen at Graceland The scene is in the movie. "Priscilla and I were self-conscious around each other for two years after that, " he says.
It's the memories that give "Elvis and Me" unusual problems. The script is based on Priscilla Presley's best-selling book of the same name. It is the story of her life with Elvis, and , understandably, it tries to preserve her memories of their relationship. That's what memoirs do. And Priscilla is an executive producer of the TV-movie, But producer Robert Lovenheim and director Larry Peerce want to tell a believable, objective story. "The book tries to uphold the myths. Our script has in sight into Priscilla, into the subtext of her story," says Lovenheim. "We want to do right by her. We don't want to destroy her memories, but we're not making This Is Your Life,".
Most often, the relationship with Priscilla's memories is helpful. A whisky bottle is removed from the set because Priscilla tells them Elvis never served whisky. She tells them exactly how many members of the entourage ought to be sitting around. And actress Susan Walters stops biting her nails when she finds out that Priscilla never bit hers.
But then there are the touchy issues, like the Wink. When Elvis was leaving Germany, his two year army stint over, Priscilla accompanied him to the airport, where hundreds of screaming fans waited for him. The King of Rock 'n Roll mounted the boarding steps, waved to the crowd and then winked. As Priscilla saw it, the Wink was for her.
But Lovenheim and Peerce have their own views after seeing newsreels of Elvis's goodbye. "He's finally through with the army and being a jeep driver," says Lovenheim. "The mobs overwhelm him. He's getting a taste of "the life' again, the world at his feet." As Lovenheim sees it, the Wink was for his fans. "I'm back," it said.
But when Priscilla saw the shot, she was disturbed. This Elvis wasn't winking at her. "It was a very romantic moment for me, " she explains. "I was waiting for that moment, and it didn't happen. They did it from a man's point of view! Elvis had other things on his mind. I guess that's cold, hard reality."
Luckily perhaps, it was not possible for Priscilla Presley to play herself. It would be too much of a reach for her, at 42 (and a member of CBS's Dallas cast), to play a 14 year old. But casting the role was a problem. The producers needed an actress young enough to play 14 convincingly, but with enough range and seasoning to carry the role all the way up the 32 -year-old woman who has been through tragedy. They came up with Susan Walters, a 24-year-old former soap opera actress who has a small role on Hotel. Walters bears a strong resemblance to the young Priscilla --the high cheekbones and heartstopping blue eyes.
To play Elvis, again a relative unknown was needed, since a star couldn't dissolve into the role. The producers settled on Dale Midkiff, a lanky 28-year-old who played the young Jock Ewing in "Dallas: The Early Years" On a drizzly afternoon, he drives up to the location shoot in a red 1963 Buick Wildcat convertible, the top down and Bruce Springsteen blaring from the 1987 sound system. It is a car the King might have driven, and an entrance almost theatrical enough. He parks and swaggers down the street in cowboy boots, a big, I know-I'm sexy grin across his unshaven face. "I was with Priscilla and Jerry Schilling last night," he tells Walters, the excitement obvious in his voice. Not surprisingly, they talked about Elvis.
What does he think of Elvis? He explains while cruising the quiet neighborhood in the Wildcat that Elvis was basically "a good Christian boy." He wasn't really a drug addict. "Those were prescription drugs he was using. He thought he had it under control." And he didn't break his work to Priscilla's father by bringing her to live with him at Graceland. "It was his father, Vernon, who made the promise [that she would live apart from Elvis], not him."
Midkiff has fallen in love with his character. He plays young Elvis with an easy, boyish charm. But Elvis also has a dark side. He was, even in Priscilla's account, unnaturally attached to his mother, sexually kinky, addicted to drugs and to fame. He was volatile and, in later years, increasingly paranoid. With the help of makeup, lightning and a few extra pounds gained, Midkiff will be made to look like the bloated, dissipated singer of those years. The big question is, will he be able to capture the dark side of Elvis? Or will he be too worried about betraying all those memories?