{"id":283953,"date":"2026-02-10T13:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T13:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/283953\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T13:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T13:50:08","slug":"baz-luhrmann-on-his-new-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/283953\/","title":{"rendered":"Baz Luhrmann on His New Documentary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFor 50 years, the Holy Grail of Elvis Presley<\/a> footage \u2014 10 professionally shot concerts from the early Seventies \u2014 sat deep in a Kansas salt mine, completely inaccessible to the public. To the hardcore Elvis fan community, its existence was little more than myth. But when Baz Luhrmann<\/a> inked a deal to direct the 2022 biopic Elvis, starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks, he insisted that Warner Bros. excavate all 59 hours of film, which the studio owns, to see if it might spark ideas for his movie.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat Luhrmann saw left him gobsmacked. This wasn\u2019t just Elvis at his peak as a live performer, captured from multiple angles often by expert filmmakers, but also fly-on-the-wall backstage footage and candid interviews from the notoriously press-shy music icon. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t let this footage go back into the salt mines,\u201d Luhrmann says by Zoom as he wanders the streets of Tokyo. \u201cRight away, I knew we had to do something with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat he didn\u2019t want was a traditional documentary that told the story of Presley\u2019s touring years in chronological order with title cards and talking-head interviews. He instead envisioned something more daring, which he calls a \u201ctone poem.\u201d As Luhrmann explains, \u201cIt\u2019s as if Elvis comes to you in a dream and tells his story, and he sings it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe result, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, which opens in IMAX Feb. 20 and theaters nationwide Feb. 27, is a feat of filmmaking. Despite its longtime storage in the salt mine, which helps to protect film from the damaging effects of moisture, making the footage screen-worthy presented enormous technological and financial hurdles. The journey started when Luhrmann and editor Jonathan Redmond began combing through boxes of film reels that were originally shot for the 1970 documentary Elvis: That\u2019s the Way It Is and the 1972 concert film Elvis on Tour. \u201cWhen we got it into the cutting room at Warner\u2019s, there was this vinegar smell,\u201d Luhrmann says. \u201cThat\u2019s the smell of film degenerating. And it was so smelly we knew it was on the brink of crumbling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tIt looked spectacular once a very delicate digital transfer was complete, but much of the concert footage was silent. Fortunately, RCA had multi\u00adtrack tapes of every show, and the filmmakers were able to pain\u00adstakingly sync them up. Then, during the hunt for additional audio, they came across a previously undiscovered 45-minute interview with Presley, conducted by the Elvis on Tour directing team in 1972, with the camera off. \u201cYou can tell he\u2019s very tired and vulnerable,\u201d says Luhrmann. \u201cBut he\u2019s talking, really unguarded, about his life.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThat gave them the idea to let Elvis narrate the film, using that interview along with select bits of recorded conversation from throughout his life. \u201cIt\u2019s always been about other people telling you their story of Elvis,\u201d says Luhrmann. \u201cAnyone who pumped gas into Elvis\u2019 car and looked him in the eye wrote a book about it. This is his side of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn EPiC, that story begins with a transcendent segment of the medley \u201cAn American Trilogy\u201d from 1972. Then the film ricochets through a collage of 1950s TV performances and early concerts captured by fans in the audience. Next is a glimpse of some of the B movies the King shot in the 1960s during a period of career decline, including one in which he sings to a guy in a dog costume. \u201cHollywood\u2019s image of me was wrong. I knew it, and I couldn\u2019t say anything about it,\u201d we hear Presley say in a moment of unexpected candor. \u201cIt was nobody\u2019s fault except maybe my own, but I was attached to things I didn\u2019t fully believe in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEPiC bounces between shows in 1970 and 1972, highlighting stunning performances of songs like \u201cBridge Over Troubled Water,\u201d \u201cSuspicious Minds,\u201d \u201cIn the Ghetto,\u201d \u201cBurning Love,\u201d and \u201cHow Great Thou Art.\u201d Redmond was initially worried about \u201cjumping through time and space and aspect ratios and formats. It\u2019s super-8 one shot. Then it\u2019s 35mm anamorphic the next shot, then it\u2019s 16mm 4:3.\u201d But they went with their guts. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want a linear flow,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\n\tIn order to make the footage really pop, they handed it over to director Peter Jackson\u2019s team in New Zealand, the same crew responsible for the acclaimed 2021 documentary The Beatles: Get Back. \u201cThey set the gold standard for film restoration \u2014 cleaning it up, degrading it, removing all the dust,\u201d says Redmond. \u201cBut not losing anything as well, because you can go too far with film restoration and it starts to look plastic. These people are masters at making film look like film, but better and cleaner. What they did was the icing on the cake.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLuhrmann and Redmond did have access to concerts shot after 1972, including Presley\u2019s 1977 concert special. But the footage is difficult to watch due to Presley\u2019s perilous physical state in the weeks before his death. \u201cElvis\u2019 body is corrupted in 1977,\u201d notes Luhrmann, though he adds that the King\u2019s \u201cspirit and voice actually soars.\u201d The director ran a famous performance of \u201cUnchained Melody\u201d from this same time period at the end of his 2022 biopic and was reluctant to return to that well. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to repeat ourselves,\u201d he adds, \u201cand we didn\u2019t want to show him at the definitive end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe movie concludes by noting that Elvis performed more than 1,100 concerts between 1969 and 1977, sometimes playing three a day. \u201cHe flew so close to the sun,\u201d says Luhrmann. \u201cAnd then he\u2019s trapped, to quote the song [\u201cSuspicious Minds\u201d]. He\u2019s caught in a trap, and he can\u2019t get out. He doesn\u2019t quite know why, but the only thing that sustains him as he keeps going round and round and round on this circuit in America is that the only love he can get is across the footlights. He became addicted to performing.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tLuhrmann is currently deep into preproduction on a Joan of Arc movie, but he\u2019s not quite ready to let go of Elvis. A 1972 concert at the Hampton Coliseum in Hampton Roads, Virginia, was found in the vault that\u2019s never been seen in full. He\u2019s batting around the idea of maybe one day turning it into its own film.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat keeps him going is the knowledge that his biopic created a groundswell of interest in Elvis among young people who were only vaguely aware he existed beforehand. \u201cLike all great icons, there comes a point when they just become wallpaper or a \u00adHalloween costume,\u201d says Luhrmann. \u201cBut Elvis was a human being who was absolutely dirt poor. His parents could not read or write. And then overnight he becomes the most famous 20-year-old on the planet. Nothing like that had ever happened before. And so with this movie, we just wanted to get out of the way and let the audience experience him in the most intimate way possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For 50 years, the Holy Grail of Elvis Presley footage \u2014 10 professionally shot concerts from the early…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[3587,1551,146,85,46,409],"class_list":{"0":"post-283953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-baz-luhrmann","9":"tag-elvis-presley","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}