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Film crop captures a little bit of the King’s magic

Last year’s big Elvis-themed movie was 3000 Miles to Graceland, a vile and ultraviolent tale of robbery and betrayal featuring a gang of gun-wielding Elvis impersonators and Kevin Costner as a cold-blooded killer who could be Elvis’s illegitimate son.

Thank goodness for this year’s chief Elvis-related movie, Disney’s Lilo & Stitch, an animated feature film that puts a positive spin on the King once again.

Lilo & Stitch offers further evidence that although Elvis shuffled his pelvis off this mortal coil 25 years ago, he never really left the building - and he sure never left those buildings known as movie theaters.

This past year, from August of 2001 until now, I detected the Presley presence in more than 20 new feature films, making this sixth annual look at “Elvis Allusions in the Movies” as frutiful as ever.

The first year of this informal survey was the best. From mid-1996 to mid-1997, the King “appeared” in 26 films, or only seven less than he actually starred in during his lifetime.

The second year was the worst. The Presley count from mid-1997 to mid-1998 dropped to 14.

Since then, the total has ranged from the high teens to the low to middle 20s - proof that, as Neil Young sang, “The King is dead but he’s not forgotten.”

So, turn up your rhinestone-studded collar, rest your blue suede shoes on a comfortable stool, and read along as we take a look back at a year’s worth of Elvis cinema:

- Elvis motifs run riot through Lilo & Stitch, the story of an Elvis-loving little girl in Hawaii who befriends a cantakerous outer space alien.

Lilo is introduced to viewers as she lies on the floor, mouthing the words to Heartbreak Hotel while it plays on a small record player. Later, the song Stuck on You is heard during a sequence in which Lilo gets to know her new “pet,” Stitch.

Lilo sees a possible convert in Stitch. “Wanna listen to the King?” she asks. “You look like an Elvis fan.” She discovers that Stitch’s talons can act as phonograph needles and his mouth can function as a speaker, like the bell of a gramophone. When she places one of Stitch’s sharp fingernails on a spinning vinyl record and opens his mouth wide, the sound of Suspicious Minds emerges.

Later, Lilo - carrying a photograph of the Hawaiian-shirted, lei-wearing Elvis that appears on the Blue Hawaii album cover - says to Stitch: “Elvis Presley was a model citizen. I’ve compiled a list of his talents for you to practice.”

So while Lilo’s older sister looks for a job, Lilo tags along and gives Stitch Elvis lessons (”This is the face of romance,” she says of the King) while Devil in Diguise plays on the soundtrack.

Stitch gradually becomes more Elvis-like. He ends up with a jumpsuit, a pompadour and a guitar, but the transformation ends in disaster as Stitch’s monsterness breaks loose. “I’m sure Elvis had his bad days too,” Lilo says.

Lilo isn’t the only Elvis fan in the film, however. “Ooo, I love this song,” says a weird alien scientist when he hears the familiar sound of Hound Dog. The film ends with Wynonna singing a new version of Burning Love.

- The hero of the inspirational film Hometown Legend is Elvis Jackson (Nick Cornish), a small-town newcomer and talented high school football player who takes some ribbing for his name. “Now, what kind of mama names her baby Elvis?” one kid asks.

Later, when Elvis thinks he is alone in an after-hours diner, he pretends to be a football star. He mimics the sportscasters who describe his moves (”Vintage Elvis!”) and then imagines himself with a girl: ” `Who’s your daddy?’ - `You are, Elvis.’ ” Pretty Lacey Chabert, who has been watching all this in hiding, finally calls out: “Hey Elvis!” When the teen turns around, she says: “I just wanted to make sure that was really your name.”

- In Ridley Scott’s intense based-on-a-true-story war movie Black Hawk Down, Jeremy Piven is Chief Warrant Office Cliff Wolcott, a popular pilot who introduces himself with the words: “My name is Cliff `Elvis’ Wolcott.” Wolcott plays Suspicious Minds in his helicopter, and the lyrics foreshadow the tragic situation that will develop: “We’re caught in a trap/ I can’t walk out …” Later, the song Devil in Disguise is heard when a tough, unsympathetic officer is onscreen.

- In the romantic comedy Tadpole, scheduled to open in Memphis in the next few weeks, a prep school sophomore (Aaron Stanford) who is in love with his stepmother, Eve (Sigourney Weaver), discovers that the object of his ardor was a former rock and roller. “When we were 15, Eve had this thing for Elvis,” says Eve’s best friend (Bebe Neuwirth). “Elvis Presley?” asks the boy, surprised. He then creates some fake sideburns in order to enhance the Elvisness of his appearance, first from a makeup kit and later from the hair of the family dog. Needless to say, sideburns-related comic complications follow.

- In the dreadful action-comedy caper Bad Company with Chris Rock, ultracool CIA honcho Anthony Hopkins rather inexplicably refers to a fashionably scruffy terrorist as “Elvis” when the bad guy is cornered on a city rooftop. “Hey Elvis,” says Hopkins, “if you drop the knife and step down, no one is gonna hurt you.” The villain must not have been a Presley fan, because he jumps.

- When Jason Lee brings Penelope Cruz to wealthy Tom Cruise’s fabulous apartment in Vanilla Sky, he comments: “Welcome to Graceland.”

- The sight of Elvis on television getting his Army induction haircut elicits distressed moans from the local hoodlums during the teen gang film Deuces Wild, set in Brooklyn in 1958. “Elvis?!” one cries. “What next?” Adds another: “I got more peach fuzz on my (euphemism deleted) than he’s got on his head!”

- Harrison’s Flowers is the story of a woman who travels to war-torn Croatia in search of her presumed-dead photojournalist husband. “What’s this all about - Harrison’s alive?” asks a female photographer when she hears of the wife’s mission. “Yeah,” replies a sarcastic shutterbug played by Adrien Brody. “So’s Elvis.”

- The King is a subject of conversation in Queen of the Damned when the vampire rock idol Lestat (Stuart Townsend) confronts the dandyish vampire, Marius (Vincent Perez), whose flamboyant fashion sense remains unchanged after centuries. Says Lestat: “How did you manage to slip through the ’50s in red velvet?” Replies Marius: “I slept.” Lestat comments: “Don’t think you missed much.” But Marius contradicts him by uttering the magic word: “Elvis.” Admits Lestat: “Elvis, yes.” Responds Marius, tossing down a copy of Rolling Stone magazine that features Lestat’s face on the cover: “You’re bigger than he is now.”

- Elvis is once more associated with romance (although in a sarcastic manner) in O, a teen update of Shakespeare’s Othello. When the film’s Othello character (Mekhi Phifer) professes his love for the movie’s Desdemona equivalent (Julia Stiles), he comments: “Look, we’re 18, and personally, I’m not trying to get married by some Elvis impersonator out in Vegas or nothin’ like that. …” Then he slips an elastic band around the girl’s finger, adding: “I figure maybe we could pretend for a while, you know.”

- It would have been unforgivable if a movie titled Rock Star ignored Elvis; fortunately, the King gets his props when the lead singer of a British metal band called Steel Dragon tries to tell fan-and-wannabe singer Mark Wahlberg that being the overpaid, drug-abusing, sex-addicted idol of millions isn’t as easy as it sounds. “It’s like being bloody Elvis,” says the singer. “Except Elvis was the King,” interjects Steel Dragon’s lead guitarist. “And I’m just the queen,” says the singer, who is gay.

- In Behind Enemy Lines, the story of an American pilot shot down over Bosnia, a local man driving a pickup is shown wearing Elvis-style sideburns and Elvis aviator glasses. At first, his truck’s sound system plays The Wanderer by Dion, but later it plays That’s All Right, Mama by Orion, the mysterious masked Presley soundalike who encouraged the belief that he might really be Elvis.

- I saw An American Rhapsody at a preview screening, but the movie never did come to Memphis, which was an unfortunate loss for seekers of Elvis allusions. The film uses Elvis (and later the Beatles) as symbols of Western freedom as it chronicles the life of a young escapee from Communist Hungary (Ghost World’s Scarlett Johansson) growing up in California in the 1950s and ’60s. In one scene, the girl - at this point only 5 years old - awakens in the bedroom of her new American sister, and the first thing she sees is a poster of a seated Elvis strumming a guitar, above the words “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” The camera pans up to Elvis’s face, which is highlighted by a spotlight, and then the song All Shook Up bursts onto the soundtrack.

- Elvis music - often used ironically - continues to be popular onscreen. A small-town marching band plays Love Me Tender during Last Ball, an inspirational romantic comedy screened during this year’s Memphis International Film Festival.

- The Elvis gospel recording Run On is heard during The Rookie. (In fact, the film’s Dennis Quaid character is somewhat Elvisesque himself in his polite respectfulness - he calls his parents “ma’am” and “sir”).

- Viva Las Vegas plays during the trailer for the frantic race-against-the-clock comedy Rat Race (however, the song either isn’t heard or plays very softly during the film itself).

- “So-and-so has left the building” references have become so prevalent that you wonder if audiences still remember the phrase entered the vernacular because of Elvis. When Paul Giamatti and Lee Majors leap from a helicopter in Big Fat Liar (written by native Memphian Dan Schneider), a pilot - using the duo’s code names - comments: “Papa Bear and the Wolf have left the building.” And one of the many humorous credits that scroll past at the end of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back reads: “Jay and Silent Bob Have Left the Building.”

- Another catch-phrase associated with Elvis falls from a the lips of a very different recording star, Snoop Dogg, in the Old School-style “blaxploitation” horror movie Bones. “I gots ta TCB tonight,” Snoop’s gangster character tells a neighborhood hoodoo woman played by Pam Grier, in a surprising adoption of Elvis’s abbreviation for “Taking Care of Business.”

- The fabulously mysterious psychotropic sci-fi teen flick Donnie Darko never made it to Memphis theaters last year, but those who rent it will notice a high school kid dressed as a 1950s Elvis in a gold lame suit during a Halloween party scene.

- OK, Call Me Claus - in which Whoopi Goldberg plays a Kriss Kringle for the new millennium - wasn’t a theatrical release. But the made-for-cable movie, which premiered last December on the TNT network, was produced by Memphian Lisa Sanderson, so it’s no surprise that a scene in which various would-be television Santas audition for a shopping network program includes Steve Murphy as an “Elvis Santa” who says, in a Presley accent, “Murry Chris’mas … Thank yuh veruh much.” (The back of his jumpsuit reads “ELVES.”) Later in the film, a character declares: “Santa has left the building.”

- And perhaps these shouldn’t count, but Elvises without the surname of Presley also made their presence known in several movies this past year. These people don’t represent any desire on the part of the filmmakers to allude to the King, but hey, if it weren’t for Presley, no doubt they would be named “Mike” or “Urkel” or “Ozzy” or something. In any event, the credits for Bread and Tulips list an electrician named Elvis Pasqual; Elvis Jones was an animatronics designer and sculptor on Jeepers Creepers; one Michael `Elvis’ Greene was a staff assistant on Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence; and the “Rainbow Randolph Ice Dance” in Death to Smoochy was choreographed and performed by Olympic medal-winner Elvis Stojko.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot a really big one: in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, a character comments that ailing Hobbit Frodo Baggins could use some “Elvis medicine.” I was really surprised by that line because … What? Are you sure?

Sorry. The phrase was “elvish medicine.” Never mind.