I was meant to meet him and become his pal’…
Baz Luhrmann remembers precisely where he was on August 16, 1977 — the day the King of Rock and Roll left the building.
“This kid gets on a bus and hears Elvis Presley died,” Luhrmann, 63, told The Post of his 14-year-old self back in Australia.
Rattled by the tragic news, {the teenager} then had a spooky premonition.
“EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert” options never-before-seen footage of Elvis performing in his legendary Las Vegas residency.
“I went, ‘Oh, that’s not right. I was meant to meet him and become his friend.’ Weird, huh?”
Forty eight years later, the “Moulin Rouge” and “Great Gatsby” director has, in a approach, turned into Presley’s most loyal companion.
Luhrmann has devoted a lot of the past decade to the long-lasting musician. In that time, he’s helped shake off the cartoonish, sweaty “fat suit” image that’s shackled Elvis’ cultural reminiscence and dwarfed his stratospheric expertise, while introducing the genius singer to youthful generations.
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The director began with the attractive 2022 biopic “Elvis” starring Austin Butler and has just doubled down with “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” his revelatory half-gig-half-documentary of largely never-before-seen efficiency footage that’s now in theaters.
Improbably, one of Hollywood’s most dazzling showmen has made that “Hound Dog” man in the white jumpsuit who your grandparents preferred cool again.
“I feel like it kind of happened by complete accident,” Luhrmann said. “I mean, I’m not Elvis’ friend, but I feel I know him as a person — probably in a quite profound way.”
Luhrmann said he felt related to Elvis as a teenage: “I was meant to meet him and become his friend.”
If the Oscar-nominated Butler film reminded audiences that Presley was musically important, effortlessly attractive and human, what’s the director’s lofty objective with “EPiC”?
“We wanted to give him the world tour he never had,” Luhrmann said.
That unlikely journey to fulfill Presley’s unrealized dream started during manufacturing of “Elvis,” when Warner Bros. granted Luhrmann access to its Kansas City, MO, underground salt mines where the studio shops helpful, outdated negatives.
“I accidentally found this footage,” Luhrmann said of the beforehand rumored movie of Presley’s well-known International Hotel residency in Las Vegas that lasted from 1969 to 1976 as nicely as stops on his US tour.
He discovered a lot of footage — some 65 bins of 8 mm and 35mm movie of the early half of his Nevada stint, other national reveals and goings-on behind the scenes that have been meant for an unreleased doc.
The director stumbled on 65 bins of thought-to-be-lost footage of Elvis.
Yet, a trove though it was, it was soundless and in unhealthy form. So Luhrmann turned to his pal Peter Jackson (“Lord of the Rings”) to help restore the buried treasure. Jackson had executed equally outstanding work on 2021’s “The Beatles: Get Back.”
Fans did their half, too. To get the audio, artful Lurhmann sought help from the passionate neighborhood of obsessive King collectors and a considerably more down-and-dirty aspect.
“There’s a big black market [for] trading,” he said.
Back in September, Luhrmann obtained laughs onstage at the Toronto International Film Festival premiere when he described assembly shadowy sellers in parking tons. Now, “someone told me, you better turn that down or you’ll get whacked,” he said.
It took two years to match the movie with sound recordings that Luhrmann acquired through inventive strategies.
As he steadily snapped up the suitable recordings, an assistant editor named Jim Greco spent two years meticulously matching the sound to the video. And it started to work. Lurhmann was blown away by what he noticed and heard, and knew there was a film in it.
“What would Elvis do?,” he remembered considering. “Could it go on IMAX?”
The last piece of the “EPiC” puzzle was an unearthed Nagra-tape interview in a box the director discovered of Elvis intimately ruminating on his life for nearly an hour.
Screw the students and speaking heads, Luhrmann determined.
“There are always people telling you about Elvis,” he said. “And I thought, ‘The hell with that. Let’s just have Elvis tell his story.’”
At the world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, excited girls obtained up and danced.
The combine of Elvis singing and dancing in his prime, rehearsing and talking candidly about himself combines into an eye-opening and exhilarating film expertise that’s arrived on both IMAX and common screens.
At the premiere, excited girls obtained up and danced.
The project taught Luhrmann even more about his ought to’ve-been pal. Seeing Elvis revealingly away from the highlight, particularly during chummy backstage glimpses, the director was stunned by how sensible and humorous his subject was. “Goofy,” he said.
Luhrmann was struck by Elvis’ sense of humor behind the scenes as nicely as his peerless musicianship.
And listening to the uncommon recordings of Elvis singing, he also couldn’t consider the extent to which the person was actually the consummate artist.
“He is never out of tune,” Luhrmann said incredulously.
“I’ve worked with some of the greatest iconic musical people in the world, and they always sort of slightly hit a bang note. He’s never out of tune.”
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