“What grade are you in? You’re a kid.” Priscilla Ann Beaulieu He was 14 years old when he met Elvis Presley in a party. She was the daughter of a commander at the US military base in Germany and he, at 24 years old, a rock star doing military service. They were together 14 years.
The director Sofia Coppola now tells his love story (and everything that followed) in ‘Priscilla’a film based on the autobiography ‘Elvis and me’ that Priscilla herself wrote.”I didn’t know that She was still in high school when she started visiting Graceland., Elvis’ mansion, and they would party all night together. Imagine how crazy that must have been,” explains the director in an interview with ‘Fotogramas’.
Starring Cailee Spaeny and (the lately omnipresent) Jacob Elordi, the film portrays the rise and fall from grace of a relationship that was always unequal; the story of a woman very much in love, manipulated and subjected for the success and power of the singer. “The intention was not so much to uncover the icon as to show Priscilla’s perspective, the story as she lived it,” said the leading actress during the presentation in Venice.
However, and in the filmmaker’s words, convincing Priscilla to shoot the film was not an easy task. “She did not want that a movie should be made based on his autobiography, but he agreed to meet with me. After a long conversation, he decided to trust me,” details Coppola. Thus, Elvis’ ex-wife spoke up to three times in person (and several phone calls) with Cailee Spaeny to prepare for the role. And in the film is the same actress who gives life to Priscilla from 14 to 29 years old.
The director of ‘The Virgin Suicides’, a film that is now 25 years old, draws a Priscilla who, after the first few years of romance, stays alone in a golden cage and is modeled after Elvis: black hair, excessive backcombing, painted eyes. “She put on her eyelashes after her water broke and before going to the hospital. She spent much of her life trying to please another person until she realized she had to discover what she herself wanted from life,” she explained. the filmmaker in a interview on ‘VOGUE’ .
extreme loneliness and a transition to adult life in which she also has to face motherhood 9 months after her wedding. However, as Priscilla Presley has repeated in several interviews, Elvis He was “the love of my life”.
Jacob, the Elvis chosen by Coppola
The casting of Jacob Elordi as Elvis It was a question of “charisma.” “Finding an actor who could play Elvis seemed like an impossible mission, there is no one who looks like him,” explains Coppola, detailing the anecdote that made him offer him the role. “We met in a restaurant and, upon entering, I remember that All the girls turned to look at him.. I thought that Elvis must have that same power of attraction,” adds the director, for whom the difference in height between her protagonists did not go unnoticed either. (Elordi is 1.96 and Cailee Spaeny is 1.52).
“I ended up accepting that it could be metaphorical (with respect to the power dynamic). At first we were worried, ‘How are we going to fit them on the same plane?’ We put Cailee on lofts, put her in platform shoes, and carried her up. to a pallet of apples,” Coppola explained in ‘VOGUE’.
No rights to use Elvis songs
Shot in 30 days and on a limited budget, one of the big obstacles was the soundtrack. The company Elvis Presley Enterprises, owner of the rights to the singer’s songs, did not want to participate or cooperate in the project. Thus, unlike the biopic ‘Elvis’ (by Baz Luhrmann), the film It does not have any of the songs from the ‘King of Rock’.
This made Coppola have to look for options to set his story. “My husband and his band (‘Phoenix’) helped me choose musical themes from that time,” explains the filmmaker in ‘Fotogramas’. So, The Ramones,Ray Charles, Quincy Jones and Dolly Parton (among others) put music to the story of ‘Priscilla’. But, the choice of ‘I Will Always Love You’ was not accidental. That’s the song Elvis sang to Priscilla when they got divorced. Elvis wanted to record it, but Dolly Parton (who recorded it on her album ‘Jolene’) told him no, it was her song. In the 90s it was Whitney Houston who popularized it with her version in the OST of ‘The Bodyguard’.
“I always knew that if we didn’t get the rights to his music, it wouldn’t be a problem, because It’s the story of Priscilla. This puts more focus on her,” adds Coppola in the ‘VOGUE’ publication. It was in 1973 when Priscilla decided to leave Graceland, “she did it when she had neither money nor a professional career, something unthinkable for a woman in the 70s.” In 1977, Four years later, Elvis died at 42 years old in a bathroom in his mansion.
Source: Lasexta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
