On the day of Austin Butler's final screen test for “Elvis,' director Baz Luhrmann threw everything at him.
Austin Butler poses for portrait photographs for the film 'Elvis' at the 75th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Wednesday, May 25, 2022.
And during the screen test, Luhrmann flipped the script. Some of the scenes Butler had prepped went out the window. In others, Luhrmann fed him lines from behind the camera. The one minute of “Suspicious Minds" that Butler was to perform in a Presley jumpsuit stretched to six. “Baz in the very first meeting said, ’Look, this is a story about two people. There would have never been an Elvis without a Col. Tom Parker, and, in his own mind, there would have never been a Col. Tom Parker without Elvis,” says Hanks. “As soon as he said that, I thought, ‘Well, this is going to be new turf, and worthy of the Baz-maximalist-confetti-strewn style of moviemaking.’”And, like “The Great Gatsby” and “Moulin Rouge,” “Elvis” is indeed an extravagant, maximalist Baz-styled blow-out.
All of which meant that Butler had a lot riding on his shoulders. For him, it was essential to find ways to make Presley more human than superhuman. One resonant connection for the actor was learning that Presley's mother died when he was 23, the same age Butler was when he lost his mom. And like Presley, an initially timid performer, Butler grew up shy.
Before “Elvis” began shooting in Memphis, Hanks had dinner with Priscilla Presley, who then described her ex-husband as “an artist as unique as Picasso and as popular as Charlie Chaplin that really only felt truly himself and at home when he was singing."
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