The widow is having fun – Kommersant

Netflix presented the animated series “Agent Elvis”, the authors of which came up with a second, spy “I” for the king of rock and roll. Familiarized with the series Igor Gavrilov.

It is easy to imagine an American police officer of the late 1960s who, after a day of work, secluded himself in the bathroom, imitates the characteristic movements of Elvis Presley – rotates his hips, juggles a non-existent microphone and demonstrates karate techniques. It’s harder to imagine that Elvis, the king of rock and roll, puts a police badge on a velvet shirt and, hoisting a flashing light on the roof of a Lincoln Mark IV, goes to patrol the streets of Memphis. Nevertheless, work in the police was his childhood dream. Having achieved success in music, he was not only friends with the police – he was sewn a police uniform, he constantly listened to the police radio, and once even regulated traffic at the scene of a car accident.

The matter was not limited to the voluntary help of the police. All fans of the singer know that he wanted to become an FBI informant in order to help his homeland fight the internal enemy. “Representatives of the drug culture, hippies… Black Panthers and the like consider me their enemy or, as they put it, a man of the establishment. And I love my country. Sir, I am happy to offer my services to help our country out of this crisis,” wrote Elvis Presley in a letter to Richard Nixon.

During a face-to-face meeting, the president presented him with a badge for an agent of the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement. It is also known that at this meeting the singer called the British group The Beatles “a real anti-American force”: “They came to the USA, made money, and then returned to the UK, where they spread anti-American sentiments.” To which Nixon said that the vanguard of anti-Americanism is drug addicts. Elvis noted that he studied both communist brainwashing and drug culture for ten years, so his experience, they say, can be useful to the country.

This episode was ignored in his Oscar-nominated film Elvis by Australian director Baz Luhrmann. And yet, the mutual sympathy of Elvis Presley and law enforcement agencies is an extremely intriguing topic. It is she who turns out to be the main character in the animated series Agent Elvis, released on Netflix.

One of the creators of the series was the widow of Elvis Presley Priscilla, she also voiced her cartoon counterpart. It is unlikely that anyone will be surprised by the fact that her husband on the screen is a virtuous figure, an exemplary family man and a true patriot. He cooperates with a carefully conspiratorial organization guarding the peace of Americans. The character was voiced by actor Matthew McConaughey, who also became the executive producer of the series.

Priscilla Presley, in her declining years, went into all serious trouble: almost at the same time when Baz Luhrmann was filming his grandiose biopic, she placed her late husband in an animated “black comic book”, in which the closest friend of the king is the chimpanzee Scatter, obsessed with sex and drugs. The widow’s partners were Mike Arnold, who had previously developed a spy theme in the animated series Archer, and moderately popular rock musician John Eddy in the 1970s. Also on the list of members of the “Agent of Elvis” team are fashion designer and rock and roll designer John Varvatos, who designed the costumes of the characters, film composer and partner of Marilyn Manson Tyler Bates, stunt comedian Johnny Knoxville and English actor Simon Pegg, who voiced Paul McCartney in the series. Luhrmann was also noted in the project – he got a character named Director.

Together, the creators of the series led their hero through key points in American history: they introduced him to Charles Manson, Timothy Leary and Howard Hughes, sent him to Vietnam and the Altamont festival, and also took him from the set of the film “Change of Habit” directly to the moon. The authors are not exactly exaggerating, after all, many pages of Presley’s biography allow for very bold interpretations. But the very form of narration sets up a desperately frivolous mood.

There is also a notorious meeting with Nixon in one of the episodes, only with the addition of below-the-belt jokes characteristic of the series. However, Priscilla Presley carefully avoided the subject of the singer’s tendency to whine, and the Beatles, correcting a long-standing injustice, even made a kind of script compliment.