Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, Hello, Malcolm Glabel here, and welcome to what
Speaker 1: might be the final episode in our development hell series
Speaker 1: of Revision's history. Today we're talking about Alvis Love down
Speaker 1: on his street. That person singing is not Elvias.
Speaker 2: These are the people.
Speaker 1: That's Cameron Crowe. You've seen his movies. Jerry Maguire almost famous,
Speaker 1: he wrote Fast Times at Ridgemont High, so many more.
Speaker 1: And the guitarist on this song is Nancy Wilson from
Speaker 1: the mega nineteen seventies band Heart, who at the time
Speaker 1: was Cameron Crowe's wife. And the story we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about today starts back in the summer of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, when Cameron and Nancy were on their honeymoon.
Speaker 1: They spent it in a little cabin in the Pacific Northwest,
Speaker 1: a little cabin that would become the birthplace for today's
Speaker 1: movie that Never was Blue Seattle, a loving romp about
Speaker 1: two songwriters trying to write a movie for Elvis Presley,
Speaker 1: A movie about a couple writing a movie, written by
Speaker 1: a couple writing a movie. What's not to love? A
Speaker 1: script so meta that it belongs on the big screen.
Speaker 1: Only the big screen wasn't big enough to handle it
Speaker 1: or something like that, because one of the things that
Speaker 1: you might conclude in listening to this interview is that
Speaker 1: for Cameron Crowe, it is so much fun talking about
Speaker 1: his lost Elvis masterpiece that I think he's afraid that
Speaker 1: if he actually makes it, he'll feel abandoned, like a
Speaker 1: version of screenwriter empty nest syndrome. So let's tell the
Speaker 1: story of Blue Seattle. And this interview is different from
Speaker 1: all the other development hell stories we told on the
Speaker 1: series because instead of giving us the script to his movie,
Speaker 1: Cam and Crope gave us the songs he and Nancy
Speaker 1: wrote forty years ago. As in every Elvis movie, the
Speaker 1: best parts of the songs to capture a moment, that
Speaker 1: honeymoon bursts of creative inspiration, and they tell a story
Speaker 1: but a young couple in love. I've been looking forward
Speaker 1: to this. Let's start from the beginning because this is
Speaker 1: this is a story that needs, as you know, appropriate setup.
Speaker 3: Well, when we first talked, I went down a road
Speaker 3: that felt very friendly and evocative and filled with memories.
Speaker 3: Because you are an Elvis guy, your revisionist history on
Speaker 3: Elvis was seminal, and this idea of like never made
Speaker 3: projects from the heart and stuff. It combined with my
Speaker 3: love of Elvis and a particular part of Elvis to
Speaker 3: you just want to like put this in your lap, Malcolm.
Speaker 3: This is this was one that got away.
Speaker 1: Well, let's start with Elvis. So you your first concert
Speaker 1: you ever attended as a kid, right, is an Elvis concert?
Speaker 3: That's right? I won tickets on the radio.
Speaker 1: It's your twelve Yeah, something like that. Which Elvis are
Speaker 1: you getting in that low period?
Speaker 3: Elvis seventy two, Elvis.
Speaker 1: The big, the big high Collers.
Speaker 3: Big high Callers, karate kicks. He was a little obsessed
Speaker 3: with Nixon. In my San Diego Sports Arena show, he
Speaker 3: did an imitation of Nixon and at one point was
Speaker 3: on his back kind of kicking his legs, just having fun.
Speaker 3: The kid was having fun at my show.
Speaker 1: Baroke, it's baro You got Barroke Elvis.
Speaker 3: I got Baroque Elvis. But Malcolm, he did. There was
Speaker 3: one moment where it just broke through, like his genius
Speaker 3: really broke through. And it was a brief moment of
Speaker 3: sunlight through the clouds, but it was bridge over trouble
Speaker 3: water and I felt him connect and there was that
Speaker 3: moment where it was galvanizing and giving what he wanted
Speaker 3: to give, and the audience was like mid shriek and
Speaker 3: kind of taking it in. And and that was that
Speaker 3: was the DNA you were meant to build up from
Speaker 3: watching the show. Okay, there he is when you were feelings,
Speaker 3: it was kind of fun in games Elvis.
Speaker 1: And so this is so much of your life's work
Speaker 1: kind of grows, is growing from the tiny seed of
Speaker 1: not the all that of that Elvis concert, right, I
Speaker 1: mean almost famous. So this this concert had a huge
Speaker 1: impact on you.
Speaker 3: It did, and also also Malcolm because like I took
Speaker 3: my mom and my mom you know, if you if
Speaker 3: you've seen all famous.
Speaker 4: It's unfair that we can't listen to our music.
Speaker 1: It's because it is about drugs and promiscuous sex.
Speaker 4: Simon and garfun is poetry, Yes, it's poetry. It is
Speaker 4: a poetry of drugs and promiscuous sex. Honey, they're on POTT.
Speaker 3: So that week changes a lot. So this was the
Speaker 3: door that gets cracked open where rock and of course
Speaker 3: my future love and that combined with journalism. I was
Speaker 3: on my way, but Elvis was there at the gates,
Speaker 3: you know, and I still was obsessed with Elvis but
Speaker 3: I was obsessed with the corners of Elvis's experience, and
Speaker 3: one of those corners was his movies. And I loved
Speaker 3: those B movies. Some might even call them C and
Speaker 3: D movies. There he comes out of the box hot
Speaker 3: with Loving You and Jail House Rock, but eventually he's
Speaker 3: doing genre things for the money that Colonel Parker has
Speaker 3: put him up for. And you know, there's a set
Speaker 3: formula for the Elvis movies that happened. And I became
Speaker 3: obsessed with those movies.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And you became obsessed with them because I mean,
Speaker 1: one thing I was trying to figure out is I
Speaker 1: listened to the music of the project we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about. Was I was trying to understand your intentions
Speaker 1: and your So are you obsessed in a kind.
Speaker 3: Of that's so delicately put? I love it?
Speaker 1: Is it is?
Speaker 5: It is it?
Speaker 1: Are you winking at Elvis? Are you sharing in the fun?
Speaker 1: Or are you buying it?
Speaker 3: All of the above? All I think you just you
Speaker 3: just have to enjoy it for what it is, which
Speaker 3: which is a romp. Elvis often did three of those
Speaker 3: movies in a year. You can see he's kind of
Speaker 3: confused by the character names they call him by. It's
Speaker 3: like he's he's lost, He's he's brilliantly lost. It's just,
Speaker 3: you know, you see so much. It's almost watching his
Speaker 3: face in these movies. It's like a diary that he
Speaker 3: never wrote. You can see why am I here? You
Speaker 3: can see glimmers of oh this is good, and Margaret
Speaker 3: Viva las Vegas. Wait a minute, she's challenging me. So
Speaker 3: it's all there, hidden in this candy colored genre romp
Speaker 3: that the Elvis movies became so all of the above.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, sir, So you developed early on, in other words,
Speaker 1: a rich and nuanced interpretation of who Elvis was and
Speaker 1: what he stands for. Yes, and that's that's Is there
Speaker 1: any other artist who plays a comparable role in your
Speaker 1: in the development of your imagination?
Speaker 3: No, because there's only one guy who was or artist
Speaker 3: who was so huge that he was able to make
Speaker 3: thirty throwaway movies that did well enough so that he
Speaker 3: could keep doing it, perhaps against his will. Only one
Speaker 3: person that I ever knew about, and we'll share this later,
Speaker 3: did ask Elvis, like, why did you make all those movies?
Speaker 3: And he gave this one person an answer, But mostly
Speaker 3: he never did any interviews. He never commented on it.
Speaker 3: He just did all those movies for fifteen years. They
Speaker 3: squandered quite a bit, you know, as John Lennon would
Speaker 3: would tell you in his interviews, like why is Elvis?
Speaker 3: Why is the King? Just like you know, strolling around
Speaker 3: Hollywood sound stages with B level stars singing like medium
Speaker 3: decent songs, you know, but that's part of the mysteries
Speaker 3: of Elvis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so we have this. This is the kind
Speaker 1: of the necessary context, Yes, the story that you're gonna tell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. So it's the eighties and I had written
Speaker 3: Fast Times at Ridgemont High which like amazingly kind of
Speaker 3: found an audience, so I kind of had a shot
Speaker 3: at possibly a screenwriting career. And in the middle of
Speaker 3: all this, I perhaps most importantly, fell in love with
Speaker 3: Nancy Wilson, the great Nancy Wilson, amazing guitarist, half of
Speaker 3: the Wilson sisters who front their band Heart. So we
Speaker 3: were together for a while and then decided to get married.
Speaker 3: And it was a beautiful time. And Anne Wilson, Nancy's sister,
Speaker 3: had a cabin in Cannon Beach, Oregon, and that was
Speaker 3: where we wanted to go for a little honeymoon, you know,
Speaker 3: just borrow the cabin from Ann. Now this you must
Speaker 3: know as a setup is Ann and Nancy Wilson. To
Speaker 3: this day, they're like the everly sisters. They sing together
Speaker 3: and it's like, you know, there's no thought that goes
Speaker 3: into it. They have the sibling voices that blend so
Speaker 3: beautifully their musical twins in a way, and sings. Nancy
Speaker 3: sing a little bit, but mostly plays this elegant, beautiful guitar.
Speaker 3: They're a serious duo. So ten days into our honeymoon,
Speaker 3: which was how long we wanted to spend at Anne's cabin,
Speaker 3: we decid we want to spend two weeks. We want
Speaker 3: to spend a little bit longer. But Anne wants to
Speaker 3: come to her cabin. So Ann Wilson shows up on
Speaker 3: our honeymoon, which is an interesting thing for a small cabin.
Speaker 3: It's like a sitcom in a way. Here you have
Speaker 3: the two sisters with you on your honeymoon with one
Speaker 3: of them, and what are you going to do in
Speaker 3: this in this small environment in a in a you know,
Speaker 3: coastal town in Oregon where not much is going on. Well,
Speaker 3: we're going to do a project, a musical project that
Speaker 3: will involve all three of us. Whose idea was this
Speaker 3: mine because I love watching them sing together. And Nancy
Speaker 3: would later score my movies and stuff, and so we
Speaker 3: worked really well together and AND's a lot of fun. Now,
Speaker 3: all all of this being said, I was working loosely
Speaker 3: on a book I wanted to do about Elvis movies,
Speaker 3: So so that was on my mind. And like any
Speaker 3: idea that you believe is good, it's built on the
Speaker 3: things you love, and Elvis was one. Playing music with
Speaker 3: my wife was another, and s c TV and Martin
Speaker 3: Short was a third element. I loved Martin Short, that
Speaker 3: great that great comedy show s c TV.
Speaker 1: Remember I'm Canadian.
Speaker 3: So here comes this idea for a kind of and
Speaker 3: this is the cousin of what you're doing, Malcolm. It's
Speaker 3: like lost masterpieces. What's What's What's something that like a
Speaker 3: movie that almost got made? And it's built on the
Speaker 3: burning fever inside your gut that this is the idea
Speaker 3: of all time. So I started building this idea of
Speaker 3: the great Elvis movie that never got made and what's
Speaker 3: the story behind it? And I decided that it was
Speaker 3: like you had Goffin and King, who are like a
Speaker 3: great couple songwriting their legends. They'd written all these great songs.
Speaker 3: The Beatles did some of them. I thought, like, what
Speaker 3: about a much lesser Goffin and King, Like, what about
Speaker 3: a couple who's the songwriting team They haven't gotten in
Speaker 3: the door. And it's Parnell and Zix was their name,
Speaker 3: Linda Parnell and Louis Zix. And Louis Zix of these
Speaker 3: two songwriters, is obsessed with writing. He hears Elvis may
Speaker 3: do one more movie, and he's gonna write with with
Speaker 3: with his songwriting partner wife, they're gonna write this song
Speaker 3: cycle for the ten songs of an Elvis movie that
Speaker 3: they're gonna pitch and make. And this is the beginning
Speaker 3: of Blue Seattle, which is their song cycle Malcolm, that
Speaker 3: they're gonna try and sell to Elvis himself. And so
Speaker 3: here on our honeymoon, I began to write these Elvis
Speaker 3: songs that were fleshed out with Ann and Nancy Wilson
Speaker 3: of heart and and and un ironically, really mostly we
Speaker 3: were gonna do these songs that that captured all the
Speaker 3: elements of the Elvis movie formula.
Speaker 1: Now, before we get into the songs themselves, which I
Speaker 1: have to say, are genius? I want you to define
Speaker 1: you said all the elements of the eleph movie formula.
Speaker 1: Break it down from before we start. What what are
Speaker 1: the elements, the crucial.
Speaker 3: Elements, okay, the the the Elvis elements of this. First
Speaker 3: of all, he has to have a name that sounds
Speaker 3: like a fist, you know, nothing too complex, just kind
Speaker 3: of like deep Rivers was one Buck Thomas, you know,
Speaker 3: so like we we thought, you start with a name
Speaker 3: that's like, you know, Mike Davis something like that. And
Speaker 3: and Elvis must always have workplace pride. He needs to
Speaker 3: do a couple different things in an Elvis movie of
Speaker 3: this era, but like they're often a strange combination of things,
Speaker 3: like he can be a veterinarian who's also a race
Speaker 3: car driver who also works in a county fair somehow
Speaker 3: living you know, a little kid should appear at some
Speaker 3: point looking for kind of some kind of mentorship, which
Speaker 3: he provides, usually in the form of a song. Dancing
Speaker 3: girls must appear.
Speaker 4: In the Garden of Paradise, Noble Master.
Speaker 3: So like that. It's worked in a fight, at least
Speaker 3: one fight, and a thoughtful moment over a pet. Come on, Albert,
Speaker 3: don't be a faint.
Speaker 1: A good album because, of course Elvis. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: his dog, his love of dog. I mean the seminal
Speaker 1: of what was the seminal dog in Elvis's life. I've
Speaker 1: now forgotten the one that song he used to sing
Speaker 1: over and over and over again as a teen was
Speaker 1: a song about a dead dog, Shep.
Speaker 3: Yes, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: I think it's Shep. Yeah. These are the kind of
Speaker 1: stations of the Elvis cross that you've.
Speaker 3: Us the stations of the cross. You can't say it
Speaker 3: any better.
Speaker 1: There's a lot going on in these movies.
Speaker 3: And he lined them up, man, he lined them up
Speaker 3: and did them. But then ultimately we end up at
Speaker 3: a place where Elvis's nobility is protected. He either gets
Speaker 3: the girl or he doesn't get the girl, and there's
Speaker 3: a there's a rave up song that sends you out
Speaker 3: feeling good.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's the Elvis movie.
Speaker 1: Did you have you watched all the album Elvis movies?
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. And as long as you have these elements,
Speaker 3: you're in the ballgame. Yeah. And of course the songs
Speaker 3: are written outside of Elvis's experience, and usually they come
Speaker 3: to him and at some point and they play him
Speaker 3: the songs, and you know, legendarily he's like, no, no, okay,
Speaker 3: I do something with that. Okay, No, okay, now I'm tired,
Speaker 3: you know, Like, and they bring more songs another day.
Speaker 3: And these are songs that the songwriters have like killed
Speaker 3: themselves over because they know they're gonna have a session
Speaker 3: with Elvis, you know, yeah, yeah, And this was the
Speaker 3: songwriting couple in the story, my fictional story for lu Seattle,
Speaker 3: Like their dream is that they will one day be
Speaker 3: able to play these songs for Elvis and pitch this movie.
Speaker 1: Are we going to hear some of those songs, dear listener,
Speaker 1: Oh yes we are. After quick Break, Cameron Crowe is
Speaker 1: going to play us some of the music from Blue Seattle.
Speaker 1: So you sat down, you're there. How long did it
Speaker 1: take to write these ten songs?
Speaker 3: Like four or five days? Because I remember we made
Speaker 3: this cassette that we're going to listen to mercifully a
Speaker 3: little bit of yes, maybe a lot, but there's I
Speaker 3: remember we listened to it on our way back from
Speaker 3: the honeymoon. We were like, this is really pretty good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wait, why don't we let's play that one? I
Speaker 1: actually I think you're being far too modest. I have
Speaker 1: another one I want to recommend, but we'll get to
Speaker 1: that one. Just play just to get us in the mood.
Speaker 1: Let's listen to your favorite of the ten songs you wrote.
Speaker 3: It's going to be My People, My People.
Speaker 1: Let's listen to My People.
Speaker 3: Let me set it up. We wanted to bring Elvis
Speaker 3: this movie in the late sixties because this is kind
Speaker 3: of the period where post Elvis has started to develop
Speaker 3: a little bit of a social conscience. So the idea
Speaker 3: is Elvis plays a cab driver in this who is
Speaker 3: a man kind of of the people. And so like
Speaker 3: the idea of Elvis roaming the streets in Seattle and
Speaker 3: like Pike Place and all that stuff. We loved it.
Speaker 3: And so there is a moment where he realizes he
Speaker 3: he must return to the relevance of the street where
Speaker 3: he was once this cab driver, and he leaves this
Speaker 3: relationship that has kind of belittled him in some ways.
Speaker 3: And so he's like going back to his roots, and
Speaker 3: he's singing this song from behind the wheel of his cab,
Speaker 3: My People, And it's always good. I'll just add this,
Speaker 3: It's always good when you have a little bit of
Speaker 3: a of a Spanish kind of castinette, you know.
Speaker 2: Clove down in his street watching from my seat. These
Speaker 2: are the people, my people in the city. Raid, I
Speaker 2: seem to know my these are the people, my people.
Speaker 4: I'm just an afty.
Speaker 6: How did mine.
Speaker 4: My review?
Speaker 2: Mar excuse me in my crime?
Speaker 4: I must be seeing my bride.
Speaker 1: For the people, the people of people people.
Speaker 3: A little bit.
Speaker 7: You're a moment in there, and now another one. He's
Speaker 7: gonna be clapping, even though he has danse hands on
Speaker 7: the wheel simp figure.
Speaker 1: It out almost.
Speaker 2: To the people.
Speaker 1: People you can. Actually, it's funny. That's like totally believable.
Speaker 1: Wasn't Elvis song? If Alvis? Have I heard that on
Speaker 1: an Elvis album? I'm not thinking twice about it.
Speaker 3: I've come such a long way to hear you say that.
Speaker 1: No, I mean I'm not I'm not blowing smoke here.
Speaker 3: No, I felt that too at your time. Almost sell
Speaker 3: that to to to Elvis. Yeah, for one of those movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who's playing guitar on that?
Speaker 3: Nancy and Ann are both playing guitar and singing, and
Speaker 3: I'm like attempting to do an Elvis voice?
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is it's not that the wake link for sure,
Speaker 1: it's not your range.
Speaker 3: Fantastic. You know, they can play anything at the drop
Speaker 3: of a hat, and their harmonies are so cool.
Speaker 1: Wait, let's so let's start from the view. So Blue
Speaker 1: Seattle is set's the is the first song sets the
Speaker 1: tone here, and we we're what are we? What are
Speaker 1: we doing?
Speaker 8: What do we?
Speaker 1: What are what are we trying to do? Narratively with
Speaker 1: Blue Blue Seattle.
Speaker 3: Usher you into uh an Elvis world of time and
Speaker 3: place and character. Yeah, where fun will perhaps abound.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's let's play a little, just the first half
Speaker 1: of it, and then just to get a kind of
Speaker 1: feel we get in the mood, Let's let's hear a
Speaker 1: little bit of it.
Speaker 3: Leathers always in LUs.
Speaker 6: Green mountains, a maple.
Speaker 3: This is the native influence was thing through.
Speaker 6: I'm going back to the place where I'm.
Speaker 4: A pretty little ship of warm man. Just kg.
Speaker 1: The sticks are rare boom. I thought the opening this
Speaker 1: should be the theme for Seattle. First of all, Blue Seattle.
Speaker 1: Seattle needs to call itself blue because everyone thinks they're
Speaker 1: gray Seattle, so as a marketing campaign to remind us
Speaker 1: that the skies are blue in the mountains are green
Speaker 1: is like. And secondly, just those opening this place made
Speaker 1: the town made for love. I mean, come on, why
Speaker 1: is the city not make this just that those three
Speaker 1: opening lines. That's the That should be the official tagline
Speaker 1: for Seattle.
Speaker 3: Everything takes its time. I'm realizing to come to this
Speaker 3: crossroads with you is really meaningful. So yeah, once he did.
Speaker 3: It happened at the World's Fair in Seattle. So this
Speaker 3: is like a reunion with uh, with an Elvis city
Speaker 3: that's like undervalued as an Elvis city.
Speaker 1: But wait, yes, Elvis. Elvis plays Seattle during the expo.
Speaker 3: He makes a movie. It happened at the World's Fair.
Speaker 3: I forget who the co star is, but like the
Speaker 3: space needle is on the poster for it.
Speaker 1: It's a good nastic oh oh wow, a little kind
Speaker 1: of a little a little a little phallic imagery to
Speaker 1: add to the we then we come to pay the fair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and as you said earlier, in the kind of like
Speaker 1: in the Elvis movie taxonomy that you created, he needs
Speaker 1: to have multiple jobs, but one of them has to
Speaker 1: be a kind of keeping it real, that's right. And
Speaker 1: so the keep it real job we have here. We
Speaker 1: understand that he's a cab driver.
Speaker 3: He's a cab driver, looking for love.
Speaker 1: Looking for course. Yeah, let's do let's do it. Let's
Speaker 1: do a minute of let's do a minute of of
Speaker 1: pay the fair.
Speaker 3: We'll see the little girl.
Speaker 5: I'll stand a rod over there, maybe forty.
Speaker 8: Understand she's a watch.
Speaker 4: He's a watch.
Speaker 8: He's a watch. He's a wall.
Speaker 2: A fair.
Speaker 3: Yuh, that little girl a little lot of like you.
Speaker 3: But das and they sound and Nancy sounds so good
Speaker 3: on this, they don't.
Speaker 1: I know that the thing that makes this genius is
Speaker 1: because understanding that we have the Wilson sisters doing the
Speaker 1: do do Do Do Do Do.
Speaker 4: Do right.
Speaker 1: Came when you when you're doing this project? Are they
Speaker 1: what's there? They as into it as you are? There?
Speaker 3: I mean A we're bored, yeah, but b it's it's
Speaker 3: a it's a great question. There was mist there's like
Speaker 3: waves crashing on the below these little cliffs where we're staying,
Speaker 3: and in the middle of this we're just like howling
Speaker 3: through these Elvis songs. It was amazing.
Speaker 1: Honeymoon is there Is there a lot of weed involved
Speaker 1: or not?
Speaker 3: Not really? Not really. I think a lot of beers.
Speaker 3: I think we were just like lining up beers doing
Speaker 3: some of this stuff. Yeah, yeah, I think I think
Speaker 3: we would have lost our hard Elvis edge if we'd
Speaker 3: gone to the weed too much. That would be the
Speaker 3: later Elvis movie, that's right. So Hiccups is the one's
Speaker 3: there's usually a novelty song that's completely embarrassing.
Speaker 1: Oh that's what Hiccup is doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, where Elvis is asked to do something that's really
Speaker 3: kind of beneath him and he knows that. You can
Speaker 3: always see it in the movies when he's asked to
Speaker 3: do this, to play patty Cakes with a little kid,
Speaker 3: or or do a move like that, he usually, if
Speaker 3: you're really looking at it with a microscope, he has
Speaker 3: a little fun and then it gets old because they're
Speaker 3: asking him to do a number of takes you can
Speaker 3: usually tell. And so by the end of the novelty
Speaker 3: song in the movies, he's so ready to move on.
Speaker 3: But but it's important that he bonds with a child
Speaker 3: and a pet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, those are crucial.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 1: It's just impossible not to be filled with sympathy for Elvis.
Speaker 1: I would want no part of his life. It just said.
Speaker 1: Everything about it just sounds he's locked up in this
Speaker 1: gilded cage and he just sounds like he's desperately unhappy
Speaker 1: almost all the time.
Speaker 3: Yes, and the further you go into the movies, you
Speaker 3: see the anguish start to turn up. You can see
Speaker 3: the anguish build and sometimes for whole movies he's annoyed,
Speaker 3: kind of just wondering why he's there while he's doing
Speaker 3: these lines.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's so. It's so heartbreaking, it is, but
Speaker 1: still a little bit of hiccups, just so we understand
Speaker 1: this the novelty because now that you say that, it
Speaker 1: made I was puzzling. I was listening. It's like, why
Speaker 1: is hiccups here? That's here?
Speaker 2: Part this partlet a rhyme, the hiccup, No friend of mine,
Speaker 2: there's no way to rid yourself.
Speaker 1: Oh this a little scat hellup, yeah, big.
Speaker 6: Big.
Speaker 1: I was humming this to myself after a mile around.
Speaker 3: Now this year. Right, this is a heartbreak. This is
Speaker 3: like the guy who was truly dangerous is now doing
Speaker 3: the hiccup song.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Culturally, my and.
Speaker 1: That line at the end, my prescription is simply love.
Speaker 1: When he goes to yeah, when he goes to all
Speaker 1: the cures for the hiccups and then he comes as
Speaker 1: to the only one that works for me is love,
Speaker 1: which by the way, is like so poignant and so true.
Speaker 1: The one thing he was lacking was love. Right, That's
Speaker 1: a truer line has really been written of Elvis that
Speaker 1: he got every other drug in quotes offered to him
Speaker 1: and none worked. The only thing you need it was Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 3: Super well said, and there was buried in the Hiccup song.
Speaker 1: But the way, what's hilarious continuing hilarious is I said
Speaker 1: before the contrast between two of the great guitar players
Speaker 1: of our generation. And then it's a good Elvis impression.
Speaker 1: But as you say, you if you are the weak,
Speaker 1: you could only be you could only be though in
Speaker 1: this company.
Speaker 3: That's that's true. It's true. And and of course story wise,
Speaker 3: which we'll we'll get to.
Speaker 4: It.
Speaker 3: These are the demos that the songwriting team within the
Speaker 3: story are going to present to Elvis. So this would
Speaker 3: be they're recording these themselves present to him, which which
Speaker 3: i'll you know, we'll talk about in a second. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'll be brief.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to play I want to
Speaker 1: play One Chance to Love and then we listen, let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about about about context. This
Speaker 1: this is this is where in this functions how.
Speaker 3: I think this is kind of the looking over his
Speaker 3: shoulder at the romantic landscape of Blue Seattle. He kind
Speaker 3: of steps out and it's a single man in the
Speaker 3: spotlight Roy Orbison kind of song. Yeah, that allows him
Speaker 3: to uh, you know, flex his his vocal Elvis chops.
Speaker 1: And this time I think we should listen to the
Speaker 1: whole song. I think it's a lovely song. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: do the whole thing.
Speaker 8: H m, Dom, I've known you.
Speaker 2: And yet I've loved you. No old as many greedy men.
Speaker 3: With hands and gloves.
Speaker 2: But I just want one.
Speaker 4: One chance too loud.
Speaker 3: What I want you to know? I am everything, yea Christ.
Speaker 3: I don't have a lot to give, but I'm giving
Speaker 3: it all here.
Speaker 4: You coming man.
Speaker 1: So helpless.
Speaker 8: Would ask for.
Speaker 2: Chances to look what I means.
Speaker 8: No, I'll take my chid.
Speaker 1: I'll take my chance of just one.
Speaker 4: What chance?
Speaker 3: There's only one chance, There's not two, there's only one.
Speaker 1: I just think s great. I just I just love
Speaker 1: this one.
Speaker 5: We're building We're building this olf, Yeah.
Speaker 1: We're we're we get the Wilson Sisters at the end.
Speaker 3: You can't beat it.
Speaker 1: We have real singers at.
Speaker 3: The end, but the situation forgot what real city is like.
Speaker 1: It's the least demo.
Speaker 3: Ish mm hmmm mm hmmm.
Speaker 1: It feels like by the end of this you're your
Speaker 1: enthusiasm for the project is increasing.
Speaker 3: You're exactly right.
Speaker 1: That is the most Elvis, that's the most pure. If
Speaker 1: you played that for anyone and said who would be
Speaker 1: the ideal singer for that? Everyone everyone would say Elvis,
Speaker 1: that's an Elvis song.
Speaker 3: I'm so close to it, you know, I'm When you're
Speaker 3: the artist, Malcolm, it's hard to look outside the character
Speaker 3: you're playing. Sometimes. No, that's amazing, Thank you. I still
Speaker 3: one chance to love.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, now that you've heard the songs, I think
Speaker 1: you understand why I needed to see this movie. We're
Speaker 1: gonna take a short break. When we come back, we
Speaker 1: talk about how the story of the film turns out
Speaker 1: and what it all means. So we've we've we've got
Speaker 1: our ten songs, and now we're this is the core
Speaker 1: of a of a narrative. You want to do you
Speaker 1: want to do this kind of tongue in cheek Elvis movie, Yes,
Speaker 1: pretending to.
Speaker 3: Tell the story of how it almost happened? Or yeah,
Speaker 3: could have happened that that idea is what kind of
Speaker 3: landed for for this.
Speaker 1: So to go back to the screenplay, did you actually
Speaker 1: write a screenplay around those songs?
Speaker 3: I did? I did?
Speaker 1: So how does it begin with those two characters dreaming
Speaker 1: about writing an Elvis movie?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and enjoying enjoying one of the movies and trying
Speaker 3: to be productive in their own little songwriting career. And
Speaker 3: I got the feeling story wise that Elvis had done
Speaker 3: the Comeback Special and just maybe he had two more
Speaker 3: movies that he did after that. I think he did.
Speaker 3: I could be wrong. I think he did. He did
Speaker 3: a movie called let Me See Chautauqua was the name
Speaker 3: of it, and it was kind of like a sought
Speaker 3: after property. And he does this movie Chautauqua, but by
Speaker 3: the time it comes out, they've changed the name to
Speaker 3: The Trouble with Girls and how to get into it?
Speaker 3: So so dashed again or his you know, dying embers
Speaker 3: of an acting career. And then he goes into the
Speaker 3: last one, which is Change of Habit, which he does
Speaker 3: with Mary Tyler Moore, and of course he plays a doctor.
Speaker 1: In a movie with Mary Tyler Moore.
Speaker 3: The last one, it's the last one. So I got
Speaker 3: the idea that our little songwriting duo gets a shot.
Speaker 3: That's the dream to get the shot with Elvis. They're
Speaker 3: they're ushered in and they have a moment in his
Speaker 3: trailer where he's in his doctor uniform. There's a guitar
Speaker 3: in his trailer. He's on a break doing you know,
Speaker 3: change of habit, and he and he ushers them in
Speaker 3: and they're kind of nervous. Our guy, the main guy
Speaker 3: who's who's like an Elvis fanatic and has like really
Speaker 3: studied Louis Zix has studied Elvis. But anyway, they run
Speaker 3: through the songs. But before they do, Elvis says, you know,
Speaker 3: not real talkative, totally charismatic, bronze in his doctor outfit.
Speaker 3: He says, I always wanted to be in a good movie.
Speaker 3: I don't know I'm gonna I'm gonna do this very
Speaker 3: much anymore, maybe never go ahead. So with having led
Speaker 3: with I'm not really doing this stuff anymore. These guys
Speaker 3: earnestly run through the songs, and Elvis listens and he says,
Speaker 3: let me, let me, let me, let me have the
Speaker 3: sheet music for the the Cab Driver my People song.
Speaker 3: And there's one guy that's written the songs, plays the
Speaker 3: guitar his Elvis's guitar and accompanies him, and Elvis sings
Speaker 3: My People in that little trailer, and then a guy
Speaker 3: comes to get him to do a scene and he's leaving,
Speaker 3: and our guy, Louis says, Elvis, why'd you do all
Speaker 3: those movies? And I used the line that I had
Speaker 3: heard from the actual story where somebody asked him that,
Speaker 3: and he said, hey, man, last thing I remember I
Speaker 3: was driving a truck. And he laughs and leaves, and
Speaker 3: we're left with the songwriting couple, and the wife of
Speaker 3: Louis says, I think he said no. And Louis says, yeah,
Speaker 3: but what a no? That's like the greatest no ever.
Speaker 3: And she says, sometimes a no is maybe even better
Speaker 3: than a yes. And that's that's the end of Lost Masterpieces,
Speaker 3: the movie that never gets made. Elvis never makes another movie,
Speaker 3: but they have that moment in the trailer that that
Speaker 3: where it all came to life for one minute while
Speaker 3: he sang the.
Speaker 1: Song, yeah that truck. Last thing I remember, I was
Speaker 1: driving a truck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll tell you where it came from. Leon Russell,
Speaker 3: the great you know, pianist and member of the Wrecking
Speaker 3: Crew and stuff. Besides being you know, genius solo artists,
Speaker 3: he played on so many records, and he played on
Speaker 3: a bunch of Elvis records. And he was in the
Speaker 3: RCA studios in the hallway and he sees Elvis coming
Speaker 3: down the hallway and they hadn't seen each other since
Speaker 3: playing on a session, and Leon Russell described it as
Speaker 3: he kind of like developed Elvis Turett's you know, he
Speaker 3: just like, what do you say to him? And he
Speaker 3: ended up blurting out, Elvis, why'd you make all those
Speaker 3: shitty movies? Just yucking it up in a studio hallway,
Speaker 3: and Elvis said, last thing I remember, I was driving
Speaker 3: a truck and like walks on, you know, driving a
Speaker 3: truck in Tupelo basically, and then the hurricane.
Speaker 1: His whole life is just a blur.
Speaker 3: That's what he means.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's what he means.
Speaker 3: But yeah, but.
Speaker 1: Cameron, well, once again, it's just it's so heartbreaking.
Speaker 3: It is heartbreaking the idea that.
Speaker 1: He would confess. He's essentially confessing to the fact he's
Speaker 1: had no agency over his own career, which we know
Speaker 1: is the truth of his own career. Yeah, that he
Speaker 1: just completely surrendered all decision making to somebody out to
Speaker 1: this kind of bad surrogate father.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and clearly, in what little research I've been able
Speaker 3: to do in the years passed our little novelty project here,
Speaker 3: he didn't appreciate his movies. He never apparently had the
Speaker 3: moment of watching him at two or three in the
Speaker 3: morning and saying, like, shit, it's kind of good. I
Speaker 3: think he mostly became ashamed of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But also the idea of doing this kind of
Speaker 1: bittersweet Elvis, who's aware of his own kind of loss
Speaker 1: and failure in some sense, and who you know, they're
Speaker 1: coming to him and they're confronting him with more of
Speaker 1: the kind of falsehood, you know, like a kind of act,
Speaker 1: and like that's and he just he can't do it anymore.
Speaker 3: Driscilla Pressley said, there's a version of Elvis that few
Speaker 3: people ever saw. And they would go to the outskirts
Speaker 3: of town to like gospel festivals, and Elvis would sit
Speaker 3: at a piano with with like a gospel group who
Speaker 3: was just like kind of an amateurish gospel group, and
Speaker 3: he'd sing at this piano and she would say that
Speaker 3: was the purest Elvis that was him just connected to
Speaker 3: his own heaven. That was it. And she said, like,
Speaker 3: if you're going to do something about Elvis and not
Speaker 3: have that in, you're not seeing the real guy. So
Speaker 3: I felt like that moment in the trailer he actually
Speaker 3: there was. There was just a love of music and
Speaker 3: there was something in that song that like touched him
Speaker 3: enough to want to sing it. And he who is
Speaker 3: he if not a singer? And so he takes a spin.
Speaker 3: He takes it for a spin, and that was his goodbye.
Speaker 3: It's like.
Speaker 1: In the screenplay, how much of Alvis had we seen
Speaker 1: prior to the trailer?
Speaker 3: Oh? Nothing, He's like Wolfman Jack in American Graffiti or something.
Speaker 3: It's like, so we have a brief.
Speaker 1: That he has that cameo right at the very end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're just jamming like we're on the honeymoon. They're
Speaker 3: trying to like it's the joy of their creation that
Speaker 3: the songwriters the whole story really is. They're living in
Speaker 3: it and experiencing it like we did on our honeymoon.
Speaker 3: But but I think that line is is cool because
Speaker 3: maybe maybe his partner realizes that the act of actually
Speaker 3: doing it and pulling el of us back into a
Speaker 3: place that he was obviously leaving, and like, how will
Speaker 3: the songs really turn out? And are they out of
Speaker 3: step with the times? Like these are all challenges that
Speaker 3: they don't have to face. They got to see it,
Speaker 3: and damn it was good.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, oh man, Cameron, Why have why have we
Speaker 1: been denied this? This is so much more interesting than
Speaker 1: I imagined I thought what you were doing because all
Speaker 1: I had was the songs you sent me, the songs.
Speaker 1: I didn't have the story, and I thought, oh, this
Speaker 1: is like a goof I just thought, oh, you're just
Speaker 1: like someone loves Elvis is doing a little goofy Elvis.
Speaker 1: But now I understand, as is the case with so
Speaker 1: many of your movies, when we get to the core
Speaker 1: of it, there's there's something really emotionally resonant there, like painfully,
Speaker 1: painfully emotionally.
Speaker 3: So it's that happy sad feeling that you know, like
Speaker 3: the songs we love so often tap into the happy
Speaker 3: sad feeling of you know, the ying and yang, and
Speaker 3: you get to feel it all.
Speaker 1: So did you pitch this script anywhere?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 3: I kind of wrote it and enjoyed it and moved
Speaker 3: on to something else.
Speaker 1: Why didn't you pitch it?
Speaker 3: I hadn't started directing yet really, and by the time
Speaker 3: by the time that I did, I was already off
Speaker 3: on another journey. But I mean, I always loved the
Speaker 3: idea of the dream that almost happened. And this, this
Speaker 3: is what you're digging into right now. There's there's an
Speaker 3: incredible kind of like happy said, melancholy about you know,
Speaker 3: some of some of the Christopher Guests stuff in the
Speaker 3: way that that it was influencing me around this time
Speaker 3: and later too, Like I just loved the humanity and
Speaker 3: the humor and the mix of that. I don't know
Speaker 3: it just maybe someday I'll circle back to some version
Speaker 3: of this. But I did love the idea of a
Speaker 3: portrait of these artists, just like scraping for something true
Speaker 3: and a different truth comes out of it.
Speaker 1: On this season's development Hell series, we've heard stories about
Speaker 1: my brush with Hollywood Glory science fiction tales never were
Speaker 1: chimped forward Michael Jackson biopics. But I wanted to tell
Speaker 1: you about Blue Seattle at the end of it all,
Speaker 1: because this conversation was my ticket out of development. Hell
Speaker 1: Crow and Nancy Wilson got divorced some time ago. We
Speaker 1: didn't talk about that, but I think it was part
Speaker 1: of the happy sad feeling I got listening to these
Speaker 1: songs they made together right when they got married. Crow
Speaker 1: is the king of happy sad on film, the kind
Speaker 1: of instant nostalgia. It's all about feeling joy while knowing
Speaker 1: it will pass, that all things fade, but not if
Speaker 1: they never exist in the first place. That's the beauty
Speaker 1: of development. Hell I thought it was all about missing
Speaker 1: out on projects the world deserves to see, and for
Speaker 1: some films, like say Bubbles, it really is. But it's
Speaker 1: also about ideas so perfect that realizing them on screen
Speaker 1: might do them a disservice. Will anyone's elbows be better
Speaker 1: than Cameron Crowe singing with Nancy Wilson ten days after
Speaker 1: they got married? How could you even shoot the scene
Speaker 1: with the songwriters run through all the songs they've written
Speaker 1: in a trailer? How's Elvis gonna clap his hands while
Speaker 1: driving his cab? Would it look ridiculous? Maybe that's not
Speaker 1: the point. Does it sound amazing? Absolutely? And does it
Speaker 1: come to life in our imagination? Yes?
Speaker 4: It does.
Speaker 1: It's like Louis's wife says, sometimes a no is better
Speaker 1: than a yes. This episode of Revision's History was produced
Speaker 1: by Nina Bird Lawrence and Ben and Alfhaffrey, with Talian
Speaker 1: editing Sarah Nix, original scoring by Lubiskarra engineering by Echo Mountain.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Thanks to the Pushkin Crew,
Speaker 1: Greta Cone, Christina Sullivan, Sarah Nix, Nicole upten Bosch, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: Sarah Bruger and Kerry Brody. An extra special thanks of
Speaker 1: course to Camera Crow. I'm Malcolm Glappa.
Speaker 4: One too loud?
Speaker 8: What I love?
Speaker 4: Ye man, There's so.
Speaker 8: Many of us who that's what one.
Speaker 6: Whatever?
Speaker 2: Let the chances to look, but not me.
Speaker 8: Donald. No, I'll take my shot.
Speaker 2: I'll take my chances.
Speaker 8: Just what chance? It's true?
Speaker 4: What's it?
Speaker 6: Chimes one sends to
Speaker 8: Chans to