Baz Luhrmann tells fascinating story of finding 'mythical' Elvis footage in real life salt mine
It sounds incredible
Baz Luhrmann joined Simon Mayo this week on Greatest Hits Radio to talk about his latest film EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, which is now out in cinemas. The film uses previously unseen archive footage of the King of Rock and Roll which has been restored with the help of Peter Jackson.
Baz Luhrmann worked on the Elvis biopic a few years ago starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks, and explained how it was during the research for that film, that he came across the footage used in the latest production.
Finding the Elvis archive reels
The director recounted how one of his team had to go into a salt mine under Kansas City to look for the reels. Explaining that MGM keep the film reels in the mine to protect them from moisture, Baz told Simon: “It was an accident (finding the reels).
"What happened was Ernst Jorgensen, who's kind of the number one Elvis expert on the planet, says: 'Look, there are these mythical reels that were shot during the Vegas years. Do you think you could try and find them, because you're making the (biopic) movie?'
"I thought, well, maybe I'll be able to use them instead of building the showroom. So I send a guy in... and literally he has to go into salt mines in Kansas City where MGM keep all their footage so it doesn't get destroyed by moisture."
Baz continued: "And he sort of kicks the door and... I wasn't there, but he sends me pictures of like... it's a bit like Raiders of the Lost Ark, you know, smashes the door and there's 65 boxes of negative of both the concert in 1970, the tour, and we came into possession of this 8mm that had never been seen before.
"And so now we've got it. I didn't use it in the (biopic) film, but it's like with Jono Redmond, who's my creative partner in this, it's like, do we put it back in the salt mines?"
Thankfully they didn't and Elvis fans now have a new film to enjoy, as Baz went on to reveal: "What I forgot to tell you was we also found 40-minute tape of Elvis just talking about his life, really unguarded, so unusual. And we just thought, well, what if we just got out of the way and imagine a dream concert where Elvis comes to you and sings and tells you his story?
"And you sort of get to know him in a really very intimate way."
The film director went on to reveal how the condition of the reels was "terrible", continuing: "Some of it was missing, some of it was mislabelled. When it came into the Warner's Lot, where we were going to cut it, it really smelled of vinegar. It smells like vinegar, and some of it was deteriorating. So we were in a bit of race against the clock.
"Now, we didn't have sound. So then it took two years to find sound, which the good thing about sound is you find the mag tape that was with like a rough cut, and then also, sometimes I'd have to dispatch someone to meet some 'gangster' in a car park and give them money because, you know, because there's a huge black market for Elvis stuff."
The Elvis black market
Explaining more about the Elvis black market, Baz said that there was definitely one 'gangster' that one of his team had to meet, calling him a "serious dude" in Chicago. "There were also some other real collectors," he explained.
"And there's one guy who's super private, and they don't collect it to sell it... They collect it just to say, I have it and he was lovely.
"And we wanted one particular piece, and he actually gave it to us, but it took two years to sync the sound we found with the pictures."
He continued: "Elvis' voice from the stage... great. The band... great. Some of the orchestrations were damaged, we couldn't use those to do 5.1 to do IMAX sound."
Baz then opened up about Elvis' backing singers saying: "The Sweet Inspirations were amazing, but some of that was missing too... So in that one little bit, for example, of a song we've just released called 'Oh Happy Day', it's just a tiny bit of Elvis singing gospel. And as a kid, he used to sneak into East Trigg and see Mahalia Jackson and these huge black gospel choirs.
"I took this bit of Elvis singing out every day and we made a dream version of Elvis singing with those choirs. So it goes from very realist stuff to new works.
"We've taken several Elvis songs and made new works in the score to parts where we've remixed stuff. So it's not a documentary and it's not a concert film. It's EPiC."
Listen back to the full interview:
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