Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [274]
Next Binder and Howe met with the Colonel, who lived up to his eccentric reputation, showing them the scrapbooks he kept as the dogcatcher in Tampa, diverting their attention while he sized them up. Binder, watching Parker in action with his staff, saw that the Colonel prided himself on his ability to terrorize grown men all around him. Politely, but firmly, Binder insisted he needed a one-on-one meeting with Elvis before he committed to the special.
Secretly, Binder was thinking that at thirty-three, Elvis was no longer the rebellious Hillbilly Cat whose fluid hips and good-natured sneer had captivated a nation. The world was a different place than it had been in 1956, and the movies had rendered Elvis an anachronism. Musically, he had been eclipsed by a long list of British and American musicians, from the Beatles to the Doors to the Jefferson Airplane. He would always be remembered as a pioneering rock-and-roll icon, but to a generation that listened to FM rock radio and elongated album cuts, he was a relic, a man who hadn’t placed a record at the top of the charts in six years.
The producer-director suspected that “with that exterior of self-confidence and bravado, Elvis was actually a scared little boy,” even as the singer had to know that the special, if done correctly, could rejuvenate his career and liberate him from the artistic brimstone of grinding out three B movies a year. And indeed, years later, Priscilla would tell Binder she had never seen Elvis so excited about anything, that he was so eager to get started he could barely sleep.
They met in Binder’s office, in what was known as the glass elevator building on Sunset Boulevard. At first Binder was taken aback by the enormity of Elvis’s presence, which he hadn’t expected. (“You certainly knew that this was a special person . . . his looks were just phenomenally sculpted, without any weak points.”) The two men liked each other, and both were comfortable enough to speak candidly.
“I felt very, very strongly that the special was Elvis’s moment of truth,” says Binder, “and that the number one requirement was honesty.” They joked around a bit, and Elvis told Binder he had never felt at ease doing television, going back to Steve Allen, the tuxedo, and the basset hound. Binder told him he understood, but that this would be different, because this time it would be about music: “You make a record, and I’ll put pictures to it, and you won’t have to worry about television.”
They talked about the Colonel, and Binder said they would probably move in directions that Parker wouldn’t like. Then as tactfully as possible, Binder told Elvis that Parker had neither kept up with the times nor his client’s need to grow. Parker had certainly been a promotional genius, though “once he had the stranglehold, he forgot that what he was marketing was built around talent, and manipulated the whole thing with smoke and mirrors.” The Colonel had pulled off a great con in getting MGM to pay Elvis a million dollars for Harum Scarum, but if Parker had been really smart, he would have turned around and given that money to a great director to put Elvis in the right kind of movie.
“He laughed at that, and said, ‘You’re right.’ ” He then told Binder he had been burning up inside for years to communicate.
But Binder still wasn’t sure what that meant. How was Elvis’s musical gut these days? If songwriter Jimmy Webb had brought him the melodically complex, lyrically poetic “MacArthur Park,” for example, would he have recorded it, even at seven minutes?
“Definitely,” Elvis said, his voice firm and eager. Now Binder felt certain that Elvis was thinking more about the future than the past. They had a deal.
Elvis said he was going to Hawaii to get a tan and relax for a few weeks, and Binder