The Elvis Movie Left Me Sad

Not because my mother was one of the women who kissed him at the International Hotel.

Last night I went to see the Elvis movie with my daughter, my mother, sister, and brother-in-law.

I wasn’t prepared for how heavy the story was and how sad it left me.

We gathered outside the theatre’s doors after the movie. My mother was visibly crying. I started to well up as well. I hugged her as she let escape a couple of audible sobs until she pulled herself together. After all, it was just a movie.

“Colonel Parker was just a bad person,” she said.

“A manipulator for sure,” I said.

My brother-in-law said something about what a great job Tom Hanks did playing the part.

“That was Tom Hanks?” My mother was shocked. She has never been one to know too many names of movie stars, but she knows Tom Hanks. “I don’t know if I can ever watch another movie with him in it again.”

My mother is loyal to her feelings. She has always been loyal to Elvis.

I thought about saying Mom, Tom Hanks isn’t really the one who ruined Elvis’s life.

Once outside the building we all committed that though it was 9 pm it was still very hot. Redding, California where I live hit 113 degrees today and had barely cooled.

I grew up with Elvis’s music. I grew up with talk of Elvis. Even though my mother isn’t from Memphis, Tennessee, she is from Tennessee. He was part of our family like some distant cousin we knew but never saw.

His music was played at parties and Christmas, on Easter morning. I knew way before the movie how deeply he loved his mother.

Everyone knew he was our mom’s heart throb.

Everyone knew too that my mother was one of those women you see in the film kissing Elvis. Yes. My mother kissed Elvis Presley.

She sat at a long table near the stage at the International Hotel to watch his show. When he placed his hand down to invite the women up, she took her chance. She lifted herself on to the stage. He leaned in and they kissed.

But his kissing the beautiful women (yes, my mother is beautiful) even while he was married isn’t what left me sad. It was his heartbreak.

He was born for greatness. He achieved greatness. He is the King of Rock Roll. Sadly, his greatness became for another’s profit. He was used and manipulated.

I know this is the film I am talking about, and the reality might have looked and been different. But maybe not.

The heaviness that I went home with was how he could have been even more. His desire to connect with his audience. His desire to travel to foreign lands. He was certainly an empath, and the audience knew this. His desire to want to integrate, blacks and whites not just on an intellectual or political stance, but on a heart and soul level.

He wanted his music to move and touch and entertain — this is what music did for him, so he wanted to share this. Sure, he never wanted to be poor again. Yes, he enjoyed the fame and the women.

I think there is something about being trapped working in Las Vegas that could steal the heart of any artist. My bias is shown here. But the neon lights, and the cold sterile casinos, and the night after night living in a city where people come only to gamble and party feels vulgar to me (sure a night or two, or a show once a year could be fun).

Elvis’s greatness to me wasn’t just his costumes and record sales and top-notch performances at the International Hotel where women like my mother had the opportunity to kiss him. His greatness wasn’t just his God given voice, his charisma and looks, nor his ability to move his body: but his desire to make change, challenge the status quo, integrate people, and love.

These are things I admire about Elvis.

On our way home my daughter and I talked about the film. She asked what he died from. I told her it was a heart attack but probably from misusing drugs for years.

I told her that Colonel Parker always had a doctor available for Elvis to help him sleep, help him get up. I explained that sometimes this is the case for famous people like Elvis, like Michael Jackson.

My 13-year-old daughter said, “To be honest, Mom, I always get Elvis and Michael Jackson mixed up — you know the way they move the same.”

The sun was going down, leaving the sky bruised with deep pinks and purples.