ELVIS & NIXON IS ABOUT A FARCE
Thanks to the Nixon tapes, all sorts of scenes can be recreated for dramatic purposes, but director Liza Johnson had to make up the unrecorded event in Elvis & Nixon. One such scene occurred after 35-year-old Elvis Presley (played strangely by Michael Shannon) flew to Washington with a handwritten letter to deliver to the president at the White House gate, seeking accreditation as a secret narcotics agent. Elvis had a lot of local police badges, so he felt that a federal badge was needed to top off his collection. Nixon (Kevin Spacey) at first scoffed at the idea of a meeting with the entertainer despite efforts of Dwight Chapin (Evan Peters) and Bud Krogh (Colin Hanks) to point out the political value. Only when they approached one of Nixon’s daughters to make the plea did he gain entry to the Oval Office on December 21, 1970. After an 30-minute odd conversation, in which an awkward Presley got what he wanted with bullshit—pretending to be a right-winger, eager to expose drug traffickers and Communists, and even lambasting the “anti-American” Beatles. Credits at the end report that Chapin and Krogh served time for their role in Watergate, but whether Presley ever ratted on fellow entertainers as drug users is not revealed. What we do know is that Special Agent Elvis used his federal agent ID to flag down motorists for speeding and to offer help at accidents. Elvis thus fooled Nixon, a joke even funnier than the film itself. MH