Blue Seattle with Cameron Crowe | Development Hell
2024-04-11 00:50:40
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The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States since it was established in 1861. There have been 3,517 people awarded with the medal. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. And our new podcast from Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor Stories of Courage on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Hello hello Malcolm Gladwell here and welcome to what might be the final episode in our Development Hell series of revisionist history.
Today, we're talking about Elvis.
That person singing is not Elvis.
That's Cameron Crowe, you've seen his movies, Jerry Maguire, almost famous, he wrote Fast Times at Ridgemont High, so many more.
And the guitarist on this song is Nancy Wilson from the mega 1970s band Heart, who at the time was Cameron Crowe's wife. And the story we're going to talk about today starts back in the summer of 1986, when Cameron and Nancy were on their honeymoon. They spent it in a little cabin in the Pacific Northwest, a little cabin that would become the birthplace for today's movie that never was Blue Seattle.
A loving romp about two songwriters trying to write a movie for Elvis Presley. A movie about a couple, writing a movie written by a couple, writing a movie. What's not to love a script? So meta that it belongs on the big screen, only the big screen wasn't big enough to handle it or something like that.
Because one of the things that you might conclude in listening to this interview is that. For Cameron Crowe, it is so much fun talking about his lost Elvis masterpiece. That I think he's afraid that if he actually makes it, he'll feel abandoned, like a version of screenwriter Empty Nest syndrome. So let's tell the story of Blue Seattle. And this interview is different from all the other development hell stories we told on this series. Because instead of giving us the script to his movie, Cameron Crowe gave us the songs he and Nancy wrote 40 years ago. As in every Elvis movie, the best parts are the songs.
They capture a moment that honeymoon burst of creative inspiration, and they tell a story about a young couple in love.
I've been looking forward to this. Let's start from the beginning, because this is a story that needs, as you know, appropriate setup.
Well, when we first talked, I went down a road that felt very friendly and evocative and filled with memories. Because you are an Elvis guy, your revisionist history on Elvis was seminal. And this idea of never made projects from the heart and stuff, it combined with my love of Elvis and a particular part of Elvis. To just want to put this in your lap, Malcolm, this was one that got away.
Well, let's start with Elvis, so your first concert you ever attended as a kid, right? is an Elvis concert.
That's right, I won tickets on the radio.
You're 12.
Yeah, something like that.
Which Elvis are you getting in that period?
Period Elvis, 72 Elvis.
The big high collars.
Big high collars, karate kicks. He was a little obsessed with Nixon in my San Diego Sports Arena show. He did an imitation of Nixon and at one point was on his back, kind of kicking his legs. Just having fun, the kid was having fun at my show, Baroque Elvis.
You got baroque Elvis?
I got Baroque Elvis, but Malcolm, there was one moment where it just broke through, his genius really broke through. And it was a brief moment of sunlight through the clouds, but it was bridge over troubled water. And I felt him connect and there was that moment where it was galvanizing and he was giving what he wanted to give. And the audience was mid-shriek and kind of taking it in, and that was the DNA you were meant to build up from watching the show. Okay, there he is.
When you're weary.
Feeling small?
It was kind of fun and games, Elvis.
So much of your life's work is growing from the tiny seed of that Elvis concert, right? Almost famous. This concert had a huge impact on you.
It did, and also Malcolm, because I took my mom and my mom. If you've seen Almost famous, you know my mom. It's unfair that we can't listen to our music.
It's because it is about drugs and promiscuous sex.
Simon and Garfunkel is poetry.
Yes, it's poetry, it is a poetry of drugs and promiscuous sex. Honey, they're on pot.
So that week changes a lot. So this was the door that gets cracked open, where rock, and of course, my future love, and that combined with journalism, I was on my way.
But Elvis was there at the gates.
And I still was obsessed with Elvis, but I was obsessed with the corners of Elvis's experience, and one of those corners was his movies. And I loved those B movies, some might even call them C and D movies. He comes out of the box hot with Loving You and Jailhouse Rock.
But eventually, he's doing genre things for the money that Colonel Parker has put him up for. And you know, there's a set formula for the Elvis movies that happened, and I became obsessed with those movies.
Yes, yes, and you became obsessed with them because, I mean, one thing I was trying to figure out as I listened to the music of the project we're going to talk about was I was trying to understand your intentions and your so, are you obsessed in a kind of?
That's so delicately put, I love it.
Is it is it, is it? Are you winking at Elvis? are you sharing in the fun? or are you buying it?
All of the above.
All the above.
I think you just you just have to enjoy it for what it is, which which is a romp. Elvis often did three of those movies in a year. You can see he's kind of confused by the character names they call him by, it's like, he's.
He's lost, he's, he's brilliantly lost. It's just, you know, you see so much, it's almost watching.
His face in these movies is like a diary that he never wrote. You can see why am I here? You can see glimmers of Oh, this is good and Margaret V.
LAS VEGAS Wait a minute. Yeah, she's challenging me. So it's all there, hidden in this candy colored genre romp that the Elvis movies became.
So, all of the above.
Yeah, yeah.
Yes, sir.
So you lots of you develop early on. In other words, a rich and nuanced interpretation of who Elvis was and what he stands for.
Yes.
And that's that. Is there any other artist who plays a comparable role in your, in the development of your imagination?
No, because there's only one guy who was, or artist who was so huge that he was able to make 30 throwaway movies that did well enough so that he could keep doing it, like, perhaps against his will, only one person that I ever knew about, and I'll we'll share this later, did ask Elvis, like, why did you make all those movies? and he gave this one person an answer.
But mostly, he never did any interviews, he never commented on it, he just did all those movies for 15 years. They squander quite a bit, you know, as John Lennon would would tell you in his interviews, like, Why is Elvis, why is the King? Just like, you know, strolling around Hollywood soundstages with B-level stars singing like medium decent songs, you know?
But that's part of the mysteries of Elvis.
Yeah, yeah, so we have this. This is the kind of the necessary context.
Yes.
For the story that you're going to tell.
Yeah.
OK, so it's the 80s. And I had written fast times at Ridgemont High, which, like, amazingly, kind of found an audience, so I kind of had a shot at possibly a screenwriting career.
And and in the middle of all this, I perhaps most importantly, fell in love with Nancy Wilson, the great Nancy Wilson, amazing guitarist, half of the Wilson sisters who front their band, Heart. So we were together for a while and then decided to get married and it was a beautiful time. And Anne Wilson, Nancy's sister, had a cabin in Cannon Beach, Oregon, and that was where we wanted to go for a little honeymoon. You know, just borrow the cabin from Anne.
Now this, you must know, as a setup, is Anne and Nancy Wilson to this day. They're like the Everly sisters, they sing together and it's like, you know, there's no thought that goes into it. They have the sibling voices that blend so beautifully.
They're musical twins in a way Anne sings, Nancy sings a little bit, but mostly plays this elegant, beautiful guitar. They're a serious duo. So 10 days into our honeymoon, which was how long we wanted to spend at Anne's cabin, we decided we want to spend two weeks.
We want to spend a little bit longer. But Anne wants to come to her cabin, so Anne Wilson shows up on our honeymoon, which is an interesting thing for a small cabin. It's like a sitcom in a way. Here you have the two sisters with you on your honeymoon with one of them.
And what are you going to do in this, in this small environment, in a, you know, coastal town in Oregon where not much is going on? Well, we're going to do a project, a musical project, that will involve all three of us.
Whose idea was this mine?
Because I love watching them sing together.
And Nancy would later score my movies and stuff, and so we worked really well together and Anne's a lot of fun now. All of this being said, I was working loosely on a book I wanted to do about Elvis movies, so that was on my mind.
And like any idea that you believe is good, it's built on the things you love. And Elvis was one, playing music with my wife was another.
And SCTV and Martin Short was a third element. I loved Martin Short, that great, that great comedy show SCTV.
I remember I'm Canadian.
So here comes this idea for a kind of, and this is the cousin of what you're doing. Malcolm. It's like, lost masterpieces, what's what's what's something? That like a movie that almost got made, and it's built on the burning fever inside your gut. That this is the idea of all time. So I started building this idea of the great Elvis movie that never got made.
And what's the story behind it? And I decided that it was like you had Goffin and King, who are like a great couple. Songwriting. They're legends. They'd written all these great songs. The Beatles did. Some of them. I thought, like, what about a much lesser Goffin and King like?
What about a couple who's a songwriting team that haven't gotten in the door? And it's Parnell and Zicks? was their name? Linda Parnell and Louis Zicks and Louis Zicks, of these two songwriters. Is obsessed with writing. He hears Elvis may do one more movie, and he's going to write with with with his songwriting partner wife. They're going to write this song cycle for the for the 10 songs of an Elvis movie that they're going to pitch and make.
And this is the beginning of Blue Seattle, which is their song cycle Malcolm, that they're going to try and sell to Elvis himself. And so here on our honeymoon, I began to write these Elvis songs that that were fleshed out with Anne and Nancy Wilson of Heart. And. And and unironically, really, mostly, we were going to do these songs that captured all the elements of the Elvis movie formula.
Now, before we get into the songs themselves, which I have to say, are genius. I want you to define. You said. All the elements of the Elvis movie formula. Break it down for me before we start. What are the elements? the crucial elements?
OK, the the the Elvis elements are this. First of all, he has to have a name that sounds like a fist, you know, nothing too complex, just kind of like Deke Rivers, was one. Buck. Thomas, you know? So, like we, we thought you start with a name that's like, you know, Mike Davis, something like that. And an Elvis must always have workplace pride. He needs to do a couple different things in an Elvis movie of this era. But, like, they're often a strange combination of things. Like, he can be a veterinarian who's also a race car driver who also works at a county fair, somehow.
What a way to earn a living, you know? A little kid should appear at some point looking for a kind of some kind of mentorship, which he provides, usually in the form of a song.
Dancing girls must appear.
Would you mind telling me where I am in the Garden of Paradise, Noble Master?
So like that, it's worked in a fight, at least one fight, baby, we just say.
Um, in a thoughtful moment over a pet, Come on, Albert, don't be a fink.
A good Elvis, because, of course, Elvis. yeah, I mean his dog, his love of dog. I mean the seminal. What was the seminal dog in Elvis's life?
I've now forgotten the one. That song he used to sing over and over and over again as a teen, was a song about a dead dog.
Shep, shep.
Yes, wasn't it? I think it's shep. Yeah, these are the kind of stations of the Elvis Cross that you've.
The stations of the Cross. Yeah, can't say it any better.
There's a lot going on in these movies.
And he lined him up, man, he lined him up and did it. But then ultimately, we end up at a place where Elvis's nobility is protected. He either gets the girl or he doesn't get the girl. And there's a There's a rave up song that sends you out feeling good.
Yeah, yeah, and that's Elvis movie.
Did you have you watched all the Elvis movies?
Yeah, definitely, and as long as you have these elements, you're in the ballgame, yeah. And of course, the songs are written outside of Elvis's experience, and usually they come to him at some point and they play him the songs.
And, you know, legendarily, he's like, No, no, OK, I do something with that. OK, no, OK, now I'm tired, you know, like? And they bring in more songs another day.
And these are songs that the songwriters have, like, killed themselves over. Because they know they're going to have a session with Elvis, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
And this was the songwriting couple in the story, My Fictional Story, Blue Seattle. Like. Their dream is that they will one day be able to play these songs for Elvis and pitch this movie.
Are we going to hear some of those songs to your listener? Oh, yes, we are. After a quick break, Cameron Crowe is going to play us some of the music from Blue Seattle.
So you sat down, you're there. How long did it take to write these 10 songs?
Like, four or five days, because I remember we made this cassette that we're we're going to listen to, mercifully. A little bit of, yes, maybe a lot, but there's.
I remember we listened to it on our way back from the honeymoon. We were like, this is really, pretty good.
Yeah, wait, why don't we? Let's play that one? I actually, yeah.
I think you're being far too modest. I have another one I want to recommend, but we'll get to that one. Just play. Just just to get us in the mood. Let's listen to your favorite of the 10 songs you wrote.
Great, it's going to be my people.
My people, let's listen to my people.
Let me set it up. We wanted to bring Elvis this movie.
In the late 60s, because this is kind of the period where.
Post Elvis has started to develop a little bit of a social conscience, so the idea is Elvis plays a cab driver. In this Who. Who is a man. Kind of of the people. And so like the idea of Elvis roaming the streets in Seattle and like, Pike Place and all that stuff, we loved it and so so. There is a moment where he realizes he he must return to the relevance of the street where he was once, this cab driver.
And and he leaves this relationship that has kind of belittled him in some ways. And so he's like, going back to his roots, and he's singing this song from behind the wheel of his cab. My people, and it's always good, I'll just add this, it's always good when you have a little bit of a of a Spanish kind of.
Castanet, You know?
Up down in his street.
Watching from my seat, these are the people.
My people.
In the city rain, they seem to know my pain. These are the people.
My people.
I'm just an empty house, haunted by an image in my rear view mirror.
Oh.
Excuse me if I cry.
I must say my pride. Oh, the people, the people, the people, my people got a little bit of a moment in there.
And now another one, Oh, he's going to be talking, even though he has those hands on the wheel. Or simply to.
I must say my pride.
The people, or the people, my people.
You can, actually, it's funny, that's like, totally believable as an Elvis song.
If I heard that on an Elvis album, I'm not thinking twice about it.
I've come such a long way to hear you say that.
No, I mean, I'm not blowing smoke here.
No, I felt that, too at the time. I'm like, almost sell that to Elvis for one of those movies, yeah.
Who's playing guitar on that?
Nancy and Ann are both playing guitar and singing, and I'm attempting to do an Elvis voice.
Yeah, which is it's not bad.
I'm the wink-link, for sure.
It's not bad.
I am that wink-link.
Your range?
But they're fantastic, they can play anything at the drop of a hat, and their harmonies are so cool.
But wait, so let's start from the beginning. Blue Seattle is the first song that sets the tone here, and what are we trying to do narratively with Blue Seattle?
Usher you into an Elvis world of time and place and character, where fun will perhaps abound. Yeah.
Let's play a little, just the first half of it, and then just to get a kind of feel we get in the mood, let's hear a little bit of it.
Summer winds are calling me to the place that I love blue skies, green mountains.
A town made for love.
This is the native influence wafting through.
I'm going back to the place where I belong, Blue Seattle, a pretty little city where man just can't go wrong, Blue Seattle.
The seafood's fresh, the steaks are rare.
Steaks are rare, yeah.
I thought the opening, this should be the theme for Seattle. First of all, Blue Seattle. Seattle needs to call itself blue because everyone thinks they're gray Seattle. So as a marketing campaign, to remind us that the skies are blue and the mountains are green is like....
And secondly, just those openings, this place, the town made for love. I mean, come on, why does the city not make this? Just those three opening lines. That should be the official tagline for Seattle. Am I wrong?
You know, everything takes its time. I'm realizing to come to this crossroads with you is really meaningful. Yeah, it happened at the World's Fair in Seattle, so this is like a reunion with an Elvis City that's undervalued as an Elvis City.
Wait, Elvis plays Seattle during the expo.
He makes a movie. It happened at the World's Fair.
Oh.
I forget who the co-star is, but the space needle is on the poster for it.
Oh my goodness, it's fantastic. Oh wow. A little phallic imagery to add to the hopefully.
Then we come to pay the fare.
Yeah.
And as you said earlier in the Elvis movie Taxonomy that you created. He needs to have multiple jobs, but one of them has to be a kind of keeping it real.
That's right.
And so the keep it real job we have here is we understand that he's a cab driver.
He's a cab driver looking for love.
Looking for love? Yeah, let's do a minute of pay the fare.
I see the little girl, I'll stand right over there, maybe 40 seconds.
40 seconds.
She's the one to stare.
She's the one, she's the one, she's the one, she's the one.
She's the one to pay the fare.
Pay the fare, that little girl.
That little.
I look a lot like you.
The Gas logo.
I tell her and they sound Penn and Nancy sound so good on this, they do.
I know the thing that makes this genius is this understanding that we have the Wilson sisters doing the do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.
You don't want to pay the fare.
Cameron When you're doing this project, are they as into it as you are?
I mean, a we're bored.
Yeah.
But B It's a great question. There was mist. There's like waves crashing below these little cliffs where we're staying, and in the middle of this, we're just like howling through these Elvis songs. It was an amazing honeymoon.
Is there a lot of weed involved or not?
Not really, not really. I think a lot of beers, I think we were just like lining up beers, doing some of this stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
I think we would have lost our hard Elvis edge if we'd gone to the weed too much, that would be the later Elvis movie.
That's right, that's right. So hiccups is the one.
There's usually a novelty song that's completely embarrassing.
Oh, that's what Hiccup is doing.
Yeah, where Elvis is asked to do something that's really kind of beneath him and he knows it. You can always see it in the movies when he's asked to do this. To play patty cakes with a little kid or do a move like that. Usually, if you're really looking at it with a microscope, he has a little fun and then it gets old. Because they're asking him to do a number of takes, you can usually tell.
And so by the end of the novelty song in the movies, he's so ready to move on.
But it's important that he bonds with a child and a pet.
Yeah, yeah, those are crucial, you know? It's just impossible not to be filled with sympathy for Elvis. I would want no part of his life.
Everything about it just sounds he's locked up in this gilded cage, and he just sounds like he's desperately unhappy almost all the time.
Yes, and the further you go into the movies, you see the anguish start to turn up, you can see the anguish build.
And sometimes for whole movies, he's annoyed.
Kind of just wondering why he's there while he's doing these lines.
Yeah, yeah, it's so. It's sort of heartbreaking it is. Let's do a little bit of hiccups, just so.
We understand this, the novelty. Because now that you say that I was puzzling, I was listening, it's like, Why is Hiccups here? it's here.
Hiccup, hiccup.
Hiccup be gone.
Hiccup.
Hiccup.
Hiccup be gone. I was humming this to myself.
From a miles around, you're right, this is a heartbreak. This is like a guy who was truly dangerous is now doing the hiccup song. Yeah, culturally.
And that line at the end, my prescription is simply love. Yeah, when he goes through all the cures for the hiccups, and then he comes and says, the only one that works for me is love.
Which, by the way, is, like, so poignant and so true. The one thing he was lacking was love, right? That's true. A truer line has really been written of Elvis.
That he got every other drug in quotes offered to him and none worked. The only thing he needed was, Yeah, he was....
Super well said, super well said, and there it was buried in the Hiccup song.
By the way, what's hilarious continuing? What's hilarious is, I've said before, the contrast between two of the great guitar players of our generation. And then it's a good Elvis impression. But as you say, you are the weak link.
I am the weak link.
You can only be, though, in his company.
That's true, it's true. And of course, story-wise, which we'll get to. These are the demos that the songwriting team within the story are going to present to Elvis. So this would be their recording, these themselves present to him, which we'll talk about in a sec.
Yeah, yeah.
I'll try and be brief.
I want to play one chance to love. And then let's talk a little bit more about context, this is where, and this functions how.
I think this is kind of the looking over his shoulder at the romantic landscape of Blue Seattle. He kind of steps out. And it's a single man in the spotlight, Roy Orbison kind of song.
Yeah.
That allows him to flex his vocal Elvis chops.
And this time, I think we should listen to the whole song. I think it's a lovely song. Let's do the whole thing, thank you.
Darling, I've known you forever.
And yet I've loved you never.
Oh, there's many greedy men with hands in gloves.
But I just want one.
One chance to love.
One glimpse inside.
I want you to know I am giving it everything.
Your precious love.
I don't have a lot to give, but I'm giving it all here, I ain't coming back.
Darling, there are so many others.
Who would ask for 20, 30, 40, 50 chances to love, but not me, darling? No, I'll take my shot, I'll take my chance on just one, one chance to love.
One glimpse inside.
Your precious love.
Why do you call it mine?
One chance to love.
There's only one chance, there's not two, there's only one one glimpse inside.
I just think it's great, I just love this one, your precious love.
We're building, we're building this album.
Yep.
I ain't coming back.
One chance to love.
One chance to love.
We get the Wilson sisters at the end.
You can't beat it.
We get real singers at the end.
I forgot what real singing is like.
It's the least demo-ish. It feels like by the end of this, your enthusiasm for the project is increasing.
You're exactly right.
That is the most Elvis, that's the most pure. If you played that for anyone and said who would be the ideal singer for that, everyone would say Elvis, that's an Elvis song.
I'm so close to it. When you're the artist, Malcolm, it's hard to look outside the character you're playing sometimes. That's amazing. Thank you, I always dug one chance to love.
Yeah, okay, now that you've heard the songs, I think you understand why I needed to see this movie. We're going to take a short break. When we come back, we talk about how the story of the film turns out and what it all means.
We've got our 10 songs. This is the core of a narrative. Do you want to do this kind of tongue-in-cheek Elvis movie?
Yes, or tell the story of how it almost happened, or could have happened. That idea is what landed for this.
To go back to the screenplay, did you actually write a screenplay around those songs?
I did.
How does it begin with those two characters dreaming about writing an Elvis movie?
Yeah.
Enjoying one of the movies and trying to be productive in their own little songwriting career.
I got the feeling, story-wise, that Elvis had done the comeback special, and just maybe he had two more movies that he did after that. I could be wrong. I think he did a movie called Chautauqua, that was the name of it. It was kind of like a sought-after property.
He does this movie, Chautauqua, but by the time it comes out, they've changed the name to the trouble with girls and how to get into it.
So dashed again are his dying embers of an acting career. Then he goes into the last one, which is change of habit, which he does with Mary Tyler Moore. Of course, he plays a doctor.
Wait, Elvis did a movie with Mary Tyler Moore.
The last one, it's the last one. I got the idea that our little songwriting duo gets a shot. That's the dream to get the shot. With Elvis. They're ushered in and they have a moment in his trailer where he's in his doctor uniform.
There's a guitar in his trailer, he's on a break, doing change of habit and he ushers them in. They're kind of nervous. Our guy, the main guy who's an Elvis fanatic and has really studied Louis X, has studied Elvis. But anyway, they run through the songs.
But before they do, Elvis says.
Not real talkative, totally charismatic, bronzed in his doctor outfit, he says I always wanted to be in a good movie. I don't know if I'm going to do this very much anymore, maybe never go ahead having led with, I'm not really doing this stuff anymore. These guys earnestly run through the songs.
Elvis listens and he says, Let me have the sheet music for the cab driver. My people song this one guy that's written the songs, plays the guitar, Elvis's guitar and accompanies him. Elvis sings. My people. In that little trailer, then a guy comes to get him to do a scene.
He's leaving our guy, Louis, says. Elvis, why'd you do all those movies? I used the line that I'd heard from the actual story, where somebody asked him that. He said, Hey man, last thing I remember I was driving a truck, he laughs and leaves.
We're left with the songwriting couple, the wife of Louis says. I think he said no.
Louis says, Yeah, but what a no, that's like the greatest no ever, she says. Sometimes a no is maybe even better than a yes.
That's the end of Lost Masterpieces, the movie that never gets made, Elvis never makes another movie, but they have that moment in the trailer.
Where it all came to life for one minute while he sang the song.
Yeah, last thing I remember, I was driving a truck.
Yeah, I'll tell you where it came from. Leon Russell, the great pianist and member of the Wrecking crew. Besides being a genius solo artist, he played on so many records, he played on a bunch of Elvis records.
He was in the RCA studios, in the hallway, he sees Elvis coming down the hallway. They hadn't seen each other since playing on a session. Leon Russell described it as he kind of developed Elvis Tourette's.
He's just like, What do you say to him? He ended up blurting out, Elvis, why did you make all those shitty movies? just yucking it up in a studio hallway? Yeah, Elvis said. Last thing.
I remember I was driving a truck and walked on.
Driving a truck in Tupelo, basically. Then the hurricane hit, and there he is what he means.
His whole life is just a blur.
That's what he means.
Oh, that's what he means.
Yeah.
But Cameron, once again, it's just so heartbreaking.
It is heartbreaking.
The idea that he's essentially confessing to the fact he's had no agency over his own career, which we know is the truth of his own career. Yeah, that he just completely surrendered all decision making to somebody else, to this kind of bad surrogate father.
Yeah.
Clearly, in what little research I've been able to do in the years past, our little novelty project here. He didn't appreciate his movies, he never apparently had the moment of watching them. At two or three in the morning and saying, like, Yeah, it's kind of good. I think he mostly became ashamed of them, yeah.
Yeah, but also the idea of doing this kind of bittersweet. Elvis, who's aware of his own kind of loss and failure in some sense, and who, you know, they're coming to him and they're confronting him with more of the kind of falsehood, you know, exactly.
And he just can't do it anymore.
Priscilla Presley said There's a version of Elvis that few people ever saw. And they would go to the outskirts of town to gospel festivals. And Elvis would sit at a piano with a gospel group who was just kind of an amateurish gospel group. And he'd sing at this piano. And she would say that was the purest Elvis, that was him just connected to his own heaven, that was it. And she said, like, if you're going to do something about Elvis and not have that in, you're not seeing the real guy. So I felt like that moment in the trailer, he, actually. There was just a love of music and there was something in that song that touched him enough to want to sing it.
And who is he, if not a singer? And so he takes a spin, he takes it for a spin, and that was his goodbye. It's like,....
In the screenplay, how much of Elvis had we seen prior to the trailer?
Oh, nothing, he's like Wolfman Jack in American graffiti or something. It's a brief appearance.
Oh, he just has that cameo right at the very end.
Yeah, they're just jamming like we're on the honeymoon, they're trying to like, it's the joy of their creation. The songwriters, the whole story really is, they're living in it and experiencing it like we did on our honeymoon.
But I think that line is cool, because maybe his partner realizes that. The act of actually doing it and pulling Elvis back into a place that he was obviously leaving. And like, how will the songs really turn out and are they out of step with the times? These are all challenges that they don't have to face. They got to see it.
And damn, it was good.
Yeah, yeah, oh man, Cameron, why have we been denied this? This is so much more interesting than I imagined. I thought what you were doing, because all I had was the songs.
You sent me the songs, I didn't have the story, and I thought, Oh, this is like a goof. I just thought, Oh, you're just like someone who loves Elvis is doing a little goofy Elvis thing.
A kid's new thing, yeah.
But now I understand, as is the case with so many of your movies, when we get to the core of it, there's something really emotionally resonant there, like painfully, painfully emotionally resonant there.
I hope so. It's that happy-sad feeling that, you know, like the songs we love so often, tap into that happy-sad feeling of, you know, the ying and yang, and you get to feel it all.
So wait, did you pitch this script anywhere?
No, I kind of wrote it and enjoyed it and moved on to something else.
Why didn't you pitch it?
I hadn't started directing yet really, and by the time that I did, I was already off on another journey. But I mean, I always loved the idea of the dream that almost happened. And this is what you're digging into right now. There's an incredible kind of, like, happy-sad, melancholy about, you know, some of the Christopher guest stuff in the way that it was influencing me around this time.
And later, too, like, I just love the humanity and the humor and the mix of that. I don't know, just maybe someday I'll circle back to some version of this.
But I did love the idea of a portrait of these artists, just like scraping for something true, and a different truth comes out of it.
On this season's Development Hell Series, we've heard stories about my brush with Hollywood glory, science fiction tales that never were chimp-forward Michael Jackson biopics. But I wanted to tell you about Blue Seattle at the end of it all because this conversation was my ticket out of development hell.
Crowe and Nancy Wilson got divorced some time ago. We didn't talk about that. But I think it was part of the happy-sad feeling I got listening to these songs they made together right when they got married. Crowe is the king of Happy-Sad on film. The kind of instant nostalgia that's all about feeling joy while knowing it will pass. That all things fade, but none if they never exist in the first place. That's the beauty of development hell.
I thought it was all about missing out on projects the world deserves to see. And for some films, like, say, Bubbles, it really is. But it's also about ideas so perfect that realizing them on screen might do them a disservice. Will anyone's Elvis be better than Cameron Crowe singing with Nancy Wilson ten days after they got married? How could you even shoot the scene where the songwriters run through all the songs they've written in a trailer?
How's Elvis gonna clap his hands while driving his cab? Would it look ridiculous? Maybe that's not the point. Does it sound amazing?
Absolutely, and does it come to life in our imagination? Yes, it does. It's like Louis wife says sometimes a no is better than a yes.
Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Thanks to the Pushkin crew Greta Cohn, Christina Sullivan, Sarah Nix, Nicole Opdenbosch, Eric Sandler, Sarah Bruguier and Carrie Brody. An extra special thanks, of course, to Cameron Crowe. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, one chance to love.
One glimpse inside.
Your precious love.
I ain't callin mine.
Darling, there are so many others.
Who would ask for 20,?
30,.
40 or 50 chances to love, but not me, darling. No, I'll take my shot.
I'll take my chance on just one one chance to love.
One glimpse inside.
Your precious love.
I ain't callin mine.
One chance to love.
One glimpse inside.
Your precious love.
I ain't callin mine.
One chance to.
One chance to love.
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States since it was established in 1861. There have been 3,517 people awarded with the medal. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. And our new podcast from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Media is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor Stories of Courage on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Sponsored by Lifelock.
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