Filmmaker Baz Luhrmann first learned of the extraordinary footage while deeply immersed in research for his 2022 biopic, “Elvis.” He heard whispers of a hidden treasure: reels of unused, never-before-seen film originally shot by MGM for the 1970 concert movie “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is” and its 1972 sequel, “Elvis on Tour.” Intrigued, Luhrmann initially considered using this existing footage to recreate the iconic Vegas showroom where Presley made his grand return to live performances, potentially saving the colossal effort of building a new set.
However, his initial idea quickly blossomed into a multi-year quest of preservation and restoration, culminating in the brand-new documentary, “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert.” This groundbreaking film is set to captivate audiences in IMAX theaters nationwide starting this Friday.
The remarkable journey began in a place few would expect: a vast underground salt mine in Kansas. Luhrmann, speaking from his Australian office, emphasized, “People think it’s a turn of phrase, but it’s not.” These unique, climate-controlled facilities are commonly used by major studios, including Warner Bros. (the current owner of the Elvis footage), to safeguard their invaluable archival collections – naturally, at a significant cost.
“It would cost $100,000 just to send someone in to look,” Luhrmann revealed, explaining why he personally covered the expense to dispatch researchers into the vault. What they found was astonishing: “They find not just one or two reels,” he recounted, “They find 69 boxes of footage.” This immense discovery included 35-millimeter film from various Vegas performances for “That’s the Way It Is,” alongside 16-millimeter footage captured backstage for both that film and “Elvis on Tour.”
However, this vast collection wasn’t without its challenges. “But it’s all mislabeled,” Luhrmann lamented, detailing the state of the archive. “Some’s been stolen, dust corroding, just a mess.” Jonathan Redmond, editor and executive producer of “EPiC” and Luhrmann’s longtime creative partner, highlighted another significant hurdle: “It was just 59 hours’ worth of picture. There was no sound, because film and sound are recorded separately and archived separately.” He added in a video interview from Los Angeles, “So we were looking at all this footage, some kind of amazing stuff, but we didn’t know what he was singing.”
Despite the chaotic and silent condition of the footage, the filmmakers were utterly captivated. “We’ve got to do something special with this,” Redmond urged Luhrmann. “We can’t just put it back in the salt mines.”
Luhrmann enthusiastically concurred, stating, “We’ve got to do something special, like a companion piece.”
Before diving into this new project, their primary focus remained completing the “Elvis” biopic. As Luhrmann and Redmond worked on shooting and editing “Elvis,” Warner Bros. oversaw the meticulous 4K scanning of the raw footage. Simultaneously, assistant editor Jim Greco embarked on the painstaking task of syncing the silent film with any available sound recordings. Adding another layer to the discovery, Angie Marchese, Vice President of Archives and Exhibits for Presley’s Graceland museum, supplied the filmmakers with several reels of 8-millimeter and Super-8 home movie footage, much of which had also never been seen publicly.
“But then what really happened, the breakthrough, was that then we found this interview,” Luhrmann revealed. It was an early morning, following a late night of gospel singing, when Presley had agreed to an audio-only interview with the “Elvis on Tour” filmmakers. In this rare recording, he spoke with an uncharacteristic candidness about his life and career up to that point, revealing a side rarely heard.
“Having read all the books and done so much research on Elvis, we knew his story, so he wasn’t necessarily telling us something we didn’t already know,” Redmond commented. “But hearing him tell it in his own voice was so much more powerful, in a way. And that really kind of unlocked the key to the project.”
This crucial audio interview provided Luhrmann with the missing piece to his central question: “What do we make?” They were determined to avoid simply creating another concert film or merely re-editing earlier footage, as had been done for “That’s the Way It Is” in 2001. Nor did they wish to produce another standard biographical documentary, echoing films like “This Is Elvis” from 1981.
“They’re good documentaries,” Luhrmann conceded. “But it’s always people talking about Elvis — not him.” Instead, Luhrmann and Redmond conceived a unique blend of concert film, biographical elements, and something far more ethereal and imaginative. “We’re going to make, like, a dreamscape,” Luhrmann explained, “where Elvis comes to you in your dream and sings and tells your story like never before. That was the idea.”
This ambitious vision necessitated tracking down even more archival footage, interviews, and concert film, all in sufficiently high quality for their planned IMAX release. “Basically, we wanted film backing for all the archive material,” Redmond clarified. “So even the stuff in the ’50s, we were able to go back to the various vendors and source film for it and scan that.”
Their commitment to original film and sound elements often led them beyond conventional sources. “We wired together some audio that’s out there, that’s bootlegged,” Luhrmann chuckled. He humorously recounted the illicit nature of these acquisitions: “We had to meet people in car parks and buy it, bless their socks. The trading of illegal Elvis stuff — there’s Colombian drug lords, and then there’s the guys that trade bootlegs, and dude, I think I’d rather work with the Colombian drug lords.”
Interestingly, the director was unfazed by occasional gaps in instrumentation, choosing to rescore and rerecord those segments. This aesthetic choice perfectly aligned with their overarching creative concept.
“This is the opposite of ‘Get Back,’” Luhrmann noted, referencing Peter Jackson’s acclaimed Beatles docuseries. He explained, “What makes ‘Get Back’ so great is that it’s fly-on-the-wall. What I wanted to say was, No, this is an imagined concert, where all these things happen at once.” Nevertheless, the filmmakers eagerly enlisted Jackson and his renowned WingNut Films for the crucial task of image restoration, a process they had perfected for projects like “Get Back” and the 2018 World War I documentary, “They Shall Not Grow Old.”
“He’s the gold standard of film restoration,” Redmond affirmed. “So quite early on, we decided, as good as our footage is, let’s shine it up as much as possible.”
Rest assured, however, that their work remained purely preservative and artistic. “I want to underline, there’s not a single frame of A.I. in this,” Luhrmann stated firmly. “And there are no visual effects. I like to say the only visual effect in this is the visual effect Elvis has on his audiences.”
With their multi-year, dual-film exploration of Elvis Presley finally complete (and a few brief images from the recovered footage even making it into the biopic, despite ultimately rebuilding the Vegas showroom), Luhrmann and Redmond express their hope that they’ve contributed significantly to the ongoing cultural conversation surrounding the King. For them, the entire endeavor constantly circled back to one fundamental question: Who was Elvis Presley, really? “We had this phrase: in the cracks, you see the light,” Redmond shared, “which really strongly applies to a character like Elvis, who was so used to cameras and being on camera.”
“Elvis says in this movie, it’s very hard to live up to an image,” Luhrmann observed. “He said, a human being is one thing and an image is another.” Thus, for the director, truly understanding Elvis Presley meant engaging with, and empathizing with, both the man and the legend. “I hope that the two films show the mask,” he concluded, “because we all love to see Elvis being the iconic Elvis, but also take the mask off. That’s what I set out to do.”