Standing Room Only
The first talks about future production started at the beginning of 1972.
By then, Elvis had toured all over the United States.
The singer set out on his first tour since the mid-1950s in September 1970. The tour then ran through six American cities, from Phoenix, Arizona to Mobile, Alabama, and included eight sold-out performances.
Tickets for each concert were sold out in no time, and the press reviews that appeared in the following days were more than positive.
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A similar situation continued throughout the next year.
Elvis drove his show from town to town, giving a total of one hundred and fifty-six shows throughout 1971. Each of them was watched by two (this is how much the room of the International Hotel could accommodate) to eighteen thousand people!
The iron point on this concert map was, of course, Las Vegas, where, as in the previous year, Presley resided twice – in January / February and in the summer season – throughout August and several days of September.
And it was in Las Vegas that the photos for his next documentary were to be made.
Initially, Colonel Parker intended to use the formula proven two years ago and once again show the audience his famous client during performances at the International Hotel. The material for the project with the working title “Standing Room Only” was planned to be shot during the winter series of Elvis concerts in the city.
At the last minute, however, the above concept was changed and instead of to the entertainment capital, MGM sent its cameras behind Presley on a spring tour. The new film was now to show his triumphant return to the stages of the largest American concert halls.
Jack Haley Jr, acting as MGM vice president at the time, entrusted the project supervision to two experienced producers – Robert Abel and Pierre Adidge, who just a year ago did an excellent job of filming “Mad Dogs & Englishman” documenting Joe Cocker’s US tour States in 1970.
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” It was the time when the music was the most going on ,” Abel recalled in an interview. “ For me it was a great artistic manifesto of our times. And in combination with the movie… what an amazing marriage. I felt like Alan Lomax recording Woody Guthrie. I perpetuated this great phenomenon for posterity. Woodstock had just hit the screens and suddenly everyone realized that an amazing artistic, social revolution was taking place, and I always wanted to get to her roots and I always wanted to make a movie about Elvis .
However, before this highly valued expert in the field of visual effects, computer animation and interactive media finally started working on Presley’s thirty-third (!) Film, he already had in his CV a screening of the best-selling book “Making Of The President, 1968” and several completed with the use of the latest technological solutions, TV commercials.
Information provided by EP Promised Land (Poland): http://www.elvispromisedland.pl/
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