Viva Pod Vegas: The Elvis Presley Film Podcast

Viva Pod Vegas officially kicks off Season 2 with a long-overdue omission: Elvis: The Comeback Special from 1968! After discussing the different versions that we watched, we talk about the director’s OTHER notable work. Mike welcomes Col. Tom Parker back to the podcast to hear his original pitch to NBC.

We talk about the disparate elements they shot and edited together, what it must have been like to see this on TV in 1968, and how broadly influential this special was (and the additional context needed to fully take it in). Joey tries to sift through, frankly, too much research, then makes a splurge of a purchase while recording. We discuss Elvis’s storytelling mannerisms that trickle down through culture.

Viva Pod Vegas is back! (Elvis has... re-entered the building?) We're kicking things off with a new format and a new slate of movies. After explaining what we're doing in Season 2 and how we're picking (and sequencing) what we're going to watch, we hold our first-ever "live on air" draft of Elvis-related movies! (The full list and the order in which we're watching them for Season 2 can be found here.) We read an email and find out about an Elvis TV series that's new to us, and we solicit requests and picks for future seasons.

It's the season finale of Viva Pod Vegas as we've finally arrived at Elvis Presley's final film: Change of Habit! After getting over the fact that we're concluding on another late-career Elvis movie that isn't really starring him, we talk about the "Queen of Comedy" moniker, this film's surprising cinematographer, and what level of respect this movie holds in film critic circles. We also talk about Elvis's unfinished/unfilmed The New Gladiators, and what the world lost by never seeing The King as a karate cop.

We then pivot to discussing Change of Habit, and kick off by analyzing the film's need to remind audiences that this is, in fact, an Elvis movie. What is this movie trying to do? It features abortion, sexual assault, social equality, and autism. We discuss its aims and if it is successful. We talk about the perfect end to Elvis's film career -- singing gospel music in church -- and reflect back on the Viva Pod Vegas journey so far and where we may go from here.

It's time for The Trouble with Girls: a good title that does not describe its action at all and, sadly, Elvis's penultimate film. After getting some more advice about what to cover next, we run through the film's wild cast and lament how almost none of the many high profile actors spend any time interacting with one another. We also talk through this film's troubled production history (and the source novel that must be better than this), get sad about the unfortunate placement in Elvis's film career (at least for our purposes), and debate whether this is really the only movie where Elvis doesn't fight. Was cannibalism a popular topic in 1927? What is a Chautauqua? We try to find answers. We talk also talk about the tonal shifts that must have been difficult for everyone involved, the the unexpected and illogical murder plot, and why it opens with so many child auditions if they're never going to pop up again. We find new ground with our games at the end of the episode and look ahead to our final movie, Change of Habit.

We have made it to 1969, the final year of Elvis Presley's film career, and we're kicking things off with Charro! This means we have just two movies to go, but we may have finally accomplished something special: did we finally find a good tagline? We talk about how Charro! is a movie featuring no songs (other than the title/theme song) sung by Elvis, the movie's truly wild alternate titles, and how hyper-violent (and overly sexual) it is (at least for an Elvis movie). We explore how Charro! exists at seemingly at a pivot point in Elvis's film career, which makes the fact that the end is nigh a bit depressing. We imagine Elvis as the star of a 1960s Western TV series. Mike explains how this movie is similar to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and how Elvis's sense of morality and justice in the movie is akin to Superman. We play our normal games at the end of the episode, but they hit a bit different this time, given the lack of music in this movie. We guess what The Trouble with Girls will be about. Is it going to be a stinker? We're worried!