On December 21, 1970, two of America's greatest recording artists met for the first time... A summit meeting in the White House, for the President and the King of rock 'n' roll.
The stranger-than-fiction meeting in December 1970 of pop icon Elvis Presley (played by Michael Shannon) and US President Richard Nixon (played by Kevin Spacey) is the basis of the engagingly offbeat comedy-drama Elvis & Nixon.
Set over two days, the movie dawdles in its early stages as it establishes why gun-loving, pill-popping patriot Elvis is so keen to meet Nixon — he’s put together a cockamamie scheme of becoming an anti-subversive undercover rock ‘n’ roller and wants a badge that will designate him an FBI agent at large.
But when we get to the meeting itself, the result is comedy gold — with Michael Shannon’s Elvis busting karate moves in the Oval Office, gobbling the president’s M&Ms and upending protocol at every turn. For his part, Kevin Spacey’s Nixon finds unexpected affinity with his guest, bonding over their shared hardscrabble upbringings and their shared dislike of The Beatles.
Famously, according to Smithsonian Magazine, the photograph of the pair’s meeting is the most requested image from the US National Archives. It's not surprising that people want to check that this meeting actually happened, it does seem more like a far-fetched shaggy dog story...
Certificate 15. Runtime 82 mins. Director Liza Johnson
Elvis & Nixon is available to buy or rent from YouTube Movies, Google Play and Amazon Prime in the UK. In the US, the movie is available for free for Amazon Prime subscribers.
