Jan Shepard - Special guest @ Grammy Museum for Elvis Movie Panel

Elvis At The Movies
A Special Elvis Month Event
Presented by The GRAMMY Museum

Wednesday, January 4, 2012; 7:30pm

As part of our first-ever Elvis Month, The GRAMMY Museum is proud to present a special panel focusing on the King of Rock-n-Roll's time spent in Hollywood. Join as we take a special look into the lesser-explored side of Elvis Presley's career with Elvis At The Movies. Through a panel of his costars Mary Ann Mobley (Girl Happy and Harum Scarum) , Celeste Yarnall (Live A Little, Love A Little) and Jan Shepard (King Creole), guests will get a unique view into the inner-workings of Elvis courtesy of the people who acted along side of him. After the discussion, moderated by GRAMMY Museum Executive Director Bob Santelli, panelists will take audience questions.

Doors open at 7:00pm. Admission is free for Museum Members; reservations required. Members receive priority seating. To reserve your seats, please call 213.765.6800 or e-mail programs@grammymuseum.org.


Elvis Month, January 2012

Special Elvis events & programming include:
The Elvis Presley Story class series
led by Executive Director Robert Santelli

Tuesday, January 3, 8:00pm
Tuesday, January 10, 8:00pm
Tuesday, January 17, 8:00pm

The GRAMMY Museum's first evening class of 2012 takes a look at the life and legacy of Elvis Presley. Taught by Executive Director Robert Santelli, The Elvis Presley Story is part of the museum's January celebration of the King of Rock & Roll. Santelli will trace Presley's career from his early days in Memphis and the rise of rock & roll, through his time spent in Hollywood making movies, his late '60s comeback, and his tragic death in 1977 at age 42.

Class dates for The Elvis Presley Story are Tuesday, January 3; Tuesday, January 10; and Tuesday, January 17. Classes begin at 8 p.m. and occur in the museum's Clive Davis Theater. The Elvis Presley Story is free to all museum members as well as the general public and is part of the institution's on-going Continuing Education series.

In addition to leading the GRAMMY Museum, Santelli has written over a dozen books on American music. His latest work, This Land Is Your Land: Woody Guthrie and the Journey of an American Folk Song, will be published in March. Santelli has already taught courses on the origins of rock & roll, '60s rock, and hip hop. Future courses in 2012 will deal with the blues, Bob Marley, and Woody Guthrie.

What went wrong with Cirque du Soleil’s Viva Elvis show?

What went wrong with Cirque du Soleil’s Viva Elvis show at the Aria? Just about everything, according to local gaming industry insiders who know a thing or two about the entertainment business.

It’s difficult to imagine a multimillion-dollar Elvis show not doing very well in Las Vegas. His concerts were a travel destination in themselves during the 1970s when he was regularly filling the showroom at the Las Vegas Hilton.

But that was then and here we are some 35 years after his death. All those years seemed to give Cirque’s big thinkers the feeling that the time was right for the company’s own interpretation of Presley’s music.

"Elvis was a show without heart, a lot of talent but no heart," says Minnie Madden, a Las Vegas-based producer, director and critic who now writes and talks about the business where she has made her living for a number of years.

"When you’re doing a show about someone as iconic as Elvis, people want to see the performer they loved," she said.

Another Las Vegan, an unhappy but devout Presley fan who saw the show shortly after it opened, appeared to echo this thinking. He remembers turning to a friend and saying, "There are only three things wrong with it– the music, the scenery and the dialogue. Other than that it is not bad."

Conclusions like that are highly subjective, but since the show is headed for closure by the end of 2012, they have become food for some serious thought.

Why did Viva Elvis fail to sell a satisfactory volume of tickets and is there any chance that it might still be saved, given the fact that its scheduled closing is about a year away?

An Elvis insider – he is familiar with efforts to repair the production – told me, "They should not have jacked around with the music the way they did. They should have handled it as they did the Beatles music in the show at The Mirage where the music was allowed to speak for itself."

He added, "A lot of what ended up in the show had nothing to do with Elvis’ music as he performed it and his life as he lived it. That was a mistake. There was too much poetic license with important facts. Portraying Colonel Parker as an old time southern carny type was nothing other than ridiculous. The colonel didn’t talk that way, he was from Belgium."

And then there was the matter of timing, as other sources noted. Many of the "The King’s" most ardent fans are well past middle age now. They don’t get out now the way they once did.

So why isn’t the show being allowed to limp along as further adjustments are made in the hopes they will produce a positive difference? Big entertainment productions are swing shift drivers at major Las Vegas Strip resorts. They bring in the customers who fill the restaurants, bars, shops and the casino.

The result is perfect harmony when it all works, but when a major showroom production does not pull its weight, something has to go.

That something, in this case, is Viva Elvis.

Several local gaming industry professionals think it might have generated more ticket sales had it been at another of the MGM properties – maybe The Mirage or TI, resorts that offer easier access.

Steve Wynn has had as much success as anyone, creating Strip showroom productions that were huge hits, but he also considers entertainment to be the "big white knuckle moment" in the creation of a resort.

Wynn enjoyed big successes with Siegfried and Roy at The Mirage, O at Bellagio and the first Cirque show which is still at the TI, but Le Reve at the Wynn required a good bit of tinkering or fine tuning before it began to gain satisfactory momentum.

by Phil Hevener/Gaming Insider