Priscilla cast on recreating Elvis for big screen

In Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me,” Sofia Coppola saw something that was glamourous and wild, something that would provide an opportunity for beautiful filmmaking in a setting she had yet to explore — the world of 1960s American rock royalty. But even she was a little surprised to find in this wholly unrelatable tale something, well, relatable: A young woman, isolated, figuring out who she is, in the shadow of a powerful man.  

Presley’s book, nearly 40 years old at this point, reveals things about Elvis that are, at best, unflattering. Everyone knows they met when she was 14 and he was 24. But his controlling and sometimes volatile behaviour, dictating exactly what she looked like, what she was allowed to do and whom she was allowed to spend time with, might still come as a surprise to some. Before the film’s premiere in Venice, Coppola said she wasn’t making Priscilla for Elvis fans.