Mex Potential : Elvis Meets Nixon (And Inspires A Comedy Film)

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Elvis Meets Nixon (And Inspires A Comedy Film)</h1>
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A new comedy sheds light on the mysterious meeting between a president and the King.</h2>
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 <span class="timestamp__date--published" style="box-sizing: inherit;">04/19/2016 06:55 pm ET</span></div>
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HANDOUT . / REUTERS</div>
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President Nixon shakes hands with Elvis Presley in the Oval Office in Washington, DC in December 1970 after the little-known meeting.</div>
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The most requested photo in the U.S. National Archives is not the first moon landing or the burning twin towers after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.</div>
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It is actually a picture of President Richard Nixon shaking hands with Elvis Presley in the Oval Office in December 1970 after the meeting between two pivotal figures in 20th century America.</div>
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“Elvis & Nixon,” a comedy movie that reimagines their unlikely White House encounter, opens in U.S. theaters on Friday after premiering at New York’s Tribeca film festival. It is distributed by Amazon Studios.</div>
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Kevin Spacey (Nixon) knows a thing or two about playing a president after years as the scheming Frank Underwood on the TV series “House of Cards.” But Michael Shannon, who plays Presley, was just 3 years old when the singer died in 1977.</div>
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“We weren’t, either of us, trying to do caricatures,” Spacey, who spent hours listening to tapes of Nixon and watching video of the president, told Reuters in an interview.</div>
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There are no records of what exactly happened on the day when Presley requested a meeting with Nixon in a bid to become an undercover federal agent-at-large, and found a bond with the president over a shared dislike of the counterculture.</div>
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Nixon had not begun his secret Oval Office recordings, so the screenwriters relied largely on first-hand accounts from Presley confidant Jerry Schilling and Nixon aide Bud Krogh.</div>
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Shannon, whose Presley is quiet, lonely and reflective, never imagined himself playing the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”</div>
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“I didn’t go into it being a huge Elvis fan. I didn’t have his records or anything,” the Kentucky-born actor said. “But I am really happy I had a reason to investigate Elvis because there is nobody else like him, not just in terms of the scope of his fame but in the unique construct of his life. I think he was always trying to figure out ‘why me?’”</div>
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Shannon listened to interviews and visited the tiny apartment in Memphis where Presley spent his teenage years. He also learned karate for a scene in which Presley demonstrated his black belt moves for an astonished Nixon.</div>
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Spacey relished the chance to play a very different kind of president, and to present a rarely seen side of Nixon.</div>
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“I just hoped that if I was able to create a Nixon who had enough of the qualities about who he particularly was, that people wouldn’t think about Frank Underwood, even though I am on an Oval Office set.” </div>
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<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Peter Cooney)</em></div>
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Elvis Meets Nixon (And Inspires A Comedy Film)

Elvis Meets Nixon (And Inspires A Comedy Film) A new comedy sheds light on the mysterious meeting between a president and the King. ...