As I watched Anchor Me: The Don McGlashan Story the intimate, generous portrait of a man whose voice has quietly shaped the emotional weather of this country, I found myself asking a familiar question: who gets to tell the story when a life becomes public property? McGlashan, like all enduring artists, has been interpreted endlessly. Sung back to himself by crowds. Quoted. Claimed. Yet the film reminds us that authorship matters. That there is a difference between legacy and testimony. Between being spoken about and speaking for yourself.
That question of voice, of ownership, of narrative control followed me straight into the newly released teaser for EPiC. Because Elvis Presley, too, has lived for decades inside other people’s sentences.
Elvis Presley has never lacked witnesses.
There have been crowds and cameras, managers and myths. There have been voices eager to explain him – to crown him, to caution against him, to mourn him. Everyone, it seems, has had something to say about Elvis Presley: what he represented, what he became, what he lost along the way.
What he thought has always been harder to come by.
For decades, Elvis has existed as an idea more than a narrator of his own life. His story has been shaped, sold, and sanctified by others. The tragedy, the excess, the isolation – all carefully arranged into a familiar arc. A legend, yes. But rarely a conversation.
EPiC arrives as something quieter, and far more disruptive.
“There’s been a lot written and a lot said.
But never from my side of the story.”– Elvis Presley
This line, lifted from the newly released teaser, lands with a force that no amount of archival spectacle ever could. It reframes the entire project. EPiC is not another monument to Elvis Presley. It is an act of authorship.
The film draws on newly uncovered footage and audio from the late 1960s – a pivotal moment when Elvis returned to the stage to begin his legendary Las Vegas residency. For years, rumours of lost material have circulated among collectors and historians. What matters here, however, is not the rarity of the footage, but the intention behind its use.
Elvis is not being displayed.
He is being heard.
This isn’t nostalgia.
It’s authorship.
The Elvis between the myths
Late-60s Elvis is the most compelling Elvis.
This is a man no longer dazzled by his own ascent, nor entirely consumed by his decline. He is alert. Wary. Fully aware that the world has expectations he is expected to fulfill, night after night. The Vegas shows – often caricatured as gaudy excess – take on a different texture here. They are revealed as ritual. Discipline. Survival.
The same songs.
The same stage.
The same body, carrying the weight of repetition.
Within that repetition, EPiC finds a thinking artist. Elvis talks about performance, control, image. About the distance between the private man and the public demand. He does not posture. He does not plead. He simply explains.
Baz Luhrmann’s involvement is felt most powerfully in restraint. Where his 2022 feature Elvis exploded the myth outward – loud, operatic, intoxicating – EPiC turns the volume down. The camera lingers. The edit listens. The film allows silence to do its work.
Elvis doesn’t need another monument.
He needs the mic.
What emerges is not scandal or confession, but perspective. Elvis as a working artist, acutely conscious of the machinery surrounding him. Elvis as someone trying to locate himself inside a story already being written about him.
In an era obsessed with legacy – who controls it, who profits from it, who is flattened by it – EPiC feels unusually timely. It does not rewrite history. It restores balance. It gives the subject back his voice.
This is Elvis, not as symbol –
but as presence.
At The Capitol, where cinema is treated not as nostalgia but as a living conversation, EPiC belongs on the big screen. This is a film that demands scale, stillness, and attention. A film that asks us not to cheer or judge – but to listen.
Elvis has been watched for a lifetime.
Now, finally, he speaks.
– Roger Wyllie, View Mag