Kevin Spacey and Michael Shannon on 'Elvis & Nixon' — and Lex Luthor vs. Zod
Spacey’s Nixon makes a strong point for Shannon’s Elvis in ‘Elvis & Nixon’ (Photo: Bleecker Street)
Forget Batman v Superman: 2016’s most surprising confrontation between larger-than-life personalities takes place in Elvis & Nixon, when the Elvis “The King” Presley (Michael Shannon) comes face-to-face with Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon (Kevin Spacey). The movie opens in theaters Friday.
What lends their encounter extra significance is the fact that both actors have previously battled the Man of Steel. Spacey took on Brandon Routh’s Superman as Lex Luthor in 2006’s Superman Returns, while Shannon’s General Zod and Henry Cavill’s Last Son of Krypton reduced Metropolis to a pile of rubble in 2013’s Man of Steel.
Zod prepares to wreak more havoc in ‘Man of Steel’ (Photo: Warner Bros./Everett Collection)
Despite this shared history, the actors don’t profess a strong opinion about which of them was the more effective nemesis for Superman. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say you probably haven’t seen Man of Steel,” Shannon jokingly told Yahoo Movies. True, Zod wins hands down if the villains are only being graded on a “sheer destruction” scale. On the other hand, Luthor survives to fight another day at the end of Superman Returns, a claim that Zod can’t make. (Though it’s worth noting that in Batman v Superman, Zod is resurrected by Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex, who triggers the evil Kryptonian’s transformation into the Superman-killing monster, Doomsday.) But Shannon’s got an answer for that, too: “Survival is overrated.”
The actors’ comic-book-movie pasts make them ideal for Elvis & Nixon, which could be described as a comic-book version of history. Directed by Liza Johnson, the film takes its inspiration from a famous photo commemorating the duo’s Dec. 21, 1970 meeting in the Oval Office. Apart from that picture, which is officially the most-requested photo housed in the U.S. National Archives, little is known about what the singer and the president discussed as their conversation was not recorded. (Nixon didn’t install the taping system that eventually contributed to his undoing until 1971.)
Luthor + Kryptonite = Deadly Combination in ‘Superman Returns’ (Warner Bros./Everett Collection)
The lack of any hard information about Elvis and Nixon’s real-world encounter awards screenwriters Joey Sagal, Hanala Sagal, and Cary Elwes — yes, that Cary Elwes — the opportunity to imagine their own version of what went down when the title characters were alone in the Oval Office. “It’s fun to exercise your imagination,” Shannon says. “There can be a lot of different versions of this meeting, and I like how this version accentuates the vulnerability of these men and highlights how they were searching for some kind of understanding [of each other].”
Spacey echoes his co-star’s interest in exploring the private side of two historical figures with firmly entrenched public images. “Neither of us were interested in doing a caricature or imitation,” the Oscar-winning actor explains. “Everything we’re doing in the movie is quite private, so I watched a lot of home movies of Nixon and listened to the conversations that were taped in later years at the White House. What I learned was that Richard Nixon swore more than anyone I’d ever heard in my life!”
Shannon, meanwhile, plumbed the depths of Elvis’s private mind by speaking extensively with his childhood friend and longtime colleague Jerry Schilling (played in the film by Alex Pettyfer), as well as diving into some of the King’s favorite books, which included a few surprising titles. “One of his favorites was Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, which I had never read. It was interesting to read that book while also thinking about Elvis reading that book. I guess he kind of identified with it.”
Watch the ‘Elvis & Nixon’ trailer:
Shannon also immersed himself in Presley’s discography and filmography, watching and re-watching concert films like 1970’s That’s The Way It Is as well as the 31 features Presley made between 1956 and 1969. The actor’s favorite? King Creole, the 1958 film where Elvis plays a New Orleans singer who crosses paths with a French Quarter gangster. But don’t ever force Shannon to watch Viva Las Vegas again, even with the presence of Ann-Margret at her most glamorous. “She’s fetching, no doubt about it. But I can’t watch that movie until the end — it slowly drives me insane.” The piece of footage that Spacey reviewed the most often was his own screen test to play Richard Nixon in Ron Howard’s 2008 Frost/Nixon. “I should point out that’s a movie I didn’t get,” he says, with a chuckle. (Frank Langella wound up winning the role and, later, an Oscar nomination.) “So it was helpful for me to look at that screen test and think, ‘Well, I won’t be doing that.’”
