Actor Kevin Spacey has been chosen to portray President Richard Nixon in an upcoming film called Elvis & Nixon about the pair’s famous meeting at the White House in which Elvis asked the president to make him an undercover federal agent.
Michael Shannon has been signed to play Elvis opposite Spacey in the drama, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“It’s almost hard to fathom this story, which evolved in the Oval Office between these two extraordinary men… It’s almost too good to be true,” said Alex Walton of Bloom, the production company that is introducing the project to foreign buyers at the American Film Market (AFM).
Presley had famously sent a hand-written letter to Nixon while aboard an American Airlines flight in which he volunteered to enlist his services to America to help combat “the drug culture, the hippie elements, the SDS [Students for Democratic Society], Black Panthers, etc.”
Elvis noted that these groups “do not consider me as their enemy or as they call it the establishment,” suggesting that his world-wide acclaim as a rock star cut across political barriers. He then expressed his love for the establishment, writing “I call it America and I love it.”
Presley was subsequently made an Honorary Federal Agent-at-Large.
In an interview with Hot Press Magazine last year, Spacey said he worked on his first presidential campaign in 1976 for then-presidential nominee Jimmy Carter, who went on to become the nation’s 39th president until he was defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Spacey also said during the interview that “President Obama will go down as having passed some of the most historic bills in the history of this country. That despite constant knee-jerk opposition from the Republicans. A lot of people don’t realize how much he’s done in the most difficult of circumstances.”
Follow Adelle on Twitter @AdelleNaz
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.