Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Reinventing Elvis: The ‘68 Comeback’ on Paramount+, A Documentary About The TV Special That Brought New Life To The King Of Rock And Roll (2024)

Reinventing Elvis: The ‘68 Comeback (now streaming on Paramount+) revisits the legendary television special that was designed and built to make The King relevant again. Singer Presents…Elvis, colloquially known as The ‘68 Comeback special, was produced and directed by Steve Binder, and originally aired on NBC in December 1968 to record-breaking reception by viewing audiences. Binder is interviewed extensively in Reinventing Elvis: The ‘68 Comeback; also appearing are members of the show’s supporting cast and its studio audience, authors and writers to add Presley context, historian David Brinkley on the political and social climate of America in the 1960s, and Darius Rucker and Maffio with the point of view of musicians on Elvis’s career and enduring legacy.

REINVENTING ELVIS: THE ’68 COMEBACK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: In 1968, Elvis Presley was 33, and coming around to the realization that The King was washed up. He was a star from the second “Heartbreak Hotel” hit number one in 1956, representing a synthesis of R&B produced by Black musicians with Gospel singing traditions and the rhythms of country and western music, all of it wrapped up in a distinctive style of performance that drove young fans of the burgeoning rock ‘n’ roll sound wild. But with a stint in the US Army, and a turn toward Hollywood with a string of sometimes decent, but increasingly terrible movies, Elvis eventually drifted away from making records and performing live. By the late sixties, he needed a new showcase, a means of displaying for his fans and the world at large that he still had it as a rock star. And a television producer and director named Steve Binder was hired to help Elvis resurrect his once great career.

“This was having Elvis walk out there cold after not performing for years,” Binder says in Reinventing Elvis: The ‘68 Comeback, and there was pushback from the singer and pressure from his people, particularly in the form of longtime manager Colonel Tom Parker. (“The Villain” is splashed in red across Parker’s visage here, in case there were any questions.) Elvis was ready for the special, but also very nervous, and Binder proved to be the right guy at the right time to not only defuse “the bully” Parker, but inspire a kinship with Elvis that helped his best emerge. And when he appeared on the special’s intimate stage in a black leather suit, guitar in hand and flanked by his regular outfit in guitarist Scotty Moore and drummer DJ Fontana, Elvis became Elvis again right before everyone’s very eyes.

Like Parker, Elvis understood the marketing portion of this undertaking. But on a deeper level, he recognized the ‘68 Comeback special as a chance “to save his own soul,” as author Alanna Nash puts it in Reinventing Elvis. And while the hour-long TV event presented the singer in various musical segments, some tinged with his roots in gospel and rockabilly, others leaning on his Hollywood-honed comedy chops and even the martial arts, it was the live sequences before audiences that helped refuel Elvis Presley’s flair for fiery performance. “We got the first MTV Unplugged,” says an original ‘68 Comeback audience member in an interview. “It was astonishing to be 10 to 12 feet away from Elvis.” And with Binder’s insistence on a racially diverse cast and exclusion of the staid material preferred by the Colonel, the special infused new relevance into Elvis’s career and cultural standing in a time when America was hurting from political violence, racial strife, civic unrest, and the war in Vietnam.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Well, somewhere, Austin Butler is probably still doing the Elvis voice. And like Reinventing Elvis, Baz Luhrmann’s Butler-starring 2022 Elvis biopic presented Colonel Tom Parker completely and totally as the big bad. In 1969, a year after Elvis’s comeback special aired, The Beatles entered a studio to try and recapture a bit of their own magic. And Get Back, Peter Jackson’s fascinating three-part documentary from 2021, is at its most revealing whenever the Fab Four are captured in off-the-cuff, unrehearsed moments. In Get Back, there is often the sense of eavesdropping on superstars, which is exactly what the improvised performance sequences in ‘68 Comeback showcase.

Performance Worth Watching: “Integration on television was not fully realized,” says Emmy-winning choreographer and ‘68 Comeback dancer Anita Mann of the era. “And Steve Binder, in my opinion, whether it started with the T.A.M.I. Show in ‘64 or the NAACP special” – productions that featured and promoted diversity, and in part got Binder the Elvis job – “and the ‘68 Comeback special obviously, I think that Steve Binder sees the world as one color. He really pushed the envelope.”

Memorable Dialogue: Even during its writing and preproduction, Binder says his goal for the Elvis special was clear. “I wanted to get back to the raw, the wild. The guy who was chased by the vice squad wherever he appeared, for fear that he would destroy the youth of America.”

Sex and Skin: In the ‘68 Comeback special, the sex appeal that had always been integral to Elvis Presley’s mystique was captured and presented in different ways. A “bordello” sequence replete with women in revealing costumes interacting with the star was shot, but originally cut from the broadcast for being too risque. And during the improvisational segments that featured Elvis before a live audience, the singer himself made light of the censors and establishment squares who’d taken to filming his supposedly salacious dance moves for submission to the FBI. These were the people who wanted to prosecute his pelvis for deviance, and Elvis just had to laugh at that.

Our Take: Encased in thick black leather from head to toe – check. A deep V T to reveal his bare chest – check. A camera in close-up, capturing the sweat beading up on his brow beneath a shock of black hair – check. And Elvis Presley taking scintillating lead runs on his guitar, cutting up the crowd with jokes, and cozying up to audiences to croon a ballad from the front row – check, check, and check. Singer Presents…Elvis – otherwise known forever as his ‘68 Comeback – is an incredible document of both performance and television production, extremely bold for its time, that did everything it set out to do for its subject. It remains as a vivid window into his soul, and with Reinventing Elvis: The ‘68 Comeback, we get a chance to see how it all came about. Elvis isn’t telling this story, obviously – nine years after it aired, he’d be dead at the age of 42 – but the insights of Steve Binder as its producer and director are key to understanding how it was realized, and Reinventing Elvis also does a good job of contextualizing the special, not only through the prism of Elvis’s career, but as a piece of media that incorporated and revealed the America of its time. This doc, though a bit padded at nearly two hours in length, would seem to play best as a companion piece to the special it explores, which these days is available to rent from Prime Video.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Reinventing Elvis: The ‘68 Comeback adds valuable perspective to the same revisionism of Presley’s legacy that Baz Luhrmann’s recent biopic of The King explored. It also benefits from direct access to the creators of and participants in Elvis’s iconic national TV comeback, and features the singer in some truly incredible moments of performance.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter:@glennganges