Wouldn`t it be wonderful if Elvis were really still alive, even if he`s fat, balding and broke in some backwater?
Can`t you just imagine him, sitting in some threadbare rooming house, watching all the hoopla that will surround the 15th anniversary of his death? That comes on Saturday and with it there`s sure to be TV news footage of the faithful flocking into Graceland and, undoubtedly, a magazine or tabloid cover story proclaiming, ”Elvis Lives!” Perhaps unexpectedly, the CBS news division has mustered some of its own forces in the pursuit of Elvis tales and trivia.
This week`s edition of ”48 Hours” (9 p.m. Wednesday, WBBM-Ch. 2) is a lightweight-especially in view of all the murder conspiracy claptrap that attends various anniversaries of that other icon, Marilyn Monroe-but nonetheless engaging look at Elvis mania.
Although they struggle mightily to remain sober and journalistic, the
”48 Hours” correspondents can`t help but display a bit of bemused incredulity as they wander the Elvis subculture.
The estimable Bill Geist is especially amusing-isn`t he always?-when crafting one of his typically clever pieces about the vast number of people making Las Vegas livings as Elvis impersonators. Noteworthy is a 6-year-old who has been playing Elvis professionally since he was 3.
Erin Moriarty will be seen trying to behave herself as she interviews a woman who claims that when she was a 35-year-old Atlanta bartender she engaged in a ”passionate love affair” with Elvis, even though he had been dead for a year.
The show, naturally, travels to such Elvis shrines as Tupelo, Miss., and the two-bedroom house there where he was born and through which 65,000 of the faithful traipse each year; to the Sun recording studios where he first cut a record; and, at greatest length, to Graceland.
The show does little to really dig into the Elvis phenomenon but makes an interesting stop at the editorial offices of the tabloid Weekly World News, keeper of the Elvis-is-alive flame.
The show also follows four Elvis fanatics as they travel from Denver to Memphis in conjunction with the announcement that the young Elvis will adorn the postage stamp.
”He`s the best thing that ever happened in this world,” says one of those women, failing to note that Elvis isn`t too bad either when it comes to raising supermarket tabloid sales or boosting television ratings.
– ”A Taste for Killing” (8 p.m. Wednesday, USA cable) is a solid and sordid thriller. It`s held together by a perfectly slimy performance by Michael Beihn as Bo Landry, a sociopath with homicidal tendencies. And, surprisingly, by sitcom star Jason Bateman as rich kid Blaine Stoddard III, who falls into Landry`s wicked web of murder and blackmail.
They meet as Stoddard and his boyhood friend Cary (Henry Thomas) begin their clout-gotten summer jobs aboard an offshore oil rig. Their boss, a brutish fellow named Elray, is forever giving them a hard time, and when he`s beaten in a poker game by Stoddard, Elray vows revenge.
He tries to take it when, later on shore, he encounters the boys outside a brothel. Instead he is beaten to death by Landry, who, vowing the boys to silence, sets in motion a devious plot to extract $50,000 from Stoddard.
The film`s ending is typically overwrought, and a romance between Cary and the only girl on the oil rig never really washes, but Beihn and Bateman make such tense, believable and creepy foes that the film has the taut energy of a good boxing bout.
– ”Real Sex 4” (premiering at 10 p.m. Thursday, HBO), the latest in the cable network`s continuing-if unintentional-series of efforts to liberate the sexual sensibilities of the television-watching nation, is a ”60 Minutes”-
like journey into five sexual subjects.
Annie Sprinkle, the porn star turned performance artist, is seen doing her thing and talking about the things she does. The cameras visit a German television game show in which striptease is the shtick. The attractive young ladies competing for the title of Miss Nude World America share some of their feelings and expose most of their physical attributes.
There is also a segment-profile of the woman who`s setting afire the phone sex lines in Manhattan. And if you want to know how dolphins can play a part in human sexuality, this is the show for you.
The ”Real Sex” series is frank and thoughtful and altogether a refreshingly honest oasis in a cable world that too often uses sex and nudity gratuitously and smirkingly.
