But here in Spain, not long ago, I did buy the record that went with it, the original soundtrack, which happened to catch my eye as I was looking for something by Previn. I got it because it made me laugh and brought back memories I’d once decided I would rather forget, just as everyone else in the crew had undoubtedly decided to forget them, and tried hard to forget them, and succeeded: the liner notes to the record once again trot out the old lie that has now been consecrated, the false history. The notes say that Presley never set foot in Acapulco during the making of the film, that all his scenes were shot at the Paramount Studios in Los Angeles to spare him the trouble and the trip, while a second unit crew went to Mexico to shoot landscape stills and footage of locals in the streets for use as backgrounds, Presley outlined against the sea and the beach, against the streets as he rides a bicycle with a boy perched on the handlebars, against the cliffs of La Perla, in front of the hotel where his character worked or wanted to work; he played a traumatized former trapeze artist named Mike Windgren, I always remember names, more than faces. The official version has prevailed, as happens with almost everything, but it is a highly doctored version, as official versions generally are, no matter who provides them, an individual or a government, the police or a movie studio. It’s true that all the footage with Presley that actually appears in the film — as it was first shown and in the video version that exists today — was shot in Hollywood, whenever Presley is on screen, and he’s hardly ever offscreen in the whole film. They were very careful not to keep or use a single shot with him in it that hadn’t been taken in the studios, not a single one that could have contradicted the official version given out by the producer and by señor Presley’s entourage. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t other footage which was cut, painstakingly and deliberately cut, in this case, and possibly fed to the flames or into the maw of a shredder, reduced to a celluloid pulp: not a trace must remain, not a millimeter, not a single frame, or that’s what I imagine. Because the truth is that Presley did go to Mexico on location, not for three weeks but for ten days, at the end of which he not only abandoned the country without saying goodbye to anyone, but decided he had never been there, never set foot there, not for ten days or five or even one, Mr. Presley hadn’t budged from California or Tennessee or Missouri or wherever it was, he hadn’t set foot in Acapulco or in Mexico itself and the person who’d been interviewed and seen by tourists and Acapulqueños — or whatever they’re called — during those days in February was simply one of his many doubles, who were as necessary or more necessary than ever for this production because Presley’s character— in order to get over the nasty shock of having dropped his brother from a trapeze, with the consequent shattering of his morale and his flying brother’s body (smashed to bits) — had to throw himself into the Pacific from the heights of the brutal cliffs of La Perla in the final or rather penultimate scene of Fun in Acapulco, a title on which no one had wasted any great mental energy. That was the official version of Presley’s sojourn in Mexico, or rather his lack of a sojourn; it’s still around, I see, which to some extent is understandable. Or perhaps it’s simpler than that, perhaps it’s just that there is never a way of erasing what’s been said, true or false, once it’s been said: accusations and inventions, slanders and stories and fabrications, disavowal is not enough, it doesn’t erase but adds; once an event has been recounted there will be a thousand contradictory and impossible versions long, long before the event is annihilated: denials and discrepancies coexist with what they refute or deny, they accumulate, add up, they never cancel anything out but only end up sanctioning it for as long as people go on talking, the only way to erase is to say nothing, and go on saying nothing for a very long time.
Thirty-three years have gone by since it happened and eighteen since señor Presley died, and he is dead, though the whole world still knows and listens to and misses him. And it’s the truth that I knew him in the flesh and we were in Acapulco, absolutely, he was there and I was there, and in Mexico City, where we flew more often than we should have in his private plane, trips that took hours, at ungodly hours of the night, he was there and I was there, though I was there longer, far too long, or so it seemed to me, a chase lasts like no other kind of time because every second counts, one, two and three and four, they haven’t caught me yet, they haven’t butchered me yet, here I am and I’m breathing, one, two and three and four.
Yes: we were there, we were all there, the film’s entire crew and señor Presley’s entire retinue, which was far more extensive, he traveled — well, “travel” may be an exaggeration: he moved — with a legion at his back, a battalion of more or less indispensable parasites, each with his own function or without any very precise function at all, lawyers, managers, make-up artists, musicians, hairstylists, vocal accompanists — the invariable Jordanaires — secretaries, trainers, sparring partners — his nostalgia for boxing — agents, image consultants, costume designers and a seamstress, sound technicians, drivers, electricians, pilots, financial expediters, publicists, promoters, press people, official and unofficial spokesmen, the president of his national fan club on an authorized inspection or delivering a report, and of course bodyguards, choreographers, a diction coach, mixing engineers, a teacher of facial and gestural expression (who wasn’t able to do much), occasional doctors and nurses and an around-the-clock personal pharmacist with an implausible arsenal of remedies, I never saw such a medicine chest. Each, they claimed, was answerable to certain others in an organized hierarchy, but it was not at all easy to know who answered to whom nor how many divisions and subdivisions there were, how many departments and teams, you would have needed to draw up a family tree or that other thing, I mean a flow chart. There were individuals whom no one was supervising at all closely — everyone thought they were taking orders from someone else — people who came and went and prowled and milled around without anyone ever knowing exactly what their mission might be, though it was taken for granted that they had a mission, back then no one was very suspicious, Kennedy hadn’t been assassinated yet. All of them had the initials “EP” embroidered on their jackets, shirts, tee-shirts, overalls or blouses, in blue, red, or white, depending on the color of the garment, and any overeager bystander who asked his mother to do a little embroidering for him could have passed himself off as a member of the crew without further difficulty. No one asked questions back then, there were too many of us for everyone to know everyone else, and I think the only person who tried to keep an eye on things a little and supervise the whole group was Colonel Tom Parker, Presley’s discoverer, or tutor or godfather or something like that, they told me (no one was particularly well-informed about anything), and whose name appeared in the credits of all Presley’s films as “Technical Adviser,” a vague title if ever there was one. His appearance was quite distinguished and severe and even somewhat mysterious in that motley setting; he was always well dressed and wearing a tie, his jaw set tight as if he never relaxed, his teeth clenched as if he ground them in his sleep, and he spoke very softly but very sternly right in the face of the person he was addressing, making sure his listener was the only person who heard him even if he were speaking in a room full of people, who were often whiling the time away in unbridled gossip. I’m not sure where the title of Colonel came from, whether he really had been in the army or if it was just a whim and he called himself Colonel in nominal fulfilment of some truncated aspiration. But if so, then what was to prevent him from calling himself General? His lean figure and carefully combed gray hair inspired respect and even apprehension in most people, so much so that when his presence made itself felt on the set or in an office or a room the place would begin to empty out, imperceptibly but rapidly, as if he were a man of ill omen, as if no one wanted to be exposed for long to his Nordic eye, a translucent eye, difficult to meet head-on. Though he wore civilian clothing and his demeanor was more senatorial than military, everyone, including Mr. Presley, always called him Colonel.