A New York-area research screening of Liza Johnson‘s Elvis & Nixon (Amazon/Bleecker Street, 2016) happens tonight. We’re all presuming that Kevin Spacey will deliver a better-than-decent Richard Nixon, and that Michael Shannon‘s Elvis…who knows? But the supporting cast looks great — Alex Pettyfer, Colin Hanks, Evan Peters, Johnny Knoxville, Sky Ferreira and Tracy Letts. Unless it’s a disaster I’m presuming Elvis & Nixon will have its first peek-out at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.
How many of us have visited the Oval Office, or even the West Wing of the White House? I’ll almost certainly never go there, but I’ve visited highly detailed, movie-set recreations of the Kennedy and Nixon Oval offices, and in a way they were almost cooler than the real thing.
It was 20 years and nine months ago that Oliver Stone and his publicist Stephen Rivers allowed me to pay a brief visit to the Nixon West Wing — Oval Office, cabinet room, hallways, various offices, etc. Production designer Victor Kempster had built the amazingly detailed set (including an outdoor portion with grass and bushes) on a massive Sony sound stage.
I was let in just after Stone and his cast (including Anthony Hopkins) and crew had finished filming. It was sometime around late February or early March of ’95. I wrote up my impressions for an L.A. Times Syndicate piece. Nixon opened on 12.20.95.