On December 21, 1971, Elvis Presley just showed up at the White House and asked for an emergency meeting with the President of the United States, Richard Nixon. Elvis claimed it was a matter of national security, as he told people he wanted to help fight the anti-American counterculture that had sprung up around the use of drugs in America as well as an unhealthy appreciation of the music of The Beatles. Nixon acquiesced, and twq of the most well known men of their day had a brief meeting about somehow working together. This meeting has been fictionalized and reimagined through the new film “Elvis & Nixon,” which paints an interesting portrait of a meeting very few people were privy to at the time.
Because how the hell could the renown “King of Rock and Roll” think he could help the United Stated government and why would he even want to do so in the first place? In this movie, Elvis has become frustrated with the state of his country and he sees people protesting on the streets and he thinks they are being anti-American, and he wants to help show the youth that it is important to have respect for their country and their government. And his decision to become a “Federal Agent-at-Large” plays into this, as he claims he can infiltrate underground communist groups, somehow undetected, and then he can help bust drug dealers and propagandists. All he needed, he felt, was a Federal badge from the Department of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs to make him official. And he was quite insistent on this.
