Quentin Tarantino Impersonates His Idol, Elvis Presley

Quentin Tarantino once told an interviewer (Howard Stern, if you must know) about the Elvis phase he went through during his late teenage years. “When I was about eighteen-years-old, I got waaaay into rockabilly music.” “I was like the second coming of Elvis Presley. I dyed my hair black. I wore it in a big ole pompadour.” And he put Elvis impersonation on his resume. In 1988, just a year after he shot his first film, My Best Friend’s Birthday (watch the surviving parts here), the still-unknown auteur landed a cameo appearance on an episode of The Golden Girls. He described the appearance in a 1994 interview with Playboy:

Well, it was kind of a high point because it was one of the few times that I actually got hired for a job. I was one of 12 Elvis impersonators, really just a glorified extra. For some reason they had us sing Don Ho’s Hawaiian Love Chant. All the other Elvis impersonators wore Vegas-style jumpsuits. But I wore my own clothes,because I was, like, the Sun Records Elvis. I was the hillbilly cat Elvis. I was the real Elvis; everyone else was Elvis after he sold out.

Tarantino appears in the back row, dead center.

tarantino as elvis
via Miramax

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