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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Quentin Taran­ti­no Tells You About The Actors & Direc­tors Who Pro­vid­ed the Inspi­ra­tion for “Reser­voir Dogs”

The Pow­er of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

625 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

 


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