Elvis De Luxe (1995)
Building on the success of Neurodancer and their earlier shows, Grapefruit started working on the next extravagant theatrical spectacle, “Elvis De Luxe”.
The story unfolds in outer space, following a group of Elvis impersonators from ex-Yugoslavia travelling to a distant planet where an Elvis-impersonator competition is to take place. The scene was just a pair of interstellar yellow-cabs, vividly painted old fiats with their roofs cut off, standing on platforms that could be moved around in front of a big movie screen.
The screen provided the backdrop, and computer generated animations were projected on it to generate the illusion of space travel, landing on distant planets and even of a rather long sequence of speeding through a wormhole that ended with a little ‘space combat’ scene. The movies were supposed to be as reallistic as possible, to provide a contrast to bizarre humor happening in front of the screen.
For this show, I had to create for about 30 minutes of CGR, although truth to be told, more than two thirds of that were just a simple travelling starfield. All animations were done using 3D Studio 3.x. I picked out some of the favorite clips and stuck them together, here they are:
“Elvis De Luxe” was written and directed by Iztok Lovrič, and performed by theatrical group Grapefruit. The premiere was staged at GLEJ theatre.
I loved this show even better than “Neurodancer”, the Elvis impersonator characters were great and the dialogs were hilarious. I also recommend the soundtrack.