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.