'Elvis & Nixon': Odd period piece set in odd 1970s

One of the odder footnotes in presidential history - the Dec. 21, 1970, Oval Office meeting between Richard Milhous Nixon, headed for infamy, and Elvis Aron Presley, headed for a host of infirmities and a premature demise - has been turned into an odd, diverting footnote of a film.

Elvis & Nixon, starring Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey and directed by Liza Johnson (from a screenplay by Joey and Hanala Sagal, and Cary Elwes of Princess Bride fame), goes to great and often amusing lengths to conjure up the conversation that took place in the early afternoon of that Monday in Washington.

Nixon had yet to order the installation of the recording devices that would ultimately prove his undoing, but this much is known: At 7:30 a.m., Presley hand-delivered a letter to the guards at the northwest White House entrance, asking to see the president.

Written on American Airlines stationery in a scrawl that would not have won any penmanship prizes back in Presley's Memphis high school, the missive is a strange and wondrous document (you can read it in its entirety on the National Archives website) in which he requests to be made a "federal agent at large" so he can go undercover and do his utmost to combat "the drug culture, the hippie elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc.," that are ruining the country he loves.

That the letter got to Nixon that morning, and that the commander in chief was persuaded to meet the King that very day is remarkable. Elvis & Nixon spends almost its first hour tracing the chain of events that led to the meeting - and to the famous Elvis/Nixon photograph that came of it. Colin Hanks is Egil Krogh, the agog White House aide who set the confab in motion. Evan Peters is Dwight Chapin, a fellow Nixon facilitator. Tate Donovan has a few gruff moments as White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman.

In the Presley camp, there is longtime buddy Jerry Schilling (Alex Pettyfer), who is summoned by "E" and expected to drop everything to set up the tête-à-tête. Another member of Elvis' team, Sonny West (Johnny Knoxville), is also on hand.

Blending facts, anecdotes, and no little conjecture, Elvis & Nixon finally finds the two American icons face to face, sharing M&M's and Dr Peppers.

For his part, Spacey gets down pat the awkward physicality, the wary glances, and the nervous rhythms of Nixon's speech. But Spacey's accomplished mimicry only serves to underscore Shannon's lack of accomplishment. The brooding, skittery-eyed actor has the sideburns and the bling (monogrammed gold sunglasses, a belt buckle the size of Nevada), and when he does the Elvis karate stance, with those whooshy hand chops, it kind of works.

But Shannon neither looks like Presley nor sounds like Presley nor projects the down-home-by-way-of-Vegas charm. There's a funny scene in the waiting area of an airport terminal with a couple of Elvis impersonators approaching the real deal, thinking he's just another - lesser - one of them. Alas, they're kind of right.

With its Pop Art opening credits and a soundtrack of vintage (non-Elvis) R&B hits, Elvis & Nixon offers a kind of faux time-capsule view of the era, when the establishment and the counterculture were at violent odds, and when a celebrity with a record career, a movie career, and a fetish for guns and badges could just show up at the White House, unannounced.

Nowadays, there would be an army of publicists paving the way. Kind of quaint.

srea@phillynews.com

215-854-5629 @Steven_Rea

Elvis & Nixon
Directed by Liza Johnson. With Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey. Distributed by Bleecker Street.
Running time: 1 hour, 26 mins.
Parent's guide: R (profanity, adult themes).
Playing at: Area theaters.