20 SHOCKING, AMAZING AND STAGGERINGLY UNBELIEVABLE FACTS ABOUT ELVIS!

1. Sometime during the long hot summer, which feels like a memory reaching back thousands of years to a prehistoric epoch but was in fact only four months ago, we wrote and performed a few little sketches as a warm up act for a close friend and colleague, the brilliant stand up, writer, and actor Becky Brunning. 

 Becky Brunning.com

2. After the show, one of us (probably Naomi) wrote the words “Who Killed Elvis?” on a slip of paper.  And underneath, she (probably) wrote:  “Wholemeal bread, red peppers, Glock 18 polymer-framed short recoil-operated locked-breech semi-automatic pistol, phone mum”.

3.  Then we forgot all about it. 

4. Elvis Presley was born on January 8^th 1935, the same day as my dad, Terry.

5.  My mum loved Elvis. I suspect she married my dad because he bore a passing resemblance to Elvis (well, he had a black quiff), and because she was never realistically going to marry Elvis, not least because Elvis was already married and had no earthly idea who my mum was.

6. We started to brainstorm ideas for a show titled Who Killed Elvis?, and our best idea was to have twenty or thirty Elvises being hunted down through the mean streets of Sea Mills.  The Elvises would have no money or food or water or bedding, they’d be dressed in full Elvis gear, and they could only ever say ‘Uh-huh’.  The hunting party would be on horseback, armed with crossbows, and each Elvis pelt would score 10m points.

7. Sea Mills is a suburb of the English port city of Bristol. It is situated some 3.5 miles north-west of the city centre, towards the seaward end of the Avon Gorge, lying between the former villages of Shirehampton to the west, Westbury to the north and Stoke Bishop to the east, at the mouth of the River Trym where it joins the River Avon. Sea Mills forms part of the city ward of Kingsweston, and is noted for its brass band, the Sea Mills Big Ass Brass Band, which plays the same song - and only ever the same song - over and over and over and over again, every single day of the year, from noon till midnight.  The song is Hot Chocolate’s You Sexy Thing. 

8. Elvis had his first hit in 1954 with That’s Alright. His last number one hit, before his ‘death’, was Way Down, in 1977.  As my friend and music expert Jeremy notes, Elvis’s back catalogue is a complete mess. Does anybody really know what’s a studio album, what’s a film soundtrack, what’s a collection of songs?  Doubtful - there are so many tatty compilations.  Nobody has taken any care with Elvis’s ouvre.  Jeremy rants entertainingly on the subject of tatty Elvis merchandising, and the quagmire of Elvis’s discography, on an episode of -- shameless self promotion ahoy! -- our regular podcast, Vince & Jeremy’s Overrated Podcast.

9. https://overratedpodcast.blogspot.com/

10. We started writing Who Killed Elvis? one Monday night in a swanky pub with too many candles.  The writing sessions usually began with Naomi explaining to me how she had sustained her latest injury, and me explaining to Naomi why all four Teletubbies should be Elvis’s killers, and that we should have them escape and then chased by a super posse made up of The Clangers, Bagpuss, Playschool dolls, and Pingu.  Then Naomi would stare me down, and come up with something much better, and I would give in.  But only one of us went home without an injury.  And that was me.

 11. Elvis was locked into a disastrous contract and was forced to star in 31 low budget films, most of them completely dreadful. He played a variety of musicians, soldiers, Native Americans, convicts, twins, handymen, racing car drivers, cowboys, life guards, and boxers, with names like (no kidding) Tulsa Maclean, Lonnie Beal, and Toby Kwimper. His best film is widely considered to be the genuinely excellent Jailhouse Rock (1957); his worst, according to Elvis himself, is Clambake (1967), in which he plays a ski instructor who (for complicated reasons) is really an Oil Baron.

12. During the first readthrough of Who Killed Elvis? we realised we’d forgotten to write the second act.  Oops!  We bluffed and told the cast that we’d written a brilliant second act, but a hound dog had eaten it. The cast stared at us with contempt and suspicion. But then, they always do.

13. Sea Mills is nowhere near a sea, and doesn’t have a mill of any kind.

14. Sourcing free rehearsal space proved a challenge. We used a lot of back rooms in pubs, which attracted some attention, despite our efforts to barricade the doors to keep out the drunk, the curious, and the seriously confused. There was a serious wobble with our venue, meaning that a few days before the show we were in a state of panic-stricken horror.  We turned up at the venue for our dress rehearsal, only to find out that another event was taking place there.  It was cold, raining, and desperate out there on the streets, phoning around in a squeaky voice, lugging bags of props and costumes and biscuits - but other people have genuine problems which we bore in mind as we gratefully made our way into the warmth and privacy of The Room Above, who had so kindly lent us their space at the eleventh hour.

15.  https://www.theroomabove.com/

  

16. The cast for our test show was brilliant.  Dan Adams, Janet Adams, Jake Bickford (a sensational Elvis!), Lewis Cook (who also wrote a bit for us), Rosie Mullaney,  Tyler O’Hagan, and Lucy Roper -- all very talented, super helpful, and sexy and excellent.  They helped with the script, they made costumes, they never complained, and they helped us blackmail several prominent local councilpersons.

17. We raised £180 for Cancer Research UK.  Thank you to everyone who came to see our test performance, and who gave so generously to this brilliant charity, which is close to our hearts.  My mum died of cancer in 1997.  My dad died of cancer in 2004. I think they would have very much enjoyed Who Killed Elvis?, particularly the gag about werewolf nuns.

18. And now a few words from Naomi: A few weird facts about Vince, myself and Elvis. Vince and I first met at an Elvis convention. We both have Elvis pyjamas. We regularly attend Elvis dance classes. We both have Elvis onesies. Both of our middle names are Elvis. We both have Elvis tattoos. Our passwords to everything are ‘Elvis’ or ‘Elvis is Alive’ or when we’ve had a bad day, ‘Why Can’t Elvis be Alive’. And lastly, both our names spelt backwards spells Elvis. Weird.  So, yeah, Elvis...he’s okay.    

19. We’ll be staging a run of Who Killed Elvis? in the spring of 2019.

20. Elvis (supposedly) died on August 16^th 1977. We think of him as our spirit animal (well, Elvis and a rabbit), and we picture him happy and settled somewhere, dressed in his white jumpsuit, scoffing mince pies and drinking sherry, and wishing us all a very merry Christmas, and a happy New Year - uh-huh!

Podcast Episode 1: Pants

We've recorded a podcast!  Yes, we're jumping on the bandwagon, following in the footsteps of better, funnier, sexier and much less lazy people than us, and we've taken the plunge into the realm of talking nonsense into a microphone while Naomi gets pissed.

The Little Epic Little Podcast

Episode 1: Pants

Recorded in Naomi’s back garden on a warm Monday night.  Strange and alarming things were happening in a nearby garden.  

We talk about superstitions, Elvis, sponsorship deals, pants, and we do very bad impressions of robots.  We also talk about where we are in the process of staging a comedy show in September.  And Naomi drinks some wine as Vince gets a phonecall.

Clip from Barbara & Jeffrey by Naomi Carter.  Starring John Lomas and Naomi Carter, directed by John Lomas.

Theme music: ‘Retro’ - Royalty Free.

Duration: 30 mins.

In the Planning

 Yes, it's been a while.  And yes, we missed you.

Our Indiegogo Campaign to fund a Workshop of the play

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/little-epic-comedy-play-workshop-new/x/17456291#/

• We want to workshop key moments from our latest play, an ambitious two act comedy with four interlinked stories and complicated slapstick sequences.
• Workshopping new writing is vital to the process because without seeing what the play looks like on its feet - with actors performing key moments - we have no real idea of what we've written, or how it can be staged.  We need to see bits of our play to understand it.  And perhaps to understand ourselves.  I mean, we wrote this thing.  What does it say aqbout us?  We urgently need to know.  Our Therapy depends on it. 
• Plus, filming/photographing the workshop is part of our pledge to share with the public every part of the process of writing and staging a play.

What We Need & What You Get

• We need £500 to pay actors, hire a space, feed our cast and film the workshop.  We have a cast of twelve, but for the workshop we'll need only seven or eight actors (there will be some doubling-up of roles).  We need these actors for two days - we're looking at a weekend in November - and we'll need to pay them for their time and feed them while they do what they do so brilliantly. We'll be looking to hire a space in central Bristol (at £50 per day), and we'll record everything on camera, including the tantrums that inevitably erupt when we run out of biscuits.
• We have unique perks to offer our backers!  We could have been lazy and just had a load of cheap mugs and t-shirts printed with the Little Epic logo, but we've gone that extra mile for you and we're creating unique items! (Plus, we couldn't get cheap mugs and t-shirts printed with the Little Epic logo). From sending you insulting letters, to singing songs about you, painting your portraits and remaking your favourite movies, we've got a personalised perks package tailored to our backers - you won't want to miss out!
• If we don't reach full funding, we'll film ourselves crying.  But we were going to do that anyway (crying with tears of joy and relief), so you might as well give us the full funding.  If we don't get it all, we'll put whatever we have reached towards the workshop, fulfil the pledges, and we'll look to other means of reaching the full amount. 

Process of Elimination

Monday.

14:00 (ish)

I finish the work I had to do, send it off via email, then I lean back in my chair stretching and yawning.  If I was a character in a film or a TV series I’d do that thing where I’d rub my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose, or take off my glasses.  But I’m not a character in a film or in a TV series (that I know of) and I don’t wear glasses.  I think I should wear glasses.  I think I might look sexy in glasses, like a hot and interesting Economics Lecturer who is perhaps hiding something from his past.

This is how it feels to be lonely

Wrestling with the Devil

Hot on the heels of the first heatwave, a second blistering warm front engulfed Bristol over the weekend and my cats and kittens gathered in the living room to meow and mewl their displeasure.  I sympathised with the little fellows, but I am not a God (I don’t think) and I have no control over global atmospheric pressure systems.  I patiently explained this to the grumpy felines, using diagrams, flip charts, and a squeaky toy mouse, and then I tried to leave to get on with my day.  But the militant cat contingent had sneakily locked the door (or it had got stuck again – I’m open to all explanations) and I was stuck in there for hours, watching the tennis and printing off copies of the script.  The script is 136 pages.  I needed to print at least five copies.  It was a fierce battle between me and my Little Epic Theatre needs and my temperamental, aging HP Photosmart All-in-One Printer. That was Saturday.  I emerged on Sunday morning covered in cat scratches and ink, and with roughly 700 sheets of ripped and crumpled paper, printed on at all angles and colours with random bits of text from the script.  I have no idea who won the tennis.

My state-of-the-art printer.

A few weeks earlier Naomi and I had posted on Theatre Bristol a call out for actors to come along to the read through.  Well, first we had bulk emailed just about every actor we know, but just about every single one of them said they were busy rehearsing for their shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, which is nice for them but a bit inconsiderate for us.  Fine, we wrote back, we’ll make do without you.  Fine, they replied, you do that.  We will, we responded.  Good, they said.  Fine, we said.  Okay then, they said.  I think they just wanted to have the last word.  A few excellent actors were available and they came along and they were much much much much much better than the selfish actors who selfishly couldn’t make it for selfish reasons.  We have a Byzantine complicated arrangement with the Cross Hands pub in Fishponds to use their rather amazing upstairs room for readthroughs and rehearsals (and our debut performances) but we found out on the Friday that we couldn’t use the room until an hour later than we’d told everybody to assemble because the room was being used by amateur wrestlers and/or Satanists.  Hey, everybody’s got to have a hobby.  I fired off a quick email to let everyone know the time change because I’m so on top of things and I have now finally mastered using the email app on my Windows phone… which is surely one for the plus column on the “Is Vince a Living Deity?” list.  Unfortunately, half the people didn’t receive the email because I’m rubbish at this kind of thing, and they got there an hour early and they sat in the baking sun, cursing my name.  I think some of them may have wandered upstairs to watch the Satanist wrestling match.  I think some of them may have actually joined in.

Two young people were in the room when I finally got there, looking rugged and intelligent, struggling to carry 700 sheets of crumpled script and a variety box of biscuits.  These young actors had been there since 2pm, and they had responded to the Theatre Bristol advert that we’d completely forgotten about.  Oops. The actors are named Owen and Sam and they are terrific.  Owen found that he didn’t have page four of the script (I’ve just looked, and he definitely needed page four, which is one of the best pages of the script), and that he could barely read the printing on many of the other pages.  Sorry, Owen.  Sam and Owen left after reading Scene Three, which they assured us was no judgement on the play.  They appeared out of nowhere and then they left suddenly, like brilliant comets blazing through the dark skies. I like to imagine they do this often, turning up out of the blue at random script reads across the lands.  Phantom actors who haunt hot rooms.  Perhaps they had been conjured up by the wrestling Satanists.

The script read went well, with lots of laughter.  We were lucky to have a talented group of actors including Jasmine, Pameli, Dan (invaluable as always), Janet and Yvette who had popped in from Canada.  We timed the read through - It came in at two hours twenty-six minutes.  That’s longer than The Godfather. And I can’t sit through The Godfather in one go without needing spaghetti.  We need to cut, said a worried looking Naomi.  Yeah, I said, but let’s give that job to a director who can look at the material dispassionately – we’re too close to it.  Every single director in the room loudly and firmly disagreed with me, saying that was a terrible idea – we have to cut the script by at least twenty-six minutes, and then give it to a director.  Everybody stared at me.  I’ll get my coat, I said, and left.  I fancied some spaghetti.