"i) Rather than a biopic, I see it as a canvas, hugely ambitious, but I want to cover his whole life, many aspects of which will be truly surprising. I am now listening to a lot of Elvis and his range astounds me, from Country and Western to rock, to soul and pop. That's probably the most misunderstood thing about him as a vocal artist. There was nothing he couldn't sing.ii) When I look at musical biography, it’s not really about the life, I’m not about lionising Elvis. I just saw him as the best canvas on which to explore America in the modern age, the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.” The engine of that drama, he says, is the relationship between an artist who spanned genres, eras and races, and the P.T. Barnum character of Colonel Tom Parker, the former circus carny who made and then ruined him.I saw this story of the Colonel and Elvis as a really great prism through which to explore the latter part of the 20th century. Elvis represents what happens when a kid lives in one of four designated white houses in a black community. Something new comes about, a fusion between country and African-American music, gospel and country-and-western music."