ELVIS W ’68 COMEBACK SPECIA
Filmmaker Steve Binder has participated in the creation of some of the more intriguing, indelible, wonderful and, yes, goofy pop-culture artifacts of the past half-century-plus.
And that’s before you even mention Elvis. Binder was the director of “The T.A.M.I. Show” (1964), a concert film that celebrated America’s pop-rock diversity with a still unequaled lineup of talent: James Brown, Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys, Lesley Gore, Marvin Gaye, the Rolling Stones, and many more.
He helmed a 1968 NBC-TV special with British singer Petula Clark, simply titled “Petula,” that earned big ratings but caused sponsor palpitations when it broke a network television color barrier during a performance segment in which Clark, who is white, touched the arm of duet partner Harry Belafonte, who is black.
Infamously, he was the director of “The Star Wars Holiday Special,” a 1978 CBS cash-in so embarrassing that it remains suppressed by George Lucas, though it thrives as a bootleg. (Among its revelations: Chewbacca’s father and son — apparently as much Bowery Boy as Wookiee — are named “Itchy” and “Lumpy.”)
Less epochally, Binder directed “Don’t Bug the Mosquitoes,” an episode of “Gilligan’s Island” in which a moptopped quartet of rock-’n’-roll musicians — Bingo, Bango, Bongo and Irving, collectively known as the Mosquitoes — visit the castaways.
But it’s not Binder’s work with the Godfather of Soul, the Force or the Skipper that continues to be studied and celebrated with a zeal more often associated with the interpretation of a religious text.
No, what Binder is best-known for — the reason he was in Memphis this week, the reason he’s been dealing lately with publishers and motion picture distributors, the reason he’s been doing scads of media interviews and speaking to hundreds and hundreds of fans — is the fact that he was the director of “Elvis,” better known as the “‘68 Comeback Special,” the NBC-TV program that aired on Dec. 3, 1968, and restored the King’s rock-’n’roll crown after years of silly movies and often indifferent soundtrack recordings.
Although conceived for television in an era when many people still owned a black-andwhite set, the “‘68 Comeback Special” will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Monday on one of Memphis’ biggest screens, at the Malco Paradiso.
Presented by Fathom Events, which distributes “event” programming to cinemas, this remastered 50th-anniversary edition will be augmented with new interview footage with Binder and Priscilla Presley and is set to screen in more than 500 U.S. theaters.
Binder, 85, said the special’s longevity was not expected.
“When I did this show, we thought it was going to air that one time, and that’s it, then you move on to the next one,” he said. “There were no DVDs or anything like that at the time. It was a one-off, over and done.”
Instead, the highly-rated special —