Everything That Made Me Cringe While Reading Elvis and Me

Or Why There Will Be No Elvis Music in Priscilla.

That Lana Del Rey look started in a clothes boutique in Las Vegas.

As A24 drops trailers, and critics drop raves, we eagerly await the arrival of Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla. The film is based on Elvis and Me, a memoir by Priscilla Presley, which documents the life of Priscilla’s relationship with Elvis, from their first meeting in West Germany in 1959 to his death in 1977.

It’s difficult to overstate how much he controlled Priscilla — she came to live with him at Graceland at 16, but they wouldn’t marry for 5 more years. During that time, he molded her into his “ideal woman” — a vision he shared openly with her, and conditioned her to become.

There’s something egregious on almost every page of Elvis and Me — from how painfully familiar his words and tactics are, to those moments when I thought: “uhhh… what did I just read?”

Here’s everything that made me cringe while reading Elvis and Me

1. Priscilla was 14 when she met Elvis. Worth restating.
2. Despite the ‘rebel’ image he projected, Elvis was exceptionally conservative. Holding a traditional view of relationships: the Man makes the moves.
3. Priscilla wasn’t allowed to speak: Any time she voiced her own opinions too strongly, “especially if they differed from his, he’d remind me that his was the stronger sex, and as a woman I had my place.” (Elvis really liked to remind her of this one.)
4. Priscilla wasn’t allowed to work: In a show of independence at Graceland, Priscilla found a part-time job modeling at a Memphis boutique. She writes, “when I told Elvis about my job, he said ‘You’re gonna have to give it up…It’s either me or a career, Baby. Because when I call you, you need to be there.”
5. Elvis insisted on fidelity — for the woman. Elvis would take many sexual partners in the coming years, yet he insisted that Priscilla remain chaste. “He constantly reminded me that his girl had to be completely constant.”
6. Elvis gaslit Priscilla about what she read in the papers. When she saw a news story reporting that Elvis was dating Nancy Sinatra, he dismissed her concerns: “Don’t believe everything you hear little girl. You’ll find people trying to stir up trouble, just to make you upset.” (Little girl.) When Priscilla did confront Elvis about his infidelity, he shut her down: “I want a woman who’s going to understand that things like this might just happen.” He gave me a hard, penetrating look “Are you going to be her — or not?”
7. When Priscilla was 16, she left her family home and moved into Graceland. Though she would have her own bedroom, she slept in Elvis’ bed every night. “His role with me was that of lover and father.”
8. Elvis reminded Priscilla of his authority regularly. He once threatened to send Priscilla back to her parents, and started packing her suitcase– only to pull back at the last moment and take a crying Priscillia in his arms and say: “Do you see that you need this? You need someone to take you right to this point and put you in your place.”
9. Elvis took hundreds of polaroid photos (nude and otherwise) of Priscilla. Although Elvis stopped short of sexual intercourse with Priscilla, that doesn’t mean there was no sexual element to their relationship. She writes: “He was the director and I was his star, acting out fantasies. We dressed up and undressed, played and wrestled, told stories, acted out our fantasies and invented scenes. Whether it was dressing in my school uniform and playing being a swell innocent school girl, or a secretary… or a teacher seducing her student, we were always inventing new stories, and eventually I learned what stimulated Elvis the most.”
10. Elvis gave Priscilla a makeover. That Lana Del Rey look started in a clothes boutique in Las Vegas. “The look on the clerk’s face told me we were thinking the same thing: These clothes were far too sophisticated for such a young girl. But when Elvis saw something he liked, he didn’t think in terms of age.” Teeth, hair, makeup, Elvis instructed her in styling: “You need to apply more makeup around your eyes. Make them stand out more. They’re too plain naturally. I like a lot of makeup. It defines your features.”
11. Elvis made Priscilla walk around the house with a book on her head. He honed Priscilla’s look with the devotion of a seasoned drag queen. “There were evenings when he’d send me back upstairs to change clothes… ‘dull’, ‘unflattering’ or ‘not dressy enough’ for him. Even the way I walked came under review; he told me to move more slowly.” He corrected her verbally and physically: “If I slumped, he’d straighten my back. When I’d look up at him and wrinkle my forehead, he’d smooth it out– or tap it– telling me not to get in that habit.”
12. When Priscilla was pregnant she ate one meal a day. Even as she carried their unborn child, Priscilla carried the burden of Elvis’ assertion “women use the excuse of pregnancy to let themselves go.” She ate one meal a day, snacking on apples and hard boiled eggs. “I prided myself on never needing to buy a maternity outfit.”
13. “I was Elvis’ doll.” One night, while he was playing the piano, Pricilla placed her foot on the piano bench where he was sitting. “He looked down at a small chip in my nail polish and I immediately withdrew my foot from the bench and started making up excuses about why it wasn’t fixed. ‘I’m going to have my pedicure tomorrow,’ I promised. ‘Good,’ he said ’cause that doesn’t look like my Little Girl’s pretty lil sooties. You should always keep them looking nice.”
14. Ok let’s address that Sweet Talk. Elvis’ mother raised her son on these expressions of endearment: feet were “sooties”; milk, “butch”; teeth, “toofies”; love, “yuv”; little, “yittle”. “In moments of intimacy he would switch to third-person address: Him yuvs you and Her yuvs him”
15. He threw a chair at her.
16. Elvis took Priscilla to the Memphis Morgue in the middle of the night to look at the bodies. (I’m sorry what?) “Yeah there’s this guy that oversees the place. I went there once before. I was roaming around the rooms, looking at the bodies, and we ran into each other. Scared the shit out of us both.” (I’m sorry, WHAT?) After showing Priscilla the bodies, he went on to say “This is good for you. You have to see things like this sometimes.”
17. Elvis liked his steak burnt. He called it well-done, and if he saw any pink in his steak, he would flip. “Why isn’t this steak done? Why didn’t you make sure the maids cooked it right? If you had done your job, it wouldn’t have turned out like this.”
18. Elvis once took credit for giving Priscilla a black-eye. Elvis enjoyed playing pranks, roughhousing, and getting his way. Games got out of hand when Elvis didn’t win. When a pillow fight between he and Priscilla escalated, he bruised her arm and elbowed her in the eye. Though it was an accident, Priscilla writes: “I stomped off to my dressing room and slammed the door as I heard him yelling ‘You’re not a goddamn man’…I wore a patch over the bruised eye. Everyone teased me, and Elvis joked ‘Couldn’t help it. She tried to get rough with me. I had to show her who’s boss.’”
19. Elvis gave Priscilla pills — one time so many she was unconscious for two days. They were 500mg Placidyls, a powerful sedative. When she came-to two days later, she heard someone say “you got no business givin’ her something she’s not used to.”
20. When Priscilla was 14, Elvis gave her a handful of Dexedrine to help her stay awake in school during the day.
21. Elvis was really into pills. I mean, really into pills. He kept a medical dictionary on his nightstand, to defend against any concerns Priscilla had about his usage. She writes “He was always reading up on pills, always checking to see what was on the market… he referred to them by their medical names and knew all of their ingredients.”
22. Elvis’ faith in pills stopped short of The Pill. Priscilla married Elvis at 21, and writes “before the wedding I asked him if I should start taking birth-control pills, but he had been adamantly against it. ‘They’re not good for you. I really don’t want you taking them.” (Remember the Placidyls?) “‘They’re not perfected yet, Baby. There’s all kinds of side effects.” Priscilla became pregnant within the first few weeks of marriage.
23. Elvis was obsessed with firearms. He gave Pricilla a pearl-handled derringer. “While my classmates were deciding which colleges to apply to, I was deciding which gun to wear with what sequined dress.” (Ok, admittedly this one is kinda cool.)
24. Elvis offered to kill for Priscilla: “Phoning me late one evening, he said ‘Cilla, you have anyone you want taken care of? Strictly top secret.’”
25. Priscilla studied martial arts with Chuck Norris. Not really an example of Elvis being toxic — but you’d be angry if I didn’t mention it.

Now let’s put Austin Butler behind us.