1 settembre: Altre news su ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING e CELLULAR. Elvis flick's song and dance opens state's wallet. SANTA FE - Elvis not only left the building, he took $7.5 million with him. The State Investment Council has voted unanimously to loan that amount to a private company to underwrite nearly the entire cost of a film it will produce in New Mexico. "Elvis Has Left the Building," starring Kim Basinger and directed by Joel Zwick of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" fame, begins shooting in the Albuquerque area next month. Described as a black comedy, it's about a cosmetics saleswoman who travels from Memphis to Las Vegas, Nev., leaving behind a trail of dead Elvis impersonators. Peter Dekom, a Los Angeles entertainment lawyer and the council's film adviser, said it was "probably the easiest project to recommend that we have ever seen." "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," directed by Zwick, was a low-budget sleeper - made for $5 million - that turned into a blockbuster. "Elvis Has Left the Building" has an $8 million budget. New Mexico would be guaranteed under the terms of the loan to recoup its $7.5 million in four years, Dekom told the council during a meeting Tuesday. In addition, the state would be entitled to 6 percent of profits earned by the low-budget, independent film. Dekom described the percentage as "small but reasonable." If, for example, the film got $10 million in revenue internationally and $5 million domestically, the profits would be an estimated $2.5 million, of which New Mexico would get $150,000. London's Capitol Films will sell the movie first in the international market and that might be enough to cover costs, Dekom said. No distributor has been lined up for the U.S. market, and it might not be released in theaters, although there could be revenue from video, DVD and television sales in the U.S., according to his report. Dekom also New Mexico would see secondary economic benefits - from money spent during production, for example - that can't be quantified. Under state law, at least 60 percent of the payroll to the production crew must go to New Mexico residents. The film will pay 81 percent to New Mexicans, because the director of photography will be hired locally, the council was told. The loan will be made to Lookalike Productions, a wholly owned subsidiary of Capitol Films. "We're hoping this is the first of a number of films we can make here," Hannah Leader, one of the owners of the London production company, told the council. "I have never been in a production where people clamor so much to be in a low-budget movie," producer Tova Laiter said. Angie Dickinson might be cast as Basinger's mother, Laiter said. The shooting, scheduled to begin Sept. 15, will take about 30 days in various locations around Albuquerque. A day or two of shooting in Las Vegas, Nev., is also planned.  Elvises Packed the Building. There were young Elvises and old Elvises. There was an Elvis on a walker. There were girl Elvises and boy ones and one Elvis who was just 3 feet tall. About 100 Elvises descended on Albuquerque's Golden West Saloon on Tuesday night to audition for a part in "Elvis Has Just Left The Building," a movie starring Oscar-winning actress Kim Basinger that will begin filming next month in New Mexico. The film's producers were looking for 100 hip-shaking impersonators to work as extras in the modestly budgeted black comedy about a serial killer who stalks Elvises. "I prefer to say Elvi for the plural," said casting director Jim Graebner. The audition consisted of filling out an info card, posing for a Polaroid headshot and performing a two-minute Elvis karaoke in front of the 150 or so people who packed the Downtown bar to watch the spectacle. And it was a spectacle. The sight of 100 Elvises milling about the grungy bar was like a scene from, well, a bad movie. Elvises sweated in polyester jumpsuits. Elvises sipped beer. Women with teased hair stuck pins in their bewigged husbands' bell-bottomed Elvis pants. Elvises crowded around the bar and stood in line at the restroom. A tiny Elvis sat in his mother's lap and cried. Some of the Elvises were great. Like Mike Ridgeway, a 55-year-old pharmacy technician from Santa Fe who had the crowd cheering after he belted out an Elvis song sans karaoke tape. Some were so bad that filmgoers will empathize with the psycho killer who murders them. We won't tell you who stank, because that would be mean. And because we might get sued.Tavia Schwartz of Albuquerque showed up as a Vegas Elvis. She wore a white polyester jumpsuit festooned with beads, a black pompadour wig, aviator glasses and platform boots. "I have a crease on my head from the pantyhose on my head under this wig," Schwartz griped. Sweat glistened on the wig hair she had glued to her chest in an attempt to look more Elvis-like.The 27-year-old had never impersonated Elvis before the audition; she had rented the costume that morning. "I've been trying out for commercials. I'll take any part I can get," she said. Alan Curtis traveled from Dallas for the audition. The 47-year-old has been working as an Elvis impersonator at Texas nursing homes for five years. He's so into Elvis that he wears his hair in a shoe-polish black pompadour even when he's working his day job as a machinist. "This ain't a wig," he said. Some ladies in a nursing home audience back home had made his jeweled white jumpsuit. He wore a belt buckle the size of a dinner plate that he had made in Canada for $275. "It's an exact replica of the one Elvis wore in the concert in Hawaii," he said. Those who land parts as extras in the film will only earn $75 a day, so the job is hardly worth the price of a plane ticket. But Curtis said he came because impersonating Elvis helped restore joy to his life. "I got a divorce. I was out riding on my motorcycle and I saw a sign for karaoke at a bar," he said. Curtis went in and watched for one night, too shy to sing. He came back a week later and sang "Suspicious Minds." The experience was transformational. "People said 'You're good! You need to get a costume,' '' he said. "I did, and I been going ever since." Eleven Elvises in red satin jumpsuits auditioned as a group, identifying themselves as the Flying Elvises, Corrales Chapter. "We came as a joke," said Gale Maxwell of Rio Rancho as she fixed her wig in the ladies room. "But if they want to put us in a movie, that's OK with us." Veteran Elvis impersonator Jerry McClure drove to the audition from his home in Santa Fe while wearing his Elvis getup. "Cars would slow down and they would look, then look again," said the 58-year-old. "It was great." Judging from the costumes worn by the impersonators, it is the Vegas Elvis who is most firmly implanted in the popular imagination. There were a few hepcat Elvises in 1950s plaid coats. One 1968 Elvis in leather. But most of the Elvises looked like The King circa 1975: bloated, bleary and headed for that solid gold Cadillac in the sky. Graebner, the casting director, said all the Elvises who showed up Tuesday night would probably get a part in the film. Even the woman with long dark hair who showed up as a sexy female Elvis in a vinyl halter top, jeweled pants and stiletto heels? "The movie is a comedy," Graebner said. "We want goofy. If we had someone come in really looking like Elvis, we'd have to tell them to leave." State Investment Council approves $7.5M for Elvis movie project. Corny jokes abounded Tuesday during a meeting of the State Investment Council, which unanimously approved a $7.5 million loan to the producers of "Elvis Has Left the Building," which will begin shooting in New Mexico next month. The loan will nearly cover the cost of making the dark comedy, which will star Kim Basinger and a host of Elvis Presley lookalikes. It will be directed by Joel Zwick, who directed the low-budget smash "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." Basinger will play a cosmetics peddler who, while traveling from Memphis to Las Vegas, Nev., leaves in her wake a trail of dead Elvis impersonators who die "hilariously and accidentally," according to producer Tova Laiter. Elvis impersonators have been lined up for cameos in the movie, she says, among them several well-known stars. The producers also held an open casting call at an Albuquerque nightclub on Tuesday, attracting about 100 more impersonators. "I've never been in a production where people clamored so much to be in it," she said. The film is scheduled for release next year. About 81 percent of the film's payroll will go to New Mexicans, including a locally-hired director of photography, according to the New Mexico Film Commission. The state will represent several locations, including Arizona, Tennessee and New York City. The loan is a result of recent legislation which provides up to $22 million in production loans, with a limit of $7.5 million per project. Besides landing a Ron Howard film this year, titled "The Missing," New Mexico also invested $7.5 million in "Suspect Zero," a crime thriller about a serial killer who hunts another serial killer. It also invested $2.2 million in "Secret Agent Mom," a made-for-television movie, and $2.5 million for a segment on PBS Mystery! based on New Mexico author Tony Hillerman's novel, "A Thief of Time."  Jason Statham on Filming Cellular. The Italian Job star Jason Statham talked about his next project, Cellular. The actor will be hitting the streets of L.A. in a couple of weeks to begin production on the New Line thriller, which has Kim Basinger as a kidnapping victim whose only hope of escape is the stranger she manages to randomly dial on her tiny cell phone. "It's more of a psychological part for me, less physical than other roles I've done," says Statham. Still, he's hoping the heat wave around these parts breaks before production starts. "We have a fair amount of location work, and the San Fernando Valley, right now, is like the Gobi Desert." 2 settembre: ALEC STICKS WITH EX'S PET PROJECT.  ALEC Baldwin blamed his ex-wife, Kim Basinger, for getting him mixed up in animals-rights issues at the Bahama Bow Wow! benefit for the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons in Southampton. He claimed that when "we broke up, my friends told me to go out and order both a hamburger and a steak." Baldwin has stuck with the pro-animals program, however. In fact, he preordered a vegetarian meal from Robbins Wolfe caterers before the benefit dinner. 9 settembre: Put the blame on Mame, boys. Film icons don't come much more gorgeous or troubled than Rita Hayworth, Hollywood's original "Love Goddess," who gets the TCM bio treatment in Rita (tonight, 8 ET/PT). Kim Basinger narrates the special, which traces Hayworth's successful career and her less successful marriages. Rita is followed on the East Coast, and preceded on the West, by Gilda (9 p.m. ET/6 PT).  Actress' career and her complicated life are featured in the new documentary ``Rita''. In "The Shawshank Redemption," Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are a pair of convicts who are frozen with wonder because the woman on the movie screen they are watching has merely flipped her hair. The movie is fiction; but their reaction to the sight of Rita Hayworth is not. During the 1940s and '50s, Rita Hayworth's image in movies like "Gilda" and "Cover Girl" or in World War II pinup posters captivated millions of Americans. On screen, Hayworth, who was born Marguerita Carmen Cansino in 1918, projected a graceful open sensuality, but the real woman behind those pictures was a much more private and complex person when the cameras weren't rolling. The actress' career and her complicated life are featured in the new documentary "Rita" that airs at 7 and 10 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 9 on Turner Classic Movies. On the same day the station will also air some of her best loved films including "Gilda," "The Lady from Shanghai," "Separate Tables," "You'll Never Get Rich," "Separate Tables" and "Affectionately Yours." "When she was on camera, she was doing her job," said Elaina Archer, the documentary's director. "It's not like (Marilyn) Monroe, who I think was a little bit better at appealing to the public. Rita was really, really private." Archer's film includes footage from Hayworth's flicks, the Cansino family's home movies, interviews with her friends and collaborators and Hayworth's own voice recalling her life. "Rita" also includes contributions for current Hollywood royalty. "L.A. Confidential" star Kim Basinger narrates, and recent Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman is one of the interviewees. "We had discovered that Nicole Kidman studied Rita for `Moulin Rouge' and I wanted her perspective on what she was able to pull from her research," Archer said. "She made a point of squeezing us in to her press junket and was enthusiastic and passionate about her feelings toward Rita as a mentor, a fellow private woman and as an actress from our past that we must make a point not to forget." Hayworth had been a performer since her childhood, when she danced with her father Eduardo Cansino. Despite her success, she wanted to quit so that she could marry and have children. Unfortunately, all of her five marriages -- to Edward C. Johnson; actor-director Orson Welles (she starred in his "The Lady from Shanghai" and had a daughter with him); international playboy Prince Aly Aga Khan (the father of her second child Princess Yasmin Aga Khan); crooner Dick Haymes and producer James Hill ("Separate Tables") -- ended in divorce. "I think she was disappointed by loves that went wrong," Archer said. "I think she really did want a true love, a lasting love. And I think it weighed very heavy on her when it didn't work out." The documentary includes a previously unseen interview with Hill, where he describes his abusive treatment of her in vivid detail. "You didn't have to say he was a schmuck," Archer said. "He says it himself. That was what was so amazing. It was painful to watch that whole interview with him." As she got older, Hayworth actually benefited from embracing her age in films like "The Story on Page One." "I think it's interesting with Rita because with a lot of those love goddesses, they cling to that," Archer said. "You see a lot of these women, and it gets pathetic when they get older, and they pile on the makeup and they want to still have glamorous roles to play, and they can't let go of that image." Hayworth didn't get to enjoy her maturing career for long because she succumbed to Alzheimer's disease, which killed her in 1987. Because her affliction was unknown until near the end of her life, many had incorrectly attributed her inability to memorize her lines during her later roles to alcohol and other causes. "She was ready to embark on her own, and then this happened," Archer said. "She was living in a state of constant confusion." Hayworth once asked of the press, "Whatever you write about me, don't make it sad." "Although a lot of people would think she was weak, I don't think she was weak at all," Archer said. "She'd only put up with so much. In the end, she was always the one to walk away, whether it was a studio or a bad marriage. A lot of good things came out of this. I'm hoping Rita would be proud of it at the end of the day." 10 settembre: John Corbett Sees Elvis Leaving the Building Source: Variety Tuesday, John Corbett and his My Big Fat Greek Wedding director Joel Zwick are re-teaming on Elvis Has Left the Building.Corbett is set to star alongside Kim Basinger in the comedy for Capitol Films. Basinger plays a cosmetics saleswoman whose every move seems to coincide with those of Elvis Presley. After she accidentally offs a couple of Presley impersonators, she goes on the run from the FBI and meets a depressed ad executive (Corbett) who is at a personal crossroads. The script was written by Adam-Michael Garber and Mitchell Ganem and filming begins this month. 14 settembre: Dopo John Corbett, sempre più ricco il cast di ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING. Richards All Shook Up Over 'Elvis'. LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Denise Richards has joined John Corbett and Kim Basinger in Capitol Films' "Elvis Has Left the Building" for helmer Joel Zwick. "Elvis" stars Basinger as a Mary Kay Cosmetics consultant whose routine life seems continually to coincide with matters relating to Elvis. After accidentally offing a few Elvis impersonators, she goes on the run only to cross paths with an advertising executive (Corbett) eager to meet someone of substance. Richards will star as Belinda, a beautiful, self-absorbed fashion model who is the ex-wife of Corbett's character. The script is by Adam-Michael Barber and Mitchell Ganem. 20 settembre: 'Elvis' Gains Two More Followers. LOS ANGELES - Sean Astin, who plays the steadfast Samwise Gamgee in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, will play another buddy in "Elvis Has Left the Building." The romantic comedy also adds Annie Potts to the ensemble cast that currently stars Kim Basinger, John Corbett and Denise Richards, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "Elvis" centers on a Mary Kay consultant (Basinger) who finds her life constantly coinciding with Elvis, including a disastrous mishap that leads her to kill several Elvis impersonators. On the run for her deed, she comes across a bored New York ad exec (Corbett). Astin will portray a colleague of Corbett's character while Potts is the best friend of Basinger's character. Joel Zwick directs "Elvis," which is set to begin shooting later this month.