Q : How did "If I Can Dream" come about?

A : Well the Colonel obviously had a lot of problems as the special was
progressing. But I do want to say, in all honesty, that Colonel Parker
at any given time in my opinion, could've pulled the plug and gotten
rid of me. He could've fired me in a minute. I truly believe that and I
think as much as he hated the fact that I had gotten in between him and
Elvis, he respected the fact that he thought something--- he didn't
know what but something was happening with this special that was
different. So you know, all he would do basically is have these personal
confrontations. When he liked me my name was Bindel, B I N D E L. And when I
knew it was serious it was always Binder. And he called a meeting every
once in awhile with Elvis and myself, where he had a problem with the
show.

And one of the things is that he knew there was no Christmas song in
the show. And he had lost the battle long before of this was not gonna be
a Christmas show with "I Believe," which Frankie Laine and Perry Como
were singing at the end of their shows and so forth, which is what he
wanted, as the closing number of the show. And so he called me in one day
and, with Elvis, and the three of us were in this little water closet
that he had called an office. He always loved playing these games. He
had two William Morris agents, dressed in uniforms, standing out this
little tiny literally broom closet which they had cleaned out for him. And
he insisted upon that to be his office. And we walked in there and, he
said, "Binder it's been called to my attention that you don't plan on
having a Christmas song in the show at the end." And I said, "Yes." And
he said "Well, Elvis wants a Christmas song in the show. Don't you,
Elvis?" And Elvis sort of had his head down and his eyes lowered and he
said "Yes sir." And I said "Fine. If Elvis wants a Christmas song in the
show we'll put a Christmas song in the show." And, I won't use an
expletive but we walked out of the Colonels office, thinking it was resolved
and, Elvis jabbed me in the ribs and he said, you know, "Blank him.
We're not gonna worry about that." So, I had gotten to know Elvis pretty
well in terms of his philosophy.

One night when we were rehearsing, the television set was on the other
room and all of a sudden there was this moment of silence. And I said,
"I think Bobby Kennedys just been shot." And we all rushed into the
other office and that's exactly what happened. They had live at the
Ambassador Hotel, Kennedy making his speech. We were in the piano room at the
time, but there was just something weird that evening and I just sensed
something had gone wrong. Then we spent the whole night basically
talking about the Kennedy assassination, of both Bobby and John.

And I really liked him. I thought Elvis was one of the nicest, kindest,
funny guys I had ever been exposed to. He may not have been college
educated but he was sure street smart and well read. And, Elvis basically
had in those moments of pure honesty, had been saying things that I
felt we should say on the air in the special. So I went to Earl Brown, our
special material writer and choral director, and to Billy Goldenberg
and I asked them to disguise. I had read an article that in World War Two
all the German artists were disguising their art work so, you know, the
Nazis would never know what they were saying cause it was too abstract
for them. And I said, "We're gonna get it passed the Colonel if we just
write a speech. But if we can put it in the lyrics of a song, he's
never gonna know what we did." So I asked them go home and write a song
about the philosophy of what I was hearing from Elvis personally. That,
you know, we're all created equal. We're all deserve to walk hand in hand
with our brothers, and all that stuff.

And, one morning, very early in the morning, I got a phone call from
Earl Brown saying "I think we did it. I think you've got your song." And
so we rushed down to the studio to hear it and Billy Goldenberg played
piano and Earl sang "If I Can Dream". And the lead sheet that I was
handed had Earl Brown and Billy Goldenberg as the writers of it. And I
said "Well let's wait till Elvis shows up and we'll play it for him." In
the meantime Colonel Parker was saying over my dead body "Are we gonna
play that as the last song of the show?" And I waited for Elvis and
Elvis came into the dressing room. And I ushered him into the piano room
and Colonel Parker was in the outer room with Tom Diskin and a few of the
RCA people and so forth. And I could hear them mumbling, you know,
their discomfort and not wanting us to do what we were doing.

And we played "If I Can Dream" for Elvis and Elvis listened to it. He
said "Play it again." So we went through it again and Elvis said, "Which
I had become accustomed to." When Elvis was really making decisions he
didn't just want to make rash fast decisions. He wanted to, you know,
absorb it and hear it over and over. He had Billy and Earl play this
song I would say three or four times. And he looked at me and said, "Okay
I'll do it." I said "You'll do it" and immediately the door burst open,
and contracts were in hand to give away the publishing and so forth for
RCA and Elvis publishing company. Once they realized this is going in
the show whether they like it or not.

And the really great story about this is that when Billy Goldenberg
knew that Elvis was gonna sing it, he walked over to the piano. He took
out a pencil and eraser, and he erased his name from the lead sheet,
because in reality, Earl Brown had written that song all by himself. That
probably cost Billy Goldenberg a zillion dollars, you know, in
songwriter fees and what have you. But the integrity of that staff was second to
none. I mean, I love these guys to this day I'm very, very close to all
of 'em.

Q : What did Elvis tell you about the show?

A : Well when we finished the show and I had gone down into the
catacombs of NBC. In those days we recorded the show on two-inch videotape.
And then when you ever made edits you had to use a razor blade to cut the
tape physically and so forth. So it was a very, very laborious system.
And, because I was allowed to recreate. I never was allowed to do the
real thing but I was allowed to recreate the improvisational acoustic
session. I had tons of footage beyond the show that we originally
prepared, which was a well organized written affair. But when I saw the improv
I said, "This is what the world wants to see. This is Elvis with his
hair mussed up and sweat under his arm pits," which NBC objected to when
I showed 'em the show. They wanted that taken out of the show cause
this is prime time.

Q : Pick it up with the improv section.

A : The improvisation section for me was what we called the money in
the show. I mean, once I realized it was on tape, and there was Elvis
totally untelevised. He had no concept that there were cameras shooting
him. He was into the moment. He was having the time of his life, with
Scotty and DJ and, you know, the little boxing ring and the audience
around him and so forth. And he was just having a ball. And, when I went
into editing said "This is the show." I've got to get a lot of this
material in. So when I finished editing the show, I walked it up to the tower
at NBC and I said "Okay here it is but there's one problem." And they
said "Whats that?" Said "You know that 60 minute show that you wanted to
air for Singer and prime time?" And they said "Yes." I said "Well it's
90 minutes, so I'm hoping we can get them to buy another half hour or,
you know, get somebody else to sponsor the other half hour because I've
cut a 90 minute show." And they said, you know, it's Binder again. He's
crazy and, you know, this is NBC. This is the network. And since we had
no guest stars it was one artist, which now we take for granted with
HBO and all these special concerts and so forth. But in those days nobody
ever did those kind of shows. And, so anyway, I was ordered to go back
into the dungeon and cut out a half hour of the show, which I
eventually did. And I felt it was pretty well aborted. I used the improv just as
inners and outers, transitions to the production numbers.

And then, when Elvis passed away, some genius at NBC said "Okay, we got
to rush out a Elvis Presley tribute and we'll take the Hawaii special
and we'll take the 68 special and we'll put em together and we'll make a
big show out of this. We'll get Ann-Margret to host it." Well, whoever
went down into the dungeon and into the library, not knowing anything,
pulled the 90 minute tape out. And they ended up doing three hours, as
a tribute, and played the 90 minute special. Well there was technically
no 90 minutes on tape. I thought they had erased it or destroyed it or
whatever but they obviously didn't. And that ended up restoring and
getting back the full 90 minutes, which had a lot of the improv segments
in it.

And then eventually, the outtake reels became more important than the
show itself. And HBO calling it "One Night With You" aired the entire
unedited improv sections which were, you know, which I had nothing to do
with, I mean, is Elvis Presley and that proved he wasn't just a myth of
the Colonels PR machine. And it even proved to Elvis himself that he
was that special and that fantastic. Cause I think in the very beginning
and the reason that Elvis bought that doing the special in the first
place is because I thought he had lost confidence, which most artists do
at one time in their life. And I thought he was afraid. In fact I think
he expressed it to me. He didn't think he had it any more for the
audience cause he had been taken away from that live audience for so many
years making those movies. And I could visually see him gain his energy,
excitement, confidence. You could just tell if you're behind the
scenes, just by his facial expressions.

At first he didn't even want to go out there and do it. In fact I was
called into the dressing room. I think Joe Esposito came and got me.
Said "We got a crisis." I said "Whats the crisis?" He said "Elvis doesn't
want to go out there and do this improv." So I had to go into the
makeup room, and he cleared the makeup lady out of the room. He said "Steve
I can't do it." I said "What do you mean you can't do it?" And he said,
"I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do." And I said "Elvis,
go out there. I mean, if you go out there and say hello and good bye,
I'm happy. But you've got to go out there. You're not gonna cop out at
this point. We got an audience waiting for you. And all your friends are
here and you've got to go out." And when he went out there, he was
scared to death. And he went out there and the opening number he was shaky.
His throat was dry. And you could see all these things. Then little by
little boy, this just, you know, amazing urge of confidence just flowed
through his body and we had this cue at the end of the improvs, of
playing Memories, which was a recorded track. And he sang live to the
track. And the cue was, Elvis let me know when you've finished all the
improv, and then I'll play the track. So we had this little hand signal
between us. But the reality is when he did both of the improvs, both of
them, he never gave me the cue. I kinda had to just sense the moment when
I felt it was time to play the track.

Q : He was like a caged tiger on stage.

A : Well I think he was. I mean, the great thing about Elvis was his
natural instinct and he never gave himself credit for being a great
musician, though most musicians really feel he was. He was always sort of
down playing himself, as strange as that may sound. And, when we did the
improv, you know, I think he really had so much curiosity and fear in
him as to whether he really had it that when he walked out there and
realized, you know, "Hey. They not only are loving it but, you know, my
guys are loving it and I'm loving it." I mean, this is what it's all
about.

Q : How did Colonel Parker feel about it?

A : Well, the whole idea of the improv came--- it was inspiration cause
Elvis had physically moved into NBC. He was living in the dressing
room, and that was kinda unheard of, for the whole period that we filmed
this.

Q : Was he in Dean Martins dressing room?

A : Exactly. Well it was the Dean Martin stage. And, so Elvis had
basically by moving in, he'd go get up and we'd start rehearsals early in
the morning and, you know, there was a cast of hundreds. And, at the end
of the day when everybody was wiped out and going home to rest up for
the next day, Elvis went into the dressing room, and all the guys went
in there, and they started to unwind. And how they unwound was to just
jam. These are those moments where'd you get to look through keyholes
and see things that you're just in awe of because you're not supposed to
be seeing this stuff. I said I got to get a camera in there and got to
film this. This is better than anything we're doin out on the stage.
And Colonel Parker said "No he wouldn't allow it, no cameras, no still
photography." And so I was trying to figure out how to do it. And Colonel
said "Okay I'll tell you what I'll do. Providing that I have total
control and it won't go into the show unless I say it's okay to go into the
show, I'll let you recreate it out on the stage," which is how the
whole improv began. And, that's exactly what I did but it never was as
great as it is, it never was the real thing that I saw in the dressing
room.

Q : Was there a mix-up of tickets where no one showed up and you had to
get people from Bob's Big Boy?

A : The incident with the tickets was --- I went to Colonel Parker and
when I was told it was okay to do this and I decided we'd have two
audiences and we were inviting 250, 300 people to come to each one of these
sessions. And so I had NBC guest relations print up the Elvis Presley
tickets. And believe me, we could've sold those tickets for $1000 apiece
or something, even in those days. I mean, to see Elvis Presley for an
hour or two, you know, improvisationally singing and talking and
everything was just unheard of. And so I went to the Colonel and I said "How
many tickets do you want for your friends or your family or RCA or
whatever?" And he said, "Bindel, said you don't understand how the Colonel
works." He said, "I don't want any tickets. But, if you want all of
Elvis fans with the bouffant hairdos and all the screaming and yelling and
everything from Memphis," he said, "I want all the tickets. And if you
give me all the tickets, that means all of 'em. You can't have any, NBC
can't have any, Singer can't have 'em, nobody gets 'em."

So I went to NBC and I went to Bob Finkel, and I went to the sponsors
and I said "This is the deal. And for me there's no contest, let's give
'em to the Colonel and let's get this, cull this audience." Not taking
into consideration that my real feelings were, in all honesty, is I
didn't trust what the Colonel said. I mean, I just didn't feel 100 percent
confident when he said he was gonna do something it was really gonna
happen. And I usually try and protect my backside all the time by
anticipating whether things are gonna happen. In this case I didn't. I
convinced everybody to give the Colonel all of the tickets for both shows,
which I did. He got out his briefcase and all the tickets went into the
briefcase. And I'm expecting these airplanes to fly in from Memphis, and
all these screaming women coming out and all the Elvis hard core fans
and so forth.

And about two days after the tickets were given to the Colonel, the
guard at NBC while I was driving out one evening, said "Hey Steve, do you
need any tickets for Elvis?" And I said "What are you talking about?"
And there on his desk in the guard booth was a stack of Elvis Presley
tickets. That was my first indication we're in trouble in River City, you
know, we're in deep trouble if this doesn't come off. So the next
morning I got there extra specially early, expecting to see the Johnny
Carson, Jay Leno fans lined up outside of NBC but, you know, tenfold. I just
expected there'd be fans taking over all of Burbank wanting to see
Elvis Presley. There was nobody and I drove into the gate and we're gettin
ready to organize the staff and the stage to shoot this sequence and
all of a sudden the head of the guest relations comes to me and said
"Steve we're in big trouble." There's just a few people standing outside.
Those tickets weren't distributed. They didn't go to anybody. So we
panicked. I mean, we called some friends of ours at some local radio
stations and asked them to promote it on the air. We sent somebody over to
Bob's Big Boy to ask customers eating hamburgers and malts to come over
to see Elvis Presley and we somehow pulled together with enough people
at NBC who were there, calling their friends and families and what have
you to get these audiences in there.

Q : Did the special change your own life?

A : Well I certainly am flattered over the years of people saying "Oh
you're the guy that produced and directed the Elvis 68 special." But in
reality it hasn't. I've tried to live my life, you know, if somebody
asks me what's my favorite project it's always the next one. And I'm
better for having done Elvis Presley, to be honest with you. I never
thought it was going to be what it became in terms of folk legend or
whatever. I was just doing 100 percent the best I could at doing a special.

Q : Is there a lot of unreleased footage for the 68 special and is
there a chance for future specials? (This interview was done in 2001)

A : As far as any unreleased material, I think the Elvis Presley estate
has probably gone over material with a fine tooth and comb. They have
been acquiring anything and everything that could ever be connected with
him. The only thing is, that when I shot the improvisation segments I
actually shot two hours. And I believe that only one of those two hours
has ever been broadcast. The funny story behind it is that I got a
phone call from the people who owned the RCA specials in New York and a
gentleman named Jose Razkoff who was the business manager of the Elvis
Presley estate for awhile. And they said, "We just worked out a deal with
RCA and we're going to do another Elvis Presley tribute show. Do you
have any ideas?" And I said, "Absolutely." I said "You don't even have to
pay a penny for it. In the vault at Beacons, is two hours of the most
incredible Elvis Presley outtake footage that exists." So they didn't
know what I was talking about and I went over to Beacons and got a letter
from them authorizing me and I yanked out the two masters.

And I brought 'em to them and evidently they viewed it and they called
me up and said, "Do you think anybody cares about this stuff?" I mean,
it blew my mind. And I said, "Just play it in front of an Elvis Presley
fan and there's your answer." And they went ahead and sold it to HBO
for I heard a million dollars. Just for the right to air it and it became
one of HBO's biggest successful specials ever run to this day on their
cable network. And, you know, it was retitled "One Night With You." And
I know that--- all they ran I believe was take one. I think there's
take two which had a repeat of a lot of the same songs, but certainly it
was totally different because it was all improvisational. So even if he
did the same songs he would've done 'em a different way.

Q : Where were you when you found out Elvis had passed away?

A : I can't even tell ya. I think I was doing another special at the
time and was very involved in work and, I was very sad to hear that
because my last conversation with Elvis, when we were alone at NBC just
viewing the special, was that I had hoped--- because he told me how much he
passionately loved the special. He really did, which is very rare
hearing an artist tell you to your face how much they love what they see of
themselves on the screen. A lot of artists don't even want to look at
themselves after they finish a movie or a special. And he said how much
he loved it, and he expressed to me that he was never ever going to
record a song again that he didn't believe in and he wasn't gonna make a
movie that he didn't passionately feel something about the script. And I
said "I hear you and I hope you're strong enough to live up to that"
because, the reality is having observed Elvis in his relationship with
the Colonel, is that I didn't know if he had a lot of real close personal
friends. I equated him to Hamlet, who was afraid to go out into the
real world because he was sort of insulated and isolated.

And, I did go to see Elvis in Las Vegas when he performed the first
time there and I was really excited about him exploring new worlds for
himself. And then the next time I went to see him, he had his back to the
audience and I knew he was bored. And I think that was the big danger
of Elvis future was to prevent boredom. And I think he overstayed his
welcome mat in Las Vegas as a Las Vegas entertainer. I would've loved to
see him make movies, go around the world and do concerts and so forth
and so on. For whatever reasons, he chose not to.

Q : It's a shame you weren't able to contact Elvis and do another
special.

A : I don't know if you could--- I mean, my experience in my career has
been, and I think the reason I got into the specials business so
heavily is the fact that it was a one and only. It had it's own beginning,
it's own middle, it's own end and when it ended it was over. And I'm not
sure if Elvis and I hooked up again and did another special or whatever
it would've ever matched what we did the first time. Because, we were
both experimenting. I mean, I didn't care about ratings. I didn't care
about my relationships with the network or with Colonel Parker. I cared
about doing the greatest special I could possibly do. And, I think he
had the attitude of, this is our little window of opportunity to do
something that he'd been yearning to do for a long time, and never had the
opportunity to do it.

Q : Were there any celebrities who visited Elvis on the set?

A : The only thing I remember regarding celebrities is that, I remember
there were lots of phone calls from the Beatles trying to talk to him
but he never took the phone calls, to my knowledge. There were certain
people who claimed to be very close friends of Elvis and they tried to
get in the rehearsal rooms. And they were immediately person non grata
and told to leave and, I never saw him one on one with any celebrity.

I do have a great story, which is the first time I took Elvis out to
NBC to see where he was gonna shoot the special. I think part of the
success is, the first time I met Elvis, he said he was basically afraid of
television. It was not his turf quote unquote. And I said then, you
know, "Your turf is makin' records so why don't you make a record and I'll
put the pictures to it." And he told me later on that that's the line
that relaxed him, because he never thought about him doing a television
special. He was makin' a record and they were puttin' pictures to it.

But the really funny story is the first time I took him out to see the
stage, there was a group of tourists, who were going out on a tour of
NBC. They were gonna see the shoe shine guy in front of the Johnny
Carson stage. They were gonna see where Dean Martin did his special and so
forth and so on and there was like eight little old ladies kind of
huddled as we walked in. And the two of us stood waiting for the NBC person
to come and greet us and take us to the stage. And while we were
standing there and Elvis had his sunglasses on. And we're just standing and
chatting and all of a sudden this little woman came up and she said
"Excuse me boys, but are there any celebrities here today?" To this day she
never knew, nor does she probably know now if she's alive, that that
was Elvis Presley that she walked up to and asked that question.

Q : Were there any other funny incidences on the set?

A : Well every day was fun. I mean, it truly was. We had a great group
of people. There was a great energy about wanting to do the show. Elvis
was always in a good mood. The only time ever that I remember him being
in a bad mood, I think was when Bob Finkel told him that he was using
too much hair dye in his hair. He like freaked out over that and came to
me and said "Do you think my hair's too dark?" I said "No, I think it
looks fabulous." But, other than that, there were a lot of laughs. You
know, Joe Esposito and the gang were around and they were always filled
with laughs. We just had a great time with all of them, you know, Elvis
had this little bubble around him and nobody was allowed to penetrate
it. But we all got along great together and we all had a lot of fun and
I had a lot of respect for everybody.

Q : I had a lot of fun interviewing you, too. Thanks a lot.

- Director Of Elvis' '68 Comeback Special Talks About The King