Friday, December 11 | 5:30 p.m.
Saturday, December 12 | 5:30 & 8 p.m.
Sunday, December 13 | 2 & 5:30 p.m.
In the words of the Nashville News, circa 1979: “If Elvis is alive, he wears a mask and goes by the name Orion.” Situated squarely within the “truth is stranger than fiction” category, Orion: The Man Who Would Be King tells the story of Jimmy Ellis, a world champion Alabama horse trainer who leaves small-town life to pursue his dream of musical superstardom. Ellis, however, sounds uncannily, eerily like Elvis Presley—a fact that will limit his professional options until the King’s untimely passing in August 1977. Everything changes in the years that follow with Ellis achieving some measure of success and celebrity, albeit under the alias “Orion,” and the cover of a mask he is contractually obligated to wear in public. Matters only becoming stranger and sadder from there in this revealing documentary portrait of immense musical talent, done in by genetic circumstance.
Director Jeanie Finlay 2015 United Kingdom/United States 86 minutes NR DCP