Director's Works
Elvis Isn't Dead Skyler Knutzen
Skyler Knutzen is a homegrown Iowan and now New York based Director, DP, and Editor. He is interested in capturing present memories that garner their importance in the future and how everyday life is wrapped up in memory, mortality, and familial connections. His work focuses on documentaries, docu-branded commercials, and live music. His work as a DP and editor have screened at SXSW 2023, Netflix (The New Americans), and Sundance Film Festival 2022, Paramount + (Last Flight Home). His work as a director has screened at Nowness, Vimeo Staff Pick (Elvis Isn't Dead), Cinequest Film Festival 2021, WCFF 2021, Queens World Film Festival 2021 (Daughter Sun) and others.
I'm excited to share my short documentary with you all at 1.4. It premiered on Nowness and went on to get a Vimeo Staff Pick. I'm pleased to continue it's journey and share it with you all. I was instantly struck and connected to the story of Hawkeye Elvis. I was a student at the University of Iowa when I first came to know about him. His story somewhat fell into my lap even though I had moved halfway across the country to pursue a career in film. I had to explore this story as my own grandmother was also wrestling with dementia. My mother told me stories of her most recent visit. She explained why she was visiting that she no longer knew her name or how they were related. As I listened to my mother detail that experience, this project become about something much more than just a man that is an Elvis impersonator attending college football games. Louis Malle’s Vive le Tour, and some of Agnus Varda’s documentaries were very influential. I found the playfulness to be a defining feature of their works and something I strived to capture in this documentary. Greg and his mother have a personality that leans in this direction, and although the film dives into dementia and the process of losing a parent I didn’t want the tone of the film to ever lean into something darker, or lacking humor. Even though she is struggling they find ways to laugh at just about everything. It’s a part of my personality that aligned with them. There was no way to avoid that feeling in this work. What I love most about these filmmakers' work is that they started their films with a clear idea and by the end, you can see that they found something else. That certainly happened for me, I went in making a film about an Elvis Impersonator from the city I went to college in, and then something much much more important appeared. I asked Hawkeye Elvis' mother, where do memories go when they’re forgotten? Her response was simple, “Don’t you think they stay here, somewhere on a higher plane? Every language, every song, it’s all here still.” I can’t prove whether or not that statement is true but I do hope this film articulates how memory doesn’t just live in our heads but is hidden within our clothes, gestures, and eccentric hobbies. We are all impersonators when it comes to dealing with the difficulties of aging.