Elvis & Nixon

Elvis & Nixon (2016) is a history-based comedy you can watch online on iFILM. Just before Christmas 1970, Elvis Presley walks up to the White House gate and asks to meet the President — face to face.

Presley (Michael Shannon) has one demand: make him an undercover federal agent so he can fight drugs and the counterculture himself. To get there he needs an audience with Richard Nixon (Kevin Spacey), a man with zero interest in rock and roll who only agrees because his daughter is a fan. Their meeting in the Oval Office becomes a standoff between two outsized egos, with terrified aides scrambling to keep the protocol Elvis flatly refuses to follow.

The photo from that handshake is the most requested image in the U.S. National Archives, and director Liza Johnson builds a wry, low-key film around the strangeness behind it. Shannon skips the impersonation and plays the tired, isolated man inside the myth, which is the real reason to stick around. Stream Elvis & Nixon (2016) online on iFILM.